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of the attack upon the Chesapeake, and he was can blood, are not now sufficient motives (although ready and willing when we appeared here, to justifiable causes) for our declaring war against have sacrificed his blood in defence of the nation. that nation : Because it is plainly inferrible that Has anything turned up since to lessen his ardor? the French Emperor has ordered us to go to war Has a single document been read to you to show with this nation. I hold your vessels and cara disposition in that Government to do you jus- goes in sequestration, (another word for condemtice? Is it worth while to bring.to his mind the nation,) to be released, (that is, redeemed.) on attempt at, or pretence of, negotiation, in the City the condition of your being at war with Great of Washington? Is there a man in the nation who Britain. Sir, such a redemption as this would has one drop of American blood in him who will be worse than an expiation on the rack. It would say that our Government should have withdrawn be mean and degrading. On the other hand, not the proclamation? That we, the injured party, to go back to the long-unsettled account of injushould, in the first instance, ask pardon of the ries done to our nation by Great Britain, her Minaggressor for the insult he has offered us as pre- ister, Mr. Erskine, has in a very polite and friendliminary to negotiation for atonement? Assured-ly manner, told us that his Government has laid ly not; and in this point alone can I view it. the scourge on us; that we may scourge our next Wherefore, then, this change in the gentleman's neighbor, or, more properly, as a punishment for sentiments? In mine there is none. our not having done so before she asked it. Can it be thought strange that, in this dilemma, we choose to disobey both these mandates, and trust to operations defensive against both; to await the effect of our embargo, which my colleague has said is operating so powerfully upon both nations? But I am not for waiting, with folded-up arms, for this effect; and, although I cannot answer the opposers of this bill, whether the tropps are to be raised as an addition to our Peace Establishment, (if the present state of things might authorize us to call any establishment by that name,) or whether it is a War Establishment; yet, convinced of the necessity of such a measure, I shall vote for the bill. It will be for the oppressors of our nation to give the answer the gentlemen ask for.

Mr. TAYLOR said, it was strange that the reasons which actuated gentlemen on both sides of this question, appeared to be the same, and yet the result so different. He could not but believe that the good of our country was the main, the sole object of all. In the means to be adopted for this great object we differ; this difference, therefore, does not, cannot imply, that either the one or the other of us are less actuated by laudable motives. I confess that I accorded with the feelings of my colleague (Mr. D. R. WILLIAMS) when first I came here; what created the change on his mind had its operation on mine also. I now say, that, although in my opinion it would then have been magnanimous in our Government, and although there was ample cause to justify us to the nation, (for we could look no way, we could point In the vote I shall give I shall be governed by to no subject of complaint against Great Britain the circumstances of the case, as well as they who in which there was not sufficient grounds for war,) have said that they will vote differently. What I say that, although under all the circumstances are the circumstances? It has been conceded that which imposed themselves on our consideration, the nation who can most easily annoy us, has the it would have been magnanimous and dignified inclination to do it, if she dare so to do. Great in us to have declared war against this Power; Britain knows, the world knows, that this nation yet, now I am free to declare, that such a course is the only one on earth which rivals her in comwould not be proper. This change of opinion merce. That our commerce has been growing has been produced on my mind by the letter of with astonishing rapidity. That this commerce for the Minister of Exterior Relations in France, the most part is stable, dependent upon no changes Champagny, to our Minister at Paris. That act in Europe or Asia; unlike that which the Venewhich would have been spontaneous in us then, tians lost by the discovery of the passage to the would now be construed, and would, in fact, be East by the Cape of Good Hope, unlike that for justly considered as a succumbing and passive which there has of late been so jealous a contest obedience to that Power, by which our opponents at the head of the Mediterranean and the head of have so often and so erroneously charged us with the Red Sea, the objects of which are hunted being led and impelled. It is not necessary for after in the four quarters of the earth. Ours is our vindication that I should say that the threats not factitious, and dependent upon others; it deof no nation on earth can, or ought to, drive the pends upon ourselves and grows out of the soil. Americans into any measure, which, in their hon- The variety of the climate, the richness of the est judgment, they condemn. Thus the orders of soil in the ample bosom of our continent pours the King and Council of Great Britain for grasp-forth productions the most valuable, the most neing at the monopoly of the trade of the whole cessary for the consumption of every nation on world; thus the deliberate legislation of the Brit- the globe. These productions increase with our ish Parliament for the taxation of neutral, inde-population, our population doubles for every twenpendent nations-of our own nation, which, when ty-three or twenty-four years, and our commerce in embryo, they had failed in their attempts to grows still more rapidly by the enterprise and intax; thus these orders, which never can be sub-dustry of our citizens. These considerations keep mitted to by us while we claim to be an inde- alive the rancor of former times, these stir up pendent nation, and which I would pledge myself the fell envy of the present day. From hence to resist at the expense of the last drop of Ameri- I have proceeded the spoliations of the last twelve

