Mr. S. dwelt at some length on the disadvantage of loans. He said, if this nation was destined to raise a navy for the protection of commerce, it should have begun earlier, in the year 1793, when such outrageous violations had been committed on our commerce. The expense of such an establishment would have far exceeded the amount in value of captures made since that period. He concluded, from a number of observations which he made on this subject, that, on the score of the protection of trade, it would not be proper to fit out a navy. This proposition, he said, was the mere entering-wedge. The system was either unnecessary, or would be wholly futile in practice. Our seamen would cost us at least double of what is the expense of her seamen to Great Britain; and it required her utmost exertions to pay the interest of the enormous debt with which her unwieldy navy had saddled her. He therefore certainly thought that an attempt to justify it on the score of profit would not succeed. He deprecated the extension of Executive patronage, which would result from an increase of the Naval Establishment. Need he go back, he asked, to the time when the black cockade was necessary, in some parts of the country, to secure a man from insult from the officers of the navy? He wished to limit the Executive patronage; to adhere closely to the maxims of our forefathers. By sending out a navy, too, he said, we should volunteer to support the ascendency of the British navy, become the mere jackals of the British lion. Mr. S. went at some length into an examination of the former Administration in relation to a navy. There was nothing, he observed, in the nature of our Government, or of our foreign relations, to require a navy. If we could not carry on foreign commerce without a navy, he wished to have less of it and more of internal commerce, of that commerce which the natural advantages of the country would support between different parts of it. If we were to build a navy for the protection of foreign commerce, we should throw away our natural advantages for the sake of artificial ones. He was in favor of the embargo at present. There was more virtue in our barrels of flour as to coercion than in all the guns of our navy; and we had lately given our adversaries a supplementary broadside, which he hoped would tell well. Mr. S. stated the origin and progress of navies at some length, commencing with the Republic of Genoa. Our chief reliance as to defence must be on our militia. So little did Great Britain now rely on her navy for defence of her soil, that she had called upon every man in the country to be at his post, if danger came. Other nations might be justified in supporting a naval force, because they had colonies separated from them by the sea, with whom they were obliged to have means of intercourse, but we had not that apology for a navy. Mr. S. concluded his observations, after speaking near an hour, not, he said,