Mr. Roberts observed, that there appeared to be a disposition in the committee to take the question on the filling the blank in the first section without further debate. As he could not vote for appropriating $480,000 for the repair of the vessels of war unfit for service, it would perhaps be the most proper time to submit his opinions. I have not, Mr. Chairman, said he been a listless hearer of the very ingenious arguments advanced by gentlemen in favor of the report. He had, however, been so unfortunate as to be more confirmed in his inclination to vote against the bill, from attentively weighing these arguments. The select committee in their report (for they had reported specially as well as by bill) have said, with oracular confidence, that this country is inevitably destined to become a naval power. He had not, with them, become a fatalist. Though he was disposed to claim a high destiny for his country, he did not believe that destiny was yet immutably fixed. He, however, believed the question now to be decided must have an influence on that destiny, that might at an early day, if decided affirmatively, obliterate our happy civil institutions; if negatively, preserve them long the best blessings of posterity. Gentlemen who have advocated a naval establishment, have chosen to consider this bill and report as the furtherance of a system already in existence, and that, however short of their wishes the committee may be disposed to go, they stand prepared to view whatever might be done to augment the naval force as an evidence of assent to their system. Mr. R. said at one time he had inclined to vote for the appropriation of a sum to equip such of the vessels now out of service as might be found worthy of refittal. But on discovering it would be considered as an acknowledgment that a navy was proper in the sense it had been brought into view by the committee, and doubting, on better consideration, whether there was not great likelihood the money would be worse applied in repairing old, than in building new vessels, and feeling a conviction that if these vessels should be deemed worthy of repair, they could not be brought into action in that exigence of war when they could be useful, as in that case land defence must be resorted to, and the consequent expense incurred, he should feel it his duty to vote against this appropriation.
It has been observed that the constitution has invested Congress with power to regulate commerce, to provide and maintain a navy, &c. There is nothing, said Mr. R., imperative in this. It was necessary in a general grant of powers to insert many items to be left to the sound discretion of Congress, to use or not to use. Soon after the Government came into operation, it became a favorite object with one set of politicians to form a navy. On the occasion of our commerce being depredated upon by the Barbary corsairs, the question first came up. It became a matter of deliberation whether a peace should be purchased of them with money and presents; whether some European power should be subsidized to keep a few frigates on that station, or whether a naval force should be equipped for the purpose (as alleged) of enabling the President to negotiate to better effect. The party with whom I have always found it my duty to act, said Mr. R., opposed, on that occasion, the commencement of a navy system, when it was invited under circumstances so specious. They were, however, in the minority. The ships of war were voted—with what effect on the Algerines, he did not stop to inquire. If this opposition to the commencement of a Naval Establishment was wrong in the minority, their successors ought not to follow them; but if it should be found that they were right, the ground ought never to be quitted. The question of increasing the navy was again discussed in the celebrated times of '98-9. The collisions with France had raised the war fever very high. A navy was vociferously contended for as the most efficient means of defence. It was when things were in this state, that the President, in his reply to the Marine Society of Boston, who had with much fervor tendered him their approbation of his measures, hoped to see the wooden walls of America considered as her best defence. Because Athens, when she was invaded by the hosts of Xerxes, had chosen to interpret the oracle that promised her safety in wooden walls, rationally, America must take the same course, however dissimilarly situated. The people of Attica, inhabiting a circumscribed territory, found safety in their fleet, and they could have found it nowhere else. But such cannot be the case with America. Even the hosts of Xerxes could not make it necessary for the American people to quit their territory—the figure would not hold. On this occasion, too, the Republican party consistently opposed a navy; strange blindness and obstinacy, if they were not sustained by reason as well as principle. On this occasion, the supporters of a navy system were a majority in council. For a moment they succeeded with their measures. But the public councils were soon filled by the people with men of other minds, and the question was put to rest.
