Imagine for a moment five million tons of shipping detained, thousands of seamen reduced to want, the trades of the ship-builder, joiner, rigger, and sail-maker stopped, the masses of produce now seeking the coast for shipment arrested on their way by the entire cessation of demand, the banker and insurer idle, the commissioners of bankruptcy, the sheriff, and the jailer busy. Imagine the whole country, in the midst of a prosperous commerce, thus suddenly brought to a stand. Imagine the navigation, the produce, and the merchandise of the nation thus suddenly embargoed by one great seizure, upon the plea that they might possibly be seized abroad, and some faint idea may be formed of the alarm, distress, and indignant feeling which pervaded the entire seaboard under the Embargo of 1807. At the period in question the distressed seamen and ruined merchants had no railways, scarcely an ordinary road to the West. Manufactures were almost unknown, the mechanic arts were undeveloped, and consequently the exclusion from the sea was felt with double force. Why, urged the merchant and the mariner, should our property perish and our children go supperless to bed, when we can insure our ships and still make large profits? Would the planter reconcile himself to a law which forbade him to harness his teams or use the hoe or the plough, and bade him lie down and die of hunger beside fruitful fields? Does the Constitution of the Union, which empowers Congress to regulate commerce, authorize its destruction? And if it is the intent of Government merely to protect our ships abroad, why are foreign vessels forbidden to purchase or export our perishing fish and provisions? and why is our property to be confiscated and heavy fines to be imposed, if we send it across the Canada line, where there is no risk of seizure?--And when, in the progress of events, it became apparent that France approved of our Embargo, and that England, opening new marts for her trade and new sources of supplies in Russia, Spain, India, and Spanish America, was without a rival on the ocean, monopolizing the trade and becoming the carrier of the world, it was impossible to reconcile the Eastern States to this general interdict. Many a rich man was ruined, many a prosperous town was utterly prostrated by the shock. Property, real and personal, fell from thirty to sixty per cent., affecting by its fall all classes of society. A spirit of hostility to the party in power was engendered, which outlasted the war with England, and continued to glow until Monroe had adopted the great Federal measures of a navy, a military academy, and an enlarged system of coast-defence.