286 SPEECH OF 



So of navy yards, light-houses, forts, arsenals, dock yards, and har- 

 bours. They were all national ; they belonged to his constituents 

 as much as to any one else ; and he voted for their construction 

 and improvement with the same cheerfulness and liberality that he 

 voted for an appropriation to remove obstructions from the great 

 rivers in the Mississippi valley, to improve the harbours upon the 

 great inland seas of the north-west, or to fortify and defend the 

 western and south-western frontiers. When he voted for such 

 appropriations for the Atlantic coast, he did not feel that he was 

 making a donation to the states and cities on this side of the moun- 

 tains ; nor did he believe that any liberal-minded statesman along 

 the seaboard thought, when he voted for expenditures beyond the 

 mountains, that he was giving away money to the West. Such 

 views were narrow and illiberal. The only true rule was, to give 

 whatever the public interest required, at any and at every point, 

 interior and exterior. There could then be no just cause of com- 

 plaint; and the industry and enterprise of the people, aided by 

 such appropriations, would produce general happiness and pros- 

 perity throughout all our borders. 



" Recurring then to the question propounded, what interest was 

 it that required this expenditure ? According to the best informa- 

 tion he had been able to collect, the capital invested in the whale 

 and seal fisheries alone, in those seas, amounted to some fifteen 

 or twenty millions of dollars. The number of vessels was not less 

 than four hundred ; constituting one-tenth of the whole tonnage of 

 the United States. The number of seamen employed in this 

 service was at least ten thousand. The annual value of the trade 

 was probably six or eight millions, which was so much wealth 

 extracted from the ocean by the enterprise of our people, and 

 added to the common stock of the whole nation. This capital, and 

 these men, deserve protection. The exposure is uncommonly 

 great in these seas. They abound with shoals, rocks, and islands, 

 not known to navigators, because they are not recorded upon any 



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