allies, from which the British flag was excluded, as subject to the same restrictions, in respect of trade and navigation, as if actually blockaded in the most strict and vigorous manner, and prohibited all trade in articles the produce or manufacture of such countries or colonies. Finally, this series of violent manifestoes was made complete, by the famous Milan Decree, issued by Bonaparte, December 17, 1807, by which every vessel, of whatever nation, that should have submitted to be searched by British cruisers, was declared to have lost the neutral character; every neutral vessel sailing between British ports, with any species of cargo, was declared to be good prize; and these rigorous measures were to be continued toward every neutral nation, until it had caused England to respect the rights of its flag.

These stupendous assumptions of a power which the public law gave to neither of the belligerents, operated more injuriously upon the commerce of the United States than upon that of any other country in the world. In fact, we were then almost the only carrying nation that was not directly or indirectly a party to the war; and we had, in consequence, ever since it began, possessed a large part of the carrying trade of the globe. We were thus reduced to the dilemma of being driven from the seas, or of compelling one or both of the belligerents to recede from their unwarrantable positions. Which of them was originally or was most in the wrong; against which it was our policy to fight, or to which it was expedient to lean; and what were the measures, short of actual war, that ought to be adopted by us, were the questions on which our political parties differed from the moment when our commerce began to feel the effects of a contest that involved every part of the European world and nearly every colonial dependency of a European power. Many of the commercial classes in this country naturally felt that the aggressions of France and the ambition of Bonaparte had originally created this enormous disturbance in the relations of nations; and they as naturally believed that affairs were not to be improved by our siding with France against England. In the Eastern States, the commercial towns were generally the political strongholds of the Federalists and the Federalists had been, from the first, dis

trustful of a French alliance, opposed to the schemes of Bonaparte, and desirous to have our difficulties with England accommodated, upon principles that would at once save our national rights and prevent us from becoming absorbed into the vortex of European politics and wars.

But the Federalists were in a political minority in the country. The nation at large, whether from the effect of its old contest with England, or from the sympathies awakened by the early experiment of the French to possess and live under republican institutions, did not decidedly recoil from the absolute and despotic power which the empire subsequently established both over France and over a large part of Europe; and perhaps nothing was ever more skilfully done, than when the founder of that empire, in launching his final bolt against England, warned the people of this country that, if they desired to see the day when their rights as neutrals would be again respected, they must extort their admission from England, but that from him, until they had done this, they had nothing to expect.

Some occurrences between this country and England, which had happened or were happening when the full consequences of these measures began to be felt on this side of the Atlantic, largely contributed to the effect which Bonaparte expected to produce. In June, 1807, the causeless attack on the Chesapeake by the Leopard, off the capes of Virginia, had filled the whole country with indignation against the English, at a moment when our people were most excited by the pretension of a right to search our vessels for British seamen and deserters. Mr. Jefferson at once sent orders to the American ministers in England to demand reparation for the outrage on the Chesapeake; and on the 2d of July he issued his proclamation excluding British vessels-of-war from the waters of the United States. He summoned Congress, in an extraordinary session, to meet on the 26th of October. In the mean time, both Napoleon's Berlin Decree of November 21, 1806, and the English Order in Council of January 7, 1807, were in operation; but when Mr. Jefferson sent his message to Congress, at the opening of the special session, in consequence of the more direct and immediate aggressions of the English upon our com

mercial rights and the recent affair of the Chesapeake, he directed the attention of that body almost exclusively to the complaints which we had to make against Great Britain; and, taking severe notice of her late interdiction of all trade by neutrals between ports not in amity with her, he mentioned the French Decree of November 21, 1806, incidentally only, as a document that had already been laid before Congress. The consequence was, that our grievances against England, and the measures proper to be adopted in relation to them, formed the chief topic of popular excitement, at the time when intelligence of the still more stringent Order in Council of November 11, 1807, was received at Washington, and when the President, by his message of December 18, 1807, recommended the Embargo. This recommendation, which was made one day before the date of Napoleon's Milan Decree, together with the pending controversies with England, gave to the Embargo the appearance of a measure directed against the latter power; when, in truth, it was claimed by the Administration to be necessary to prevent the departure of our vessels from our own ports, in order to save our commerce from exposure to the depredations of both the belligerents. The bill, laying an indefinite embargo on all vessels in the ports of the United States, was promptly carried through Congress, and became a law on the 22d of December, 1807.

No measure of the Federal Government, since the adoption of the Constitution, had ever appeared, to most of those on whose interests it directly operated, so sudden, so unnecessary, and so oppressive, as the Embargo. It fell upon the Eastern States with a terrific weight. Six towns in New England possessed more than a third of the tonnage of the whole Union. At one blow, this great mass of shipping was rendered almost valueless. The numerous classes, who were dependent on its active employment for their livelihood, were suddenly deprived of their long-accustomed means of earning their daily bread. When we consider the conflicting opinions that had prevailed for years concerning the policy that ought to be pursued by our Government toward the respective belligerents; when we remember that, on the laying of the Embargo, one portion of the people felt called upon to justify a measure that inflicted

unparalleled suffering upon another portion; when we recall the new, and then singular question, whether a constitutional power to regulate commerce embraces a power to indefinitely inhibit it-in short, when we endeavor to estimate all the elements of agitation and excitement that then pervaded our politics, we shall have no cause for being surprised at the angry crimination of parties, as we can have, in truth, no reason for assuming that all the right, or all the wrong, was on either side. It is easy to arraign the Federalist or the Democrat of that period, if we choose to identify ourselves with his opponent. But we shall find, if we survey such periods with impartiality, that, even in times of difficulty and danger, the call of patriotism will not always make men endure patiently the destruction of all their pecuniary interests, when they firmly believe that other measures might have been adopted to avert the injury; and that, when other men have fixed opinions that the measures of Government are necessary and right, they will inevitably erect a very high and exacting standard of patriotism, by which they will require the sufferers to restrain their opposition to measures which they themselves uphold. In such a state of things, there will be excesses on both sides. It is the part of a wise posterity, in looking back to the political contests of a former generation, not to disregard the possibility of error that belongs to human nature, whatever may have been the badges that it wore, or the political classification under which it was known.

It has already been said that Mr. Webster's public character should not be considered as beginning at least before the year 1808, when he published a small pamphlet on the Embargo. This production appeared at a period when the restrictions imposed by Congress upon the commerce of the country were without limitation in point of time, and when it was suffering from a paralysis, for which no prospect of relief could be discerned in the apparent policy of the Administration. The topics discussed by Mr. Webster related to the distinction, in point of constitutional power, between an unlimited and a limited Embargo; the real and the ostensible causes of the present one, and the ruinous effects which it had produced.'

I do not discover why Mr. Webster But it may be conjectured that, as many did not put his name to this pamphlet. of the Republican or Democratic party,

For some time after the publication of this pamphlet, Mr. Webster does not seem to have taken any active part in political discussions, nor did he appear before the public in any capacity until 1812, excepting as an orator of the P. B. K. Society of Dartmouth, in the summer of 1809-a purely literary occasion. I take from Mr. Ticknor's Reminiscences the following brief notice of this performance:

"In 1809 I was at Hanover, when Mr. Webster went there to deliver his Phi Beta Kappa oration. Mrs. Webster, Mr. and Mrs. Jeremiah Mason, and several other friends, were with him. They made a very merry party. Some of them stayed at the Olcotts', and others at Dr. Smith's. They were objects of great interest in the village through the whole time they remained there. Mr. Webster's manner in speaking was very finefresh, earnest, and impressive (I was then eighteen years old); his oration was very much admired and praised; but it seemed to me, at the time, that the excitement he created and the homage he received were due rather to their affection for the man, and their great admiration of him, than to the merit of that particular performance."

The original manuscript of this discourse now lies before me, just as it was written on the journey from Portsmouth to Hanover; for, in truth, Mr. Webster had accepted the engagement in the midst of a very busy professional practice, and, when he left Portsmouth, he had scarcely put pen to paper. The oration was written at the inns on the journey, although composed, doubtless, as was his frequent custom, during the drive of each day. It bears the marks of this haste, and, apart from the manner in which it was delivered, it was certainly, on the whole, as Mr. Ticknor intimates, not a very remarkable performance. But it contained touches of the power which afterward became so characteristic, and which has preserved so many of his written discourses after all the adventitious accompaniments of the occasion and the delivery have

in New England as well as elsewhere, had already begun to waver in their political faith in the propriety of this measure, it may have been thought expedient to furnish them with arguments without indicating that they came from a Federal source. In his Autobiography, he speaks of it as "the little pamphlet lately rescued from oblivion." Whether it was then (1830) brought forward with

friendly or unfriendly motives I do not know, or in what way it had been " rescued." The only copy of it that I have seen is in the Library of the Massachusetts Historical Society, which is one of the original impression. The opinions expressed in it, concerning the unconstitutional character of an embargo, not limited in duration, Mr. Webster never changed.