Hitherto, the revenue of the United States, arising from impost, has been collected with a degree of integrity and punctuality highly honorable and unexampled in the history of commercial nations. This successful collection of duties has not however been effected by the employment of swarms of revenue officers, spies, and informers, as in other countries; it has been infinitely more effectually secured, by an honorable pride of character, and that sentiment of affection which was naturally excited in the hearts of freemen towards the Government of their choice, and a Government under which, in the main, they have experienced much prosperity. But barriers of this description, like other high-toned sentiments of the mind, being once broken down, can with difficulty be restored, and the chance of materially impairing this, in reality, "cheap defence of nations," should, in my opinion, of itself, afford a sufficient reason for the rejection of all measures of doubtful policy. In a country nearly surrounded by, and everywhere intersected with navigable waters, encompassed by a frontier beyond the ability of ten Bonapartean armies to guard, and inhabited by a race of men unrivalled for hardihood and enterprise, and at present in a state of poverty, the temptation of great prices will be irresistible--for there is no truism in morals or philosophy better established than the commercial axiom, that demand will ultimately furnish a supply. There are, undoubtedly, periods in the history of a nation, in which a contest would be both honorable and indispensable, but it should ever be the result of great deliberation, and in an extended republic, perhaps, of necessity. That government is most wise and most patriotic, which so conducts the affairs of the nation over which it presides, as to produce the greatest ultimate good; and when a nation is attacked at the same time by two assailants, it is no reflection on its honor or its bravery, to select its opponent; and on principles of reciprocity, independently of those of interest, the first aggressor would undoubtedly be entitled to the first notice. Who then has been the first aggressor? I answer, France. The Berlin Decree is in a great measure the cause of our present difficulties. In justification of France in doing this, I know gentlemen resort to the convention between Russia and Great Britain in 1793, to prohibit a supply of grain to France; but this is by no means sufficient justification to France, even without referring to a decree to the same effect issued in May of the same year by France, while she was ignorant of the secret stipulation between Russia and Great Britain.