After the passage of the Embargo Act, other acts were speedily passed to give it efficacy.  By these, forfeitures of threefold the value of merchandise were imposed on those who violated its provisions, vessels were obliged to give heavy bonds to land their cargoes in the United States, and all shipments to frontier posts were prohibited.  Under these acts the shipment of flour coastwise was forbidden, except upon permits issued at the pleasure of the President, upon the requisition of Governors of States, most of whom were members of the dominant party.  And last of all came the Enforcing Act, under the provisions of which the collectors were armed with power to call out the militia at their discretion and upon suspicion of an intent to violate the law, to require vessels that had given bonds to discharge their cargoes, and to detain every suspected vessel engaged in the coasting-trade.  These measures did not pass without opposition.  Although the minority was weak in numbers, it was not deficient in talent.

In the House, Josiah Quincy of Massachusetts, at that period the great commercial State, was the Federal leader; and he now, after the lapse of half a century, still survives in a green old age to see his policy vindicated by the verdict of history.

Quincy, in various speeches, urged upon Congress,—­

“You undertake to protect better the property of the merchant than his own sense of personal interest would induce him to protect it.

“Suppose the embargo passes; will France forego a policy designed to crush Great Britain and secure her way to universal empire, or England a policy essential to her national existence?  It is all very well to talk of the patriotism and quiet submission of the people of the interior; they cannot help submitting, they will have no opportunity to break the embargo.  But they whose ships lie on the edge of the ocean laden with produce, with the alternative before them of total ruin or a rich market, are in a totally different condition.”

Again said Quincy,—­

“Never before did society witness a total prohibition of all intercourse like this in a commercial nation.  But it has been asked in debate, ’Will not Massachusetts, the Cradle of Liberty, submit to such privations?’ An Embargo Liberty was never cradled in Massachusetts.  Our Liberty was not so much a mountain-nymph as a sea-nymph.  She was free as air.  She could swim, or she could run.  The ocean was her cradle.  Our fathers met her as she came, like the Goddess of Beauty, from the waves.  They caught her as she was sporting on the beach.  They courted her while she was spreading her nets upon the rocks.  But an Embargo Liberty, a handcuffed Liberty, Liberty in fetters, a Liberty traversing between the four sides of a prison and beating her head against the walls, is none of our offspring.  We abjure the monster!  Its parentage is all inland.