Gentlemen have considered this subject on its general principles and remote consequences. In this point of view, said Mr. R., it presents a wide field for reflection. The Chairman (Mr. Cheves) has complained he has had to meet this subject encumbered with much error and many prejudices; among which is the idea that a naval system is prejudicial to civil liberty. The opposers of a navy, with an air of no small triumph, are called upon to show how a system of maritime power would endanger the freedom of our country. It has been said, a military chieftain, by an easy transition, may become a civil ruler, and that the commander of an army has often become a despot, while no such event could happen from a naval commander, as such an office gave no power on terra firma. If we look a little deeper into the subject, we shall find we have as much to fear, and even more, from a naval than a military power. The latter can only be kept in time of war, and for comparatively but short periods; at a time too, when the public spirit is awakened and ready to oppose encroachment. The chair of rule may possibly be gained by a military chief; but an attempt on the public liberty has a much greater chance to fail. Evils of this sort can only take place on very rare contingency; but the ruin of the public liberty can hardly fail to be a consequence of the establishment of a naval power. History proves to us that maritime power has always excited national ambition to a spirit of conquest and plunder. A naval power will seek colonies and ports in distant places. The chance, nay, the certainty, of collisions with other nations, is multiplied, and a corruption of morals is produced, that cannot fail to make the first Government on earth a tyranny, by a course of events that the patriot can neither prevent nor divert to other consequences. A short time after Athens had found safety in her wooden walls, one of her statesmen proposed she should burn the fleets of her neighbors, that she might thereby be rendered mistress of Greece. This project the virtue of the people resisted; but that virtue soon gave way in the expedition to the Cyclades, where her navy committed acts of violence that must indelibly fix the stain of the blackest perfidy and cruelty on the Athenian character. What could be a more unprovoked act of aggression than her crusade against Syracuse, a crime that visited her with a declension of power from which she never recovered? For a nation to believe her destinies fixed, is in a great measure to fix them. Nothing, perhaps, contributed more to make Rome the mistress of the world, than the oracles that promised it. Her heroes and statesmen were stimulated thereby to fulfil her destiny. The maritime supremacy of Britain is, perhaps, owing as much to the belief that she is the destined Queen of the waters, as to any other cause. Though such operations be calculated to bring about astonishing effects, how unfortunate is it when a nation's eyes are thus directed to improper attainments—it becomes a source of incalculable evil. Athens and Rome were the victims of such a policy, as Britain is at this time. I fervently hope, said Mr. R., for a better destiny for our beloved country. Rome and Carthage were both great maritime powers; it was not in Lybia and Italy they began to contend for superiority, but in Sicily and Iberia. The conflicts thence arising brought terror to the gates of Rome, and laid Carthage in ashes. The abuse of maritime power in both those States changed the free features of the government, and left a dreary despotism in their stead. A naval victory secured to the second Cæsar the rule of the mistress of the world. In later times, we have been told, said Mr. R., the declension of maritime States has been due to other causes than their Naval Establishments. In some instances it may have been so. When the strength and power of a State has arisen entirely from the profits of commerce, when that commerce has taken another course, the transitory splendor it has built up has vanished. Venice was an example of this. The commerce of the East caused her to rise out of the circumscribed and marshy Islands at the bottom of the Adriatic, the proud Mistress of the Waves. When the Cape of Good Hope had been doubled by the Portuguese, her commercial advantages failed. She sunk from the conqueror of the Eastern Empire, to a mere city of Italy and Portugal; a narrow territory, by the same commerce, assumed the first rank among the nations of the world. A naval power may serve sometimes to extend commerce to wider limits; but it can by no means control it with certainty to channels through which nature, and often the policy of other nations, bid it to flow. What is the state of British commerce at this time? The rupture of the peace of Amiens did not arise from Britain having received injuries from France after the cessation of hostilities. The new war was a commercial one. The British Cabinet saw, in a state of peace, France would not be unmindful of her commercial interests. The intelligence, the enterprise, and population, and the resources of France, all indicated that she would at least divide successfully the profits of commerce with her rival. The naval power of Britain giving her the command of the sea, she could oppose only with effect the growing commerce of her neighbor in a state of war. This step of British policy imposed on the ruler of France the necessity of changing the channels of commerce. In this way he has aimed a blow at the vitals of her strength, which her tremendous naval power neither enables her to avert nor lessen its force. Her marine puts the trident into her hands, but she can no longer shake the earth. Her monopolizing spirit has sealed the Continent of Europe against her, and interdicted her commerce with America. She has reduced the ocean almost to a desert; and she seems hastening to that destiny which has generally attended her predecessors in naval power through her ambition to rule the waves.
