CHAPTER trade, as some of the speakers on the other side had sug

VI. gested, there ought also to be no hatred in trade. Trade 1794. ought not to be made an instrument for the gratification

of political antipathies. As, in the present circumstances of Europe, Great Britain alone could supply the manufactures we needed, to increase the duties upon them would not affect her, but us, by raising the price to the

consumers.

Clark scouted this appeal to mercantile considerations. Merchants might calculate in their counting-houses, a Legislature ought to act on political grounds. We had many wrongs to complain of. The English had violated the treaty of peace, first, by carrying off negroes, and then by retaining the Western posts. They had set the savages on our backs, and just now let the Algerines loose upon us. Shall we sit still and bear all this? A non-importation agreement, as he remembered, had made Great Britain repeal the Stamp Act. During that agreement we did not perish with cold. We found means to

clothe ourselves then, and we should do so now. We carried our point then, and we should now be much more powerful at the same weapons. Many British manufacturers were already starving for want of employment. By adopting the policy proposed, we should add greatly to their distress, should soon bring the government to their senses, and make them glad to enter into a commercial treaty.

Smith remarked that perhaps he was one of those whom it was intended to stigmatize as merchants trading on British capital, and therefore opposed to these resolu tions. Findley disclaimed any such allusion; upon which Smith added that, although not now trading on British capital, that charge might once have been alleged against him with truth. He had sacrificed a fortune in

ence.

VI.

the service of his country while struggling for independ- CHAPTER When that boon was obtained, he had nothing left but his industry and commercial enterprise. These, 1794. assisted by that British credit so much deprecated, had enabled him to acquire another fortune, and to be in a way again to serve his country. He was not surprised that some merchants advocated the resolutions. Should

our credit in England be seriously affected, trade could only be carried on by those possessed of great capitals. Young men with small means would no longer be able to embark in commerce; a complete commercial aristocracy would be established, and commercial profits would be doubled. It was no hardship to the young trader to make use of British capital at an interest of five per cent., when he could borrow the money nowhere else, and must remain idle without it.

Lee made an elaborate apology for presuming to differ Jan. 20. on the subject of these resolutions from his colleague (Madison), to whose agency in the formation and adoption of the Federal Constitution he paid some very high compliments. The idea that, unless the policy of these resolutions was adopted, Great Britain would obtain a predominating influence in our politics, seemed to him quite overstrained. At the commencement of our struggle with Great Britain, she had all the commercial influence over us which the monopoly of our trade could give. That influence neither damped our courage nor checked our unanimity. Why suppose less virtue in our citizens, now that we were free under a government of our own, than then, when we were subject to a colonial dependence?

These resolutions ought to pass, it had been said, as an expression of our gratitude for services formerly rendered to us by the French. Generosity and gratitude were attributes belonging more to heaven than to earth, IV. G G

CHAPTER rarely seen among individual men, and still more rarely

VI. among nations. It had been acknowledged in the French

1794. Convention that the assistance rendered to us had been

not so much for our sakes as to weaken a dangerous and powerful rival. If there existed on the part of France a friendly disposition toward us-and, as the French said so, he was not disposed to deny it—it might be taken advantage of, without the necessity of any legislative action, by the negotiation of a new treaty of commerce; especially as that now in existence was violated by the French government-under imperious circumstances, he was ready to admit, sufficient, in the eyes of every American, to serve as an excuse. The alleged similarity of principles and institutions between the French republic and ourselves, so much relied upon by some gentlemen, he did not himself perceive. The French republic was one and indivisible; ours consisted of sovereign states, having extensive and important local jurisdictions, and a diversity of laws and interests. Federalism was treason in France; consolidation was treason here. The French executive was plural, and their Legislature a single body-arrangements counter to the practice of almost all the states, and to the provisions of the Federal Constitution. Was every part of the United States in a condition to extend the idea of equality to the same length it had been carried in France? Might not the conflagrations, the bloody scenes of St. Domingo, be exhibited, in that case, on our own peaceful shores?

The French were a brave, generous, enlightened nation. They had performed the most brilliant achievements recorded in history. They had broken the chains. of despotism, had obliterated hierarchical and feudal tyranny, and had exercised the power belonging to all nations of establishing a government of their own. They de

VI.

served to be happy under it, and he prayed God they CHAPTER might be. But if any parallel was to be drawn between our government and that of any nation of Europe, it was 1794. the British Constitution which presented the most numerous points of resemblance. Their executive was single; their Legislature was divided into two houses. Such was the general outline of our governments, only we had improved on the British model by rendering our public functionaries more responsible to the people. We had abolished feudal rights and perpetuities; the only remnant of that system remaining among us was that, in some states (the allusion was to Virginia), lands were unjustly exempted from the payment of debts. That stain on American principles he hoped would soon be forever removed.

This assimilation of the American governments to that of Great Britain was very offensive to some members of the House. Smilie, and Lee's colleague, Moore, exclaimed loudly against it. "It is enough for us," said Moore, "that the French Constitution has liberty for its basis. From such a source we have a right to expect justice and reciprocity of commerce."

Dexter thought it very strange, if the tendency of these resolutions actually was, as their advocates main- Jan. 23. tained, to relieve American commerce from unreasonable restrictions and to encourage American manufactures, that the members from the Eastern States, which were particularly interested in navigation and manufactures, and those members of the best mercantile information, including such as were personally engaged in commerce, should be almost unanimously against them. And, in fact, their operation seemed to be, by compelling us to purchase at a dearer market, to tax us for the benefit of a foreign nation. Our trade was, no doubt, exposed to

VI.

CHAPTER Some obstructions; but most of them grew from our youth as a nation, or from adventitious circumstances. 1794. It was in vain to pant for premature manhood, or to expect to control the commercial regulations of all the world. The body politic, like the natural body, often suffered more from the bold ignorance of quacks, or from the ingenious but false hypotheses of the learned, than from the malady complained of. There was an effort of nature to relieve disease often more efficacious than any medicine. To commence a commercial warfare at the hazard of our trade, perhaps of our peace, mainly for the benefit of strangers, was, in his view, to betray the interests of the country.

"Notwithstanding our resentments, let us be just. Great Britain makes many important discriminations in her European dominions in favor of our produce which we do not reciprocate. She makes no discriminations against us except to favor her own navigation and prod uce, and we have already done the same by her. Her standing laws, excluding our ships from her islands in the West Indies, are the most exceptionable part of her policy, But she admits our produce there, and this forms a valuable part of our exports; while Spain and Portugal not only exclude our ships from their colonies, but our produce also. And yet it is sought by the advocates of these resolutions to shield Spain and Portugal against their operation.

"It is said that, by depriving the British of the necessaries of life and of the raw materials for manufactures, we shall compel them to treat us more equitably. But it is already a ground of complaint against them that they refuse to take our provisions except in times of scarcity; and as neither of these resolutions ordains a famine in Great Britain, the prospect of starving her into