, 
 
THE LIFE OF JOHN PEXDLETON KENNEDY. 
 By HENRY T. TUCKERMAN. 
 
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 sition by their side. N. Y. Tribune. 
 
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 nition of intellectual gifts. N. Y. Evening Post. 
 
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 lations to society, to our respect and admiration ? His home, which comes out so 
 delightfully, his geniality, good and cultivated sense, are charming ; such homes 
 we have known and enjoyed, but are too rare. We feel to Mr. Kennedy, after 
 having devoured the volume at three sittings, like a friend and near acquaintance 
 of his whole circle. As a book full of patriotic sentiments it must live, and we 
 hope be reproduced for the benefit of thousands that come after us. Boston 
 Transcript. 
 
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POLITICAL AND OFFICIAL PAPERS. 
 
POLITICAL 
 
 AND 
 
 OFFICIAL PAPERS. 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN P. KENNEDY. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 G. P. PUTNAM & SONS. 
 
 ASSOCIATION BUILDING. 
 
 1672. 
 
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the .year 1871, by 
 
 THE EXECUTORS OF JOHN P. KENNEDY, 
 in the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 
 
 STEREOTYPED BY LANK, LITTLE & HJLLMAN, 
 
 WILLIAM MCCREA & CO., PBWT.BS, 
 
 NEWBUBGH, N. T. 108 * 114 WOOSTEB ST., N. V. 
 

 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 A Review of Mr. Cambreleng s Report from the Committee of 
 Commerce, in the House of Representatives, at the First 
 Session of the Twenty-first Congress 9 
 
 Address of the Friends of Domestic Industry, assembled in Con 
 vention, at New York, October 26, 1831, to the People of the 
 United States. (Drafted by a Committee of which Mr. Kenne 
 dy of Baltimore and Mr. Dulton of Massachusetts were mem 
 bers.) 87 
 
 Strictures on the letter of Charles J. Ingersoll, Esq., Touching the 
 Right of a Legislature to repeal a Charter. With an Appendix, 
 Containing the Letters of Mr. Ingersoll, of Mr. Dallas, of Mr. 
 Forward, and of Mr. Biddle, in illustration of the subject dis 
 cussed 138 
 
 Speech delivered in the House of Representatives, on the 22d and 
 
 23d June, 1838, in the Debate on the Sub-Treasury Bill 184 
 
 Speech on the Bill making appropriations for the Civil and Di 
 plomatic Service for the year 1839. Delivered in the House 
 of Representatives, February 19, 1839 228 
 
 Letter to his Constituents, citizens of the Fourth Congressional 
 District in the State of Maryland, on the Principles and Value 
 of the Protective System 267 
 
 ^Defence of the Whigs : The Whig Party : Its Origin, Its Constan 
 cy, Its Success 317 
 
 Counter Report from the Select Committee on the Currency, to 
 the House of Representatives, United States, February 17, 
 1842... . 451 
 
 M555479 
 
8 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE. 
 Extract from his Report as Secretary of the Navy. Explorations 
 
 and Surveys 497 
 
 The Border States : Their Power and Duty in the Present Disor 
 dered Condition of the Country 543 
 
 The Great Drama An Appeal to Maryland 587 
 
 Letter on the Annexation of Texas 604 
 
POLITICAL PAPEKS. 
 
 A EEYIEW 
 
 MERGE, IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, AT THE 
 FIRST 8E88ION OF THE TWENTY-FIRST CONGRESS. 
 
 I follow thee, like a trusty servitor, but to entice thee from thy 
 nimble and crafty wanderings, into a surer path of truth. The time 
 lacks an honest devil. Thou canst not say I flatter. Old Play. 
 
 THE Report from the Committee on Commerce, in the 
 House of Representatives, at the present session, is the 
 last in a series of assaults which have been made upon the 
 protective system of this country, and being prepared with great 
 care and industry, and adopted by certain interests in the 
 Union, with an exulting acclamation, it may fairly claim to be 
 considered the manifesto of, what is called, the free-trade 
 party. The city of New York has been thrown into convul 
 sions of joy by this masterly and concentrated blow at the 
 American system : it is the coup de grace given by young Da 
 vid to the Philistine, and the host are ready to sing the Non 
 JVobis, on the occasion of the victory. 
 
 To us, who are at a distance from this fervor, who have 
 nothing to fear from the contagion of opinion, and nothing of 
 interest to inflame us on the question, it is left to make up our 
 minds merely upon the merits, which, it will be admitted upon 
 
10 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 a perusal of the report, are hut a feeble auxiliary to the cause 
 of the good people of Gotham, compared with the ardor prava 
 civium jubentium, the authoritativeness of the Exchange, and 
 the wisdom of Wall Street. Indeed, from all that we can learn 
 upon the subject, the author of the Report has already dis 
 credited the Scriptures, and gained more honor as a prophet 
 in his own country than he is likely to acquire out of it. 
 
