seek with avidity. Smuggling was extensively carried on through the whole extent of our wide-spread borders; the revenue was greatly reduced; and the morals of the people were corrupted by the vast temptations held out to evade the laws. It is difficult to tell on what classes of the community this disastrous measure did not operate. On the planting and shipping interest, perhaps, it was most serious. On the one, it was more immediate, on the other, more permanent, in its evil consequences.

In cities and commercial regions, capital and labor are easily diverted from one employment to another. That which to-day is profitably engaged in commerce, may to-morrow, if an inducement offers, be as readily turned into successful manufactures. Not so with the labor and capital employed in agriculture; here the change must be slow. But with the capital and the kind of labor employed in the tobacco and cotton planting of the South, no change, to any perceptible degree, was possible. The Southern people, being wholly agricultural, could live a few years without the sale of their crops; but the Northern people, being mainly dependent on their labor and commerce, could not exist with an embargo of long duration. Hence we find a patient endurance of its evils on the part of the South, while a spirit of insurrection pervaded the people of the North. In this restless condition, much of their capital and labor were permanently directed to manufactures. The bounties offered by a total prohibition of foreign articles, stimulated this branch of business in a remarkable degree; and when the embargo, non-intercourse, and war ceased to operate as a bounty, they have had to be sustained by heavy duties imposed on foreign commerce, at the expense of the planting interest of the South, which is mainly dependent on a foreign market for the sale of its commodities. Every dollar taken from commerce, and invested in manufactures, was turning the current from a friendly into a hostile channel, to that kind of agriculture which was dependent on foreign trade for its prosperity. The immediate effect of the embargo was, to starve New England. Its more permanent consequence has been, to build it up at the expense of the planting interest of the South. New England has now two sources of wealth, in her manufactures and commerce; while the South have still the only one of planting tobacco and cotton on exhausted lands, and with a reduced market for the sale of her commodities.

It was impossible for Mr. Randolph to advocate such a measure. He could not foresee all the evils it might entail on his country; but his practical wisdom, aided by his deep interest in the welfare of his constituents, taught him that no good could come out of an embargo reduced to a system, and made a part of the municipal regulations of the Government. As the first step towards an immediate preparation for war, he could approve the act; but as a scheme destined to act on foreign countries, while it was wasting the resources of Government, and consuming the substance of the people at home, it met his decided disapprobation.

Twelve months had now rolled around, and all parties had become of his opinion. No impression abroad. Nothing but disaster at home. The legislature of Massachusetts pronounced it an unconstitutional act. They were not far from the truth. For a short period, and as a war measure, an embargo would be constitutional; but the embargo acts adopted from time to time by Congress, and persisted in for more than a year, were very far from being clearly constitutional. Massachusetts pronounced them not only unconstitutional, but unjust and oppressive.

In 1799, when Virginia interposed her State authority, and declared the alien and sedition laws unconstitutional, Massachusetts then said, that the Supreme Court was alone competent to pronounce on the constitutionality of a federal law. But she now saw the error and the evil consequences of such a doctrine. The Supreme Court had declared the embargo acts to be constitutional; while a sovereign State, crushed and ruined by the burdens they imposed, saw those enactments in a very different light. Was she to be silent, and bear the evils inflicted by those laws, merely because the courts had pronounced in their favor? By no means. She was one of the sovereign parties who had ordained the Constitution as a common government, endowing it with certain general powers for that purpose; and surely, from the very nature of things, she had a right to say whether this or that law transcended those delegated powers

or not.

Whether Massachusetts strictly followed the doctrine of State rights, as laid down by Mason, Jefferson, and Madison, we pretend not to say; but we do say, that she had a right to interpose her authority, to pronounce the embargo laws unconstitutional, to show

their injustice and oppression, and to demand their repeal by instructions to her own senators and representatives. Massachusetts did interpose; pronounced her repugnance to the law; and her will was respected.

