We would not detract from the services of Jefferson.  Posterity will honor him as the Patriot of the Revolution, as the champion of the rights of man; but will it not trace to his policy as a statesman, in the cabinet of Washington, in the opposition to Adams, and in the office of President, the grave errors from which sprang the embargo, non-intercourse, and the second war with England?  At the close of his administration in 1809, he claimed credit for having left eighteen millions in the Treasury after payment of twenty-six millions of the debt of the Revolution in less than seven years, and his successor, Madison, in 1812, had over eleven millions in funds and cash in the Treasury after the extinguishment of forty-nine millions of the Revolutionary debt,—­the expenses of Government, in the mean time, exclusive of the debt, having averaged from five to seven millions only.  But parsimony is not always economy.

The embargo cost the nation at least forty millions; non-intercourse twenty more; the war in three years added one hundred and thirteen millions to the debt, with at least an equal loss by the sacrifice of commerce and heavy drafts by taxes:  and if the embargo, non-intercourse, and war can be traced to the loss of the navy, we find a saving of a million per annum in ships dearly purchased by a loss of capital which, at compound interest, would exceed to-day one-third the computed wealth of the nation.

Had the policy of Adams been continued from 1800 to 1808, the annual million, aided by the live-oak and cedar frames, the three millions paid for gun-boats, and the frigates on hand when Jefferson came into power, would have provided or placed upon the stocks ten ships of the line, forty frigates, and ten sloops-of-war.  If with the increase of revenue this estimate had been doubled in 1808, the material collected and the ships held back until the latter part of 1812, the country would have been supplied with twenty sail of the line, fifty frigates, and thirty sloops-of-war,—­a force which would have employed at least threefold its number of English ships, upon our coast, upon the passage, and in the dock-yards.  Impressment, orders in council, paper blockades, would have gone down before such a force of American ships ere one-tenth of it had left our harbors; for England, distressed for men and at war with the Continent, could not have spared the ships required to meet such a navy.  The reports of Jefferson and Madison now make it apparent, that, without omitting to pay one instalment of the debt, they could have carried out the policy of Adams and provided a navy the very aspect of which would have commanded the respect and deference of the only foe we had occasion to dread.