Weekly national intelligencer. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1841-1869, 1857-06-27

the pressure Of the embargo on the community
that they would be supported by the people. He
further said that secret agent of Great Britain
z was then in New England, by whose intrigues
every aid would be profered by that Government
to carry project into execution which would
at once render the restrictions on the commerce
between the United States and Great Britain nu-
Z gatory and all future opposition unavailing.
The danger thus thfeatening the Union was
deemed paramount to all other considerations, and
the President with his Cabinet, concluded that
s it would be better to modify theit Of
commerce in such way that, ~ E9
was afforded to American veese ritoi(
and France should still feel the -
course whatever, whether BY exporting or import
ing, either directly or circuitously. This mea-
sure has always since gone under the name of
the non-intercourse law. 1t passed on the 9th
: of February by eighty-one votes to forty"
1t is singular coincidence that, as almost the
last official act of President JEFFERSON was to
"approve" and sign the death warrant of the EN-
bargo to which he stood in the relation of parent
this unnatural act even preceded by his signing
and approving an act " authorizing the employment
of an additional Naval force the provisions of which
that, Z" In addition to the frigates now employ
ed in actual service, there be fitted out, ofcered,
and manned, as soon may be, the four following
frigates, to wit, the United States, Essex, John
Adams, and Presidents" and, moreover Athe Pre-
Z sident of the United States was authorized and
: empowered to equip, man, and employ in actual
service SO many of the public armed vessels now
laid up in ordinary as in his judgment the public
service may requires and to the frigates and
other armed vessels, when prepared for active SER
vice, to be stationed at such ports and places on
the sea-coast as he may deem most expedient, or
to cruise any part of the coast of the United
States; and, further, in order to man these ves-
sels the President was authorized and empowered,
in addition to the existing number of petty officers
and seamen and boys, to appoint and cause to be
engaged and employed, as soon as may be, three
= hundred n,idshipmen, three thousand sir hundred
seamen and boys" dc. dc.
Thus, in the last days of the existing Admins
tration, the coup de grace given to the two ia
vorite systems of the President first that of laying
up, dry-docking, and otherwise ignoring the Navy
Commercial Restrictions generally, as the most eff
fective armor in ahscontroverses, offensive and de-
fensive, with foreign Powers.
An Epitaph upont the policy of Commercial Restric-
tions was PRONOUNCED year or two after the period
above referred to and of course after the repeal Of
tba -, ~ Al of
sentatives, founded on bill for enforcing certain
merchants bonds exacted under one or other of the
several embargo laws. The elder readers of these
" Recoections" will not be displeased to have this
passage recalled to their memory, and the younger
of them will, we trust, thank us for making them
acquainted with it, We therefore reproduce it, as
follows:
"I never hear the word restriction named in the
halls of Congress (said Mr.. CHEvEs) without be-
ing alarmed. 1t is greatly to be lamented, for
the sake of the country, that this subject is SO
frequently agitated. Now the farmer is threaten
ed, then the merchant. The country had not yet
recovered from the alarm which was caused by the
resolution of the honorable gentleman from New
Hampshire to prohibit the expectation of the great
productions of the sofia resolution which, like
the comet that lately visited our region, afrighted
and dismayed the wondering people, but which, like
it, had passed away, hoped, not again to appear
in our time-when the resolutions of my honorable
friend from Virginia, numbers one, two, three-I
forget how many-followed in rapid succession,
and, like the tail of that great meteor, hung over
us, giving signs of dire and ominous portent.
These, to your farmers, are as pernicious as the
p,aguesd Egypt. To your cities, the proposition
your table IS more terrible than the pestilence
with which they were, not long since, smitten by
the judgment of God, inflicted in his wrath, but
by his Justice; which made the dwelling where
health, and JOY, and gladness and general pros
perity had blessed the inhabitants a charnel-
house, and sent forth the frequent corpse through
the deserted streets, accompanied by no living
creature, save the patient drudging animal which
bore it and the lone sexton who committed the
dust of the body to the repose of the tomb Yes,
sir, even this toerable calamity to your
cities than would be that plague upon your table" "
The whole country, East and West, North and
South, was jubilant at the almost unlooked-for re-
peal of the Embargo. The farmers and planters,
the merchants and shippers, and the land-looked
seamen, We'd with one another in the promptitude
with which they resumed their long-suspended right
to labor for their living CLEAN of revying pros
perity shone over the whole horizon. Before the
change of policy above referred to the periodical
election of President of the United States had taken
place, and Mr.. MADISON had been designated as
the successor Of Mr.. JEFFERSON The influence of
the approaching Inauguration of new PRESIDENT,
already generally and favorably known, pierced
through the gloom which had brooded over the
country and the expiration of this political year