Madison, was to make it " the interest of all nations to change the system which has driven our commerce from the sea." " Great Britain will feel it (this embargo) in her manufactures, in the loss of naval stores, and ... in the supplies essential to her colonies." " France will feel it in the loss of all which she has hitherto received through our neutral commerce, and her colonies will be cut off from the sale of their productions and the source of their supplies." "They have forced us into the measure by the direct effect on us of measures founded in an alleged regard for their own eventual safety and essential interests." "TJie ocean presents a field only where no harvest is to be reaped but that of danger, of spoliation, and of disgrace." * It will be readily understood that this measure, bearing so hardly upon the interests of all classes

1 National Inteliigencer , Dec. 23, 1807. Hist. Magazine, Nov. 1873, p. 315.

GENERAL HISTORY FROM 1783 TO 1860. 485

of the community must have called forth the most violent objection and put to the severest strain the devotiiin of the Republican party to their great Head, the President, and to his destined successor, the then Secretary of State. The Representative in Congress from this District, General Philip Van Cortlandt, voted against the Embargo, and was drawn into opposition to Mr. Madison's aspirations. It is certain also that the Vice-President, George Clinton, did not apitrove of the "Act." But notwithstanding their dissatisfaction, these gentlemen still adhered to their party affinities, and by their course, no doubt, greatly counteracted the tendency of these measures to produce political changes among their followers in New York. So their columns seem not to have seriously wavered in Westchester County at the next Senatorial election, when the Southern District, which lay in New York City, Long Island, Staten Island and Westchester County, elected both the Republican candidates.