The United States possessed a fertile, extensive, and unsettled country; and it might well be questioned how far their real interests would be promoted by forcing a further acceleration of the growth of their marine, by impelling their citizens from the cultivation of the soil to the navigation of the ocean. The measures already adopted had been very operative; and it was by no means certain that an additional stimulus would be advantageous. The increased duty on foreign tonnage, and on goods imported in foreign bottoms, had already been attended with sensible effects. In 1790, the American tonnage was one-half the whole tonnage employed in their trade: in 1791, it was three-fifths: in 1792, it had increased to two-thirds. This growth was believed to be sufficiently rapid. It was more rapid than the growth of British tonnage had ever been under the fostering care of their celebrated navigation act. Let the existing system be left to its natural operation, and it was believed that it would give to the United States that share in the carriage of their commodities, which it was their interest to take.
But if a different opinion prevailed, and it was conceived that additional encouragement ought to be given to navigation, then let the duty on all foreign bottoms be increased, and let the particular disabilities to which American vessels are subjected in any country, be precisely retaliated. The discriminations proposed, instead of increasing American navigation, were calculated to encourage the navigation of one foreign nation at the expense of another.
The United States did not yet possess shipping sufficient for the exportation of their produce. The residue must reach a market in foreign bottoms, or rot upon their hands. They were advancing to a different state of things; but, in the mean time, they ought to pursue their interest, and employ those vessels which would best answer their purpose. The attempt to make it their interest to employ the vessels of France rather than those of Britain, by discriminating duties which must enhance the price of freight, was a premium to the vessels of the favourite nation, paid by American agriculture.
The navigation act of Great Britain had been made a subject of heavy complaint. But that act was not particularly directed against the United States. It had been brought into operation while they were yet colonies, and was not more unfavourable to them than to others. To its regulations, Great Britain was strongly attached; and it was not probable that America could compel her to relinquish them. Calculations were made on the proportion of British manufactures consumed in America, from which it was inferred that her trade, though important, was not sufficiently important to force that nation to abandon a system which she considered as the basis of her grandeur. In the contest, considerable injury would be unquestionably sustained; and nothing was perceived in the situation of the United States, which should induce them to stand forth the champions of the whole commercial world, in order to compel the change of a system, in which all other nations had acquiesced. But if they were to engage in such a contest, it was by a similar act, by opposing disabilities to disabilities, that it ought to be carried on. Upon this point, several members who were opposed to the resolutions, avowed an opinion favourable to an American navigation act, and expressed their willingness to concur in framing regulations which meet the prohibitions imposed on their vessels with corresponding prohibitions. Thus far they were ready to go; but they were not ready to engage in a contest injurious to themselves, for the benefit of a foreign nation.
Another avowed object of the resolutions was to favour the manufactures of the United States. But certainly it was not by discriminating duties, by endeavouring to shift commerce from one channel to another, that American manufactures were to be promoted. This was to be done by pursuing the course already adopted, by laying protecting duties on selected articles, in the manufacture of which America had made some progress; and by a prohibitory duty on others, of which a sufficient domestic supply could be afforded. But the proposed measure only went to the imposition of a tax on their own citizens, for the benefit of a foreign nation.
If the British market afforded an assortment of goods best suited to their consumption, and could give them cheaper, a prohibitory duty imposed upon those goods would only drive their citizens to seek them in another market, less able to supply their wants, and at a dearer rate. There was nothing in this tending to encourage manufactures.
If the United States were prepared to manufacture to the whole amount of their wants, the importation of all rival articles might be prohibited. But this they were not prepared to do. Their manufactures must advance by slow degrees; and they were not to enter into a measure of this kind, for the purpose of retaliating on a nation which had not commercially injured them.
The resolutions then were adapted to the encouragement neither of the navigation, nor the manufactures of the United States, but of a foreign nation. Their effect would obviously be to force trade to change its natural course, by discriminations against a nation which had in no instance discriminated against the United States, but had favoured them in many points of real importance. By what commercial considerations could such a system be recommended?
That it would be attended with great immediate inconveniences must be admitted; but for these, ample compensation, it had been said, was to be found in its remote advantages. These were, a diminution of American commerce with one nation, by its proportional augmentation with another; and a repeal of the navigation act, and of the colonial system of Great Britain.
On the subject of forcing trade from one nation to another, which is, of necessity, so complicated in principle, so various and invisible in consequence, the legislature should never act but with the utmost caution. They should constantly keep in view, that trade will seek its own markets, find its own level, and regulate itself much better than it could be regulated by law. Although the government might embarrass it, and injure their own citizens, and even foreign nations, for a while, it would eventually rise above all the regulations they could make. Merchants, if left to themselves, would always find the best markets. They would buy as cheap and sell as dear as possible. Why drive them from those markets into others which were less advantageous? If trade with Britain was less free, or less profitable, than with France, the employment of coercive means to force it into French channels would be unnecessary. It would voluntarily run in them. That violence must be used in order to change its course, demonstrated that it was in its natural course.