The embargo power, which now holds in its palsying gripe all the hopes of this nation, is distinguished by two characteristics of material import, in deciding what control shall be left over it during our recess. I allude to its greatness and its novelty.
As to its greatness, nothing is like it. Every class of men feels it. Every interest in the nation is affected by it. The merchant, the farmer, the planter, the mechanic, the laboring poor; all, are sinking under its weight. But there is this peculiar in it, that there is no equality in its nature. It is not like taxation, which raises revenue according to the average of wealth; burdening the rich and letting the poor go free. But it presses upon the particular classes of society, in an inverse ratio to the capacity of each to bear it. From those who have much it takes, indeed, something. But from those who have little, it takes all. For what hope is left to the industrious poor, when enterprise, activity, and capital are proscribed their legitimate exercise? This power resembles not the mild influences of an intelligent mind, balancing the interests and condition of men, and so conducting a complicated machine as to make inevitable pressure bear upon its strongest parts. But it is like one of the blind visitations of nature; a tornado or a whirlwind. It sweeps away the weak; it only strips the strong. The humble plant, uprooted, is overwhelmed by the tempest. The oak escapes with the loss of nothing except its annual honors. It is true the sheriff does not enter any man’s house to collect a tax from his property. But want knocks at his door and poverty thrusts his face into the window. And what relief can the rich extend? They sit upon their heaps and feel them moulding into ruins under them. The regulations of society forbid what was once property, to be so any longer. For property depends on circulation; on exchange; on ideal value. The power of property is all relative. It depends not merely upon opinion here, but upon opinion in other countries. If it be cut off from its destined market, much of it is worth nothing, and all of it is worth infinitely less than when circulation is unobstructed.
This embargo power is therefore of all powers the most enormous, in the manner in which it affects the hopes and interests of a nation. But its magnitude is not more remarkable than its novelty. An experiment, such as is now making, was never before—I will not say tried—it never before entered into the human imagination. There is nothing like it in the narrations of history or in the tales of fiction. All the habits of a mighty nation are at once counteracted. All their property depreciated. All their external connections violated. Five millions of people are engaged. They cannot go beyond the limits of that once free country; now they are not even permitted to thrust their own property through the grates. I am not now questioning its policy, its wisdom, or its practicability, I am merely stating the fact. And I ask if such a power as this, thus great, thus novel, thus interfering with all the great passions and interests of a whole people, ought to be left for six months in operation, without any power of control, except upon the occurrence of certain specified and arbitrary contingencies? Who can foretell when the spirit of endurance will cease? Who, when the strength of nature shall outgrow the strength of your bonds? Or if they do, who can give a pledge that the patience of the people will not first be exhausted? I make a supposition, Mr. Chairman—you are a great physician; you take a hearty, hale man, in the very pride of health, his young blood all active in his veins, and you outstretch him on a bed; you stop up all his natural orifices, you hermetically seal down his pores, so that nothing shall escape outwards, and that all his functions and all his humors shall be turned inward upon his system. While your patient is laboring in the very crisis of this course of treatment, you, his physician, take a journey into a far country, and you say to his attendant, “I have a great experiment here in process, and a new one. It is all for the good of the young man, so do not fail to adhere to it. These are my directions, and the power with which I invest you. No attention is to be paid to any internal symptom which may occur. Let the patient be convulsed as much as he will, you are to remove none of my bandages. But, in case something external should happen; if the sky should fall, and larks should begin to appear, if three birds of Paradise should fly into the window, the great purpose of all these sufferings is answered. Then, and then only, have you my authority to administer relief.”
The conduct of such a physician, in such a case, would not be more extraordinary than that of this House in the present, should it adjourn and limit the discretion of the Executive to certain specified events arbitrarily anticipated; leaving him destitute of the power to grant relief should internal symptoms indicate that nothing else would prevent convulsions. If the events you specify do not happen, then the embargo is absolutely fixed until our return. Is there one among us that has such an enlarged view of the nature and necessities of this people as to warrant that such a system can continue six months longer? It is a presumption which no known facts substantiate, and which the strength and the universality of the passions such a pressure will set at work in the community, render, to say the least, of very dubious credit. My argument in this part has this prudential truth for its basis: If a great power is put in motion, affecting great interests, the power which is left to manage it should be adequate to its control. If the power be not only great in its nature, but novel in its mode of operation, the superintending power should be permitted to exercise a wise discretion; for if you limit him by contingencies, the experiment may fail, or its results be unexpected. In either case, nothing but shame or ruin would be our portion.
But I ask the House to view this subject in relation to the success of this measure, which the majority have justly so much at heart. Which position of invested power is the most auspicious to a happy issue?
