manufactures, and other ordinary vocations, to carry the
produce of their industry for exchange to all nations, belligerent or
neutral, as usual, to go and come freely without injury or molestation,
and in short, that the war among others shall be, for them, as if it did
not exist. One restriction on their natural rights has been submitted
to by nations at peace, that is to say, that of not furnishing to either
party implements merely of war for the annoyance of the other, nor any
thing whatever to a place blockaded by its enemy. What these implements
of war are, has been so often agreed and is so well understood as to
leave little question about them at this day. There does not exist,
perhaps, a nation in our common hemisphere, which has not made a
particular enumeration of them in some or all of their treaties, under
the name of contraband. It suffices for the present occasion, to say,
that corn, flour, and meal are not of the class of contraband, and
consequently remain articles of free commerce. A culture which, like
that of the soil, gives employment to such a proportion of mankind,
could never be suspended by the whole earth, or interrupted for them,
whenever any two nations should think proper to go to war.

The state of war then existing between Great Britain and France,
furnishes no legitimate right either to interrupt the agriculture of
the United States, or the peaceable exchange of its produce with all
nations; and consequently, the assumption of it will be as lawful
hereafter as now, in peace as in war. No ground, acknowledged by the
common reason of mankind, authorizes this act now, and unacknowledged
ground may be taken at any time, and at all times. We see then a
practice begun, to which no time, no circumstances prescribe any
limits, and which strikes at the root of our agriculture, that branch
of industry which gives food, clothing, and comfort to the great mass of
the inhabitants of these States. If any nation whatever has a right to
shut up to our produce all the ports of the earth except her own and
those of her friends, she may shut up these also, and so confine us
within our own limits. No nation can subscribe to such pretensions; no
nation can agree, at the mere will or interest of another, to have its
peaceable industry suspended, and its citizens reduced to idleness and
Want. The loss of our produce destined for foreign markets, or that loss
which would result from an arbitrary restraint of our