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they all amount to nothing." Now I will show, that when the embargo was recommended, and when the bill passed in the Senate, those Orders in Council were, in fact, out of sight of the President-out of sight of the Secretary of State-out of sight of the Senateand out of sight of Mr. Adams himself.

1. Mr. Jefferson, together with his message recommending an embargo, sent to Congress the four papers I have already described; saying, that those papers showed the great and increasing dangers to our vessels, our seamen and merchandise; against which he expected the wisdom of Congress would provide. And, far from placing the Orders in Council in front of the causes for the embargo, there is not the slightest reason to believe that he thought of their existence. On the contrary, forty-six days afterwards, viz. in his message to Congress, of February 2, 1808,* laying before them the Orders in Council, he says, "I transmit them "to Congress as a farther proof of the increasing dangers to our navigation and commerce, which led to "the provident measure of the act of the present ses"sion, laying an embargo on our own vessels."

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2. Mr. Madison, in his letter of December 23, 1807†— the day after the embargo law was enacted-to William Pinkney, our minister in London, says, "I enclose you a copy of a message from the President to Congress, and their act in pursuance of it, laying an im"mediate embargo on our vessels and exports. The "policy and the causes of the measure are explained "in the message itself." But Mr. Madison, like Mr. Adams, was afterwards willing to drag in the Orders in Council to bolster up that mischievous measure. Accordingly, in his next letter to Mr. Pinkney, dated Feb. 19, 1808, Mr. Madison says, "My last, which was "committed to the British packet, enclosed a copy of "the act of embargo, and explained the policy of the "measure;" leaving out "causes." More cautious, however, than Mr. Adams, or having a better memory,

* State Papers, vol. 1806–8, p. 263.
+ State Papers, vol. 1808-9, p. 260.

he does not venture to assign the Orders in Council as a cause of the embargo; much less to place them "in "front of the real causes of the embargo;" but contents himself with saying, that "among the considerations "which enforced it, was the probability of such de"crees as were issued by the British government, on "the 11th of November; the language of the British gazettes, with other indications, having left little doubt "that such were meditated." But these were after thoughts, the expression of which does no honour to Mr. Madison; as they bear an insinuation, that those rumours of British orders were among the motives which influenced the President to recommend an embargo; which he knew was not the case.

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3. I have said, that as to J. Q. Adams himself, the Orders in Council were out of sight, when he zealously advocated and voted for the embargo. This is a plain inference from the facts I have already stated. When hard pressed for adequate causes for the embargo, and not finding them in the four documents communicated with the message, Mr. Adams, it will be recollected, had recourse to the President's highly responsible recommendation of the measure, and the possible information locked up in his bosom, to justify the passage of the law. Now, if the Orders in Council furnished the great and prominent cause for the embargo, and if, compared with them, the four papers assigned by the President as the only causes for an embargo were but four "naughts;" is it possible that "those all-deyouring instruments of rapine," as Mr. Adams calls the Orders in Council, should never have risen in their terrific forms to his view? that he should not have so presented them to the view of the Senate? and that they should not have caused him to pour forth a deluge of his appalling metaphors, in describing them? I hesitate not to pronounce it impossible. "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh." Should he assert the contrary, no man of common understanding can believe him. At all events, it is clear, from the President's first message and documents, and from

the quotations already made from his next message, and from Mr. Madison's letters, that neither Mr. Jefferson nor he had the Orders in Council in their minds, when assigning and mentioning the causes of the em‐ bargo.

4. It is equally clear, that no other Senator, in voting for the embargo, contemplated the Orders in Council, because no one adverted to them in the discussion.

I now consider it as demonstrated, that Mr. Jefferson's embargo was not recommended by him, "to keep "in safety our vessels, our seamen and our merchan"dise." And as no man who thinks at all does any act of consequence without a motive, and as I am incapable of discerning any other, I do not hesitate to say, that its object was a co-operation with the French Emperor, to diminish, and as far as possible to destroy, the commerce of Great-Britain; and thereby compel her at least to make peace, if not absolutely to subject her to the control of the imperial conqueror; when it was apparent that the object of his ambition was universal empire. I add, that the mischievous measure I have been exposing was not an embargo, but an absolute prohibition of commerce, and therefore a violation of the Constitution for the power given to Congress to regulate, cannot be construed to authorize the annihilation of commerce: but such was the nature, and such would have been the effect, of this perpetual law— perpetual in its terms-if the people of the United States had tamely continued to submit to it. But they would not submit; and Congress were obliged to repeal it. The commercial part of our nation considered the Berlin decree, and the still more outrageous one issued at Milan, with the British orders in council, superadded, as less injurious than Mr. Jefferson's edict called an Embargo and all those decrees and orders continued in force, when the embargo law was repealed.

