evinced how able he was to appreciate and improve them. When he entered on the practice of his profession, he brought to it not only a mind prepared by a judicious course of study, but the enviable recommendation of an uncorrupted youth.

He rose rapidly in public esteem. His strict attention to business, his faithful application of time and talent, his punctuality in the discharge of the trusts confided to him, his powers of eloquence, and his ease of manners, soon secured him, at an early age, not only patronage, but an eminence in his profession. His fellow-citizens manifested the regard in which they held him, and the confidence they had in his abilities, by delegating him, before he had reached the age of thirty years, to the Massachusetts Convention, for the consideration of the Federal Constitution. In that assembly, associated with those long-tried and ardent patriots, Samuel Adams and John Hancock, he bore an active and honorable part.

In the year 1789, he was appointed by Washington, the first United States Attorney of the District of Massachusetts, under the new constitution, and in April, 1796, was associated with William Pinckney of Maryland and Colonel Trumbull of Connecticut, in a commission to settle the claims for British spoliations, under the fourth article of Jay's treaty. He remained in England eight years in this employment, visiting his home once during that time, on business of a private nature. His unsullied public character, the polished courtesy of his manner, and his high literary attainments, secured him the friendship and regard of all who became known to him, among whom were many of the most distinguished men in Great Britain. At the same time, by his assiduous attention to business, his profound knowledge of commercial law, his labored arguments, and his personal influence, he recovered sums to a vast amount for the citizens of his native country. Mr. Gore's and Mr. Pinckney's great exertions during this commission, are well known, but it is not so generally understood, that to Mr. Gore one large description of sufferers were principally indebted for the recovery of their claims. Mr. Pinckney had great doubts as to that class of captures, which were made under the rule of 1756. Mr. Gore made a very elaborate and powerful argument in favor of those claims, and by his perseverance and exertions, a great interest was secured to the people of the United States.

When Rufus King, who had been minister to the British Court, returned to America, he appointed Mr. Gore chargé d'affaires. In this station he continued until the following year. On his return from England, "so acceptable had been the performance of his duties," says Sullivan, "that the most respectable persons united in a festival to do him honor: and a more sincere and cordial testimonial of respect and esteem was never given to any man."

Soon after his return, Mr. Gore resumed the practice of his profession. He was a member of the Massachusetts Senate, for the county of Suffolk, during 1806 and 1807, and in the year following, was chosen to the lower house of the State Legislature. His position in this body was conspicuous, upright, and honorable. One of the ablest papers that appeared, on the orders in council, and the decrees of France, and on the manner in which these had been treated by the national government, was drawn up by him, in the form of a report, on a memorial of the citizens to the legislature. In 1809 he was chosen governor of Massachusetts, and continued in office one year. As chief magistrate, he made himself familiar with every subject, that related to the interests and prosperity of the State, the honor and happiness of the people. At the expiration of his term of office, he returned to private life, to remain but a short time however, as, in 1814, he was appointed by Governor Strong, to the Senate of the United States. In that assembly he displayed his usual ability and zeal, and exerted a great personal influence among all parties. After a service of three years in this station, the duties of which were becoming too arduous for his health, he resigned his seat, and did not thereafter enter public life.

Mr. Gore was an active and influential member of many of the literary and benevolent institutions in the community in which he lived. He was among the earliest members of the American Academy, and from 1806 to 1818, occupied the presidency of the Massachusetts Historical Society, one of the most respectable and useful bodies in America. To these institutions he bequeathed valuable legacies; as he did, also, to Harvard College-making the corporation of that institution his residuary legatee.

Mr. Gore's personal appearance is thus described by one of his cotemporaries: "He was

rather tall, and, in middle life, of full person and erect, but began to bend forward at an earlier age than common. He was bald on the whole upper surface of his head, at an unusually early period. His hair was tied behind, and dressed with powder. His face was round and florid, his eyes black; his manners courteous and amiable. His eloquence was dignified and impres sive, and in all his relations and deportment, he had the bearing and polish of a well-bred gentleman."* During the last years of his life, he suffered intensely from bodily infirmities; yet "such was his fortitude, such the equanimity of his mind, sustained by reflection, philosophy, and religion, that to a stranger he seemed not to suffer. His noble person literally bent down with pain and disease, he received his friends with cheerfulness, and so exerted himself to entertain them, that they left him with increased admiration of his intellectual and moral worth." On the first of March, 1829, having endured his sufferings like a martyr, without a murmur of complaint, he yielded to the violence of his disease, and cheerfully surrendered his spirit into the hands of his Maker.t

PROHIBITION OF CERTAIN IMPORTS.

inhabitants, under all the regulations of military | the talents and eloquence of her most distindiscipline.

