The Enquirer

We earnestly recommend to our Fellow Citizens of Virginia, the Address of the Baltimore Committee to the people of Maryland.—The subject is so important, that we shall touch it hereafter.

Let the people of Virginia combine with their honorable submission to the immediate evils of an Embargo, a sagacious disposition to convert it to the best purposes of which it is susceptible.—The world is in a strange state. When the whole continent of Europe is involved in tumult and the violation of principles, how can we expect to escape all their evils? We are one link of the great chain which enriches the commercial, civilized world: distant, though we be; it would be presumption for us to expect an entire impunity from the great shock which agitates Europe.

Let us acquiesce in our destiny, but let us profit by its imperious lessons. If we are truly wise, if we anxiously cultivate all the advantages of our situation, the embargo will be more than shorn of half its evils. It saves our capital from the seizure of free-booters; and it improves, in proportion to our wisdom and energy—the internal situation of our country.

One fact alone we submit at present to the consideration of our fellow-citizens. The Irish depend upon us every spring for flax-seed, for the production of the great material of their greatest manufacture: The Embargo has blocked up in the vessels and warehouses of Philadelphia and New-York—we know not how many thousands of pounds of flax-seed. Will any man calculate the shock which this measure gives to Ireland, or the probable price of Irish linens in time to come?—What is our duty in this situation?