Alexandria Daily Gazette, Commercial & Political

CONGRESS.

Senate of the United States.
Thursday, November 24.

EMBARGO.

DEBATE on Mr. Hillhouse's motion for a repeal.
[CONTINUED.]

MR. GILES.--Mr. President--Having during the recess of Congress retired from the political world, and having little agency in the passing political scenes, living in a part of the country too, where there is little or no difference in political opinions, and where the embargo laws are almost universally approved; I felt the real want of information upon the subject now under discussion. I thought I knew something of the general objects of the embargo laws, and I had not been inattentive to their general operations upon society, as far as I had opportunities of observing thereupon. When I arrived here, and found that this subject had excited so much sensibility in the minds of many gentlemen I met with, as to engross their whole thoughts, and almost to banish every other topic of conversation; I felt also a curiosity to know, what were the horrible effects of these laws in other parts of the country, and which had escaped my observation in the part of the country in which I reside. Of course, sir, I have given to the gentlemen, who have favored us with their observations on both sides of the question under consideration, the most careful and respectful attention, and particularly to the gentlemen representing the eastern section of the union, where most of this sensibility had been excited. I always listen to gentlemen from that part of the U. S. with pleasure, and generally receive instruction from them; but on this occasion, I am reluctantly compelled to acknowledge, that I have received from them less satisfaction and less information than usual; and still less conviction.

It was hardly to have been expected, Mr. President, that after so many angry passions had been called into action, by the recent agitations throughout the whole U. S. resulting from the elections by the people, to almost all the important offices within their gift; and particularly from the elections of electors for choosing the president and vice president of the U. S. that gentlemen would have met here perfectly exempt from the feelings which this state of things was naturally calculated to inspire; much less was it to have been expected, sir, that gentlemen who had once possessed the power of the nation, and who, from some cause or other, had lost it; (a loss which they now tell us they but too well remember; and I fear, might have added, too deeply deplore) gentlemen too, sir, who at one time during the electioneering scene, had indulged the fond and delusive hope, that through the privations necessarily imposed upon our fellow-citizens, by the unexampled aggressions of the belligerent powers, they might once more find their way to office and power, and who now find themselves disappointed in this darling expectation. It was not at all to be expected, sir, that these gentlemen should now appear here, perfectly exempt from the unpleasant feelings which so dreadful a disappointment must necessarily have produced. It was a demand upon human nature for too great a sacrifice; and however desirable such an exemption might have been at the present moment, and however honorable it would have been to those gentlemen, it was not expected.

But, sir, I had indulged a hope that the extraordinary dangers and difficulties pressed upon us by the aggressing belligerents; attended too, with so many circumstances of indignity and insult, would have awakened a sensibility in the bosom of every gentleman of this body, which would have wholly suppressed, or at least suspended, these unpleasant feelings, until some measures, consulting the general interests and welfare of the people, could have been devised, to meet, resist, and if possible, to subdue the extraordinary crisis. But, sir, even in this hope too, I have been totally disappointed. I was the more encouraged in this hope, when upon opening this debate the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Hillhouse) seemed sensible of the sacred obligation, imposed by the crisis, when he exhorted us in conducting our deliberations, utterly to discard