That the American merchants are in general, shrewd, intelligent, and penetrating, cannot be denied. They are, in these respects, at least on a level with the merchants of any other country.

It must however, be acknowledged, that in the course they have steered from the commencement of the year 1806, when the preceding memorials were presented to Congress, till the declaration of war, and during its continuance, they have been as lamentably blind to their own vital interests, and to the highest interest of their country, as if they were almost altogether deficient of the reasoning faculty. They have inflicted incalculable injury on both. Indeed so intimately in this case were these interests connected, that both were, and must necessarily be equally affected by the same wound. I hope to make this appear to their conviction, and that of the public.

The reader has seen that the mercantile part of the community felt the highest indignation in 1806, at the pretensions of England to limit the American trade in the colonial productions of her enemies; that they very strongly remonstrated with the government to resist those pretensions; and that they pledged themselves to their country and the world, to support the government in whatever measures might be necessary to obtain redress-obviously, evidently, and undeniably contemplating even war with all its horrors. I purpose to examine how far their practice corresponded with their professions and pledges. The pacific measures adopted to effect the object of their desires were a prohibition of the importation of some of the most important of the manufactures of Great Britain-an embargo, when the injuries we experienced from that nation had vastly increased-and non-intercourse.

Did the American merchants redeem their pledge? Did they preserve their faith. Did they support the government in all or any of these measures?

No. They indubitably did not. There is not a candid federalist from New-Hampshire to Georgia, that will assert, that the merchants, as a corps, supported the government in any of these measures. I say distinctly, as a corps. There were illustrious exceptions. But the fidelity of these exceptions in redeeming their pledge was unavailing. The pledge was forfeited by the corps completely forfeited.

The clear, indisputable, and melancholy fact is, that after having impelled and goaded the government into measures to procure redress, they not merely withheld their support from those measures, but actually as far as depended on them, prevented their success. They hung hostilely on the skirts of the government, and defeated the embargo, non intercourse, and ali the other restrictive measures.

I have thus far considered the point as it respected their plighted faith, and the obligation they thereby incurred to support the government in measures which had arisen out of their memorials, remonstrances and solemn pledges.

I now enter on the consideration of their conduct, as it de monstrates an unparalleled bindness towards their own interests, and those of their country.

Whatever misjudging prejudice, or faction, devotion to England, or hostility to France may pretend, the solemn fact is, that the United States were most grievously outraged and injured by Great Britain. The violence or excesses of France, enormous, and iniquitous, and indefensible as they were, afforded no justification to those of her enemy. " Retaliation," in the words of Mr. Bayard and Mr. Lloyd, "was A MERE PRETENCE." If A rob me of my hat, it does not follow that B has a right to retaliate on HIM, by robbing ME of my coat or waistcoat. And still less, if A threaten to rob me, but has not the power to do it, has B the right to retaliate on him by robbing me. France pretended to blockade England, and seize neutral vessesl bound there but was unable to effect her purpose through her destitution of naval power, England retaliated upon France by SEIZING OUR VESSELS bound to that country; and persevered in that lawless course for entire years, having depreda. ted on the United States to the amount of many millions, and with every species, of aggravation, of which an outrage is susceptible and forsooth Pall was perpetrated to punish France, whom she was at the same time supplying with our productions herself!!! There is not in the history of the world any conduct more gross or less defensible.

When we are laid in our graves, and our factions and convulsions are buried in oblivion, posterity will pass a heavy sentence of condemnation upon these odious, these oppressive, these scandalous transactions. I am sure such is the decision of all impartial and unprejudiced men in Europe. I would forfeit a world, were I possessed of one, if this be not "Alexander the deliverer's" sentiment.

That America has been the aggrieved nation, and England wholly the aggressor, is palpable from one circumstance. In all the diplomatic intercourse that has taken place between the cabinet of St. James's and that at Washington, the former has hardly ever made the slightest complaint of injustice

* In a subsequent chapter, I shall quote the sentiments of th se gentlemen at full length.

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gainst the latter, except occasionally of partiality towards France. This if it mean any thing, must certainly mean that

we bore French depredation, insult, and outrage, more patiently than English outrage, insult, and depredation. If it have any other meaning, I shall be gratified to have it de

monstrated.

We inflicted on France one solid, substantial, important, and most destructive injury, from which England was wholly free. We uniformly submitted from 1792 to 1812, to the violation of our neutrality, to the material benefit of one belligerent and extreme disadvantage of the other. Our com-. mercial marine was a constant nursery for Great Britain, to supply her navy with seamen to annoy and distress her enemy. This was a constant cause of war against us by France. It was in direct hostility with fundamental principles of the law of nations. It was affording a most decisive and all-important aid to one belligerent for the destruction of the other, to an enormous extent, I believe unparalleled in the history of Europe.

