The honorable gentleman from Connecticut has told you, and told you truly, in an exposé presented by the French Minister of Foreign Affairs to the Emperor, that this measure is much applauded: it is called a magnanimous measure of the Americans! And in a conversation which is stated to have passed recently at Bayonne, between the Emperor of France and an American gentleman, it is said, and I believe correctly, that the Emperor expressed his approbation of the embargo. I have no doubt that this is the fact; the measure is too consentaneous with his system of policy, not to be approbated by him. So long as the extreme maritime preponderancy of Great Britain shall continue, with or without the existence of an American embargo, or with or without the British Orders in Council, France can enjoy but very little foreign commerce, and that little the Emperor of France would undoubtedly be willing to sacrifice, provided that, by so doing, he could insure the destruction of a much larger and more valuable amount of British and American commerce. It is therefore apparent, that this measure, considered as a coercive measure against France, is nugatory in the extreme. What, sir, are, or have been its effects on Great Britain? When the embargo was first laid the nation were alarmed. Engaged in a very extended and important commerce with this country, prosecuted upon the most liberal and confidential terms, this measure, whether considered as an act of hostility, or as a mere municipal restrictive regulation, could not but excite apprehension; for most of our writers, in relation to her colonies, had impressed the belief of the dependence of the West India settlements on the United States for the means of subsistence. Accordingly, for several months after the imposition of the embargo, we find it remained an object of solicitude with them, nor have I any doubt that the Ministry, at that time, partook of the national feeling; for it appears, so late as June, that such a disposition existed with the British Ministry, as induced our Minister at the Court of London to entertain the belief, and to make known to his Government the expectation he entertained, that an adjustment would take place of the differences between this country and Great Britain. But, sir, the apprehensions of the British nation and Ministry gradually became weaker; the embargo had been submitted to the never-erring test of experience, and information of its real effects flowed in from every quarter. It was found that, instead of reducing the West Indies by famine, the planters in the West Indies, by varying their process of agriculture, and appropriating a small part of their plantations for the raising of ground provisions, were enabled, without materially diminishing their usual crops of produce, in a great measure to depend upon themselves for their own means of subsistence.