It was pointed out that the embargo meant a direct loss of fifty millions a year, a sum that would build a navy amply sufficient to protect American rights at sea from France and Great Britain. The _Evening Post_ painted a highly colored picture of the ruin of the city’s shippers and wholesalers, the distress of shipwrights, shopkeepers, clerks, and cartmen, and the despair of Hudson Valley farmers. It ridiculed the notion that the embargo was a valuable implement for negotiation with England. The British markets were well supplied, and Britons were secretly rejoicing that the new American policy gave them a monopoly of the world’s commerce. “Why is the United States like a pig swimming?” asked Coleman. “Because it cuts its own throat.” The embargo certainly had no such effect abroad as its sponsors hoped. From France it brought only the Bayonne decree, by which more than two hundred American ships were seized in French-controlled waters--an outrage of which the _Evening Post_ made much; in England the shipping and farming interests were greatly benefited. As Rufus King predicted, it not only threw whole business communities into bankruptcy, but emptied the national treasury and depleted the strength of the nation. When the spring election came on, the _Post_ announced a motto for Federalists which might have been made into the first American party platform: “No Embargo--No Foreign Influences--No Mystery--Freedom of Debate--Freedom of Suffrage--Freedom of Navigation and Trade--Liberty and Independence.” Right as the _Evening Post_ and other Federalist sheets were upon the main issue, they were not always quite fair. They consistently held that Jefferson was keeping the object of the embargo secret, But though this in its operation May scatter ruin through the nation And _starve_ the mouth of ragged labor, Or _bankrupt_ his rich merchant-neighbor, It must be endured without one moan, Its _causes_ and _object_ both unknown!