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years! Hence the impressment and enslaving of and her dependencies. The high price of our our seamen-hence the cry of maritime rights produce and the other articles in this country herewhich has been kept up in that nation, and the tofore afforded her by our neutral commerce; the declarations of their politicians that they would go actual scarcity, almost approaching to famine, down with the last plank sooner than yield these which now exists in her newly conquered counpretended rights-that their national existence try, Portugal, cannot have a very soothing effect depended upon the power of manning their fleets, on the mind of the man who rules her destiny; and yet while they were actually robbing our mer- nor can his good nature have been increased by chantman of our citizens, they were discharging the manly and republican-like remonstrance, which the supernumeraries of their own seamen from our Minister has made to that Government on the their fleet. From hence proceeded the restrictions subject of some of her condemnations of our propon the colonial carrying trade, and the objections erty. Our growing importance in the scale of they have made against it, as being likely to nations, the manner of our increase, cannot be a enrich their enemies by keeping up a market for pleasant subject of contemplation to her; we grow their locked-up productions; and yet, both in this in strength and wealth by peopling the uninhaband in all former wars for fifty years past, this na-ited desert, she by desolating the inhabited countion has connived at the illicit trade carried on by tries she conquers. its merchants with the Spanish Main, thereby affording to the enemy the very accommodation which they are so fearful we should also afford them.

There is another subject to which the sensations of that whole nation are alive-Louisiana has infatuated every people who have ever had the possession of it. France bas possessed it more than From this source too have the late blockading once. The American Government, in a lucky decrees or orders of council proceeded. Was it to hour for us, found her in want of the means of distress her enemies, that our direct intercourse to carrying on her wars. For our fifteen millions, them was prohibited? Was it to prevent supplies for a mere mess of pottage, she had parted with to them? No, sir, they have not even attempted her birth-right, she has given up the outlet, the to cover this with the thinnest veil of artifice. It key to the most fertile country in the world. It is not to prevent the trade to France, but to rob has been reserved for our happy country to realize us of a moiety of the value in most of the colonial the conceptions heretofore formed on this subject articles, and most certainly a moiety of the value by the most enthusiastic, the most vivid imagiof the greatest article of export from our own nation. These realities were created and are now country; I mean the duty of 9d. per lb. on cotton creating by the settlements made in our Upper permitted to be reshipped from England to France. Egypt, on the Monongahela, the Ohio, the KenTo say nothing of the licenses which the misera- tucky and Cumberland rivers. Not many years ble American is compelled to pay for, for the have rolled over our heads, it is but a tale of our privilege of pursuing his voyage after the loss sus-own times; it excited wonder in the listening tained by the plunder levied on him by way of duty and the loss in a circuitous voyage made under compulsion, and the detentions, delays, and expenses incurred against his will in a British port.

hearer, that Colonel Boon had penetrated the wilderness of the West-that he had found a land of fatness. I believe he still lives to see the wonders that have been wrought in that land. That country which was then inhabited by the beasts of the forest and men more wild, now contains nearly a million and a half of civilized population. Yes, sir, the country west of the Alleghany ridge, and watered by the streams of the Mississippi, now contains half as many people as our whole Union contained at the commencement of our Revolu

It was not granting much for the opponents of the bill to say this nation had the inclination to injure us; and now that we have for a time withdrawn our commerce from the ocean, and thereby withdrawn the supplies to her and to her West India colonies, which she absolutely stands in need of, is it probable, that under the increased irritation. What a fulcrum has Bonaparte given up, tion, under the inconveniences and deprivations brought upon her by this measure of self-defence and self-preservation, that her malice will sleep? She has recently had a fleet on our coast; she has lately reinforced her army in Canada and Nova Scotia. The intrigues of her agents with the Indians on our frontier, alluded to by the gentleman from Kentucky, have a squinting at some thing more than mere defensive operations.

Does the view brighten when we look at another point in our political horizon? France is not commercial, but she is nevertheless resentful. The existence of this Government in its present form is the severest satire against the present order of things. She has not of late years been accustomed to be disobeyed in the mandates she has issued to other nations. We have in our embargo shown a spirit of resistance, which has been felt by her

in the little island of New Orleans! there to rest his prise, to move, to agitate, to distract, and (as some wretches have supposed) to divide our nation. If he has the insatiable thirst for conquest which the very opposers of this bill have often told us he has, think you that this delightful spot has lost all its charms to him? The protraction of the settlement of our differences with Spain, attributed to his influence on that Power, but too plainly shows that it has not. His blockading decrees, his utter disregard to the treaties now subsisting between the French nation and ourselves, the condemnation and sequestration of our property under these decrees, show too plainly that friendship, that fair dealing and justice, is not to be expected from that quarter. These words are now exploded from the laws of nations, from the vocabulary of national intercourse.

