freedom deserved cultivation to the full as much as that of respect for bad law. The Non-intercourse Act was not only a bad law,--the result of admitted legislative imbecility,--but it had few or no defenders even among those who obeyed it. Ingenuity could hardly have invented a system less advantageous for the government and people who maintained it. The government lost its revenue, the shipping lost much of its freight, the people paid double prices on imports and received half-prices for their produce; industry was checked, speculation and fraud were stimulated, while certain portions of the country were grievously wronged. Especially in the Southern States all articles produced for exchange were depressed to the lowest possible value, while all articles imported for consumption were raised to extravagant rates. Elisha Potter, a Congressman from Rhode Island, complained with reason that the system made the rich more rich and the poor more poor.[128] In a crowded or in a highly organized society such a system would probably have created a revolution; but America had not yet reached such a stage of growth or decay, and the worst effect of her legislation was to impoverish the government which adopted and the class of planters who chiefly sustained it. Gallatin best knew how much the Non-intercourse Act or any other system of commercial restriction weakened the Treasury. He knew that neither the President nor Congress offered the germ of a better plan. He faced an indefinite future of weakness and waste, with a prospect of war at the end; but this was not the worst. His enemies who were disposed to destroy, were skilful enough to invent the means of destruction. They might deprive him of the United States Bank, his only efficient ally; they might reject every plan, and let the Treasury slowly sink into ruin; they might force the country into a war for no other object than to gratify their personal jealousies. Gallatin believed them capable of all this, and Madison seemed to share the belief. The Treasury which had till that time sustained the Republican party through all its troubles, stood on the verge of disaster.