of the products and manufactures of the country. She would employ in carrying to her colonies (if it were all flour, which is the most valuable article,) 60,000 tons of shipping; but the greater part of the cargoes being the bulky article of lumber, she may employ from eighty to a hundred thousand tons of shipping in the trade. The whole amount of our foreign tonnage being 854,000, Great Britain employed in this trade a quantity of tonnage equal to one eighth of the whole tonnage which we own in foreign trade. It was a desirable thing, certainly, if we could, to participate in that employment of shipping. In doing which we should create a navigation, and educate and bring forward the seamen who are to defend us on our shores and on the high seas, and employ our own manufacturers, mechanics of all kinds occupied in ship building, &c. in that proportion which such an addition to our navigation will require. The articles exported to the West Indies, Mr. S. said, were rice, flour, lumber, corn, horses, mules, cattle, poultry, potatoes, peas, beans, &c. all articles to them of the first necessity, and without which they could not support themselves, nor find materials wherewith to make hogsheads and construct buildings. If they could not get these articles from other countries, they must come to us, and must, if this bill passed, be coerced into admitting us to a participation of that navigation. Could they, he asked, get those articles in other countries? Certainly not upon equally nor any thing like equally advantageous terms, as from us. At this time, were such a law as this in existence, the West Indies, as to the whites as well as blacks, would be actually in a state of starvation: for Great Britain herself was so much in want of bread stuffs, as to have been petitioned to open her ports to certain articles, and of course was not able to supply her colonies. He doubted whether even with good crops, the mother country could supply them with flour, &c. At any rate, those articles never could be imported from a distance into the islands in as palatable a state as from this country. Could the islands get these articles elsewhere? It had been stated-and we ought to look at the subject in every part of view, said Mr. S. that gentlemen may vote advisedly-it has been stated that if Montreal was declared a free port on the part of Great Britain, she might thence obtain supplies for those islands; since it is well known that a great deal of flour is made in the neighbourhood of the St. Lawrence, which might, in that case, go down to Montreal, and be thence shipped to the West Indies. Mr. S. said, he was of a contrary opinion. It might be apprehended that much flour might be got in that way (which the bill did not provide against) but for the fact, that from thence but one cargo a year could be carried to the West Indies, the ports being shut up in the northern provinces for six or seven months yearly by the

ice. The time the ports were open was little more than sufficient for one voyage to and from the West Indies. From Canada then they cannot be supplied, and must be supplied elsewhere. That elsewhere, Mr. S. said, they would scarcely be able to find. The article of rice, he said, they could get no where, but in America. Indian corn likewise, they would get no where but from the United States-that article was for their slaves all important. It might be said they could raise it as well as we. It was true that they could; but, if they did, they must take off the slaves and land from a more profitable culture, that of coffee and sugar. They must lessen the growth of valuable articles, in order to grow one of small value. As to the article of lumber, gentlemen from the east had said that the British islands could be supplied from the United States only, with that article. On this point it would be proper to state, Mr. S. said, that there was no finer timber than grew on the borders of the lakes, and on the banks of the St. Lawrence, and Montreal could be supplied thence on good terms. The merchants could go up there and buy timber to be shipped to the West India islands, whenever the St. Lawrence should be open. If they did however, the article would be supplied at a greater expense and higher price than it could be from our Atlantic border, inasmuch as we could make four or five voyages annually, and scarcely more than one could be annually made from the St. Lawrence to the West Indies, which would greatly increase to them the cost of the article. The article of live stock they could get from no country but ours, on which, Mr. S. said, they are wholly dependent for horses, mules, cattle, sheep, hogs, &c. Even if these articles could be obtained from the British northern colonies, they could not be thence carried in safety to the West Indies. Even from the neighbouring state of New York, the difference of insurance between a cargo of live stock from that state, and one from Connecticut, and carried by Connecticut men, was six per cent. So great was the facility and skill acquired by practice in that branch of trade, &c.

These, Mr. S. said, were his practical views of the subject, which he had thought it his duty to lay before the house; leaving to others to state more at large the political views.

For his own part, he said, he had revolved this subject in his mind a long time, and had found it very difficult to make up an opinion on it. One thing was certain:-we ought not to embark in the proposed system, unless we mean to persevere in it. After once commencing, we ought to adhere to it, let the consequence be what it might.

MR. FORSYTH then proposed as a substitute for the bill, sundry new sections, embracing a system of discriminating duties, to supersede the clauses of prohibition and exclusion embraced in the bill.

MR. WILDE of Georgia, said, We seem to have accomplished within a few years a political circle: on the strange revolutions we have gone through I will not remark, further than that the same section of the country that a few years ago so decidedly opposed all sorts of commercial interdiction for important results, is now contending for it, to attain an end not so important, certainly, (though I will not detract from its importance,) as that for which formerly the same system was resorted to.