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Thus have I taken a cursory view of the con- man them in the way proposed by this bill. The duct, of the motives and springs of action of these important point of New Orleans can be defended two nations, not for the purpose of heaping un- in no way but by a regular force. It is here only merited censure upon them, (I wish to God they that I apprehend an attack from France-the would suffer us to praise them,) but of fairly sta- Spanish provinces on the East, touching, intersecting how the case stands with us, what the cir- ting our possessions on the great river, are not so cumstances are on which we are now to judge of far, but that a hostile force has already been drawn the propriety of the present proposed measure. from them and appeared in hostile array against But, under all these circumstances, and with all us; those to the South may also be called our these motives, say the opposers of the bill, neither neighbors. The man who saith to one nation, go the one nor the other of these nations dare attack and he goeth, to another come, and he cometh, us; neither of them can spare the force, can afford could at a word stir up an attack from this quarthe means of doing it; that they have enough to ter, not to be resisted by the present military force do to contend against one another. With respect of both regulars and militia we have in that territo Great Britain, such might have been the rea- tory; nor has the island of New Orleans less charms soning of the Danes, when the confederation to the monopolising nation on the opposite side of against France on the Continent was in its last the channel than it has to France. It is here the gasp, and when the land in the ocean might with onset will be made, if made at all, for conquest. certainty calculate to be left to contend with her Shall we leave it defenceless and unprotected, beantagonist and all her dependencies, embracing cause gentlemen tell us, and tell us truly, of the almost all Europe, alone, single-handed; such a invincible militia of Kentucky, removed a thoutime, it might reasonably be supposed, was not a sand miles from the scene of action? Shall we time for making a new enemy, and yet that was wait to have this territory wrested from us, that the very crisis when Copenhagen was sacked and we may have the glory of reconquering it? But it plundered. New York holds out allurements for is well known that the climate is such that the plunder as strong as those of that ill-fated city; Kentuckians would not require a foe to thin their other of our seaport towns would afford a prize camp, the fevers of that country would but too to a marauding foe. Her fleets are always ready soon do it. The grand depots for the produce and for the purpose of attack; her 10,000 men in Nova for the commerce of South Carolina and Georgia, Scotia can be transported in a week or ten days Charleston and Savannah, are similarly situated to any part of our coast, and yet there is no dan- with New Orleans; the thick white population of ger! I have intentionally omitted to say anything these two States lie more than one hundred miles of the attack on the Chesapeake, it was an unau- back; in the autumnal season it would be more thorized attack, the Government has disavowed dangerous than a forlorn hope to our backwoodsit-allowing this to be the case, yet the same li- men to be ordered down for the defence of these centious and diobolical spirit which induced un- places. Both these places military men say are authorized individuals to attack our frigate, might defensible with a moderate force. I want that induce them to attack our cities, and if they had force to be there stationed, seasoned to the climate, to fear the same punishment which is likely to be and kept in readiness while these perilous times inflicted on them for their flagitious act, they last. But it is urged against the bill that these might safely make a coasting voyage for the pur-6,000 are not enough, that when divided among pose of plunder from port to port from one end of the continent to the other. Of the invasion of any of the Atlantic States with a view to conquest, I have no apprehension. In this I concur with the opponents of the bill-it is against authorized or unauthorized freebooters, that I wish the troops to be raised. We have in this session of Congress appropriated one million of dollars for the erection of fortifications; the expenditures of former years amount to very large sums; these fortifications in almost every instance are erected and erecting on detached commanding points at the entrence of the harbors they are designed to protect; cannon and military stores are there deposited. Do the opposers to this bill propose to man these forts with the militia? No-it is acknowledged on all hands that the militia are unsuited for garrison duty; or are they to be left unprotected, as strong-holds erected and well filled with warlike stores, to be taken possession of by the first comer, and to be turned against the cities and towns they were meant to protect? We who voted the appropriation for fortifications, if we consult consistently, if we consult what was then deemed the good of the nation, dare not refuse to

the different ports and harbors on our coast, they will present no effective force at any point of attack; and because we are moderate in our requests, because we ask for little, they would give us none; but this force proposed to be raised with the addition of the Peace Establishment will amount to 10,000 men. The gentlemau from Virginia, (Mr. R.) has said that the proportion to each city or town would not be equal to the effective militia of such places respectively. The gentleman commenced his observations by giving us one of the axioms of Euclid. I will not go so deep in mathematics. I will take the first rule in arithmetic. When two numbers are added together, the aggregate will be greater than the one or the other of the two numbers first given; or, not to be too learned, that two and two makes four. Thus if the regular force applied to the defence of any city be equal to the force of militia in that place, the effective power of resistance will of course be doubled. This is our system; we do not, no more than the opposers of this bill, give up the defence of our country by militia, we claim to be as much the advocates of the militia system as they are. We only wish to reinforce the exposed points of

