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the frivolity and incapacity with which economical questions of national significance have as a rule been treated in congress. The half-educated mediocrity, which has always a broad field of action in the political life of all pure deImocracies, has probably nowhere shown itself more reckless or more presumptuous. The Federalists rightly claimed that history afforded no other instance in which a government had thus laid violent hands on the economical existence of hundreds of thousands of its citizens. Great blame would therefore have attached to the Republicans, even if their senseless policy had not made the breach between the north and the south greater, after there seemed to be some prospect that it was about to begin to close.

The opposition, to which some Republicans also, like John Randolph, belonged, raised the constitutional question on this occasion. In the debates of the Philadelphia convention the question of the right to lay an embargo was only incidentally touched upon. Madison understood the clause prohibiting the taxation of exports to be a reservation of that right to the general government. Ellsworth opposed this view and the convention clearly agreed with him. No express provision on this subject was incorporated into the constitution. The right claimed by congress was, therefore, to be deduced from its authority to regulate commerce. The opposition acknowledged the correctness of this construction. They did not question the right of

1 Elliot, Deb., V., p. 455.

Art. I., Sec. 8, § 3. "Mr. McHenry conceived that power to be included in the power of war." Elliot, Deb., V., p. 455.

An attempt was made later to confine the scope of this clause within very narrow limits; but the supreme court favored the most liberal construction which the terms of the constitution would admit of. "Commerce... is intercourse. It describes the commercial intercourse between nations and parts of nations, in all its branches, and is regulated by prescribing rules for carrying on that intercourse. It is the power to regulate; that is, to prescribe the rule by which commerce is to be governed. This power, like all others vested in congress, is com

The

congress to lay an embargo, which had already been done in 1794. They insisted only that the embargo of 1807 was unconstitutional for the reason that, unlike that of 1794, it was not limited to a definite time; that an unlimited embargo was not a regulation, but an annihilation, of commerce, which the constitution did not authorize.' Much was advanced in favor of this theory which sounded very plausibly, but which was for all that mere declamation. The only thing in the whole debate on the constitutional question which is worthy of mention is the characteristic inconsistency of which the majority were guilty. Republicans did not hesitate to rely on the introductory words of the constitution, although the orthodox mode. of interpretation set up by them declared it to be an absurdity to endeavor to deduce from these any authority whatever. There was scarcely any occasion for such a denial of their old confession of faith. The constitutional question was at least so doubtful that they would have had little to fear from the opposition if the latter had not had other arguments to advance against the embargo. The majority. therefore, liked to expatiate on the constitutional question, while the opposition avoided it almost entirely

plete in itself, may be exercised to its utmost extent, and acknowledges no limitations other than are prescribed in the constitution. . . The wisdom and the discretion of congress, their identity with the people, and the influence which their constituents possess at elections, are in this, as in many other instances . . . the sole restraints on which they have relied to secure them from its abuses." Marshall, in Gibbons vs. Ogden, Wheaton's Rep., IX., pp. 190, 196.

'Ibid, p. 192. Story, the learned commentator on the constitution, who at the time belonged to the Republican party, says: “I have ever considered the embargo a measure which went to the utmost limit of constructive power under the constitution. It stands upon the extreme verge of the constitution, being in its very form and terms an unlimited prohibition or suspension of foreign commerce." Life and Letters of J. Story, I., pp. 185, 186.

* Deb. of Congress, III., p. 679. Compare Madison's letter of Nov. 27, 1830, to Stevenson, Niles' Reg., supplement to vol. XLIII., p. 29.

and dwelt on the political and economic side of the question, because here they felt the solid ground under their feet.

The majority urged that the United States could not go to war with England and France at the same time. But the nation's honor and the nation's rights had been ignored by both in the same way; and honor and interest therefore demanded that the same redress should be had for the wrong committed by both powers. As it was not possible to obtain this redress with the sword, it was possible and could be made efficacious, only by the laying of the embargo.

The opposition charged that this mode of reasoning was not only fallacious, but sordid. They claimed that the administration party did not measure the two aggressive F powers with the same rule and did not wish so to measure them. The whole world knew what the consequences of the long war with England were to the navy and merchant marine of France, and every child could infer that all the weight of the embargo was intended to rest on England alone. It helped France against England, and it was intended to do so.

