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
But, say gentlemen, it is certainly not submission to trade to those
ports which the edicts of the belligerents have not prohibited us from
trading with. Granted--I will not enter into a calculation on the
subject, as to how much importance the trade would be of to us. The
chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means has told you it would be
contemptible in amount; but, sir, I say this, because I consider it
expedient to continue the embargo, to withhold our supplies from those
who need them, I will not permit you to go to those countries. Repeal
the embargo in part! No, sir. Give merchants one single spot anywhere
out of the jurisdiction of your own country, as large as the square
of this House, and they would carry away the whole of our surplus
produce. Give them a little island on which to place the fulcrum of
their lever, and Archimedes-like, they will move your whole trade.
Let them go to Demarara, to Gottenburg, or any other burg, and it is
to the whole world. But the trade to Spain and Portugal has been held
up as highly profitable to the merchants of the United States. The
gentlemen who venture this opinion have not, perhaps, considered the
subject with all the attention it is entitled to. It appears to me to
be demonstrable from the documents, and the knowledge of circumstances
which we possess, that Great Britain, with the extension of plunder
the Orders in Council warranted, is not satisfied. She was not content
that she had laid a snare whereby she intercepted our whole commerce
to Europe. She then permitted us (no doubt from extreme moderation)
to trade with the French colonies, taking care, at the same time, to
force a direction of that trade in a channel which could not fail to
yield a tributary supply to her exchequer. She has now interdicted, by
orders secretly issued, that commerce also. The language of Cochrane's
proclamation cannot be misunderstood. What a harvest he would have
reaped from the robbery of your merchantmen, had the embargo been
raised, as was expected by the British Cabinet, at the commencement of
the session. The Orders in Council would have taken all your property
going to continental Europe, and those of the Admiralty would have
swept the West India traders. I believe the idea of enjoying a free
trade to Spain and Portugal is altogether illusory. Mr. Canning has
told us, not _in totidem verbis_, but certainly in effect, that we
should be permitted to trade with those countries, only under the
Orders in Council. In answer to the proposition made by Mr. Pinkney
to suspend the embargo as to Great Britain, for a suspension of the
Orders in Council as to the United States, the British Minister replied
in the most peremptory manner possible. Here let me observe, that had
that suspension been agreed to, the embargo would have co-operated with
the Orders in Council against France. It would have been even much
more efficacious than those orders, inasmuch as our own regulations
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