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attack, to make these 10,000, appointed and prop- them? Is it wise that these nations should conerly divided, the advance picked guard to the 800,-sider themselves the objects of such a levy? For 000 freemen, citizen-soldiers in the great camp of myself I should deeply lament if either of these the nation, to make these positions the rallying great Powers could, for one moment, deem that points; places of rendevous for our militia, as has this was the preparation we were about to make been well observed by my worthy friend from for such a contest; that this was, at such a crisis, North Carolina. the scale and estimate of the national defence; that in contemplation of war, with one, or with both of those empires, which almost divide the globe, this was the bulwark of independence we were about to raise. I should blush for my country if with such a preparation as this, it could expect seriously an attack from either of those nations, or to assail either of them. I should tremble for its hopes, if such as these were its exertions in real anticipation of a struggle, for whatever is valuable or dear to man. Though I join in vote with the advocates of this bill, I am not coincident with them in my reason for it. As a defence against France or Great Britain, I place very little reliance on a force of six thousand men. The general state of the country, the extent of our seacoast and frontier lines, the number of our military posts and of our fortifications, are my inducements to support this bill, and not the particular national exigency, to which it has, if any, only a remote reference.

A great deal has been said of the danger of standing armies; if I could believe that there was the least danger to the liberties of 800,000 or one million of freemen by the force now to be raised, I should think very little of my country, I should think it deserved not the liberty it enjoyed. But, sir, the whole nation would laugh at such fears as these, they well know how groundless these fears are; they are as absurd as would be the man, who because by a spark lighting on his hand, it was demonstated that fire would burn, and therefore he would fly to the frigid zone and cover himself in ice and snow-or that because his great grandfather was drowned, he should be affected with an eternal hydroprobia. With respect to economy I have but one word to say and I have done I cheerfully leave the nation to judge whether it will not be cheaper to defend your cities and towns, the depots of the greatest part of our wealth, from plunder, rapine, and conquest, than to reconquer them after they have been sacked and destroyed, after wealth sufficient to maintain ten such armies as the one proposed has been wrested from us and transported across the Atlantic.

Mr. QUINCY.-It is not my intention to emulate the zeal of those gentlemen, who advocate this bill upon the principle that it is an augmentation of military force called for by the national crisis and worthy of it. But as in the vote I am about to give I shall coincide with many from whom it is usually my lot to differ, and be in opposition to some with whom it is often my pride and pleasure to unite, I shall very concisely assign the reasons which influence my mind.

I am astonished that to the raising of only six thousand men so much popular machinery should be thought requisite by the friends of this bill. The insults and injuries of Great Britain, the menacing aspect of France, our national honor, our safety, our independence, have all been made pleas and apologies for the proposed additional military force-these six thousand men! We have witnessed no ordinary expenditure of patriotic declamation, and no inconsiderable exertion of resolute zeal, to screw the courage of the majority up to the "sticking place," in a vote for six thousand men! The labor has no conformity with the object. The means are wholly disproportionate to the end. The arguments and warmth of gentlemen compared with their immediate purpose is a resemblance of nothing so much as that representation of the poet, of "Ocean into tempest wrought, to waft a feather, or to drown a fly." Do gentlemen really deem it necessary on the question of such augmentation of our force, as that now contemplated, to utter studied invectives against one or both of those belligerents who so cruelly interfere with our rights? Is this a force for their punishment, or for our protection against

But it is objected that this is an augmentation of our Military Peace Establishment; and that this is a standing army in time of peace; and that a standing army has been in all times the bane of liberty. This has opened a wide field, which has been occupied with great powers of argument and eloquence. If any gentleman call it an augmentation of our Military Peace Establishment, he is at liberty to do it. The name affects not the substance. But the designation expressed in the bill seems to me much more appropriate. It is an "addition to our military force." It has nothing permanent in its nature; the enlistment is but for five years; subject at any time to the repeal of Congress and every two years, under the limitation of army appropriations prescribed by the Constitution, must pass the ordeal of this House. The terrors so vividly expressed of a standing army seem to be not justified by the number of the augmented force, nor by the provisions of the bill. An army is an instrument. It is necessary to be used. It is liable to be abused. What is the dictate of wisdom in relation to it? Not to forego the advantage of the use of the instrument out of fear of danger from its abuse; but so to limit its nature at the time of its formation, as far as human foresight extends, as never to exceed its legitimate purpose. This security exists in the utter incompetency of the number to effect any project hostile to the liberties of such a nation as this, and also in the general provisions of the law and the Constitution, which puts it in the power of Congress to disband the force when it pleases, and every two years into the power of this House, by refusing appropriations, to compel its dissolution.

But it is said this is a precedent; it is but the beginning; an entering wedge; its augmentation will be progressive; we shall never be able to