st be chased down; and no man more readily
than the gentlemen of trade. A gentleman who came yesterday to honour
me with the invitation of Cincinnati, that rising wonder of the
West,--with eloquence which speaks volumes in one word, designated as
_piracy_ the interference of foreign violence with the domestic
concerns of a nation. There is such a moving power in a word of truth!
That word has relieved me of many long speeches. I no longer need to
discuss the principle of your foreign policy: there can be no doubt
about what is lawful, what is a duty, against piracy. Your naval forces
are, and must be, instructed to put down piracy wherever they meet it,
on whatever geographic lines, whether in European or in American waters.
You sent your Commodore Decatur for that purpose to the Mediterranean,
who told the Dey of Algiers, that "if he claims powder, he will have it
with the balls;" and no man in the United States imagined this to oppose
your received policy. Nobody then objected that it is the ruling
principle of the United States not to meddle with European or African
concerns; rather, if your government had neglected so to do, I am sure
the gentlemen of trade would have been foremost to complain. Now, in the
name of all which is pleasing to God and sacred to man, if all are ready
thus to unite in the outcry against a rover, who, at the danger of his
own life, boards some frail ship, murders some poor sailors, or takes a
few bales of cotton--is there no hope to see a similar universal outcry
against those great pirates who board, not some small cutters, but the
beloved home of nations? who murder, not some few sailors, but whole
peoples? who shed blood, not by drops, but by torrents? who rob, not
some hundred weight of merchandize, but the freedom, independence,
welfare, and the very existence of nations? Oh God and Father of human
kind! spare--oh spare that degradation to thy children; that in their
destinies some bales of cotton should more weigh than those great
moralities. Alas! what a pitiful sight! A miserable pickpocket, a
drunken highway robber, chased by the whole human race to the gallows:
and those who pickpocket the life-sweat of nations, rob them of their
welfare, of their liberty, and murder them by thousands--these
high-handed criminals proudly raise their brow, trample upon mankind,
and degrade its laws before their high reverential name, and term
themselves "most sacred majesties." But may God be blesse