It will not, from the premises, be denied, that from the declaration of war between France and England, the latter power constantly made inroads upon us and we as constantly sought redress-and that our principal grievances were the outrages practised on our seamen, and the reiterated and intolerable infringement of our commercial rights and privileges. Under this view of the case, the correctness of which will not, I trust, be disputed, what course ought an enlightened body of merchants to steer ?

Suppose them patriotic, and public spirited, and magnanimous; a regard to the national honour and interest would impel them to uphold the government of their own country in a struggle against the lawless outrages of a foreign nation. But even suppose them base, sordid, selfish, avaricious, and without a single spark of patriotism; public spirit, or liberality, ought not their very selfishness dictate the same course ? How could they fail to see that every step they took to harrass, to cripple, to embarrass their own government, was a step towards enabling the foreign and aggressing nation, to triumph over their country, and to enforce its claims, to the manifest and immense injury of their own most vital interests ? I should pity the fatuity of a lad who had been but six weeks in a counting-house, and did not at once perceive the cogency of these arguments. This point is clear, and plain, and convincing in theory. But it does not rest on theory. We have a strong and practical illustration of it by our own melancholy experience, an illustration which the merchants of this coun

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try will long have cause to deplore. By the jacobinical, and seditious, and disorganizing combinations to oppose the measures calculated to procure redress, England was enabled to enforce the orders in council for four years and an half; whereby, during sixteen months, she interdicted our trade with all Europe except Sweden and her own dependencies: that is to say, she, forbade us to trade with about one hundred and thirty millions of the people of Europe. For the remainder of the time, when she somewhat relaxed her orders, she proscribed our trade with at least fifty millions.

Never has the sun in his course beheld such transcendent, such lamentable, such irreparable folly as the merchants of the United States have been guilty of in this instance. Throughout the whole of the arduous conflict between the United States and Great Britain, they have constantly, and invariably, and most energetically thwarted, and harrassed, and embarrassed their own government. They have defended the conduct of Britain throughout-and as constantly laboured, in the face of reason, justice, and common sense, to put their own nation in the wrong. And for what end? to serve the purposes of party; to enable a few ambitious men, who were out of office, and panted to get in, to accomplish this object!!!

I once more wish to qualify these observations. There were here, as in a former case, splendid exceptions among the merchants, citizens who displayed the most exalted patrietism. These exceptions do not invalidate the rule. I speak of the merchants as a corps ;- for it is thus only they can be considered in this discussion ;-as their operations on the government and nation were felt and more particularly, as they acted in the eastern states.

Any one of the three pacific, measures adopted by this government, had it been duly supported by the mercantile interest, would have obliged Great Britain to redress our wrongs and very speedily. We should then have enjoyed an unshackled commerce. And had our merchants, either from patriotism or selfishness, submitted to a short temporary privation of business, they would have been repaid by a tenfold harvest of most lucrative commerce But faction led them astray. They rendered wholly nugatory all the measures adopted to guard their interests, and to extort justice for their wrongs. Great Britain was thus encouraged to proceed in her agressions. This led to a wasting war. To the hostile opposition of the mercantile class, therefore, we may fairly ascribe its ravages.

In all the wild, frantic, and fatuitous career of factionfrom the earliest records of tire to the present day, I be

Keve there is no parallel case. Never did an intelligent, enlightened and respectable body of men, make so immense, so wanton, so irrecoverable a sacrifice of their dearest interests, and so completely contrary to the dictates of reason and common sense.

If Belzebub or Lucifer held the reins of government, policy and self-interest would dictate that in all contests with foreign nations, he ought to be supported unless most manifestly and egregiously unjust. Public spirit and selfishness equally combine

to enforce this precept.

How transcendently superior Great Britain towers over us, in this respect! What a sublime lesson she holds out what a noble example she offers us to follow.

She is torn by faction like America. There is a constant ⚫ struggle between the incumbents in office and those who pant after the seats they fill. But whenever the honour or vital interest of the nation is at stake, party in a great measure dies away, or at least, becomes incapable of injuring the common cause all unite under the national standard and till the ead in view is accomplished, distinctions are almost wholly lost in one common designation, supporters of their country's interest and honour.

Not so in America. It is a fatal truth, that at the moment, when this page was written, [Sept. 1814] when not merely our interest, and our honour, but even our very salvation was jeopar dized, faction raged in many places with unabated violence; and wicked men were incessantly employed in exciting our citizens to imbrue their hands in the blood of their countrymen,* instead of preparing to oppose a vindictive enemy. May the God of peace and love, dispel the clouds that impend over us-banish our discords and once more unite us in the bonds of harmony and charity towards each other. Amen.

CHAPTER XIX.

British Depredations brought on the tapis in the Senate of the United States. Condemnatory Resolutions passed. Messrs. Pickering, Hillhouse, Bayard, and Tracy, in the affirmative. Ambassador extraordinary to England. British goods prohibited.

IN consequence of the presentation of the mercantile memorials, the Senate of the United States took the subject into their

* This was the inevitable tendency, although not the declared purpose, of a very considerable number of the publications in certain Lewspapers.