But, sir, I have yet a more cogent reason against going to war, for the honor of the flag in the narrow seas, or any other maritime punctilio. It springs from my attachment to the Government under which I live. I declare, in the face of day, that this Government was not instituted for the purposes of offensive war. No! It was framed (to use its own language) “for the common defence and the general welfare,” which are inconsistent with offensive war.[35] I call that offensive war, which goes out of our jurisdiction and limits for the attainment or protection of objects not within those limits, and that jurisdiction. As in 1798 I was opposed to this species of warfare, because I believed it would raze the constitution to its very foundation—so, in 1806, I am opposed to it, and on the same grounds. No sooner do you put the constitution to this use—to a test which it is by no means calculated to endure—than its incompetency becomes manifest, apparent to all. I fear if you go into a foreign war, for a circuitous, unfair carrying trade, you will come out without your constitution. Have not you contractors enough yet in this House? Or, do you want to be overrun and devoured by commissaries, and all the vermin of contract? I fear, sir, that what are called “the energy men” will rise up again—men who will burn the parchment. We shall be told that our Government is too free; or, as they would say, weak and inefficient. Much virtue, sir, in terms! That we must give the President power to call forth the resources of the nation. That is, to filch the last shilling from our pockets—to drain the last drop of blood from our veins. I am against giving this power to any man, be he who he may. The American people must either withhold this power, or resign their liberties. There is no other alternative. Nothing but the most imperious necessity will justify such a grant. And is there a powerful enemy at our doors? You may begin with a First Consul. From that chrysalis state he soon becomes an Emperor. You have your choice. It depends upon your election whether you will be a free, happy, and united people at home, or the light of your Executive Majesty shall beam across the Atlantic in one general blaze of the public liberty.
For my part, I will never go to war but in self-defence. I have no desire for conquests—no ambition to possess Nova Scotia. I hold the liberties of this people at a higher rate. Much more am I indisposed to war, when, among the first means for carrying it on, I see gentlemen propose the confiscation of debts due by Government to individuals. Does a bona fide creditor know who holds his paper? Dare any honest man ask himself the question? ’Tis hard to say whether such principles are more detestably dishonest, than they are weak and foolish. What, sir, will you go about with proposals for opening a loan in one hand, and a sponge for the national debt in the other? If, on a late occasion, you could not borrow at a less rate of interest than eight per cent., when the Government avowed that they would pay to the last shilling of the public ability, at what price do you expect to raise money with an avowal of these nefarious opinions? God help you, if these are your ways and means for carrying on war! if your finances are in the hands of such a Chancellor of the Exchequer. Because a man can take an observation, and keep a log-book and a reckoning; can navigate a cock-boat to the West Indies, or the East, shall he aspire to navigate the great vessel of State—to stand at the helm of public councils? Ne sutor ultra crepidam. What are you going to war for? For the carrying trade? Already you possess seven-eighths of it. What is the object in dispute? The fair, honest trade, that exchanges the product of our soil for foreign articles for home consumption? Not at all. You are called upon to sacrifice this necessary branch of your navigation, and the great agricultural interest—whose handmaid it is—to jeopardize your best interests for a circuitous commerce, for the fraudulent protection of belligerent property under your neutral flag. Will you be goaded, by the dreaming calculations of insatiate avarice, to stake your all for the protection of this trade? I do not speak of the probable effects of war on the price of our produce. Severely as we must feel, we may scuffle through it. I speak of its reaction on the constitution. You may go to war for this excrescence of the carrying trade, and make peace at the expense of the constitution. Your Executive will lord it over you, and you must make the best terms with the conqueror that you can. But the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Gregg) tells you that he is for acting in this, as in all things, uninfluenced by the opinion of any minister whatever—foreign, or, I presume, domestic. On this point I am willing to meet the gentleman—am unwilling to be dictated to by any minister, at home or abroad. Is he willing to act on the same independent footing? I have before protested, and I again protest against secret, irresponsible, overruling influence. The first question I asked when I saw the gentleman’s resolution, was, “Is this a measure of the Cabinet?” Not of an open declared Cabinet; but, of an invisible, inscrutable, unconstitutional Cabinet, without responsibility, unknown to the constitution. I speak of back-stairs’ influence—of men who bring messages to this House, which, although they do not appear on the Journals, govern its decisions. Sir, the first question that I asked on the subject of British relations, was, What is the opinion of the Cabinet? What measures will they recommend to Congress?—(well knowing that whatever measures we might take, they must execute them, and therefore, that we should have their opinion on the subject.) My answer was, (and from a Cabinet Minister too,) “There is no longer any Cabinet.” Subsequent circumstances, sir, have given me a personal knowledge of the fact. It needs no commentary.