The evil complained of is the tendency of our navigation and commercial laws, by allow-lapse of this term, a general embargo was iming the importation of articles of a kind like to those manufactured in England, to introduce British fabrics and products, to favor the enemy and prolong the war.

on Great Britain, by prohibiting the importa- | United States by some crafty foreigner from a tion of her manufactures. neutral port.

The remedy proposed for this enormous evil, as it is believed, the practice of which is supposed to afford to Great Britain the power of continuing the war against us, is an express and absolute prohibition of articles of a kind like to those of British fabrics, from all countries. The existing laws render liable to forfeiture all British goods, and three times their value, or the vessel or carriage which shall convey them. These laws, moreover, render the master of the vessel, and all parties to the offence, liable to

those inflicted by public law, and by the common law of the land, other and more aggravated penalties.

We can draw still deeper on experience, to test the soundness or futility of such measures, if we will revert to the efforts of the potent Emperor of France on Great Britain. To aid his numerous armies in the conquest of those proud islanders, he prohibited the use of her manufactures, not only in his own dominions, and in those of his vassal states, but through out all Europe; and for many years he succeeded in causing this prohibition to be general over the Continent. No foothold could Great | Britain obtain on which to empty her over-heavy and severe penalties, and superadd to loaded stores and magazines, but some distant island or some obscure port in the North Sea. She was shut out from the market of more than an hundred millions of people by this seemingly If the people of the United States be as profliall-powerful monarch; undismayed she met the gate, as the message referred to supposes them, world in arms, bore every privation for the loss and do now risk all the fines and forfeitures, of open markets, for the labor of her people, pains and penalties, to which they are liable, and the products of her vast possessions, with- will such an act as the one proposed, effectually out discovering the smallest symptoms of yield- | secure the entire exclusion of such goods? ing an iota of her pretensions. Her proud and unbending neck spurned the yoke. It bent not the least, although we too added our mite to the pressure. She never hesitated between the alternative of no trade, or a surrender of what she deemed her rights. The effects of her firm- | ness and perseverance are not likely to render her more submissive to the blows we have inflicted, or to those we are preparing for her by this bill. She now has all the world courting her trade, and receiving her products, diminished France, impoverished America excepted.

The Emperor of France, I will not say more despotic in the quality of his laws than the government of the United States, but possessing greater power, exerted all the ingenuity of his inquisitive policy, and employed his vast means, to detect offences against his prohibitory statutes, and, when detected, punished them with unmitigated severity. Yet the prohibited goods were to be found in every part of the Continent, and in the very heart of his dominions. Surely such a lesson will not be lost on any legislature, guided by a sound discretion, nor on any man not predetermined to shut his eyes against the light of experience.

When she considers how successfully she met her numerous foes, armed also with prohibition It is not merely the experience of the present and proscriptions of her products on every foot day to which I would ask the attention of genof land, from the Baltic to the Mediterranean, tlemen. The experience of all times, and of all and compares the situation of her then enemies nations, has shown that the most arbitrary, with that of our fallen country, will she be even the most sanguinary provisions of the best frightened into submission by the increased executed laws are ineffectual against the intropressure of this act? She attempts to capture duction of foreign commodities, which are betour ships, to destroy our trade, and prevent us ter and cheaper than the domestic. It has been from receiving supplies from abroad. We co-truly said, the strongest, the highest bars that operate most manfully in this work of ruin; nay, we do more to this end, in a few short days, than she could do in many years. We annihilate our ships, destroy our produce, imprison all our citizens, suffer not one to escape from the United States, doom whole States to sloth and famine, allow no man, woman, or child to cross a river or bay without permission from the President, to obtain the smallest comfort in the greatest need, break down all the barriers heretofore thought necessary to the support of the public and individual liberty, disregard the provisions of our constitution, and subject ourselves and property to martial law. When our vindictive foe has obtained so efficient an ally, in bringing destruction on the people of this country, he may cheerfully sustain the loss which will be incurred by retaining at home, or selling at a reduced price, the few blankets that might be smuggled into the

the tyranny or folly of government can erect, always have, and we may therefore safely predict always will, prove powerless against the cheapness of foreign articles. Private interest will either overleap or burst them asunder. Laws against the long-continued habits, and the manifest benefit of a people, serve but to corrupt their morals, to compromit the character of government, to expose its weakness, and finally to render it both odious and contemptible.

