Do you believe, sir, that your merchants, a great portion of whose property has been seized by foreign nations, when the remnant of their vessels, which have escaped, shall, upon entering your own ports, be seized by your own custom-house officers, that they will be satisfied to lose the remainder of their property, in pursuance of your own laws? They will think it hard enough, that millions of their property have been seized by France, by Denmark, and by Sweden, without having the remainder seized on their return, and confiscated by their own Government. Surely, sir, they will require strong evidence of the fact that your faith is plighted to France, before they will be satisfied with the measure you are about to adopt.
Mr. Speaker, I am not the Representative of merchants; I feel no peculiar interest in their favor, but I consider them a useful class of citizens; their interests are closely connected with the interests of your farmers; and, in this point of view, they are at least entitled to notice. Hitherto, your merchants have been noted for their fairness, and for the respect they have paid to your revenue laws. But, sir, after having their property plundered by France, by Denmark, and Sweden, will they not, when they learn that from a scrupulous regard to your faith plighted to France, a faith, however, which has no existence, you seize, with a few exceptions, all which return; will they not, I repeat it, endeavor to land their cargoes so as to escape the vigilance of your officers? Have you no apprehension that, when they have once learnt the art of smuggling to save their property from seizure and confiscation, they will afterwards practise it, to avoid the payment of duties? I fear that this system will have a tendency to corrupt the morals of your merchants, and from them it will extend throughout the country.
Wednesday, February 27.
The House formed a quorum at half-past ten o'clock.
Mr. Gold.—Mr. Speaker, at a period when the civilized world is convulsed by continued war, to its centre; when the European continent is exhibiting the marks of ruthless conquest, and is threatened with all that barbarism, with which Attila, with his invading hordes, overwhelmed the Roman world, it becomes the Councils of this nation to move with cautious steps on the theatre of our foreign relations; to move, sir, with a fixed eye on the great law of neutrality, and yield an implicit obedience to its high injunctions.
It eminently becomes, sir, the Government of this country, in all our concerns with the belligerents of Europe, to carry an even hand, to manifest to both a fair, impartial, and equal conduct. Without such a course, the consequences to our peace and prosperity, from the jealousy and violence of warring nations, are inevitable, and, with it, we can hardly promise ourselves exemption from aggressions and spoliation; such and so destructive is the spirit of the times. Need I, sir, to excite caution in legislation, refer the House to the consequences of the non-intercourse act of the 1st of March, 1809; for, however free from all exception from the belligerents was that act, yet France, in the wantonness of power, made it the pretext for the exercise of the rigorous right of reprisal by an additional decree, which, with the preceding, have, like the besom of destruction, swept our property from the ocean.
It was on that act, that the Rambouillet decree of the 23d of March last, was founded for its sole justification; and so do the very terms of the decree, shameful and disgraceful as it is, import.
In reviewing the proceedings of our Government under the act of the 1st of May last, (the act upon which the President's proclamation for a non-importation with Great Britain is founded,) permit me, sir, to ask if the spirit of a fair and impartial neutrality, so eminently necessary in the critical situation of the United States, has guided our proceedings with the respective belligerents? By this act, if either of the belligerents rescinded its edicts, violating our neutral rights, the non-intercourse act was to be put in force against the other refusing to rescind, and the President, by proclamation, was to declare such fact of rescinding. Under this provision, sir, the President substituted a prospective engagement for a fact done; a promise for a performance; the future for the past, and hence, sir, have resulted our present difficulties; that crisis which bears so hard upon the American people. It is not, sir, my object to impeach the motives of the President in this ill-fated proceeding; I am to presume a love of country guided him; but it is impossible not to see in the measure a course indulgent to France, a construction upon the letter of the Duke de Cadore, of the 5th of August last, (touching the revocation of the decrees of Berlin and Milan,) the most favorable and advantageous to that country, and offensive to Great Britain. For, sir, notwithstanding the above proclamation, the noon-day sun is not plainer than that those decrees are not revoked; nor indeed, sir, will they, in my opinion, ever be revoked under the above act. The utmost extent of our hopes, from the last despatches transmitting the official communication of the twenty-fifth of December last, from the Grand Judge Massa, and the Minister of Finance, Gaete, is, that our vessels (with their cargoes) seized in the ports of France since the first of November, in violation of the stipulation of the above letter of the 5th of August, and of all that is holden sacred among nations, may be at some future day, under some new and embarrassing conditions, flowing from the policy of Napoleon, restored to our suffering citizens. By the last paragraph of the above letter of the Minister of the Finances, it would seem that the Emperor and King has shut his eyes upon past engagements, and referred all that concerns us to the second day of February, when new toils are to be spread, as is to be presumed, for the unsuspecting, credulous, and confiding American merchant and navigator. Against the mass of evidence, that the French decrees are not revoked—evidence which is increased by the melancholy advices of every east wind—the honorable member (Mr. Rhea) from Tennessee, refers us to the President's proclamation, as a foundation for our faith in the repeal of the decrees to rest on; this is evidence indeed of things not seen. As well might the trembling mariner look to his almanac for the state of the weather at the moment the pitiless tempest is beating upon him, and his vessel is sinking under the shock of the elements. Whatever ground of hope or belief in the good faith of France existed at the time of issuing the proclamation, subsequent events have removed those grounds from under our feet, and blasted all our hopes; the wily policy of the French Court stands confessed; the Emperor loves but to chasten; he seduces but to destroy.
While the indulgent course, the favorable interpretation of the letter of Cadore of the 5th of August above mentioned, was adopted by the Cabinet towards France; was a similar temper and disposition manifested in relation to Great Britain?
I fear, sir, this part of the case will not well bear scrutiny. That the Orders in Council, and not the doctrine of blockade, were the objects of the act of the 1st of May, in relation to Great Britain, not only the debates of the period, but the recollection of every member of this House, will bear me out in asserting. That mere cruising blockades, and every other blockade not supported by an actual investing force, is unwarranted by the laws of nations, is my clear conviction; it is the result of examination and reflection on the subject; but unfounded in public law as is the doctrine set up by Great Britain, its abandonment or modification can only be expected from treaty, and not by an isolated declaration at the threshold, under the threat of a specific alternative. The Orders in Council being removed, the blockade of May, 1806, would have been little more than nominal; why then was it insisted on as indispensable, under the above act? Through a strange fatality, something, inconsiderable in itself, is always found in our demands upon Great Britain, to bar a settlement.