Abridgement of the Debates of Congress, from 1789 to 1856 (4 of 16 vol.). United States. Congress

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СКАЧАТЬ from their friends and country, their powder-horns empty, rods mislaid, wads too large, guns not primed – all was confusion. In this unhappy moment the messenger of death comes. The unfortunate Barron refuses to permit his men to be mustered by any but an American officer. His Government had given the command. This is the provocation. The vessel is attacked, and, without resistance, eight are wounded, three are killed, and four taken and carried into British service, one of whom has been hung as a malefactor in Nova Scotia. It has been said that the Goddess of Liberty was born of the ocean. At this solemn crisis, when the blood of these American seamen mingled with the waves, then this sea nymph arose indignant from the angry billows, and, like a redeeming spirit, kindled in every bosom indignation and resentment. A nation of patriots have expressed their resentment, and the sound has reached the utmost bounds of the habitable world. Let a reasoning world judge whether the President's proclamation was too strong for this state of things, and whether it should be rescinded without atonement.

      Do the wrongs of this nation end with this outrage? No. Clouds thicken upon us; our wrongs are still increased; during the sensibility of this nation, and without atonement for the attack upon the Chesapeake, on the 16th October, 1807, a proclamation issues from the British Cabinet respecting seafaring persons, enlarging the principles of former encroachments upon the practice of impressment. This proclamation makes it the indispensable duty of her naval officers to enter the unarmed merchant vessels of the United States, and impress as many of the crew as a petty and interested naval officer may without trial point out as British subjects. The pretension is not confined to the search after deserters, but extended to masters, carpenters, and naturalized citizens of the United States – thus extending their municipal laws to our merchant vessels and this country, and denying us the right of making laws upon the subject of naturalization. The partners of British and Scotch merchants can cover their property and their merchandise from other nations under the neutral flag of the United States to Leghorn, Amsterdam, Hamburg, &c. But the patriotic Irishman or Englishman who has sought this protecting asylum of liberty, are not secured by our flag from the ruthless fangs of a British press-gang. And at this very moment our native citizens and adopted brethren, to a considerable number, are doomed to the most intolerable thraldom in the British navy by this degrading practice. There the freedom of our citizens depends upon the mercy of naval officers of Great Britain; and, upon this subject, every proposition for arrangement is trampled down by these unjust pretensions. Information was just received of the execution of the Berlin Decree, when the papers from every quarter announced the existence of the British Orders in Council, making a sweeping dash at our rightful commerce. Something must be done. The events which been have retraced, all pressed upon us. The treatment of our Minister, and his unavailing exertions; the result of the negotiation which gave birth to the rejected treaty; the memorials of the merchants; the outrageous conduct of the British naval officers upon our seaboard; the connivance at their conduct by the British Government; the proclamation of October 16, 1807; the execution of the Berlin Decree, and the Orders in Council. These considerations required the arm of Government, and at this inauspicious period, when the clouds which had so long threatened and darkened our political horizon gathered to a thick and horrible tempest, which now seemed about to burst upon our devoted nation, the embargo snatched our property from the storm, and deprived the thunderbolt of its real calamities. The effects of this measure at home and abroad, notwithstanding its inconveniences, will best attest the wisdom of the measure, which will be increased in its efficacy by a total non-importation law. As a measure of coercion upon other nations, I not only have the strongest hopes, but also a rational confidence in it, founded upon the most conclusive evidence. The misrepresentations in this country, the violations of the embargo, and the hope of changing the parties in the United States, or of producing a separation of the States; these miscalculations have destroyed entirely the efficacy of this measure, and been a main cause why Great Britain has not relaxed in her injustice towards America. And if we can rigidly enforce this system, my confidence is undiminished, my faith strong, that the United States will have reasonable terms offered to them. Yet the violators of your laws have been the great cause why the present state of things has been protracted. They are as infamous as the cowboys in the Revolution, who embodied themselves to feed our enemies with the only cow of a weeping widow, or a poor soldier who was fighting for his country. The commerce of the United States with the West Indies, the Continent of Europe, and Great Britain, will present to this committee the evidence upon which this faith is bottomed. The United States have furnished the West Indies with the essentials of existence, and also have afforded a market for the colonial produce of those islands. In fact, they cannot live without provisions from the United States in the present state of the world. These islands have been reduced to wretchedness and want already, notwithstanding the violations of the embargo, and flour, we learn, has been as high as $20, $30, $40, $50, and $60 per barrel. The vast importance of these possessions alone, to the mother country, might have been sufficient to have produced a settlement of our differences, if other considerations had not prevented. Attend to the trade with England and the continent previous to the Orders in Council. The annual exports of British manufactures to the United States amount to twelve million pounds sterling. In exchange for these manufactured articles, Great Britain receives to the amount of four million pounds sterling in tobacco, cotton, wheat, and the substantials of life. The eight millions which remain due must be paid in money or bills. To raise this money, the American merchants carry to the Continent of Europe produce of the United States to the amount of this eight millions, which is sold, and the amount remitted to the merchants in London to pay the debts of our merchants. This trade is now destroyed by the Orders in Council, and not the embargo – for this very measure has saved our vessels from capture, our merchandise from condemnation, and our seamen from impressment.

      Thursday, December 1

      Another member, to wit, Thomas Moore, from South Carolina, appeared, and took his seat in the House.

      Jesse B. Thomas, the delegate from the Indiana Territory, returned to serve in the room of Benjamin Parke, who hath resigned his seat, appeared, was qualified, and took his seat in the House.

      Tuesday, December 6

Foreign Relations

      The report of the Committee on Foreign Relations being again before the House, and the question still on the first resolution —

      Mr. Gholson said: Mr. Speaker, were I to yield to my embarrassment on the present occasion, I should not trespass on your indulgence. But when I reflect upon the great national importance of the question now before the House, and upon the high responsibility which its decision must attach to me as one of the Representatives of the people; I am impelled, from considerations of duty, to assign to you the reasons by which I am influenced.

      It has been said, sir, with great truth, that the present is an extraordinary crisis. It seems indeed to have been reserved for the age in which we live, to witness a combination of political events unparalleled in the annals of time. Almost the whole civilized world has been within a few years convulsed by wars, battles, and conquests. Kingdoms and empires have been revolutionized; and we behold a vast continent assuming a new aspect under a new dynasty. Those laws which from time immemorial have prescribed and limited the conduct of nations, are now contemptuously prostrated, innocent neutrality is banished from the ocean, and we hear a grim tyrant asserting himself the sovereign of the seas. Thus the most essential part of the globe is attempted to be partitioned between two domineering rival belligerents. Sir, it would have been a subject of the sincerest felicitation if our happy country could have been exempt from this universal concussion. But we are fated to share evils in the production of which we have had no participation. In inquiring, Mr. Speaker, into the causes of these evils and the policy by which we are to be extricated from them, I am conscious of two things – of my utter incompetency to the elucidation of so great a subject, and of the unavoidable necessity of touching upon ground already occupied by gentlemen who have preceded me in this debate.

      When, sir, I recur to the resolutions reported by the Committee of Exterior Relations, I find one which proposes resistance to the edicts of Great Britain and France; and another which recommends a system of non-intercourse between the United States and those countries.

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