The House met at nine o’clock, and after reading the Journal, adjourned till twelve o’clock, in order to attend the funeral of Mr. Crowninshield.
The House met accordingly at twelve o’clock.
Tuesday, April 19.
Suspension of the Embargo.
Mr. Randolph said that they had lately gotten into a strange habit of calling things by their wrong names. The other day, said he, we received a bill from the Senate for making an addition to the Peace Establishment, without limitation; we christened the bill by the style and title of a bill to raise for a limited time an additional military force. Here is a bill authorizing the President of the United States, under certain conditions, to suspend the operation of the embargo; and for certain conditions certainly none ever were nearer uncertainty than these are. What are the conditions? They are not positive, and of these, such as they are, the President at last is to determine. The President, under certain conditions, is to suspend the embargo, and when you inquire what those conditions are, you find them uncertainties—contingencies of which, when they happen, he is the sole and exclusive judge. Now if we do authorize the President to suspend the embargo under certain conditions, let us ascertain them. Let them not be uncertain. Let him not have a discretion whether he will suspend the embargo or not.
It is not my purpose now to recapitulate my former argument on this subject; but I do say that if the President of the United States is to have a discretion at all, it ought to be absolute and unqualified, not only substantially so, but nominally so; and the objection to this bill is, that under the pretence of qualification to discretion, under the mask (not by this intending any disrespect to the other branch of the Legislature) of restricting the power, you do in fact give him an unqualified power; and no gentleman who reads the bill can for a moment hesitate to acknowledge the correctness and soundness of the doctrine. I rise not so much to enter into discussion (for I feel myself unable) as to offer an amendment, which, if it be lost in Committee of the Whole, I will reiterate in the House to ascertain its sense. I move therefore to strike out from the enacting clause in the first section to the end of it and insert:
“That the act laying an embargo on all ships and vessels in the ports and harbors of the United States, and the several acts supplementary thereto, shall be repealed, so far as they prohibit trade with France and her dependencies, and States associated in common cause with her, as soon as the United States shall be exempted from the operation of her decrees of the 21st November, 1806, and December, 1807, and the President of the United States shall have officially been notified thereof, and shall have received assurances that the existing stipulations between the United States and France will be respected by her.
“And be it further enacted, That the said acts shall be repealed, so far as they prohibit trade with Great Britain, her dependencies, and States associated in common cause with her, as soon as her Orders of Council of November last shall be revoked, so far as they affect the commerce of the United States, and the President of the United States shall have received official assurances thereof, and that the neutral rights of the United States shall be respected by them. And the President of the United States shall be and he is hereby authorized and required, on the receipt of such assurances from either of the two belligerents, to notify the same forthwith by proclamation; whereupon the embargo shall be removed in regard to such belligerents. And if such assurances be received from both belligerents, proclamation shall in like manner be forthwith issued; whereupon the acts aforesaid, and the several acts supplementary thereto, shall cease and determine.”
I will state in a few words why I have not inserted in that amendment any condition respecting reparation for the affair of the Chesapeake. It was not because the bill from the Senate contains no such principle; but because the embargo has never been considered, that I recollect, certainly it was not so considered by the gentleman who moved the resolution, as a reaction on our part in consequence of that outrage; because the step was not taken till some time after that outrage; and because it was taken before we knew whether reparation would be made for the outrage or not. In fact it was never said by any gentleman who advocated it, to have any connection with that transgression, which stood on its own demerits. The embargo grew out of the French decrees and British proclamations, and if justified by the British proclamation, was assuredly yet more justified by the Orders of Council which followed it. It was then a measure intended to meet the aggressions on our commerce by the two belligerents; and not a measure of resentment in consequence of the aggression on the Chesapeake. It is therefore that I have thought proper not to mingle subjects which at all times ought to have been, and I understand now are kept separate and distinct.