But the gentleman has told you that we ought to go to war, if for nothing else, for the fur trade. Now, sir, the people on whose support he seems to calculate, follow, let me tell him, a better business, and let me add, that whilst men are happy at home reaping their own fields—the fruits of their labor and industry—there is little danger of their being induced to go sixteen or seventeen hundred miles in pursuit of beavers, raccoons, or opossums, much less of going to war for the privilege. They are better employed where they are. This trade, sir, may be important to Britain, to nations who have exhausted every resource of industry at home, bowed down by taxation and wretchedness. Let them, in God’s name, if they please, follow the fur trade. They may, for me, catch every beaver in North America. Yes, sir, our people have a better occupation—a safe, profitable, honorable employment. While they should be engaged in distant regions in hunting the beaver, they dread lest those whose natural prey they are should begin to hunt them, should pillage their property, and assassinate their constitution. Instead of these wild schemes, pay off your debt, instead of prating about its confiscation. Do not, I beseech you, expose at once your knavery and your folly. You have more lands than you know what to do with; you have lately paid fifteen millions for yet more. Go and work them, and cease to alarm the people with the cry of wolf, until they become deaf to your voice, or at least laugh at you.
Mr. Chairman, if I felt less regard for what I deem the best interests of this nation than for my own reputation, I should not, on this day, have offered to address you, but would have waited to come out, bedecked with flowers and bouquets of rhetoric, in a set speech. But, sir, I dreaded lest a tone might be given to the mind of the committee—they will pardon me, but I did fear, from all that I could see or hear, that they might be prejudiced by its advocates, (under pretence of protecting our commerce,) in favor of this ridiculous and preposterous project; I rose, sir, for one, to plead guilty; to declare in the face of day that I will not go to war for this carrying trade. I will agree to pass for an idiot if this is not the public sentiment, and you will find it to your cost, begin the war when you will.
Gentlemen talk of 1793. They might as well go back to the Trojan war. What was your situation then? Then every heart beat high with sympathy for France, for republican France! I am not prepared to say, with my friend from Pennsylvania, that we were all ready to draw our swords in her cause, but I affirm that we were prepared to have gone great lengths. I am not ashamed to pay this compliment to the hearts of the American people, even at the expense of their understandings. It was a noble and generous sentiment, which nations like individuals are never the worse for having felt. They were, I repeat it, ready to make great sacrifices for France. And why ready? Because she was fighting the battles of the human race against the combined enemies of their liberty; because she was performing the part which Great Britain now, in fact, sustains, forming the only bulwark against universal dominion. Knock away her navy, and where are you? Under the naval despotism of France, unchecked and unqualified by any antagonizing military power; at best but a change of masters. The tyrant of the ocean, and the tyrant of the land, is one and the same, lord of all, and who shall say him nay, or wherefore doest thou this thing? Give to the tiger the properties of the shark, and there is no longer safety for the beasts of the forest or the fishes of the sea. Where was this high anti-Britannic spirit of the gentleman from Pennsylvania, when his vote would have put an end to the British treaty, that pestilent source of evil to this country? and at a time, too, when it was not less the interest than the sentiment of this people to pull down Great Britain and exalt France. Then, when the gentleman might have acted with effect, he could not screw his courage to the sticking place. Then England was combined in what has proven a feeble, inefficient coalition, but which gave just cause of alarm to every friend of freedom. Now the liberties of the human race are threatened by a single power, more formidable than the coalesced world, to whose utmost ambition, vast as it is, the naval force of Great Britain forms the only obstacle.
