He showed that "maritime defence, commercial regulations, and national revenue" were the very corner-stones of the Constitution, and that these great interests had been crippled and abused by the departure from Washington's policy.

He developed, with great force, the principal and the most unanswerable argument of his party, that the navy had been neglected and decried because it was a Federalist scheme, when a navy was what we wanted above all things, and especially when we were drifting into a maritime conflict.

He argued strongly in favor of a naval war, and measures of naval defence, instead of wasting our resources by an invasion of Canada.

So far he went strictly with his party, merely invigorating and enforcing their well-known principles.

But when he came to defining the proper limits of opposition to the war he modified very essentially the course prescribed by advanced Federalist opinions.