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CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. (AMEEIOAN SHIPPING.) 



adventure at sea were the theme of lyre and 

 the praise of eloquence. It was comfort and 

 wealth in peace, hope and safety in war. 



"It was the horn of plenty and the nursery 

 of seamen, for the maintenance of our inde- 

 pendence and rights. Why should America 

 not have her part in these glories of the sea ? 

 Was she not discovered by the genius, daring, 

 and devotion of Columbus? Were not our 

 colonies created into commonwealths by the 

 men who braved the dangers of the sea to found 

 here new empires? Our country is born of 

 the sea ! Its freedom is of the wind and wave. 



" Shall these praises be forever an echo of 

 the past? Are we to take no part in the en- 

 lightenment and progress in science and art, 

 of which commerce is the procreant cause and 

 infallible gauge ? Has the sea rolled back and 

 away from us at the command of the insolent 

 monarchs of capital ? 



" To one born inland the sea has a weird and 

 wondrous mystery. I have studied its moods 

 as a lover those of his mistress. Through the 

 generosity of my fellow-legislators here, we 

 have been able to mitigate somewhat of its ter- 

 rors. Its enchantment has led me over liquid 

 leagues on leagues to remotest realms. Not 

 alone does it enchant because of its majestic 

 expanse, its resistless force, its depth and unity, 

 its cliffs, bays, and fiords, its chemical quali- 

 ties, its monstrous forms, its riches and rocks, 

 its tributes, its graves, its requiem, its murmur 

 of repose and mirror of placid beauty, but for 

 its wrath, peril, and sublimity. These have 

 led adventurous worthies of every age, by sun, 

 star, and compass over its trackless wastes, and 

 returned them for their daring, untold wealth, 

 and the eulogy of history. 



" But it is for its refining, civilizing, elevat- 

 ing influences upon our kind that the ocean 

 lifts its mighty minstrelsy. Unhappy that na- 

 tion which has no part in the successes of the 

 sea! Happy in history those realms, like Tyre, 

 Sid on, Carthage, Greece, Italy, Spain, and Nor- 

 way, whose gathered glories are symboled in 

 the trident! Happy in the present are those 

 nations who, under the favoring gales of com- 

 merce, the fostering economies of freedom, 

 and the unwavering faith in the guidance of 

 Providence, bear the blessings of varied indus- 

 try to distant realms and bring back to their 

 own the magnificent fruits of ceaseless inter- 

 change ! Happy that nation whose poet can 

 raise his voice to herald the hope and human- 

 ity of its institutions in the grandeur of the fa- 

 miliar symbol of Longfellow : 



" Sail on, Union, strong and great ! 

 Humanity with all its fears, 

 With all the hopes of future years, 

 Is hanging breathless on thy fate ! 



"^Amid this divided marine dominion, in 

 which one power alone has half the rule of the 

 ocean, shall America sit scepterless and forlorn 

 dethroned, ignoble, dispirited, and disgraced? 

 The ensign of our nationality takes its stars 

 from the vault of heaven. By them brave men 



sail. It is now an unknown emblem upon the 

 sea. We welcome every race to our shores in 

 the vessels of other nations. Our enormous 

 surplus, which feeds the world, is for others 

 to bear away. We gaze at the leviathans of 

 commerce entering our harbors and darkening 

 our sky with the pennons of smoke ; but the 

 thunder of the engines is under another flag 

 and the shouting of the captains is in an alien 

 tongue. Others distribute the produce, capital- 

 ize the moneys, gather the glories, and elevate 

 their institutions by the amenities and benigni- 

 ties of commerce ; and we, boasting of our in- 

 vention, heroism, and freedom, allow the jail- 

 ers of a hated and selfish policy to place gyves 

 upon our energy, and when we ask for liberty 

 to build and for liberty to buy, imprison our 

 genius in the sight of these splendid achieve- 

 ments. 



u Mr. Speaker, if you would that we should 

 once more fly our ensign upon the sea, assist 

 us to take off the burdens from our navigation 

 and give to us the first, last, and best the in- 

 dispensable condition of civilization by com- 

 merce liberty." 



Mr. Dingley, of Maine, representing the ma- 

 jority of the committee, said : " Mr. Speaker, I 

 agree with the gentleman who has just taken 

 his seat (Mr. Cox, of New York) that there is 

 no subject before Congress more important 

 than that to which this bill addresses itself. 

 The humiliating fact which confronts us is that 

 the American carrying-trade is rapidly declin- 

 ing and the American flag gradually disappear- 

 ing from the ocean. The following statistics 

 of the Treasury Department tell the story more 

 strikingly than any language can do : 



u By reference to this table it will be seen 

 that the coastwise trade of the United States 

 is prospering, as well as all our other protected 

 interests. Restricted as it is to American ves- 

 sels, without competition from abroad, it occu- 

 pies precisely the same position as all other 

 domestic interests. While the statistics show 

 only a small gain in tonnage over that exhib- 

 ited in 1855, yet there has been such an in- 

 crease of steamers as to add materially to the 

 actual carrying-tonnage of vessels engaged in 

 the coastwise trade of the country. In 1855, 

 estimating one ton of steam-vessels as equal to 

 four of sailing-vessels, which is very near the 

 fact as to vessels engaged in the coastwise trade, 



