counteract the navigation act, we have laid on British, a higher tonnage than our own vessels pay in their ports; and what is much more effectual, we have imposed ten per centum on the duties, when the dutied articles are borne in foreign bottoms. We have also made the coasting trade a monopoly to our own vessels. Let those, who have asserted that this is nothing, compare facts with the regulations which produced them..

Is not this increase of American shipping rapid enough? Many persons say it is too rapid, and attracts too much capital for the circumstances of the country. I cannot readily persuade myself to think so valuable a branch of employment thrives too fast. But a steady and sure encouragement is more to be relied on than violent methods of forcing its growth. It is not clear, that the quantity of our navigation, including our coasting and fishing vessels, is less in proportion to those of that nation: in that computation we shall probably find, that we are already more a navigating people than the English.

As this is a growing country, we have the most stable ground of dependence on the corresponding growth of our navigation: and that the increasing demand for shipping will rather fall to the share of Americans than foreigners, is not to be denied. We did expect this from the nature of our own laws; we have been confirmed in it by experience; and we know that an American bottom is actually preferred to a foreign one:

In cases where one partner is an American, and another a foreigner, the ship is made an American bottom. A fact of this kind overthrows a whole theory of reasoning on the necessity of further restrictions. It shows, that the work of restriction is already done.

If we take the aggregate view of our commercial interests, we shall find much more occasion for satisfaction, and even exultation, than complaint, and none for despondence. It would be too bold to say, that our condition is so eligible there is nothing to be wished. Neither the order of nature, nor the allotments of providence, afford perfect content; and it would be absurd to expect in our politics what is denied in the laws of our being. The nations, with whom we have inter-course, have, without exception, more or less restricted their commerce. They have framed their regulations to suit their real or fancied interests. The code of France is as full of restrictions as that of England. We have regulations of our own; and they are unlike those of any other country. Inasmuch as the interest and circumstances of nations vary so essentially, the project of an exact reciprocity on our part is a vision. What we desire is, to have, not an exact reciprocity, but an intercourse of mutual benefit and convenience.

It has scarcely been so much as insinuated, that the change contemplated will be a profitable one; that it will enable us to sell dearer and to buy cheaper: on the contrary, we are invited to submit to the hazards and losses of a conflict with our customers; to engage in a contest of self-denial. For what-to obtain better markets? No such thing; but to shut up forever, if possible, the best market we have for our exports, and to confine ourselves to the dearest and scarcest markets for our imports. And this is to be done for the benefit of trade; or, as it is sometimes more correctly said, for the benefit of France. This language is not a little inconsistent and strange from those, who recommend a non-importation agreement, and who think we should even renounce the sea and devote ourselves to agriculture. Thus, to make our trade more free, it is to

be embarrassed, and violently shifted from one country to another, not according to the interest of the merchants, but the visionary theories and capricious rashness of the legislators. To make trade better, it is to be made nothing.

So far as commerce and navigation are regarded, the pretences for this contest are confined to two. We are not allowed to carry manufactured articles to Great Britain, nor any products, except of our own growth; and we are not permitted to go, with our own. vessels, to the West Indies. The former, which is a provision of the navigation act, is of little importance to our interests, as our trade is chiefly a direct one, our shipping not being equal to the carrying for other nations; and our manufactured articles are not furnished in quantities for exportation, and if they were, Great Britain would not be a customer. So far, therefore, the restriction is rather nominal than real.

The exclusion of our vessels from the West Indies is of more importance. When we propose to make an effort to force a privilege from Great Britain, which she is loath to yield to us, it is necessary to compare the value of the object with the effort, and above all, to calculate very warily the probability of success. A trivial thing deserves not a great exertion; much less ought we to stake a very great good in possession, for a slight chance of a less good. The carriage of one half the exports and imports to and from the British West Indies, is the object to be contended for. Our whole exports to Great Britain are to be hazarded. We sell on terms of privilege, and positive favor, as it has been abundantly shown, near seven millions to the dominions of Great Britain. We are to risk the privilege in this great amount--for what? For the freight only of one half the British West India trade with the United States. It belongs to commercial men to calculate the entire value of the freight alluded to. it cannot bear much proportion to the amount of seven millions. Besides, if we are denied the privilege of

But

carrying our articles in our vessels to the islands, we are on a footing of privilege in the sale of them. We have one privilege, if not two. It is readily admitted, that it is a desirable thing, to have our vessels allowed to go to the English islands; but the value of the object has its limits, and we go unquestionably beyond them, when we throw our whole exports into confusion, and run the risk of losing our best markets, for the sake of forcing a permission to carry our own products to one of those markets; in which too, it should be noticed, we sell much less than we do to Great Britain herself. Ifto this we add, that the success of the contest is grounded on the sanguine and passionate hypothesis of our being able to starve the islanders, which, on trial, may prove false, and which our being involved in the war would overthrow at once, we may conclude, without going further into the discussion, that prudence forbids our engaging in the hazards of a commercial war; that great things should not be staked against such as are of much less value; that what we possess should not be risked for what we desire, without great odds in our favor; still less, if the chance is infinitely against us.

If these considerations should fail of their effect, it will be necessary to go into an examination of the tendency of the system of discrimination, to redress and avenge all our wrongs, and to realize all our hopes.

It has been avowed, that we are to look to France, not to England, for advantages in trade; we are to show our spirit, and to manifest towards those, who are called enemies, the spirit of enmity, and towards those, we call friends, something more than passive good will. We are to take active measures to force trade out of its accustomed channels, and to shift it by such means from England to France. The care of the concerns of the French manufacturers may be, perhaps, as well left in the hands of the convention, as usurped into our own. However our zeal might engage us to interpose, our duty to our own immediate constituents

demands all our attention. To volunteer it, in order to excite competition in one foreign nation to supplant another, is a very strange business; and to do it, as it has been irresistibly proved it will happen, at the charge and cost of our own citizens, is a thing equally beyond all justification and all example. What is it but to tax our own people for a time, perhaps for a long time, in order that the French may at last sell as cheap as the English ?-cheaper they cannot, nor is it so much as pretended. The tax will be a loss to us, and the fancied tendency of it not a gain to this country in the event, but to France. We shall pay more for a time, and in the end pay no less; for no object but that one nation may receive our money, instead of the other. If this is generous towards France, it is not just to America. It is sacrificing what we owe to our constituents, to what we pretend to feel towards strangers. We have indeed heard a very ardent profession of gratitude to that nation, and infinite reliance seems to be placed on her readiness to sacrifice her interest to ours. The story of this generous strife should be left to ornament fiction. This is not the form nor the occasion to discharge our obligations of any sort to any foreign nation: it concerns not our feelings but our interests; yet the debate has often soared high above the smoke of business into the epic region. The market for tobacco, tar, turpentine and pitch, has become matter of sentiment; and given occasion alternately to rouse our courage and our gratitude.

If, instead of hexameters, we prefer discussing our relation to foreign nations in the common language, we shall not find, that we are bound by treaty to establish a preference in favor of the French. The treaty is founded on a professed reciprocity, favor for favor. Why is the principle of treaty or no treaty made so essential, when the favor, we are going to give, is an act of supererogation? It is not expected by one of the nations in treaty: for Holland has declared in her trea