"Sam": or The history of mystery./ By C. W. Webber.

"SAM:" OR, THE HISTORY OF MYSTERY.
nation using it? Assertion is substituted for argument;
inferences not authorized by historical facts are arbitrarily
drawn; things wholly unconnected with each other are associated together; a very logical mode of reasoning, it must
be admitted! In the same way he could demonstrate how
idle and absurd our attachments are to freedom itself. He
might say, for example, that Greece and Rome had forms
of free government, and that they no longer exist; and,
deducing their fall from their devotion to liberty, the conclusion, in favor of despotism, would very satisfactorily follow!
He demanded what there is in the nature and construction
of maritime power, to excite the fears that have been
indulged? Do gentlemen really apprehend, that a body of
seamen will abandon their proper element, and placing themselves under an aspiring chief, will erect a throne to his
ambition? Will they deign to listen to the voice of history,
and learn how chimerical are their apprehensions?
"But the source of alarm is in ourselves. Gentlemen fear,
that if we provide a marine, it will produce collisions with
foreign nations, plunge us into war, and ultimately overturn
the constitution of the country. Sir, if you wish to avoid
foreign collision, you had better abandon the ocean surrender
all your commerce; give up all your prosperity. It is the
thing protected, not the instrument of protection, that involves
you in war. Commerce engenders collision, collision war, and
war, the argument supposes, leads to despotism. Would the
counsels of that statesman be deemed wlse, who would recommend that the nation should be unarmed; that the art of
war, the martial spirit, and martial exercises, should be prohibited; who should declare, in the language of Othello, that
the nation must bid farewell to the neighing steed, and the
shrill trump, the spirit-stirring drum, the ear-piercing fife,
and all the pride, pomp and circumstance of glorious war;
and that the great body of the people should be taught, that
national happiness was to be found in perpetual peace alone?
No, sir. And yet, every argument in favor of a power of
protection on land, applies in some degree to a power of
protection on the sea. Undoubtedly, a commerce void of
naval protection is more exposed to rapacity than a guarded
commerce; and if we wish to invite the continuance of the
old, or the enactment of new edicts, let us refrain from all
509