I am perfectly sensible and ashamed of the trespass I am making on the patience of the committee; but as I know not whether it will be in my power to trouble them again on this subject, I must beg leave to continue my crude and desultory observations. I am not ashamed to confess that they are so. At the commencement of this session, we received a printed Message from the President of the United States, breathing a great deal of national honor, and indignation at the outrages we had endured, particularly from Spain. She was specially named and pointed at. She had pirated upon your commerce, imprisoned your citizens, violated your actual territory; invaded the very limits solemnly established between the two nations by the Treaty of San Lorenzo. Some of the State Legislatures (among others the very State on which the gentleman from Pennsylvania relies for support) sent forward resolutions pledging their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, in support of any measures you might take in vindication of your injured rights. Well, sir, what have you done? You have had resolutions laid upon your table, gone to some expense of printing and stationery—mere pen, ink, and paper, that’s all. Like true political quacks, you deal only in handbills and nostrums. Sir, I blush to see the record of our proceedings; they resemble nothing but the advertisements of patent medicines. Here you have “the worm-destroying lozenges,” there “Church’s cough drops;” and, to crown the whole, “Sloan’s vegetable specific,” an infallible remedy for all nervous disorders and vertigoes of brain-sick politicians; each man earnestly adjuring you to give his medicine only a fair trial. If, indeed, these wonder-working nostrums could perform but one-half of what they promise, there is little danger of our dying a political death, at this time at least. But, sir, in politics as in physics, the doctor is ofttimes the most dangerous disease; and this I take to be our case at present.
But, sir, why do I talk of Spain? “There are no longer Pyrenees!” There exists no such nation, no such being as a Spanish King, or Minister. It is a mere juggle, played off for the benefit of those who put the mechanism into motion. You know, sir, that you have no differences with Spain; that she is the passive tool of a superior power, to whom, at this moment, you are crouching. Are your differences, indeed, with Spain? And where are you going to send your political panacea, resolutions and handbills excepted, your sole arcanum of Government, your king cure all? To Madrid? No—you are not such quacks as not to know where the shoe pinches—to Paris. You know, at least, where the disease lies, and there you apply your remedy. When the nation anxiously demands the result of your deliberations, you hang your head and blush to tell. You are afraid to tell. Your mouth is hermetically sealed. Your honor has received a wound which must not take air. Gentlemen dare not come forward and avow their work, much less defend it in the presence of the nation. Give them all they ask, that Spain exists—and what then? After shrinking from the Spanish jackall, do you presume to bully the British lion? But here the secret comes out. Britain is your rival in trade, and governed as you are by counting-house politician; you would sacrifice the paramount interests of the country, to wound that rival. For Spain and France you are carriers, and from good customers every indignity is to be endured. And what is the nature of this trade? Is it that carrying trade which sends abroad the flour, tobacco, cotton, beef, pork, fish, and lumber of this country, and brings back in return foreign articles necessary for our existence or comfort? No, sir, it is a trade carried on—the Lord knows where, or by whom; now doubling Cape Horn, now the Cape of Good Hope. I do not say that there is no profit in it—for it would not then be pursued—but it is a trade that tends to assimilate our manners and Government to those of the most corrupt countries of Europe. Yes, sir, and when a question of great national magnitude presents itself to you, it causes those who now prate about national honor and spirit to pocket any insult; to consider it as a mere matter of debit and credit; a business of profit and loss, and nothing else.
