signal instances of discomfiture of which we complain: the first in the surrender of Detroit, and the second in the failure of the expedition against Montreal. These are our principal misfortunes. On the other hand, we can boast the destruction of Proctor's army, and the successful attack and capture of York. Let us take the enemy's view of these events. Neither of the officers of the enemy who commanded on these occasions has since been employed. Proctor has suffered the severest censure, in the general orders of the commander in chief, that language can express, and Sheaffe, it is understood, has been sent to England, perhaps for trial for his misconduct. The enemy, then, supposes our successes on these occasions, however we may regard them, as heavy misfortunes to his arms. The victory of Harrison was such as would have secured to a Roman general, in the best days of the republic, the honours of a triumph! He put an end to the war in the uppermost Canada! The attack on York was highly spirited, and the success was brilliant and complete-and this, too, under the disadvantage of having lost the commanding officer, the gallant Pike, at the moment when the harvest of victory was to be reaped. The war on the land has not, then, been so disastrous or so dishonourable as we have sometimes supposed.

But on what principle, in estimating the character and effects of this war, are gentlemen authorized to separate the operations on land from those on the ocean and the lakes? I claim not exclusively for my own political friends the honours of our naval triumphs-I was among the first to accuse them of their neglect of this service, and to urge them to cherish and support the naval establishment. But I cannot either allow to the gentlemen in the opposition the claim which they affect of being the exclusive friends of the navy.-They have discarded the man (the late president Adams) who was its greatest patron, and rejected from the times which they love to call their own, the period in which it received its greatest and its happiest impetus. But let its patrons and its friends be whom they may, I have a right to claim its merits for the country; and when we connect our naval deeds with the other events of the war, who will venture to say this has been an inglorious war? An inglorious war! Insult not the gallant men who have fought and bled in your battles, and yet live with high claims to your applause. Tread not so rudely on the ashes of the heroic dead.

It is said that the negociations which are pending should make us relax in the prosecution of the war, and confine our operations to the single object of our own defence. It would be sufficient to oppose this advice by the practice of every country and

every age, by one of the best known maxims of national policythat your preparations should be greatest at the moment that you most anxiously desire and most earnestly seek peace: and by one of the most frequent results of national experience, that exactly in proportion to your ability to do your enemy injury do you negociate to advantage. Let us suppose the negociation to fail, and that, in the mean time, we neglect the establishment of an efficient army, what disgrace and what calamity might not be the result! We are told that our past misfortunes should admonish us of our inability to wage the war upon the land, and we are particularly advised not to attempt the invasion and conquest of Canada. Our misfortunes, it is admitted, should lead us to the practice of caution, but should not deter us from the exercise of our faculties; they should rather animate us, as we may hope to remove their causes, to more vigorous efforts. I should consider the prevalence of the opinion, that the nation was unable to wage this war, as one of the heaviest calamities it could suffer-as the very greatest calamity it could be doomed to suffer. But I am sure there is no foundation for the opinion, if the power and resources of the nation be properly called forth and employed. The invasion of Canada is supposed by gentlemen in the opposition to be the most exceptionable way in which the war can be waged. It is said Great Britain will not surrender Canada, and that it is therefore useless to take it, as the war will be rendered interminable should we attempt to retain it. But as it is seen that the retention of Canada is not a necessary consequence of its conquest, or the only way of making it useful in the attainment of the end of war-a removal of the principal causes of war-it is found necessary to give another basis to the argument, and it is said, that Canada is of so little consequence to Great Britain, that she will sacrifice it rather than give up any important commercial right or privilege. I shall not stop to notice what appears to be an inconsistency in these arguments, but say, it is denied that this government claims of the enemy the surrender of any important right or privilege. It claims not even a surrender of the pretended right of searching our ships for her seamen. We only ask an arrangement which shall prevent an abuse of the practice. We demand only a security against the abuse of her power, which shall exempt our own seamen, our own citizens, from the intolerable outrage of impressment, and this Great Britain will grant us, rather than surrender Canada, or continue the war, unless we suffer it to languish.

I agree with gentlemen who say that Great Britain will not surrender Canada. Its value for its trade and supplies is not

the favourite view in which that possession is considered by the British nation. It is connected with the most brilliant era of their history-that of the wars of Chatham. They would part with twenty sugar islands rather than give up the barren rock of Cape Diamond. They consider it as one of the most brilliant ornaments of the British crown. It is inseparable from events which emblazon the pages of their history, which animate the eloquence of their orators, which give confidence to their statesmen, and inspire with valour their soldiers, and with patriotism their people. The peasant who has not learned his alphabet, can read in that possession his country's glory, and in a rapid and intuitive glance see the pride and power of France and Spain humbled by the British arms. In imagination he stands upon the cliffs of Quebec, and, looking down from the fearful height on the flood beneath, admires the daring valour which ventured to assail its lofty battlements. In imagination he treads the plains of Abraham, and talks (as he had heard his fathers talk) of Wolfe and of Montcalm, and how they beat the French, and how the manly, mighty counsels of Chatham elevated the character of his country, and spread her glory through the world. Now it appears to me, that this state of things presents the happiest means of carrying on the war with a reasonable hope of attaining its just object-an honourable peace. We have at our doors, within the reach of our most effectual blows, a possession highly vulnerable, which our enemy greatly prizes, and will most reluctantly suffer to be wrested from him. Consider these circumstances, and connect them with the many other inducements which Great Britain has to make peace with us, and it would seem, if we are true to ourselves, if we exhibit an honourable spirit and make a manly effort, we will effect an honourable peace at no distant day.

