And all this
to feed the avidity of a few millionary merchants, and to keep up
one thousand ships of war for the protection of their commercial
speculations. I returned from Europe after our government had got under
way, and had adopted from the British code the law of drawbacks. I early
saw its effects in the jealousies and vexations of Britain; and that,
retaining it, we must become, like her, an essentially warring nation,
and meet, in the end, the catastrophe impending over her. No one can
doubt that this alone produced the orders of council, the depredations
which preceded, and the war which followed them. Had we carried but our
own produce, and brought back but our own wants, no nation would have
troubled us. Our commercial dashers, then, have already cost us so many
thousand lives, so many millions of dollars, more than their persons
and all their commerce were worth. When war was declared, and especially
after Massachusetts, who had produced it, took side with the enemy
waging it, I pressed on some confidential friends in Congress to avail
us of the happy opportunity of repealing the drawback; and I do rejoice
to find that you are in that sentiment. You are young, and may be in the
way of bringing it into effect. Perhaps time, even yet, and change of
tone (for there are symptoms of that in Massachusetts), may not have
obliterated altogether the sense of our late feelings and sufferings;
may not have induced oblivion of the friends we have lost, the
depredations and conflagrations we have suffered, and the debts we have
incurred, and to have to labor for through the lives of the present
generation.
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