An additional duty of five cents per gallon on molasses and twenty-five dollars per ton upon hemp will consign the navigation of the country to inevitable and almost immediate destruction! This is the kind of argument which the gentleman has thought proper to address to the committee. The gentleman from Maine has said that our navigation goes abroad unprotected to struggle against the world; and he has expatiated at length upon this part of the subject. I trust I shall be able to prove, without fatiguing the committee, that no interest belonging to this or any other country ever received a more continued or a more efficient protection than the navigation of the United States. I heartily approve this policy. I would not, if I could, withdraw from it an atom of the protection which it now enjoys. I shall never attempt to array the great and leading interests of the country against each other. I am neither the exclusive advocate of commerce, of manufactures, or of agriculture. The American System embraces them all. I am the advocate of all. When, therefore, I attempt to show to the committee the protection which has been extended by this government to its navigation, I do it in reply to the argument of the gentleman from Maine, and not in a spirit of hostility to that important interest. Mr. Buchanan then entered upon an elaborate historical examination of the care for the interests of our navigation that had been exerted by Congress from 1789 to the time when he was speaking.[23] On the subject of the navy, as likely to be affected by measures that were complained of for a tendency to depress the commercial marine, he said: