letter to Fisk, you have fairly stated the alternatives between which we are to choose:  1. licentious commerce and gambling speculations for a few, with eternal war for the many; or, 2. restricted commerce, peace, and steady occupations for all.  If any State in the Union will declare that it prefers separation with the first alternative, to a continuance in union without it, I have no hesitation in saying, ‘Let us separate.’  I would rather the States should withdraw, which are for unlimited commerce and war, and confederate with those alone which are for peace and agriculture.  I know that every nation in Europe would join in sincere amity with the latter, and hold the former at arm’s length, by jealousies, prohibitions, restrictions, vexations, and war.  No earthly consideration could induce my consent to contract such a debt as England has by her wars for commerce, to reduce our citizens by taxes to such wretchedness, as that laboring sixteen of the twenty-four hours, they are still unable to afford themselves bread, or barely to earn as much oatmeal or potatoes as will keep soul and body together.  And all this to feed the avidity of a few millionary merchants, and to keep up one thousand ships of war for the protection of their commercial speculations.  I returned from Europe after our government had got under way, and had adopted from the British code the law of drawbacks.  I early saw its effects in the jealousies and vexations of Britain; and that, retaining it, we must become, like her, an essentially warring nation, and meet, in the end, the catastrophe impending over her.  No one can doubt that this alone produced the orders of council, the depredations which preceded, and the war which followed them.  Had we carried but our own produce, and brought back but our own wants, no nation would have troubled us.  Our commercial dashers, then, have already cost us so many thousand lives, so many millions of dollars, more than their persons and all their commerce were worth.  When war was declared, and especially after Massachusetts, who had produced it, took side with the enemy waging it, I pressed on some confidential friends in Congress to avail us of the happy opportunity of repealing the drawback; and I do rejoice to find that you are in that sentiment.  You are young, and may be in the way of bringing it into effect.  Perhaps time, even yet, and change of tone (for there are symptoms of that in Massachusetts), may not have obliterated altogether the sense of our late feelings and sufferings; may not have induced oblivion of the friends we have lost, the depredations and conflagrations we have suffered, and the debts we have incurred, and to have to labor for through the lives of the present generation.  The earlier the repeal is proposed, the more it will be befriended by all these recollections and considerations.  This is one of three great measures necessary to insure us permanent prosperity.  This preserves our peace.  A second should enable