I am done.  I should have thanked my God for greater power to resist a measure so destructive to the peace and happiness of the country.  My feeble efforts can avail nothing.  But it was my duty to make them.  The meditated blow is mortal, and from the moment it is struck, we may bid a final adieu to the constitution.

COMMERCE AND NAVAL POWER (United States Senate, February 12th, 1810)

God has decided that the people of this country should be commercial people.  You read that decree in the seacoast of seventeen hundred miles which he has given you; in the numerous navigable waters which penetrate the interior of the country; in the various ports and harbors scattered alone your shores; in your fisheries; in the redundant productions of your soil; and, more than all, in the enterprising and adventurous spirit of your people.  It is no more a question whether the people of this country shall be allowed to plough the ocean, than it is whether they shall be permitted to plough the land.  It is not in the power of this government, nor would it be if it were as strong as the most despotic upon the earth, to subdue the commercial spirit, or to destroy the commercial habits of the country.  Young as we are, our tonnage and commerce surpass those of every nation upon the globe but one, and if not wasted by the deprivations to which they were exposed by their defenseless situation, and the more ruinous restrictions to which this government subjected them, it would require not many more years to have made them the greatest in the world.  Is this immense wealth always to be exposed as a prey to the rapacity of freebooters?  Why will you protect your citizens and their property upon land, and leave them defenseless upon the ocean?  As your mercantile property increases, the prize becomes more tempting to the cupidity of foreign nations.  In the course of things, the ruins and aggressions which you have experienced will multiply, nor will they be restrained while we have no appearance of a naval force.

I have always been in favor of a naval establishment—­not from the unworthy motives attributed by the gentleman from Georgia to a former administration, in order to increase patronage, but from a profound conviction that the safety of the Union and the prosperity of the nation depended greatly upon its commerce, which never could be securely enjoyed without the protection of naval power.  I offer, sir, abundant proof for the satisfaction of the liberal mind of that gentleman, that patronage was not formerly a motive in voting an increase in the navy, when I give now the same vote, when surely I and my friends have nothing to hope, and for myself, I thank God, nothing to wish from the patronage it may confer.

You must and will have a navy; but it is not to be created in a day, nor is it to be expected that, in its infancy, it will be able to cope, foot to foot with the full-grown vigor of the navy of England.  But we are even now capable of maintaining a naval force formidable enough to threaten the British commerce, and to render this nation an object of more respect and consideration.