As soon as this House has risen, what think you will be the first question every man in this nation will put to his neighbor? Will it not be—“What has Congress done with the embargo?” Suppose the reply should be—“They have made no provision. This corroding cancer is to be left absolutely on the vitals six months longer.” Is there a man who doubts but that such a reply would sink the heart of every owner of property, and of every laborer in the community? No man can hesitate. The magnitude of the evil, the certain prospect of so terrible a calamity thus long protracted, would itself tend to counteract the continuance of the measure by the discontent and despair it could not fail to produce in the great body of the people. But suppose in reply to such a question, it should be said—“The removal of the embargo depends upon events. France must retrace her steps. England must apologize and atone for her insolence. Two of the proudest and most powerful nations on the globe must truckle for our favor, or we shall persist in maintaining our dignified retirement.” What then would be the consequence? Would not every reflecting man in the nation set himself at work to calculate the probability of the occurrence of these events? If they were likely to happen, the distress and discontent would be scarcely less than in the case of absolute certainty for six months’ perpetuation of it. For if the events do not happen, the embargo is absolute. Such a state of popular mind all agree is little favorable either to perseverance in the measure, or to its ultimate success. But suppose that the people should find a discretionary power was invested in the Executive, to act as in his judgment, according to circumstances, the public good should require. Would not such a state of things have a direct tendency to allay fear, to tranquillize discontent, and encourage endurance of suffering? Should experience prove that it is absolutely insupportable, there is a constitutional way of relief. The way of escape is not wholly closed. The knowledge of this fact would be alone a support to the people. They would endure it longer. They would endure it better. We would be secure of a more cordial co-operation in the measure, as the people would see they were not wholly hopeless, in case the experiment was oppressive. Surely nothing can be more favorable to its success than producing such a state of public sentiment.
We are but a young nation. The United States are scarcely yet hardened into the bone of manhood. The whole period of our national existence has been nothing else than a continued series of prosperity. The miseries of the Revolutionary war were but as the pangs of parturition. The experience of that period was of a nature not to be very useful after our nation had acquired an individual form and a manly, constitutional stamina. It is to be feared we have grown giddy with good fortune; attributing the greatness of our prosperity to our own wisdom, rather than to a course of events, and a guidance over which we had no influence. It is to be feared that we are now entering that school of adversity, the first blessing of which is to chastise an overweening conceit of ourselves. A nation mistakes its relative consequence, when it thinks its countenance, or its intercourse, or its existence, all-important to the rest of the world. There is scarcely any people, and none of any weight in the society of nations, which does not possess within its own sphere all that is essential to its existence. An individual who should retire from conversation with the world for the purpose of taking vengeance on it for some real or imaginary wrong, would soon find himself grievously mistaken. Notwithstanding the delusions of self-flattery, he would certainly be taught that the world was moving along just as well, after his dignified retirement, as it did while he intermeddled with its concerns. The case of a nation which should make a similar trial of its consequence to other nations, would not be very different from that of such an individual. The intercourse of human life has its basis in a natural reciprocity, which always exists, although the vanity of nations, as well as of individuals, will often suggest to inflated fancies, that they give more than they gain in the interchange of friendship, of civilities, or of business. I conjure gentlemen not to commit the nation upon the objects of this embargo measure, but by leaving a wise discretion during our absence with the Executive, neither to admit nor deny by the terms of our law that its object was to coerce foreign nations. Such a state of things is safest for our own honor and the wisest to secure success for this system of policy.
Mr. Key said he well knew how painful it was to address gentlemen who had already made up their minds; but the magnitude of this important constitutional question compelled him to trespass for a few moments on the patience of the House. I shall, said he, confine myself to the constitutionality of the bill from the Senate, in hopes that if the House feel the impressions on the subject which I feel, they will reject it; or at least word it so, that the power given to the President shall be constitutional. I was in hopes, from the talents of the gentlemen who spoke the other day, that I should have heard some reply, some attempt made to defeat the constitutional objections which I offered to the resolution; if they did not meet them with fair argument, that they would at least have shown what part of the conclusions which I had drawn were incorrect. Gentlemen say the argument is not true. They must either allow my deductions, or show wherein I am incorrect in drawing them. I call upon the understanding of the House, and their attachment to the constitution, to follow me but for a few moments, and see whether we can vest the power contemplated by the bill.
All the respective Representatives of the people of the States at large, and the sovereignty in a political capacity of each State, must concur to enact a law. An honorable gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Campbell) admitted that the power to repeal must be coextensive with the power to make. If this be admitted, I will not fail to convince you that in the manner in which this law is worded we cannot constitutionally assent to it. What does it propose? To give the President of the United States power to repeal an existing law now in force—upon what? Upon the happening of certain contingencies in Europe? No; but if those contingencies when they happen in his judgment shall render it safe to repeal the law, a discretion is committed to him, upon the happening of those events, to suspend the law. It is that discretion to which I object. I do not say it would be improperly placed at all; but the power and discretion to judge of the safety of the United States, is a power legislative in its nature and effects, and as such, under the constitution, cannot be exercised by one branch of the Legislature. I pray gentlemen to note the distinction: that whenever the events happen, if the President exercise his judgment upon those events, and suspend the law, it is the exercise of a legislative power; the people, by the constitution of the country, never meant to confide to any one man the power of legislating for them.