Gentlemen propose to protect commerce on this side the Gulf Stream, yet admit if our vessels are despoiled on the Indian Ocean, we must apply retaliation in the West Indies. The Gulf Stream limitation is at once given up; a new expedition to the Cyclades is in that case to take place. Begin your conquest in the West Indies, and you must increase your navy to acquire and defend them. It is at once an admission that naval power must be used more for ambition than the protection of commerce and our territorial waters. But, what is worse, as you acquire colonies and ships you must create armies. The hands of the Executive, restricted and elective as it is, in the United States, became thence armed with a sceptre formidable indeed, and the more so as it acquires this strength without producing the shock to public feeling which the seizure of power by a military leader will always excite. It has been said, (said Mr. R.,) that the existence of Great Britain hung upon her navy in the contest in which she is now engaged. If her fate hangs suspended by her naval power, she owes her peril to that source. Without her maritime strength, would she have aspired to balance the scales of power on the Continent? Would she have become a party to the infamous conspiracy of Pilnitz? Would she have wantonly plotted the dismemberment of France? Would she have broken the peace of Amiens whence her present dangers arise? Certainly not.
On the article of cost, said Mr. R., it is of little importance whether the army or navy of Great Britain is most burdensome on her finances, though it has been dwelt upon with particular emphasis, nor whether an army be more expensive in every case, than a navy. Armies are a necessary consequence of navies. Has not the British army increased with equal pace with her navy?
The humane mind, said Mr. R., cannot contemplate without pain, that from naval power have flown the most copious streams of human misery. The plunder of half the world, with immense advantages in addition, has not sustained the British navy. A debt has been accumulated that almost baffles the power of figures to estimate. But debt, and a prospect of Government insolvency at home, are of much less account than the wrongs this navy has wrought on the society of nations. And yet it is this Government that is held up to Republican America as a model for imitation.
Need I remind you, said Mr. R., of the millions of victims sacrificed to commercial cupidity on the plains of Hindostan, by means of this navy? A population, thrice as great as that of the British Isles, has been exterminated in this devoted region, within comparatively but a few years, by mercantile rapacity. Colonel Dowe informs us, that the wealth of one of the cities of this wretched country had whetted the avarice of Clive and his associates, and that an offer was made to the Government to pay the public debt for permission to sack it. It was too gross an act of infamy to assent to, and the adventurers obtained their end by other means. A famine and pestilence was substituted for the bayonet, and the spoils of the devoted city glutted the hands of rapine. In this exploit, a shoe-black divided his £200,000. Need I remind you, said Mr. R., that the population of Africa has been drained, to groan out a wretched existence in the West India colonies, to prop up this naval and commercial power, or that the remotest corners of every sea have been visited with the scourge of blood and desolation for the same purpose? On general principles, does not past experience afford sufficient warning to these States to avoid those shoals on which so many nations have been wrecked?
Mr. Chairman, under no view which I have been able to take of this subject, considering it either as the furtherance of a system of naval power, to be expanded with the growing strength of the Union to gigantic size, or that it is a proper time for providing a temporary increase of naval force, can I agree, said Mr. R., to the bill on your table.
When Mr. Roberts had concluded, the committee rose, and had leave to sit again.