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of the day of the delivery of this message, the London CHAPTER statement as to the anticipated issue of orders in council, in retaliation for the Berlin decree, was printed along 1807. with the other English news received at New York by the Brutus; but neither in that paper, nor in the presi dent's message, nor in the accompanying documents, nor in either House while the message was under consideration, was any allusion made to that statement as a reason or ground for the measures recommended and adopted.

Immediately on the receipt of this message, the Senate, with closed doors, dispensing with its rules, which require the several readings of a bill to take place on different days, and disregarding the appeals of the feeble minority for a little delay, in a four hours' session passed a bill laying an embargo on all the shipping in the ports of the United States. The two senators from Connecticut, the two from Delaware, Pickering, Crawford, and M'Clay of Pennsylvania, voted against it; all the Democrats, except Crawford and M'Clay, for it; also John Quincy Adams, who signalized his adherence to the policy of the administration by a display of very vehement zeal. "The president," he urged, "has recommended this measure on his high responsibility. I would not consider, I would not deliberate, I would act. Doubtless the president possesses such further information as will justify the measure."

The president's special partisans in the House were not less zealous for immediate action; but it was impossible quite to come up to the precipitation of the Senate. The bill from that body was debated in Committee of the Whole, with closed doors, three days, Friday, Saturday, and Monday, the sittings on Friday and Saturday being protracted late into the night, in hopes of compelling the committee to report the bill. Having been re- Dec. 21.

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CHAPTER ported on Monday with some verbal amendments, Quincy moved an additional section, excepting fishing 1807. vessels on their giving bonds not to engage in any commerce. This was rejected, 82 to 45. A motion to take off the injunction of secrecy, and to proceed with open doors, was lost, 75 to 52; after which the bill was put Dec. 22. upon its final passage, and was carried about midnight, 82 to 44. The Senate having concurred in the amendments of the House, the bill was signed by the president, and became a law. It prohibited the departure, unless by special direction of the president, of any vessel from any port of the United States bound to any foreign country, except foreign armed vessels possessing public commissions, and foreign merchant ships in ballast, or with such cargo only as they might have on board when notified of the act. All registered or sea-letter vessels— the latter denomination including foreign-built vessels owned by Americans-which, during this restriction from foreign voyages, might engage in the coasting trade, were to give bonds, in double the value of the cargo, to reland the same within the United States.

Thus, on the mere recommendation of the executive, almost without debate, with closed doors, without any previous intimation to the public, or opportunity for advice by those most able to give it, was forced through, by night sessions, and the overbearing determination of a majority at once pliant and obstinate, an act striking a deadly blow at the national industry, and at the means of livelihood of great numbers, the real nature and inevitable operation of which seem to have been equally misapprehended by the cabinet which recommended, and by the majority which enacted it.

Ever since the time of the Stamp Act and the nonimportation agreements entered into on that occasion, an

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idea had prevailed of the efficacy of the suspension of CHAPTER commercial intercourse as a means of sustaining the rights of America against interference from abroad. Such 1807. had been the first resort of the Continental Congress at the commencement of the Revolution, in the famous nonimportation and non-exportation agreement known as the American Association. After the close of the Reyolutionary war, and prior to the adoption of the Federal Constitution, several of the States, Virginia most eagerly and most decidedly, had employed similar means, limited, however, on that occasion to discriminating duties on tonnage and goods, in an attempt to compel Great Britain to come into their views of commercial reciprocity. In the first Congress under the Federal Constitution, and afterward, a similar policy had been very warmly urged, first by Madison, and then by Jefferson, in his famous report on the commerce of the United States; and again in the debate on Madison's resolutions founded on that report. Very lately, after a long interval, the policy of those resolutions had been adopted in the act prohibiting the import of certain British manufactures, an act already twice suspended, but which had just gone into operation-the House, after a very acrimonious debate, and in spite of numerous mercantile petitions, having refused, by a vote of 80 to 50, to suspend it a third time.

Immediately preceding Jay's mission, during the state of excitement caused by the issue of British orders in council restricting neutral trade with enemies' colonies, an embargo had been laid, first for thirty days, and then for thirty days longer; and according to Monroe, and others of the more ardent opposition at that time, it had been the allowing that embargo to expire that had compelled Jay to submit to what they considered as such

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CHAPTER unfavorable terms. Without any distinct notions of its operation and effects, an embargo seems to have been 1807. vaguely regarded as a defensive and retaliatory measure of potent efficacy; and the expediency of resorting to it in case of the failure of the demand on Great Britain for reparation in the case of the Chesapeake, had been suggested in the newspapers, Federal as well as Democratic.

The passage of the act, therefore, sudden as it was, did not take the public entirely by surprise. Being regarded merely as a temporary measure, though it contained in itself no limitation, it was at first sullenly submitted to both in Congress and out of it. But this submission did not prevent extensive evasions, to which the act, as first hurried through, was exceedingly open, the haste and inexperience of its framers, while placing at the disposal of the president the revenue cutters and the navy as means to enforce it, having left the act without penalties and other necessary safeguards, as though commerce could be stopped by a mere word of command. The enrolled coasting vessels, of which no bonds were required to reland their cargoes within the United States, hastened to take on board merchandise fitted for the West India islands, whither they made sail, under pretense of being blown off the coast, willing to risk the slight penalty of the old revenue laws for the hope of a 1808. rich market. To meet this difficulty a supplementary Jan. 8 act was speedily passed, by which coasting and fishing vessels of every description, as well as registered and sea-letter vessels engaged in the coasting trade, were required to give bonds to reland their cargoes in the United States. All vessels violating the act were to be forfeited, with their cargoes. The master was subjected to a fine of from $1000 to $20,000, and the owners and parties concerned in the outfit to a penalty double the value of the vessel and cargo.

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As the pressure of the embargo, re-enforced by this CHAPTER supplementary act, began to be felt, loud complaints began also to be made that the true motives of its passage, 1808. and reasons for it, had not been avowed. The injunction of secrecy had indeed been taken off; but of the papers laid before Congress, none were printed except Regnier's exposition of the Berlin decree, and the proclamation recalling British seamen, both of which had previously appeared in the newspapers. Armstrong's correspondence with Champagny, though communicated to Congress, was not made public; his correspondence with his own government had not been communicated even to Congress. Not only had a motion to ask the president for it been rejected during the secret session, but the journal of that session had been so made up that even the fact of such a motion did not appear.

The receipt of dispatches from Armstrong, announcing a gross attack on neutral rights, openly avowed and defended by Bonaparte's ministers, and understood by the Americans in France as equivalent to a declaration on his part that he would not permit any neutral commerce, had been made the occasion for the embargo. Yet the measure itself seemed to be aimed not so much at France as at Great Britain, to which country and her colonies much the larger proportion of American produce was exported. The preservation of our ships, seamen, and merchandise had been alleged in the president's message as the object in view; but how could that be a reason for refusing to allow the exportation of our produce in foreign vessels? If the dangers that threatened the American flag were too great to be encountered, our ships, instead of being laid up to rot at the wharves, might still have been sold to British merchants, who would have assumed all the risks of the transportation of our produce, which, without a market abroad, would