to diminish its employment, and it proposes, at the same time, to augment its expense, by subjecting it to heavier taxation.  Sir, there is no interest, in regard to which a stronger case for protection can be made out, than the navigating interest.  Whether we look at its present condition, which is admitted to be depressed, the number of persons connected with it, and dependent upon it for their daily bread, or its importance to the country in a political point of view, it has claims upon our attention which cannot be surpassed.  But what do we propose to do for it?  I repeat, Sir, simply to burden and to tax it.  By a statement which I have already submitted to the committee, it appears that the shipping interest pays, annually, more than half a million of dollars in duties on articles used in the construction of ships.  We propose to add nearly, or quite, fifty per cent to this amount, at the very moment that we appeal to the languishing state of this interest as a proof of national distress.  Let it be remembered that our shipping employed in foreign commerce has, at this moment, not the shadow of government protection.  It goes abroad upon the wide sea to make its own way, and earn its own bread, in a professed competition with the whole world.  Its resources are its own frugality, its own skill, its own enterprise.  It hopes to succeed, if it shall succeed at all, not by extraordinary aid of government, but by patience, vigilance, and toil.  This right arm of the nation’s safety strengthens its own muscle by its own efforts, and by unwearied exertion in its own defence becomes strong for the defence of the country.

No one acquainted with this interest can deny that its situation, at this moment, is extremely critical.  We have left it hitherto to maintain itself or perish; to swim if it can, and to sink if it must.  But at this moment of its apparent struggle, can we as men, can we as patriots, add another stone to the weight that threatens to carry it down?  Sir, there is a limit to human power, and to human effort.  I know the commercial marine of this country can do almost every thing, and bear almost every thing.  Yet some things are impossible to be done, and some burdens may be impossible to be borne; and as it was the last ounce that broke the back of the camel, so the last tax, although it were even a small one, may be decisive as to the power of our marine to sustain the conflict in which it is now engaged with all the commercial nations on the globe.

Again, Mr. Chairman, the failures and the bankruptcies which have taken place in our large cities have been mentioned as proving the little success attending commerce, and its general decline.  But this bill has no balm for those wounds.  It is very remarkable, that when the losses and disasters of certain manufacturers, those of iron, for instance, are mentioned, it is done for the purpose of invoking aid for the distressed.  Not so with the losses and disasters of commerce; these last are narrated, and not unfrequently much exaggerated, to prove the ruinous nature of the employment, and to show that it ought to be abandoned, and the capital engaged in it turned to other objects.