The National Intelligencer And Washington Advertiser

FOR THE NATIONAL INTELLIGENCER

UNIVERSAL BLOCKADES.

The government of Great Britain does not appear sufficiently to consider the nature and consequences of the measure of universal blockade, which they are said to have adopted. The measure is in fact improperly styled a blockade. It is a forcible suspension of all the trade of the continent of Europe. Switzerland enveloped in Europe, and the United States of America, in a different and remote quarter of the globe, are incidentally subjected to insupportable and illegitimate interruptions of the sales of their agricultural productions and manufactures, and to the most injurious obstruction of their supplies. We can have no vent for the tropical productions which we import. Switzerland, incapable of participating in the operations of France and Prussia in shutting the European sea port, and America having no participation in them, are treated as France and Prussia. The chapter of justice is torn out of the maritime code. The law of nations is mutilated in one part and interpolated in another. America, prevented from supplying the old continent through England, or by direct voyages, can raise no monies from domestic or foreign goods to pay for European merchandise. She cannot therefore import such merchandise. She cannot raise duties or revenue thereon. This is a condition, which the United States are unable to endure. It is quite unnecessary to consider, whether we shall be willing or will consent to endure such a state of things, for it is not in our power to bear it. We must use our accustomed medium (domestic and foreign goods) to purchase or to procure supplies. If we cannot sell our domestic and foreign goods abroad, we must work them up and consume them at home. Beer, cider, and fruit and grain spirits, made at home, must soon exclude foreign beer and rum. Europe takes no sheep's wool from us, wherefore we must extend our prohibitions of woollen goods at the next session of Congress, that Europe and America may be forced to manufacture the raw materials we produce for sale and exportation. Two millions of females and many children in the United States, who do little now but needle work or play, must be taught to card, spin by machines, knit, weave, dye, print cloths, engrave, gild, paint, and perform other operations in manufactures. If the manufacturing nations unwisely and unkindly destroy the export trade of our produce, we must manufacture it. The current of British supply will be turned aside, because we cannot lose the value of our crops, and buy in them any longer to the amount of so millions of dollars per annum. It is the plain interest of G. Britain to facilitate the sales of crops and foreign goods, the proceeds of which enable us to buy their manufactures. If instead of facilitating, she destroys, the nett proceeds of sales by illegitimate blockades, it will force us like the new Robinson Crusoe, to work up our crops for ourselves. As there is not a section in the law of nations to justify this destruction of neutral trade, in goods not contraband, so it is manifest that she converts the trident into the sceptre of naval despotism. Wise, and learned, and upright judges, cannot condemn the property of the innocent infractors of illegitimate blockades. Conscience, in an enlightened and independent judiciary department, is not to be moulded by "orders" of the executive government. "Retaliation" against Prussia cannot there warrant lawless injustice to the U. S. of America. There is no authority in the British navy to make commercial laws for neutral states. But it has no right to make "orders of king and council to bind our commerce in all cases whatsoever. But lately we heard the plea of necessity to justify the impressment of our seamen and now it is used to justify the prostration of our agriculture and the destruction of our trade in innocent goods- goods not contraband of war. It is easy to perceive the same disposition in the British convention of March 179 something with the late government of Russia.

Grenville. The papers contained in Mr. Jefferson's celebrated communications of 1793 and 4, with the British & French governments. There was then no necessity. The same disposition appears in the proclamation of admiral Sir Horatio Nelson, of April 11, 1797, before Cadiz. in which he declared that it was "found right that Spain should no longer have any trade!" Here is not even a plea or appearance of necessity, yet admiral Nelson allowed himself so to use his power and commission, as to set up a blockade at the expense of the indefeasible rights of our neutral agriculture and commerce. The order of the British government of November 6th, 1793, was equally unwarrantable and equally unfounded in necessity. It authorised the carrying in of all American vessels having on board the produce of the French colonies. We were in our colonial days and have been since in the course and practice of the legitimate importations of hundreds of cargoes of molasses from the French colonies. The naval despotism of G. Britain in November 1793, made these a cause of seizure—Surely without necessity.—England has allowed a mere corporation of merchants, to usurp the dominions of all the native princes of India, so as to exclude us and all other maritime nations from the whole Peninsula, as if it were a proper estate of their English trading company; and now, to crown the whole, they have determined that we shall not buy or sell with the myriads who inhabit Europe!—that mighty Europe shall no longer have any trade!—that we must carry on trade with their European dominions alone—that all this is requisite to the manifestation of "the resentment" of the British government at the recent conduct of Prussia! The king of G. Britain was coerced into a neutrality in his Hanoverian character by the power of France. Prussia acted the same neutral part. Now Prussia goes a step further, under equal circumstances of coercion, All the relations and connexions of the British royal family on the European continent (as well by blood as by marriage) act the same part, Yet neutral friendly America, is no longer to be allowed, by the British navy, to sell her crops to these very relations and their subjects. This is undeniably a measure of the most excessive nature. Mr. Fox far, very far exceeds Lord Grenville, and Mr. Pitt. To the neutral world, he out Herods Herod. We recently supposed, that tho' a faithful Britain, he was still enough of the citizen of the world to love justice and right in his intercourse with the amicable, the right, and the just. Can it be supposed, that the American people will submit to laws of trade, unprecedented and arbitrary, framed by the executive government of that country, whose legislative supremacy, with pleas of "necessity" & virtual representative character, they successfully denied in arms? Will six organized millions in 1806, submit to worse than what two little unorganized millions refused to bear twenty years ago? Is America to bear alledged British necessities, and her own real necessities also? Are reason and justice and fixed principle to be expunged from the maritime code, and the will of a single prince to be the law of neutrals on the ocean? Is this the stile and manner in which Britain protects the liberties of the world? Is it for such purposes, that she maintains it to be necessary, that she should possess the superiority at sea—the sovereignly of the ocean? The real "necessities" of Britain are at this time completely misunderstood, as we believe, and we have an equal right to think, when the measures alledged to be "necessary", afect us. The discussion of this point may be a subject of future consideration. In the mean time it may be well temperately and firmly, to observe, that to interfere with the legitimate and advantageous sales of the crops und merchandise of the greatest neutral and friendly consumer of British manufactures, at a moment too when the rest of the civilized world throws them on the hands of the British manufacturers, appears to us to be as unwise, as it is unlawful, unexampled, and unsupportable. Their real necessities demand that they diligently increase our ability and our means and our disposition to purchase their redundant and rejected manufactures by enabling us to sell our crops and foreign merchandise at increased prices. instead of this, they propose an illegitimate and offensive obstruction of our markets, to the proportionate destruction of our means of purchase, forcing us by a necessity, real and imperious, to manufacture those foreign and domestic raw materials, which must otherwise perish in our hands.