To render the miserable system, of which this bill is to be the keystone, more palatable, we are told encouragement will hereby be afforded to our own manufactures. This comes with an ill grace, indeed, from that government which has most unfeelingly destroyed all the numerous manufactures that spring from, and are supported by, navigation and commerce. Manufactures that inspire health, courage, firm.

ness, and intrepidity, that nerve the arm and invigorate the mind, that provide you men, at all times, able and willing to defend the soil blessed by their industry, and to advance the glory of a nation that has the wisdom to protect and cherish them.

Instead of these hardy employments, you offer the loom and shuttle. You huddle together men, women, and children, in one contaminated, and contaminating mass, and will soon render your men more effeminate than your women. You have sentenced the sons of industry and enterprise to penury and want, and expect to stifle their complaints by sending them to work at a machine, where an idiot can work as skilfully as themselves, and a feeble girl of ten years of age can earn as much.

will then be destroyed with the same apathy that is now discovered in the destruction of others that are more useful. From the high price of labor in America,-the cheapness, quantity, and excellence of our lands, and the profitable employment of capital in foreign commerce, we cannot expect to manufacture many articles so cheap as they can be afforded from other countries, less fortunately situated. Such will then be imported, and the numerous adventurers in these new establishments must fail. Sad, but certain result of not leaving to the sagacity of individuals, at all times more quick-sighted and intelligent on subjects of this sort than the wisest governments, the employment of their wealth, and the exercise of their own industry.

All writers, sir, on political economy, all nations, except our own; all statesmen, except those who rule the destinies of the United States; are satisfied of the vast importance of commerce to the population, the riches, and prosperity of a country; that, with it, are inseparably connected individual wealth and national power, of which it is essentially the source and support.

I know, sir, the people of this country are patient beyond all example. They have believed the government was not hostile to their interests. They have been taught to think the privation they endured was a necessary price for the protection of their rights, and the support of their freedom. This opiate, which has been so plentifully administered, must, and will lose its effect. They cannot continue the dupes of that policy, of which they are so manifestly the victims. They will not stoop to beg; they cannot see their wives and children perish with hunger and nakedness. You take from them their livelihood, and restrain them from the sad privilege of seeking abroad that bread which you will not permit them to earn at home. They will feel themselves degraded and insulted by being told, that they must fight the ene-gree, and as long as the patience of the people my for their rights, when the government, which ought to be their friend and protector, deprives them of all their rights, of even the means of obtaining subsistence, and at the same time renders them the scoff and ridicule of the world.

Would to heaven, sir, the government might awake from its own fatal illusions, before it be too late, before the people shall awake to the deformity of that despotism which debases and oppresses them!

The President tells you the restraints will affect those most who are most ready to sacrifice the interests of their country in pursuit of their own. These restraints will affect all who use any articles like those which are prohibited. The bill grants a monopoly to the manufacturer, at the expense of every one who wears the article which he makes. You tax the weaver the difference that is occasioned in price, by want of those commodities, which would have been imported had not your prohibition been imposed.

By the destruction of commerce, with its dependent arts, and the flattering bounties you thereby heap on the favored manufacturers, you prematurely seduce the capitalists of the country into new and untried employments. When peace returns, and trade shall be restored, should that ever be the case, these manufactures will not compete with foreign. They

From some cause, which I will not now undertake to develope, but which is, at last, pretty well understood throughout this country, the efforts of our government have all tended directly to the destruction of commerce. To this end it has been loaded with all the shackles and restrictions for which any pretence could be invented, and to as high a de

would bear. Congress has now finally suppressed all that can be exercised by our own citizens, both foreign and domestic.

The little remnant which had been spared from prohibitions, proscriptions, embargoes, and war measures against Great Britain, at the evident hazard of offending the few friends which remain to us in the civilized world, is now to be sacrificed to this exterminating spirit. Not an article, of which wool or cotton is an ingredient, is to be admitted from abroad. By far the greatest portion of the apparel of the whole population of this country, is composed of wool or cotton. It cannot be pretended that one-half the supply necessary to cover our citizens from absolute nakedness, can be made at home. Without recurring to the uncertain accounts, of who makes, and where these goods are made, and the quantities that interested manufacturers pretend can be delivered, there is one fact known to every one, that puts this question beyond all doubt: notwithstanding the immense influx of those articles in the autumn of 1812, and the quantities which we are told find their way into the United States from Great Britain, as well as from other parts of the world, goods of this kind, especially of the coarser sort, and such as are used almost exclusively by the poor, have been sold for a year past at three times the amount of their original cost, whereas, in com