Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 4.djvu/276

266 be imagined. Whatever else was doubtful, no one could doubt that under the doctrine of States-rights and the rules of strict construction the embargo was unconstitutional. Only by the widest theories of liberal construction could its constitutionality be sustained.

The arguments in its favor were arguments which had been once regarded as fatal to public liberty. The first was made by Richard M. Johnson of Kentucky: "If we have power to lay an embargo for one day, have we not the power to renew it at the end of that day?  If for sixty days, have we not the power to renew it again?  Would it not amount to the same thing?  If we pass a law to expire within a limited term, we may renew it at the end of that term; and there is no difference between a power to do this, and a power to pass laws without specified limit." This principle, if sound, might be applied to the right of habeas corpus or of free speech, to the protection of American manufactures or to the issue of paper money as a legal tender; and whenever such application should be made, the Union must submit to take its chance of the consequences sure to follow the removal of specified limits to power. Another argument was used by David R. Williams, a representative South Carolinian. "The embargo is not an annihilation but a suspension of commerce," he urged, "to regain the advantages of which it has