eet, in the end, the catastrophe impending over her. No one can
doubt that this alone produced the orders of council, the depredations
which preceded, and the war which followed them. Had we carried but our
own produce, and brought back but our own wants, no nation would have
troubled us. Our commercial dashers, then, have already cost us so many
thousand lives, so many millions of dollars, more than their persons
and all their commerce were worth. When war was declared, and especially
after Massachusetts, who had produced it, took side with the enemy
waging it, I pressed on some confidential friends in Congress to avail
us of the happy opportunity of repealing the drawback; and I do rejoice
to find that you are in that sentiment. You are young, and may be in the
way of bringing it into effect. Perhaps time, even yet, and change of
tone (for there are symptoms of that in Massachusetts), may not have
obliterated altogether the sense of our late feelings and sufferings;
may not have induced oblivion of the friends we have lost, the
depredations and conflagrations we have suffered, and the debts we have
incurred, and to have to labor for through the lives of the present
generation. The earlier the repeal is proposed, the more it will be
befriended by all these recollections and considerations. This is one of
three great measures necessary to insure us permanent prosperity. This
preserves our peace. A second should enable us to meet any war, by
adopting the report of the war department, for placing the force of
the nation at effectual command: and a third should insure resources
of money by the suppression of all paper circulation during peace, and
licensing that of the nation alone during war. The metallic medium of
which we should be possessed at the commencement of a war, would be
a sufficient fund for all the loans we should need through its
continuance; and if the national bills issued, be bottomed (as is
indispensable) on pledges of specific taxes for their redemption
within certain and moderate epochs, and be of proper denominations for
circulation, no interest on them would be necessary or just, because
they would answer to every one the purposes of the metallic money
withdrawn and replaced by them. But possibly these may be the dreams of
an old man, or that the occasions of realizing them may have passed away
without return. A government regulating itself by what is wise and just
for the many, uninfluenced by the loc