Abridgment of the Debates of Congress, from 1789 to 1856, Vol. 4 (of 16)United States. Congress
History
Abridgment of the Debates of Congress, from 1789 to 1856, Vol. 4 (of 16)
United States. Congress
Law -- United States; United States -- Politics and government
millions were saved by having the embargo, a sum nearly equal to the
whole exports of the United States for one year, excluding the capital
employed. The first two or three seizures of vessels, sir, would have
sent an alarm abroad, and the danger been so imminent, they would have
voluntarily retired from destruction. There are no reasonable data from
which to infer that one hundred millions of our property could at any
one time have fallen a prey. Some few vessels might have been taken,
but the rest would have escaped the grasp of the power which harassed
them.
I will now examine the character of this measure; for upon my word,
sir, it seems a political nondescript, though we feel its effects so
severely. The President tells you it is a measure of precaution only;
and yet we are told by the gentlemen that it is a species of war,
which America can best use to coerce the two greatest powers on the
earth, commanding land and sea, to truckle at our feet. I know not
how gentlemen can place our connection with foreign nations in such a
predicament; whilst the President officially holds out to the world
that the embargo was a peaceful measure, gentlemen now say that it
is a coercive one, a sort of quasi war. I recollect a gentleman at
the last session making an estimate of the West Indies being worth an
hundred millions to Britain, and predicting that before the measure
was ninety days known in the West Indies, it would bring that nation
to our feet, that it would act as a great political lever, resting
its fulcrum on Jamaica, and move all Europe to our wishes. Double the
number of days have elapsed, and they hold out insulting language. How
then can we trust to the future predictions of gentlemen? Their error
arises from a want of knowledge of the country; a little experience is
worth all the theory in the world. In the years 1774-'5, an honorable
feeling adopted a non-exportation and non-importation agreement, more
faithfully executed by patriotism than any law since made or enacted;
for every family refused to use an article which was not raised within
the bosom of its own country. Did it produce starvation in the West
Indies? No, sir; the politicians of that day did not so calculate.
They knew the resources of those islands, and told them that if they
would convert a part of their sugar plantations into corn-fields, they
would not suffer. We are now in the habit of overvaluing ourselves and
undervaluing our enemies. Come the day when it will, we shall have no
ignoble foes to meet.
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