Mr. Jefferson might have taken a very different course from the one pursued by him. He might have said, This disaffection is only found among the federalists; they despise State rights, and have only resorted to them on this occasion to abuse them; the people of Massachusetts are favorable to my administration, and to the obnoxious law; my popularity and influence are unbounded in other sections of the Union; by persevering a little longer, we shall accomplish all that was designed by the embargo; I will therefore disregard the clamors of these people, and persist in enforcing the law, even should it drive them to extremity. But Mr. Jefferson did not reason in this way. He saw that a sovereign State, through her regular legislative forms, had pronounced against the law; it was not for him to scrutinize the character and composition of that legisla ture; it was enough for him to know, that a State had solemnly declared the law unconstitutional, unjust, and oppressive. When, in addition, he was told by a distinguished statesman from Massachusetts, that a longer persistence might endanger the integrity of the Union, he unhesitatingly acquiesced in a repeal of the most important and favored measure of his administration.

What might have been the consequences if Massachusetts had been driven to extremities, we will not conjecture-we do not reason from extreme cases. All we have to say is, that so long as the States have the independence to maintain those rights guaranteed to them by the Constitution, and that so long as there is patriotism and virtue in the administration of the Federal Government, there will never be the necessity of driving the States into those extreme measures of secession or nullification.

CHAPTER XXXIV

GUNBOATS.

THE question may be asked here, Why did Mr. Jefferson make so little preparation for a war which, sooner or later, seemed to be inevitable? To understand his policy, we must first know the political principles that governed his conduct. He came into power as the leader of the republican State-Rights party. During the first four years of his administration, he applied the few simple and abstemious doctrines of that party most successfully in the management of our domestic affairs. But now a new and untried scene was opened before him. Never were the embarrassments of any government in regard to foreign powers more intricate and perplexing; and, to increase his difficulties, he had to deal with the most powerful nations on earth, who, in their hostility to each other, paid no respect to the laws of nations or the rights of neutrality. The Constitution was ordained mainly for the purpose of regulating commerce, foreign and domestic, and establishing a common rule of action in our intercourse with other countries. While the States at home preserved their political existence, retained much of their original sovereignty, were distinct, variant, and even hostile in some of their domestic interests, to the world abroad they presented but one front. At home each pursued its own policy, developed its own internal resources, and was unconscious of the existence of a common government, save in the negative blessing that it bestowed upon them of peace with each other and with the world. They literally fulfilled the spirit of their national motto, E pluribus unum―at home many, abroad one. It is obvious that peace must be an essential element in the successful operation of such a complicated system of government. War of whatever kind, especially an aggressive war, whether by land or sea, must destroy its equilibrium, and precipitate all its movements on the common centre, which, by an intense over-action, must finally absorb all countervailing influences. Mr. Jefferson was thoroughly penetrated with the true spirit of our Constitution; so was John Randolph. These profound statesmen thought alike on that subject: they differed as to

certain measures of policy, but not at all in their principles. They both sought the peace of the country, not only as the best condition for developing its resources, but as an essential means for preserving the purity of its institutions. Neither could look with complacency on a standing army or a large naval establishment. They did not even consider them as essential in the present emergency, more imminent, perhaps, than any that could possibly occur at a future period.

Negotiation having failed, and both belligerents still continuing to plunder our commerce, Mr. Jefferson recommended, as the only remedy, a total abandonment of the ocean. Mr. Randolph's advice was to arm the merchant marine, and let them go forth and defend themselves in the highways of a lawful commerce. As the means of home defence, Jefferson recommended the construction and equipment of gunboats, in numbers sufficient to protect the harbors and seaports from sudden invasion. Randolph advised to arm the militia, put a weapon in the hands of every yeoman of the land, and furnish the towns and seaports with a heavy train of artillery for their defence.

In all this we perceive but one object-a defence of the natal soil (natale solum) by the people themselves, and a total abstinence from all aggression. "Pour out your blood," said these wise statesmen to the people; "pour out your blood in defence of your borders; but shed not a drop beyond." Happy for the country could this advice have always been followed! As Randolph foresaw and predicted, we came out of the war with Great Britain without a constitution; mainly to his exertions in after years are we indebted for its restoration. The late war with Mexico has engendered a spirit of aggression and of conquest among the people, and has taught the ambitious, aspiring men of the country, that military fame achieved in an hour is worth more than the solid reputation of a statesman acquired by long years of labor and self-sacrifice. Where these things are to end it does not require much sagacity to foresee. Let the people take warning in time, and give heed to the counsel of their wisest statesmen; let them dismiss their army and their navy, relieve the country of those burthensome and dangerous accompaniments of a military government, and trust to negotiation, justice, and their own energies and resources for defence. What was visionary and impracticable in the warlike days of Jefferson, is now wholly reasonable and