Great Britain needs, and ought to desire, a peace with this country. What inducements has she to continue the war? All we demand she can grant without affecting her interests, her honour, or her pride. We only want a security against the abuse of her power. By the continuance of the war, she cannot add to her power, or her glory, or her gains. How can she add to her power? No one imagines, if she could conquer, that she could retain a foot on our territory. Her glory? On this point she has every thing to lose and nothing to gain. Could she capture every vessel of war we have, when the superior force with which she would do it is considered, it could add nothing to her national renown. It is a war which can yield her no laurels. Nor can it yield her any pecuniary advantage. This is to be sought with us in the paths of peace. What on

the other hand are her inducements to put an end to the war? of the war is alone sufficient. It is a war on her The expence part whose effects can bear no proportion to its expense. It is Recolin its nature vastly expensive and burthensome to her. lect the vast expense she incurred in our revolutionary struggle, which heaped up so immensely her national debt, and we will be able to form some opinion of the probable magnitude of her It will be a moderate estimate to expenditures in this war. say, that it costs her double the sum we expend, and that will make this war, in which she cannot boast a trophy or risk a hope, cost her fifteen millions of pounds sterling per annum. More, probably, than the war she has lately carried on, with so More, certainly, than she much glory, in Spain and Portugal. expends to animate and sustain all the allied powers of the continent in the great contest in which they are engaged. But, what renders this expense more burthensome and embarrassing is, this a war in which the expenditure is made abroad. Were three times the sum expended in the kingdom it would less distress the nation. It would then only change hands-it now passes entirely away.

There is another very powerful reason why Great Britain should desire peace with us-this is founded in the advantages of our trade. I know we have overrated the influence of our trade as a measure of coercion, but it is notwithstanding unquestionably highly valuable to her. The loss of it would not induce her to make a great sacrifice of interest or feeling, but at any moment when she should suffer no motive but her real interests to govern her, it would be a very powerful pacificator. We were, when a good understanding subsisted between the We took from her two-fifths two nations, her best customer. of all the exports of her woollen manufactures, which she has always considered her great staple, and a vast, if not an equal amount of her cotton goods, besides other articles; and when peace shall be again restored, we shall again be her best customer; for, whatever may be thought to the contrary, there will be no changes wrought by the war, unless it be very long continued, which can materially alter the commercial relations of the two countries; and she may justly hope, on the restoration of peace, for a restoration of our valuable custom as a purchaser Our trade is rendered even more necesof her manufactures. sary to her by the great demand which is said to exist for her manufactures in the markets of other countries, because we furnish the raw materials of many of them, of better quality, and on better terms, than any other country can. They cannot, for example, from all the colonies of the world, completely substiY

VOL. III.

tute our cottons; their endeavours to establish the affirmative of this proposition, to my mind, very satisfactorily shew a material dependence upon us for this article. Does it not then seem that the terms which we demand of the enemy are reasonable and attainable?

Mr. Calhoun denied that American seamen were impressed only by mistake, and not by principle. By recurring to official documents on this subject, said he, it will be found that Britain impresses persons on board our vessels, who could not be mistaken for British sailors. She takes indiscriminately Dane, Dutchman, Spaniard, and seamen of any nation. To speak another language, and to wear a different complexion, are, it seems, no evidence with the British government that he is not an English sailor. What then is the principle of that government on this subject? If we are to judge by facts, and not by pretexts, which will never be wanting if we are simple enough to believe them, it is this: they claim, at least so far as we are concerned, that every seafaring person found on the ocean is presumptively an Englishman, and bound to serve the crown of Great Britain. They admit, it is true, this presumption to be rebutted in a single case, and only in that; by the seaman proving that he belongs to the country under whose flag he sails. But the impress officer, the very person interested against him, is the judge and jury in this mock trial of nativity; and thus an American citizen holds his life and liberty at the mercy of an insignificant drunken midshipman!

It is urged, continued Mr. Calhoun, that this is an ancient custom on the part of England, and Europe generally that it is a part of the law of nations to impress on board of neutral vessels on the high seas. Those who urge this argument ought to substantiate it by a reference to the facts, and to elementary writers on public law. Till this is done, it cannot be considered in a stronger light than a mere assertion. If it were a general custom, why not recognized by some of the many writers on the laws of nations? They minutely state the cases in which a belligerent may enter a neutral vessel for the purpose of search. Why not this also? None of the rights of search would be more important and would better deserve their attention than this, if it really were one. Their silence, then, is decisive against the custom. I know that some English writers have set up an old claim formed on the orders of their government; but there is no proof of acquiescence on the part of other powers; and if they had, it could not be obligatory on us. The law of nations is composed principally of usages originating in mutual convenience. Among the nations of modern Europe who are distinguishable by their language and countenance, it is possible