The first thing that struck my mind, when this resolution was laid on the table, was unde derivatur? A question always put to us at school. Whence comes it? Is this only the putative father of the bantling he is taxed to maintain, or, indeed, the actual parent, the real progenitor of the child? Or, is it the production of the Cabinet? But, I knew you had no Cabinet, no system. I had seen despatches relating to vital measures laid before you the day after your final decision on those measures, four weeks after they were received; not only their contents, but their very existence, all that time unsuspected and unknown to men whom the people fondly believe assist with their wisdom and experience at every important deliberation. Do you believe that this system, or rather this no-system, will do? I am free to answer it will not, it cannot last. I am not so afraid of the fair, open, constitutional, responsible influence of Government, but I shrink intuitively from this left-handed, invisible, irresponsible influence, which defies the touch, but pervades and decides every thing. Let the Executive come forward to the Legislature; let us see while we feel it. If we cannot rely on its wisdom, is it any disparagement to the gentleman from Pennsylvania to say that I cannot rely upon him? No, sir, he has mistaken his talent. He is not the Palinurus on whose skill the nation, at this trying moment, can repose their confidence. I will have nothing to do with his paper, much less will I endorse it, and make myself responsible for its goodness. I will not put my name to it. I assert that there is no Cabinet, no system, no plan; that which I believe in one place, I shall never hesitate to say in another. This is no time, no place, for mincing our steps. The people have a right to know; they shall know the state of their affairs; at least, as far as I am at liberty to communicate them. I speak from personal knowledge. Ten days ago there had been no consultation; there existed no opinion in your Executive department; at least, none that was avowed. On the contrary, there was an express disavowal of any opinion whatsoever, on the great subject before you; and I have good reason for saying that none has been formed since. Some time ago, a book was laid on our tables, which, like some other bantlings, did not bear the name of its father. Here I was taught to expect a solution of all doubts, an end to all our difficulties. If, sir, I were the foe—as I trust I am the friend of this nation—I would exclaim, “Oh, that mine enemy would write a book!” At the very outset, in the very first page, I believe, there is a complete abandonment of the principle in dispute. Has any gentleman got the work? [It was handed by one of the members.] The first position taken is the broad principle of the unlimited freedom of trade between nations at peace, which the writer endeavors to extend to the trade between a neutral and a belligerent power, accompanied, however, by this acknowledgment: “But, inasmuch as the trade of a neutral with a belligerent nation, might, in certain special cases, affect the safety of its antagonist, usage, founded on the principle of necessity, has admitted a few exceptions to the general rule.” Whence comes the doctrine of contraband, blockade, and enemy’s property? Now, sir, for what does that celebrated pamphlet, “War in Disguise”—which is said to have been written under the eye of the British Prime Minister—contend, but this “principle of necessity?” And this is abandoned by this pamphleteer at the very threshold of the discussion. But, as if this were not enough, he goes on to assign as a reason for not referring to the authority of the ancients, “that the great change which has taken place in the state of manners, in the maxims of war, and in the course of commerce, make it pretty certain” (what degree of certainty is this?) “that either nothing will be found relating to the question, or nothing sufficiently applicable to deserve attention in deciding it.” Here, sir, is an apology of the writer for not disclosing the whole extent of his learning, (which might have overwhelmed the reader,) is the admission that a change of circumstances, (“in the course of commerce,”) has made (and, therefore, will now justify) a total change of the law of nations. What more could the most inveterate advocate of English usurpation demand? What else can they require to establish all, and even more than they contend for? Sir, there is a class of men—we know them very well—who, if you only permit them to lay the foundation, will build you up, step by step, and brick by brick, very neat and showy, if not tenable arguments. To detect them, it is only necessary to watch their premises, where you will often find the point at issue surrendered, as in this case it is.
Again: Is the mare liberum any where asserted in this book, that free ships make free goods? No, sir; the right of search is acknowledged; that enemy’s property is lawful prize, is sealed and delivered. And, after abandoning these principles, what becomes of the doctrine that a mere shifting of the goods from one ship to another, the touching at another port, changes the property? Sir, give up this principle, and there is an end to the question. You lie at the mercy of the conscience of a Court of Admiralty. Is Spanish sugar, or French coffee, made American property, by the mere change of the cargo, or even by the landing and payment of the duties? Does this operation effect a change of property? And when those duties are drawn back, and the sugar and coffee re-exported, are they not (as enemy’s property) liable to seizure upon the principles of the “Examination of the British doctrine,” &c.? And, is there not the best reason to believe, that this operation is performed in many, if not in most cases, to give a neutral aspect and color to the merchandise?
I am prepared, sir, to be represented as willing to surrender important rights of this nation to a foreign Government. I have been told that this sentiment is already whispered in the dark, by time-servers and sycophants. But, if your Clerk dared to print them, I would appeal to your Journals. I would call for the reading of them, but that I know they are not for profane eyes to look upon. I confess that I am more ready to surrender to a naval power a square league of ocean, than to a territorial one, a square inch of land within our limits; and I am ready to meet the friends of the resolution on this ground at any time.