As to her poverty, you must not consider the money you spend in your defence, but the fortune you would lose if you were not defended-and further, you must recollect you will pay less to an immediate war, than to peace with a war establishment, and a war to

mies; and further, that your empire cannot be saved by a calculation: besides, your wealth is only part of your situation-the name you have established, the deeds you have achieved, and the port you have sustained, preclude you from a second place among nations; and when you cease to be the first, you are nothing.

General HARPER'S Speech, in the Senate of the United States, April 4th, 1816.

THE bill to establish a sys tem of navigation for the United States," being under consideration, Gen. Harper moved to recommit it to the committee of foreign relations, and to refer to the same committee the following resolutions, which he read in his place and laid on the table, viz.

"Resolved, that provision ought to be made by law, for excluding gradually from the naval and merchant service of the United States, all persons other than native citizens, or citizens heretofore naturalized.

"Resolved, that provision ought to be made by law, for compelling merchant vessels of the United States to have on board a number of apprentices, in proportion to the tonnage of such vessels respectively."

His object, Gen. Harper said, in moving this recommitment, was to prevail on the senate if possible to remould the bill, so as to incorporate into it the new ideas contained in these resolutions: new he meant as respected that bill, though no doubt very familiar within those

VOL. I.

walls, and to well informed and reflecting men throughout the country: and as the motion, should it prevail, would gave a new shape to the bill, and a new character to our whole maritime system, a character which he deemed it of the highest importance to impart to that great branch of our policy, he thought it incumbent on him to state, somewhat at large, the leading considerations which in his opinion recommended this measure. He was sensible that neither those considerations nor the measure itself, were new to that house, or to the nation. They had often, no doubt, been the subject of reflection and discussion abroad, and sometimes of deliberation within those walls. But as he, not having then the honour of a seat in that body, had no part in those deliberations, he might perhaps be more readily excused for Occupying some portion of its time, with his ideas concerning the great interests involved in the question.

These resolutions, Gen. Harper said, and especially the first, which contained by far the most impor tant principle, had two distinct objects, each recommended by cons

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siderations peculiar to itself, and both tending to the same great end, the honour, safety, and prosperity of the nation. The first was to preserve peace, as far as its preservation might depend on us, by excluding all foreign seamen from our merchant ships, and thus avoiding those collisions with the maritime powers of the world, which must of necessity arise from conflicting claims on the ocean to allegiance: the second, to prepare for war, by accelerating the production of a numerous class of native seamen; the most effectual mode of doing which, was to confine the navigation of our ships of war and merchant vessels, as these resolutions proposed to confine it, to our native citizens, and those heretofore naturalized among us. Such, he said, was the twofold object of his motion; to avoid contests with other nations, and especially with that between which and us, from similarity of language, appearance and pursuits, they were most likely to arise; and to make timely and effectual preparation for maintaining our rights, against all nations, and especially that great maritime power, with which in all probability we could not long avoid serious col. lisions if we would; and perhaps, judging from the temper of a large part of this nation, would not if we could. From these collisions the resolutions which he had submitted would in his opinion have a tendency to save us. So far their operation would be admitted, he presumed, to be highly beneficial. Every measure must be so, that tended by fair and honourable means, to narrow the ground and diminish the occasions of serious misunderstandings, with other powers. The effect indeed would be not complete. Neither this

measure nor any other could save us entirely from contests with a power, between which and this country so many fruitful and perennial sources of discord existed. But it was doing much to diminish the number of those sources, and to dry up one of the most fruitful. This he believed would be effected, by the resolutions under consideration. How they would produce that effect he would next proceed to consider.

Every honourable gentleman who heard him, knew how the two nations, the United States and Great Britain, stood towards each other, in relation to their maritime policy and pretensions. The United States asserted it as a right, and had established it as a habit, to incorporate foreigners by naturalization into their political association, into the nation, and thus to withdraw them from their alle giance to their native govern ments. This practice extended to all the European states, but affect. ed Great Britain more than any other nation, from obvious and well known causes. We went a step further; we had laid it down as a maxim, in our laws and foreign policy, that protection is due on the ocean to these naturalized foreigners, against their original governments, to the same extent as to our native citizens; and this protection we had repeatedly and in various forms promised to afford. We had held out to the subjects of every power, to the people of all nations, a promise of protection against their native governments, on the ocean as well as on the land, provided they would conform to our laws of naturalization. Thus the matter stood on our part.