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I have but one more fact to state on this subject: it is this that on his first hearing the news of the embargo, President Adams earnestly condemned it. But he did not then know that his son had voted for it,

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and was its most strenuous advocate: that son, of whom he said, there was not an honester or abler man in the United States.* When afterwards he learned what a conspicuous part his son had acted in favour of the embargo, he also thought it a wise measure. He even doubted whether it ought to have been limited! He says, "The policy of a limitation to the embargo "is, in a national view, and on a large scale, a nice question." That a man of his strong understanding, extensive knowledge, and great experience, when judg ing with an unbiassed mind, should have condemned the embargo-especially an embargo of unlimited duration was perfectly natural; and, but for the agency of his son J. Q. Adams in imposing it, and his continuing joined to the dominant party, he would never have ceased to condemn it. Then, too, I might have been exempted from his calumnies: for it was my involuntary exhibition of his son's conduct about the embargo, that kindled the father's wrath against me; which, in the effervescence of his foaming passions, threw up that foul scum which is spread over all his letters where my name is mentioned.

The immense importance ascribed by Mr. Adams to his son, John Quincy, induces me to state-that, having received a law education, he commenced the practice of it in Boston; but soon (in 1794) when his father was Vice-President, he was appointed Minister Resident of the United States to the States of Holland. His father places this first step in diplomacy to the account of Washington's gratitude for the son's rescu

* Letter to Cunningham, No. XLIII, dated July 31, 1809. J. Q. Adams was then on the point of departure from Boston, bound to Russia, as minister plenipotentiary from the United States. "I hope," says the father, "his absence "will not be long. Aristides is banished because he is too just. HE WILL "NOT LEAVE AN HONESTER OR abler man beHIND HIM." Here is a singular confusion of ideas. To the inclement region of Siberia in Russia, her despots have been accustomed to banish offending subjects. Aristides the just was driven into banishment by the votes of his fickle fellow citizens. J. Q. Adams voluntarily accepted of the mission to Russia. It was his first reward for abandoning the cause of federalism, and his father's and his own original principles. He perceived "there was no getting along, or being any thing, without popularity;" and the path to popularity was that opened by Mr. Jefferson-then the idol of the people: his measures must be supported.

Letter X, to Cunningham, p. 29.

ing the government from the overwhelming flood of democratic fanaticism, raised in the preceding year by the influence or proceedings of Monsieur Genet, Minister from the French Republic. "John Quincy Adams's "writings (says his father) first turned this tide."-"Not all Washington's ministers, Hamilton and Pickering included, could have written those papers, which were so fatal to Genet. Washington saw it, and felt "his obligations."*

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Mr. Adams's overweening opinion of his son's talents, and his raging enmity to others, makes him forget and confound times and facts. I had then nothing to do with the cabinet. The general post-office was my department. But Mr. Jefferson was at that time (1793) Secretary of State; and he has always been reputed to possess certain talents, some knowledge of public law and of foreign affairs, and a familiar acquaintance with the rights and duties of ministers ; having himself been minister from the United States to the Court of France, from the year 1785 to 1789. And being Secretary of State, it was his special duty to enter the lists with Mr. Genet; but he shrunk, it seems, from the fearful task. Alexander Hamilton, too, then Secretary of the Treasury, was believed to be a man of understanding, with a capacity to manifest its strength on paper. Even at the age of eighteen, he encountered successfully the most powerful tory advocates of British taxation. But what of all this? Mr. Adams represents Alexander Hamilton at one time as not possessing a particle of common sense; at another, as an ignoramus; and that, in a certain conversation with him, "he talked like a fool;" and at length sinks him even below Elbridge Gerry! Yes-Elbridge Gerry was Alexander Hamilton's master in finance!t

In this state of terror and dismay, when all Washington's ministers trembled at the sight of the French Leviathan, forth stepped a youthful champion, son of

* Letter XII, dated Oct. 15, 1808, to Cunningham.

+ See Mr. Adams's Letter, No. XIII, May 29, 1809, published in the Boston Patriot; an extract from which will be inserted in the section concerning Hamilton.

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