I shall have occasion hereafter to refer more particularly to sundry recent British enactments, by way of showing the diligence and spirit with which that government strives to sustain its navigating interest, by opening the widest possible range to the enterprise of individual adventurers.  I repeat, that I have not alluded to these examples of a foreign state as being fit to control our own policy.  In the general principle, I acquiesce.  Protection, when carried to the point which is now recommended, that is, to entire prohibition, seems to me destructive of all commercial intercourse between nations.  We are urged to adopt the system upon general principles; and what would be the consequence of the universal application of such a general principle, but that nations would abstain entirely from all intercourse with one another?  I do not admit the general principle; on the contrary, I think freedom of trade to be the general principle, and restriction the exception.  And it is for every state, taking into view its own condition, to judge of the propriety, in any case, of making an exception, constantly preferring, as I think all wise governments will, not to depart without urgent reason from the general rule.

There is another point in the existing policy of England to which I would most earnestly invite the attention of the committee; I mean the warehouse system, or what we usually call the system of drawback.  Very great prejudices appear to me to exist with us on that subject.  We seem averse to the extension of the principle.  The English government, on the contrary, appear to have carried it to the extreme of liberality.  They have arrived, however, at their present opinions and present practice by slow degrees.  The transit system was commenced about the year 1803, but the first law was partial and limited.  It admitted the importation of raw materials for exportation, but it excluded almost every sort of manufactured goods.  This was done for the same reason that we propose to prevent the transit of Canadian wheat through the United States, the fear of aiding the competition of the foreign article with our own in foreign markets.  Better reflection or more experience has induced them to abandon that mode of reasoning, and to consider all such means of influencing foreign markets as nugatory; since, in the present active and enlightened state of the world, nations will supply themselves from the best sources, and the true policy of all producers, whether of raw materials or of manufactured articles, is, not vainly to endeavor to keep other vendors out of the market, but to conquer them in it by the quality and the cheapness of their articles.  The present policy of England, therefore, is to allure the importation of commodities into England, there to be deposited in English warehouses, thence to be exported in assorted cargoes, and thus enabling her to carry on a general export trade to all quarters of the globe.  Articles of all kinds, with the single exception of tea, may be brought into England, from any part of the world, in foreign as well as British ships, there warehoused, and again exported, at the pleasure of the owner, without the payment of any duty or government charge whatever.