attempt to sketch or to dwell on the gloom
of this picture. But I have exaggerated
nothing. Perfect fidelity to the original
would have authorized me to have thrown
on deeper and darker hues. And it is the
duty of the statesman, no less than that
of the physician, to survey, with a pene-
trating, steady, and undismayed eye, the
actual condition of the subject on which
he would operate; to probe to the bottom
the diseases of the body politic, if he
would apply efficacious remedies. We
have not, thank God, suffered in any great
degree for food. But distress, resulting
from the absence of a supply of the mere
physical wants of our nature, is not the
only, nor, perhaps, the keenest distress, to
which we may be exposed. Moral and
pecuniary suffering is, if possible, more
poignant. It plunges its victim into hope-
less despair. It poisons, it paralyzes, the
spring and source of all useful exertion.
Its unsparing action is collateral as well
as direct. It falls with inexorable force,
at the same time, upon the wretched fam-
ily of embarrassment and insolvency, and
upon its head. They are a faithful mirror,
reflecting back upon him, at once, his own
frightful image, and that, no less appall-
ing, of the dearest objects of his affection.
What is the cause of this wide-spreading
distress, of this deep depression, which
we behold stamped on the public counte-
nance? We are the same people. We have
the same country. We cannot arraign the
bounty of Providence. The showers still
fall in the same grateful abundance. The
sun still casts his genial and vivifying
influence upon the land; and the land,
fertile and diversified in its soils as ever,
yields to the industrious cultivator, in
boundless profusion, its accustomed
fruits, its richest treasures. Our vigor is
unimpaired. Our industry has not re-
laxed. If ever the accusation of wasteful
extravagance could be made against our
people, it cannot now be justly preferred.
They, on the contrary, for the few last
years at least, have been practising the
most rigid economy. The causes, then, of
our present affliction, whatever they may
be, are human causes, and human causes
not chargeable upon the people, in their
private and individual relations.

What, again I would ask, is the cause
of the unhappy condition of our country,
which I have faintly depicted? It is to be
found in the fact that, during almost the
whole existence of this Government, we
have shaped our industry, our navigation,
and our commerce, in reference to an
extraordinary war in Europe, and to for-
eign markets, which no longer exist; in the
fact that we have depended too much
upon foreign sources of supply, and ex-
cited too little the native; in the fact that,
whilst we have cultivated, with assidu-
ous care, our foreign resources, we have
suffered those at home to wither, in a state
of neglect and abandonment. The conse-
quence of the termination of the war of
Europe has been the resumption of Euro-
pean commerce, European navigation,
and the extension of European agricul-
ture and European industry, in all its
branches. Europe, therefore, has no
longer occasion to any thing like the same
extent as that which she had during her
wars, for American commerce, American
navigation, the produce of American in-
dustry. Europe in commotion, and con-
vulsed throughout all her members, is to
America no longer the same Europe as
she is now, tranquil, and watching with
the most vigilant attention all her own
peculiar interests, without regard to the
operation of her policy upon us. The effect
of this altered state of Europe upon us
has been to circumscribe the employment
of our marine, and greatly to reduce the
value of the produce of our territorial
labor. . . .

-6-