This reproach was a blow with a two-edged sword. The old shibboleth of the French and English faction was bandied about once more, and was taken up with eagerness. But it could no longer be represented as self-evident that sympathy with France in opposition to the rest of Europe was synonymous with sympathy for freedom against conspiring tyrants. Napoleon was, as became more evident every day, striving after the supremacy of the world, and England appeared to be the only insurmountable obstacle in the way of the realization of his dream. But too many requisitions had been made on the services of rhetoric to permit them to have their old enchanting power over the American people in the mouth of the emperor. Jefferson and his associates took great care, therefore, not to orna

ment their policy as openly as they had been wont with the French cockade. But they had by no means completely broken with this part of their past. Whether their devotion to France was still so great that they wished to afford her indirect support in her war with England, has not yet been settled with certainty, and it is doubtful if it ever can be settled. But they were certainly aware that the embargo would not operate to make reprisals on France, and Napoleon did not consider that it did so operate.1 This was enough to throw a shadow over the political morality of the administration and of the majority of congress, as well as to refute their above-mentioned argument for the embargo. They could not at least clear themselves of the suspicion of a partiality which could be justified on no political or moral grounds, nor could they justly claim that they had thrown dust in the eyes of even one of the offending powers.

And even England had relatively very little to suffer from the embargo. At first it was scarcely heeded, more important events claiming the attention of the country.?

General Armstrong, the American ambassador to France, wrote, Aug. 30, 1808: "We have somewhat overrated our means of coercion of the two great belligerents to a course of justice. The embargo is a measure calculated, above any other, to keep us whole, and keep us in peace; but beyond this you must not count upon it." (Dwight, Hist. of the Hartford Convention, p. 96.) Jefferson himself wrote, Oct. 15, 1808, to Rob. L. Livingston, (Jeff., Works, V. p. 370): "He [Napoleon] concludes, therefore, as every rational man must, that the embargo, the only remaining alternative, was a wise measure." The duke de Cadore gives still stronger expression to this fact. He writes to general Armstrong, Aug. 5, 1810: "The emperor had applauded the general embar go." Dwight, p. 163. Compare also Deb. of Cong., IV., p. 9. Fisk of Vermont, an ardent defender of the embargo, admitted in the house of representatives in April, 1808, that as regards France the measure had no effect. In the debates on the suspension of the embargo he inquired: "What do gentlemen now ask? That we should open our ports to Great Britain alone: for that would be the effect of raising the embargo." Deb. of Congress, III., p. 691.

'Armstrong writes: "In England (in the midst of the more interest

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Besides, it was soon shown that the injuries which England was made to suffer by the embargo were compensated for by many advantages. Moreover, the injury was much smaller than had been expected, even in England. Hillhouse, in the senate, and Quincy and Key, in the house of representatives, did not weary of showing that it was impossible, on account of the great extent of sea-coast, to enforce a strict observance of the embargo. They reaped no advantage, however, from the abundance of actual proof of the assertion that only the conscientious had anything to suffer, while the unscrupulous grew rich, and that England could with little difficulty obtain any desired quantity of American goods. The misfortune was, it was answered to this, that the embargo was not conscientiously observed; that were it only so observed, it would be infallibly attended by the promised results. When it was objected that, in politics, all calculations should be based on what is, and not upon what should be, the declaimers answered that if the people had sunk so low that for the

ing events of the day) it is forgotten." Foreign Relations, III., p. 256. |

Annals of Cong., 2, X., p. 1684.

1 The British ministry also became acquainted about this time [June] with the unexpected and unexampled prosperity of their colonies of Canada and Nova Scotia. It was perceived that one year of an American embargo was worth to them twenty years of peace or war under any other circumstances; that the usual order of things was reversed; that in lieu of American merchants making estates from the use of British merchandise and British capital, the Canadian merchants were making fortunes of from ten to thirty or forty thousand pounds in a year from the use of American merchandise and American capital." Lloyd, of Massachusetts, in the house of representatives, Nov. 21. Deb. of Congress, IV., p. 9. "I consider the embargo as a premium to the commerce of Great Britain." Key, of Maryland, in the same place, Dec. 8, 1808, Ibid, IV., p. 66.

Even John Quincy Adams, who had just separated himself from the Federalists and joined the administration party, says, in a letter dated Dec. 21, 1808: "The law will not be executed. It will be resisted under the organized sanction of state authority." Niles' Register, XXXV., p. 220.