Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 4.djvu/383

1808. Assuming that the Report was made in the interest of embargo, and that it foreshadowed the permanence of the anti-commercial system, he met it by threats of insurrection and civil war, expressed in the same breath with which they were disavowed:—


 * "Good Heavens! Mr. Chairman, are men mad? Is this House touched with that insanity which is the never-failing precursor of the intention of Heaven to destroy? The people of New England, after eleven months' deprivation of the ocean, to be commanded still longer to abandon it! for an undefined period to hold their unalienable rights at the tenure of the will of Britain or of Bonaparte! . . . I am lost in astonishment, Mr. Chairman.  I have not words to express the matchless absurdity of this attempt.  I have no tongue to express the swift and headlong destruction which a blind perseverance in such a system must bring upon this nation. . . . This embargo must be repealed.  You cannot enforce it for any important period of time longer.  When I speak of your inability to enforce this law, let not gentlemen misunderstand me.  I mean not to intimate insurrection or open defiance of them; although it is impossible to foresee in what acts that oppression will finally terminate which, we are told, makes wise men mad."  Nature gave the ocean to New England, "and among a people thus situated, thus educated, thus numerous, laws prohibiting them from the exercise of their natural rights will have a binding effect not one moment longer than the public sentiment supports them."

Always assuming that the talk of war covered the plan of retaining the embargo, Quincy allowed