eacherous seduction.

I am not surprised at the war spirit which is manifesting itself in
gentlemen from the South. In the year 1805-6, in a struggle for the
carrying trade of belligerent colonial produce, this country was most
unwisely brought into collision with the great powers of Europe. By a
series of most impolitic and ruinous measures, utterly incomprehensible
to every rational, sober-minded man, the Southern planters, by their own
votes, have succeeded in knocking down the price of cotton to seven
cents, and of tobacco (a few choice crops excepted) to nothing; and in
raising the price of blankets (of which a few would not be amiss in a
Canadian campaign), coarse woollens, and every article of first
necessity, three or four hundred per centum. And now, that by our own
acts, we have brought ourselves into this unprecedented condition, we
must get out of it in any way, but by an acknowledgment of our own want
of wisdom and forecast. But is war the true remedy? Who will profit by
it? Speculators; a few lucky merchants, who draw prizes in the lottery;
commissaries and contractors. Who must suffer by it? The people. It is
their blood, their taxes that must flow to support it.

I am gratified to find gentlemen acknowledging the demoralizing and
destructive consequences of the non-importation law; confessing the
truth of all that its opponents foretold, when it was enacted. And will
you plunge yourselves in war, because you have passed a foolish and
ruinous law, and are ashamed to repeal it? But our good friend, the
French emperor, stands in the way of its repeal, and we cannot go too
far in making sacrifices to him, who has given such demonstration of his
love for the Americans; we must, in point of fact, become parties to his
war. Who can be so cruel as to refuse him that favor? My imagination
shrinks from the miseries of such a connection. I call upon the House to
reflect, whether they are not about to abandon all reclamation for the
unparalleled outrages, "insults, and injuries" of the French government;
to give up our claim for plundered millions; and I ask what reparation
or atonement they can expect to obtain in hours of future dalliance,
after they shall have made a tender of their person to this great
deflowerer of the virginity of republics. We have, by our own wise (I
will not say wiseacre) measures, so increased the trade and wealth of
Montreal and Quebec, that at last we begin to cast a wistful eye at
Cana