Gentlemen, he presumed, were not perfectly apprized, though he hardly supposed that many of them did not know the fact, that the policy which they recommended, of a total prohibition of all intercourse with the British colonies, was that policy which some of the most violent politicians in Great Britain had recommended as the means of adding to their prosperity. He alluded particularly, to a pamphlet on the colonial policy of Great Britain, which, there was some reason to suppose, recommended a system of conduct, if not pleasing, yet certainly not altogether displeasing to the British ministry. The very measure of total prohibition was that which the author of that work recommended, as the best mode of securing the consequence and importance of the North American colonies, and making the West Indies entirely independent of the United States; and of crushing the prosperity of a country which they look upon, as destined, at no very distant day, to be their commercial and political rival. Considering, Mr. W. said, that the very measure upon which the committee were now called to act had been recommended for adoption in that country, was a reason why they should deliberate, and maturely too, before they ventured on such an experiment. Nor was the reasoning contained in the book to which he had referred, so altogether destitute of foundation. The trade we carry on with the British West India possessions consists principally of lumber and bread stuffs, and a portion of live stock. With regard to the lumber, it was stated in the pamphlet, that the average annual supply for the British islands had been 117,000 loads, of which 113,000 had been imported from the United States, and 4,000 from elsewhere. But that in 1810, during the existence of our restrictive system, the port of Quebec alone had exported 160,000 loads to those islands. Possibly, Mr. W. said, a considerable portion of this came from the United States; but the whole effect was to increase the quantity exported from the British North American possessions. Of bread stuffs, perhaps, no very great supply could be calculated on from that quarter: but that was not the only dependence of the islands. It was recommended in the work referred to, and the advantages of such a change plainly shown, to grow a part of their bread stuff in some of the islands, Trinidad particularly.

The disposition of the people of the islands, particularly the island of Jamaica, and excepting Barbadoes, was generally in our favour. If that was the case, any measure affecting their interest so as to create a prejudice rather against us than the mother country, was defeating the end in view. The measure ought to be such, if any be adopted, as to make the colonies look to the mother country as the source of our regulations. To attempt to produce a relaxation of the British system by an extreme measure, did not seem to him to be the dictate of sound policy. We ought not, he said, to try the extent of our power at once. We ought not to pursue a policy which, should it fail, would leave us in despair of any alternative. He was not, he said, in favour of any temporary measure; we ought to do what we intend and believe to be effectual; but we ought not to apply the harshest and strongest measure at once.

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With regard to the operation of increased duties on this trade, though he preferred them to prohibition, yet, Mr. W. said, he could not suppose they would, as the gentlemen from Massachusetts seemed to suppose, be entirely paid, or paid in any great degree by the West India islands: The opinion of the secretary of the treasury (for whose opinion, Mr. Wilde said, he had the highest degree of respect) was altogether different: that the duty would be paid altogether by ourselves. An increased duty on imports would very evidently be paid, in a great degree, by our own citizens. With regard to a tonnage duty on outward-bound vessels, indeed, it would operate, in a small degree, as an export duty attaching to the articles exported, and would be paid in the West India islands. But under correction, he should suppose the other duty would be paid by citizens of the United States; at least so much of it as was requisite to bring up the value of the article imported to the cost of the same article imported from other countries on not as favourable terms as it would otherwise have been from the West Indies. Such would certainly be the effect, unless the price should be so far enhanced by the duties, as to cause the West India productions to come so much higher than the same articles from other countries, as greatly to reduce the consumption of them.

If it could be distinctly ascertained on this subject, what was the sense of the mercantile part of the community, or of a considerable majority of those who compose it, Mr. W. said, he should be ready to go as far as any gentleman in securing to them the rights and advantages which ought to belong to the trade in question. But there seemed to be a very great diversity of opinion even among themselves on the subject; and gentlemen in favour of the bill had delivered themselves so doubtingly, that, from their argument alone, Mr. W. said, he should be almost inclined to question the propriety of acting at all on

this subject: but certainly the conclusion would be, if any thing was done, that there was no necessity for trying, in the first instance, the full extent of all our powers on this subject. If, in 1805-6, by the unanimous voice of the same class of the community, the same measures had been demanded for protecting their interests; if, subsequently, the adoption of measures similar to the one now proposed, became, in the highest degree, exceptionable to those who had called for them, there was some reason to believe, if we pursue the same course, (particularly when the opinions of the merchants are not so decidedly expressed as they were then) we shall come to the same result.

With regard to one particular branch of commerce, referred to by the gentleman who last spoke, it was certainly desirable that some regulation by duties should take place-he meant the plaister trade; because, as to that trade, the government could be compelled to admit us to a participation in it, or the trade itself would be totally destroyed, the principal and almost only market being the United States. The article must either not be brought at all, or indifferently in British and American vessels.

The committee had been told, in the course of this debate, very confidently, from a high authority, that the necessary effect of a total prohibition would be, to compel the British government to admit us into a participation of the trade with her colonies. We all know, said Mr. W. that the colonial system is a part of the policy which European governments adhere to with the greatest pertinacity, and never relinquish. He had seen predictions somewhat similar to this on former occasions, not altogether verified by the fact.

We ought to recollect also what had been frequently heard on this floor, and what, to a certain extent, was certainly a legitimate argument, that the tendency of all systems of total prohibition was, to promote, in that section of the country where it operates most, a spirit entirely hostile to every species of fair commerce, destructive to the morals of the people, tending to the diminution of the revenue of the government, and to the defeat of any system the government might pursue for the purpose of operating on the commerce of rival powers. A total prohibition, he said, would be evaded, particularly on the eastern frontier and on the lakes, in defiance of all the force, civil and military, of the government. A large portion of the products of the United States would thenceforth go to the ports in Canada, and thence as British property to the colonies.

The bill, he said, embraced an important question: it was the commencement of a system which might lead us to results, of which many gentlemen were not perfectly aware. There was a beautiful allegory in the history of one of the most celebrated of the ancient republics-he meant the contest of Neptune and