I will illustrate my general idea by a supposition. There are two avenues to the ocean from the harbor of New York--by the Narrows, and through Long Island Sound. Suppose the fleets, both of France and Great Britain, should block up the Narrows, so that to pass them would be physically impossible, in the relative state of our naval force. Will gentlemen seriously contend that there would be any thing "abject or disgraceful," if the people of New York should submit to carry on their trade through the Sound? Would the remedy for this interference with our rights be abandoning the ocean altogether? Again: suppose, that instead of both nations blockading the same point, each should station its force at a different one--France at the mouth of the Sound, Britain at the Narrows. In such case, would staying at home, and refusing any more to go upon the sea, be an exercise of independence in the citizens of New York? Great philosophers may call it "dignified retirement," if they will. I call it, and I am mistaken if the people would not call it, "base and abject submission." Sir, what in such a case would be true honor? Why, to consider well which adversary is the weakest, and cut our way to our rights through the path which he obstructs. Having removed the smaller impediment, we should return with courage, strengthened by trial and animated by success, to the relief of our rights, from the pressure of the strongest assailant. But, all this is war; and war is never to be incurred. If this be the national principle, avow it; tell your merchants you will not protect them; but, for Heaven's sake, do not deny them the power of relieving their own and the nation's burdens, by the exercise of their own ingenuity. Sir, impassable as the barriers offered by these edicts are in the estimation of members on this floor, the merchants abroad do not estimate them as insurmountable. Their anxiety to risk their property, in defiance of them, is full evidence of this. The great danger to mercantile ingenuity is internal envy--the corrosion of weakness or prejudice. Its external hazard is ever infinitely smaller. That practical intelligence which this class of men possesses, beyond any other in the community, excited by self-interest--the strongest of human passions--is too elastic to be confined by the limits of exterior human powers, however great or uncommon. Build a Chinese wall, and the wit of your merchants, if permitted freely to operate, will break through it or overleap it, or undercreep it. ------------"mille adde catenas Effugiet tamen, hæc sceleratus vincula Proteus."