American forest leave his native element, and plunge into the water in a mad contest with the shark? Let him beware that his proboscis is not bitten off in the engagement. Let him stay on shore, and not be excited by the muscles and perriwinkles on the strand, or political bears, in a boat to venture on the perils of the deep. Gentlemen say, will you not protect your violated rights? and I say, why take to water, where you can neither fight nor swim? Look at France; see her vessels stealing from port to port, on her own coast; and remember that she is the first military power of the earth, and as a naval people, second only to England. Take away the British navy, and France to-morrow is the tyrant of the

Let the battle of Actium be once fought, and the whole line of sea-coast will be at the mercy of the conqueror. The Atlantic, deep and wide as it is, will prove just as good a barrier against his ambition, if directed against you, as the Mediterranean to the power of the Caesars. Do I mean, when I say so, to crouch to the invader? No, I will meet him at the water's edge, and fight every inch of ground from thence to the mountains, from the mountains to the Mississippi. But after tamely submitting to an outrage on your domicile, will you bully and look big at an insult on your flag three thousand miles off?

But, sir, I have yet a more cogent reason

against going to war for the honor of the flag in the narrow seas, or any other maritime punctilio. It springs from my attachment to the principles of the government under which I live. I declare, in the face of day, that this government was not instituted for the purposes of offensive war. No; it was framed, to use its own language, for the common defence and the general welfare, which are inconsistent with offensive war.

. I

fear, if you go into a foreign war for a circuitous unfair carrying-trade, you will come out without your constitution. Have you not contractors enough in this House? Or do you want to be overrun and devoured by commissaries, and all the vermin of contract? I fear, sir, that what are called the energy-men will rise up again-men who will burn the parchment. We shall be told that our government is too free; or, as they would say, weak and inefficient. Much virtue, sir, in terms. That we must give the President power to call forth the resources of the nation; that is, to filch the last shilling from our pockets-to drain the last drop of blood from our veins. I am against giving this power to any man, be he who he may. The American people must either withhold this power, or resign their liberties. There is no other alternative. Nothing but the most imperious necessity will justify such a grant. And is there a powerful enemy at our doors? you may begin with a first consul; from that chrysalis state

he soon becomes an emperor. You have your choice. It depends upon your election, whether you will be a free, happy, and united people at home, or the light of your executive majesty shall beam across the Atlantic, in one general blaze of the public liberty. . .

You are called upon to sacrifice this necessary branch of your navigation, and the great agricultural interest, whose handmaid it is, to jeopardize your best interests, for a circuitous commerce, for the fraudulent protection of belligerent property under your neutral flag. Will you be goaded by the dreaming calculations of insatiate avarice, to stake your all for the protection of this trade? I do not speak of the probable effects of war on the price of our produce; severely as we must feel, we may scuffle through it. I speak of its reaction on the constitution. .

But a great deal is said about the laws of nations. What is national law, but national power guided by national interest? You yourselves acknowledge and practise upon this principle where you can, or where you dare; with the Indian tribes, for instance. I might give another and more forcible illustration. Will the learned lumber of your libraries add a ship to your fleet, or a shilling to your revenue? Will it pay or maintain a single soldier? And will you preach and prate of violations of your neutral rights, when you tamely and meanly submit to the violation of

your

territory? Will you collar the stealer of your sheep, and let him escape that has invaded the repose of your fireside; has insulted your wife. and children under your own roof? This is the heroism of truck and traffic-the public spirit of sordid avarice. Great Britain violates your flag on the high seas. What is her situation? Contending, not for the dismantling of Dunkirk, for Quebec, or Pondicherry, but for London and Westminster-for life. Her enemy violating at will, the territories of other nations-acquiring thereby a colossal power, that threatens the very existence of her rival. But she has one vulnerable point to the arms of her adversary, which she covers with the ensigns of neutrality. She draws the neutral flag over the heel of Achilles. And can you ask that adversary to respect it at the expense of her existence?-and in favor of whom?—an enemy that respects no neutral territory of Europe, and not even your own?

Moore, American Eloquence (N. Y., 1864), II. 160166 passim.

21. Right of Neutral Trade (1806) By THOMAS JEFFERSON

A brief statement of the right of the United States to trade with belligerents while at war with each other.

THE rights of a neutral to carry on commercial intercourse with every part of the dominions of a belligerent permitted by the laws of the country (with the exception of blockaded ports and contraband of war) was believed to have been decided between Great Britain and the United States by the sentence of their commissioners mutually appointed to decide on that and other questions of difference between the two nations, and by the actual payment of the damages awarded by them against Great Britain for the infractions of that right. When, therefore, it was perceived that the same principle was revived with others more novel and extending the injury, instructions were given to the minister plenipotentiary of the United States at the Court of London, and remonstrances duly made by him on this subject, as will appear by documents transmitted herewith. These were followed by a partial and temporary suspension only, without any disavowal of the principle. He has therefore been instructed to urge this subject anew, to bring it more fully to the bar of reason, and to insist on rights too evident and too important