The foreign powers on the other hand, and particularly Great Britain, had from time immemorial

adopted it as a maxim of their laws and constitutions, essential in their opinions to the preservation of government and civil society, that allegiance is perpetual and unalienable, so far as relates to the mere act of the person who owes it: that every member of the community contracts by his birth obligations of obedience to the laws, and of service and fidelity to the state, from which he cannot withdraw, without the consent of the sovereign: in fine that this contract, like all others, can only be dissolved by the consent of both parties, one of whom is the individual or subject, and the other the sovereign, representing the community or state. He would not, he said, now enquire whether on abstract principle this doctrine was correct. The enquiry was unnecessary for his present purpose. Should it ever become necessary, he was prepared to meet the question, and entertained opinions concerning it which he should be ready to avow and maintain. It was sufficient for the present purpose, and must be known by all who heard him, that the government to which he alluded, and over whose conduct or opinions we had no control, did hold and always had held this doctrine, and had always manifested a fixed determination not to recede from it, or to relinquish the rights to which it gave birth. It was equally well known that many other governments, nay he might say all the governments of the world, except our own, all those at least which belonged to the European system, and with which we had any connexion, held the same principle, and from time to time asserted it, as might happen to suit their interest or their policy. How far we might hereafter find it necessary to

adopt and assert this principle ourselves, he deemed it unnecessary now to enquire; although he had a very distinct opinion on that subject, which on every proper occasion he should be ready to avow and support. It was enough for us at present, that Great Britain did assert this principle of perpetual indissoluble allegiance, and had manifested on all occasions a determination to support it, at every hazard.

Knowing, then, he said, as we did, this determination, this fixed purpose of that nation, to assert at every hazard the right which she thus claimed to the services of all her people, whom she could find in merchant ships on the ocean, or in her own territory; knowing also the importance which she attached to this right, regarded by her as essential to her prosperity, her safety, and even her existence; the question for us to solve, laying aside all consideration of the soundness of her doctrine, of the abstract right of the case, and looking only to the practical consequences, was this; how far would it be wise in us, to engage in a contest with that nation, on grounds considered as so doubtful, on principles not acknowledged by any other power; where the universal opinion of mankind, out of our own country, would be against us, and opinions at home might be very much divided. It was a point on which such a division must be expected; a point on which the most enlightened and patriotic men might entertain, and in fact did entertain, the most opposite. opinions: for it was well known that a very large portion of the American people, including many individuals of the highest character for virtue, knowledge, and love of country, were of opinion, that one

nation had no right, by its naturalization laws or any other means, to withdraw the subjects of another from their allegiance. He did not now intend to enquire into the correctness of this opinion, but merely to advert to the fact that such an opinion was entertained, by a very numerous and highly respectable class of our citizens, whose feelings and opinions it was of the highest importance to consult, in order to obtain their zeal ous co-operation in any national struggle that might ensue. Good citizens would always obey the laws; but unless they approved the ground of a war, mere obedience was all that could be expected from them. Zeal, devotedness, voluntary services and sacrifices of person and property, could only be expected from men of honourable minds, in a cause which they approved; and there were great numbers of the most honourable and virtuous men of this country, who would not and could not approve of any quarrel, entered into for the mere purpose, not of vindicating any rights, or redressing any injuries of our own citizens, of the native sons of our soil, but of asserting a right in this country to acquire new citizens, of whom we had no need, by withdrawing foreigners from the power of their own governments; to confer favours on foreigners, at the expense of the country and its native inhabitants.

There were, Gen. Harper said, certain principles affecting the rights of our native citizens, in defence of which he was at all times ready to incur every risk, and brave every danger. Those rights were sacred, and whenever openly assailed must be defended, at every hazard. Questions might indeed arise about the nature and

extent of some of those rights; but there were others of a nature too clear to be disputed, and too sacred to be touched; which when openly assailed must be defended at every hazard, and even when incidentally infringed, through inadvertency, accident, or mistake, claimed the jealous attention and ready interposition of the government. Without entering into any exact definition of these high and sacred rights, which he did not conceive to be now necessary, it might be remarked that the right of personal liberty, of exemption from compulsory service to a foreign government, under any form whatever, was among the most undeniable of the number; and there never was a time when he was not ready to resist, to every extremity, any such claim to the service of native American citizens, had such a claim been made by any government whatever.

The claim however which was now under consideration, the claim of the British government to the services of its own subjects, whenever it could find them in merchant ships on the ocean, or in its own ports, was by no means of this description; and the right asserted by this country to protect British subjects and other foreigners, on the ocean, against the claims of their own governments, was not a right in which our native citizens, the sons of our soil, had any interest. It was a claim for the benefit of foreigners, not always of the most desirable class, who often come to us because they found it inconvenient to remain in their own country, whom we wished to adopt for their benefit and not for our own, into our family, and to extend to them not merely the privileges but the protection due only to our native sons. It was from the