 Mr. Cambreleng professes to be a disciple of the school of 
 Mr. Huskisson. He adopts his tone, borrows his thoughts, 
 reasons on his premises, believes his facts, and concludes with 
 his advice. Whatever Mr. Huskisson conceives to be saluta 
 ry in English policy, Mr. Cambreleng conceives, in the same 
 terms, to be wholesome in American. The Report is calcu 
 lated to answer the purposes of the British Ministry, in many 
 respects, better than Mr. Huskisson s speeches. In all the 
 outward and visible signs of statesmanship the two politicians 
 are as much alike as Dromio of Syracuse and Dromio of Eph- 
 esus : but in the particular of principle and postulate, of ab 
 stract opinion and relative policy, there are scarcely to be 
 found two individuals, separated by the sea, of more incongru 
 ous elements. Mr. Huskisson, with the address of a wily 
 minister, has given a false lead, which Mr. Cambreleng fol 
 lows, in no wise doubting ; and, from the state of the game, 
 it is quite apparent that the American has walked into the trap 
 which the Englishman has set for him. 
 
 To explain this, it is necessary to say something of this 
 much talked of doctrine of Free Trade, a doctrine which we 
 have always found ourselves much puzzled to define. We un 
 derstand it only, as a beautiful abstraction ; a systematic re 
 solving of things into a state of nature ; an equalization of 
 human appetites, passions and interests ; an interminable con 
 fraternity, existing in unimaginable harmony, and moving to 
 the music of the spheres : an anticipated millennium of peace 
 on earth, and good will to men : the polity of More s Utopia 
 and Rabelais Medamothy. Mr. Huskisson and the Edinburg 
 Review have obscurely hinted that this wonder has, at length, 
 
REVIEW OF CAMBREL EXG. 11 
 
 made a lodgement in Great Britain. And Mr. Cambreleng 
 believes them !* 
 
 In Great Britain, then, it becomes a tangible thing, and we 
 may hope to form a more intelligible opinion of its nature and 
 attributes, by a reference to the British system. Free trade, 
 in this view of it, may be said to be comprehended in the fol 
 lowing leading maxims. 
 
 1. To exclude from the home market all competition in 
 such commodities as they can produce or manufacture. 
 
 2. To feed their own people, entirely with their own prod 
 ucts, though at double -the cost that they could be fed by for 
 eigners. 
 
 3. To take nothing from abroad but what they cannot do 
 without. 
 
 4. To nurse their manufactures, first, for the sake of the 
 home market, and secondly, for the sake of commerce. 
 
 5. To secure, by the most rigid laws, the transportation of 
 their own products in their own vessels, and to use every 
 stratagem to get the carriage of the products of other nations. 
 
 We may add as a sixth maxim, 
 
 To use all kinds of means to persuade the world to adopt 
 exactly the opposite policy ; and especially to humbug Amer 
 ican wiseacres with dissertations upon free trade. 
 
 It would not occur to the people of the United States, after 
 reading Mr. Cambreleng s report, that such are the fundamen 
 tal articles of the British faith ; and as it is necessary to have 
 this matter understood, in order that our learned chairman s 
 encomiums may be properly valued, we shall take a little time 
 to prove what we have said. 
 
 * " Great Britain has granted commercial liberty to her vast em 
 pire at home and abroad, and has taken a new start in the race of na 
 tions." Report, p. 21. " Her naval ascendancy gives her all the ad 
 vantages of free trade, by her dominion over the commerce of the 
 world : in peace she secures all its privileges by abolishing restrictions 
 and opening as far as she can, by her oicn laics, every avenue of 
 trade." Ib., p. 26. 
 
12 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 Mr. Huskisson s speeches afford us a full exposition of all 
 his doctrines of free trade, and will enable us, therefore, to de 
 termine how far we have departed in our policy, from his great 
 improvements in legislation. His speech of March 25, 1825, 
 explains his plan of reducing the duties. Here he states in 
 very plain language, his object to be, to recommend altera 
 tions in the duties " levied upon the importation of materials 
 employed in some of our principal manufactures, and also in 
 the prohibitory duties, now imposed upon the manufactured pro 
 ductions of other countries, so far as they shall be found not 
 inconsistent with the protection of our. own industry."* 
 
 Beginning with the cotton manufactures, Mr. H. sets out 
 with the broad declaration which we deem important to be 
 considered " that by the cheapness and quality of our goods, we 
 undersell our competitors in all the markets of the world" With 
 this enunciation, he thinks that the duties of 67 T and 75 per 
 cent, by which this manufacture had been fostered, might now, 
 with safety to the manufacturer, be reduced as low as 10 per 
 cent. He affirms that under this protection of 75 per cent, 
 this branch of industry had risen to maturityf that their ex- 
 
 * In our remarks upon Mr. Huskisson s alleged free-trade system, 
 we confine ourselves to the design and scope of his measure ; his pro 
 fessed object being to propose a system efficient to every purpose of 
 protection. We are aware of the mischiefs produced by some of the 
 details of his plan, and especially in regard to the silk trade, which 
 has been so much boasted as a victory of the free-trade principle ; 
 although that trade experiences at his hand a degree of encourage 
 ment that we should consider ample to most of our manufactures. 
 It has, however, produced its unlooked-for distresses, as the late suf 
 ferings at Spitalfields and Coventry will testify. But for the present, 
 we deal with Mr. H. s principles, not his acts. 
 
 f It may be a little edifying to our statesmen to learn from Mr. 
 Huskisson his opinion of this 75 per cent. It may teach us how to 
 estimate the notions of the trans-Atlantic champions of Free Trade. 
 Speaking of the woollen manufacture, he says, " this favorite child, 
 like other favorites, has suffered rather than profited by being spoil 
 ed and petted in rearing, while its younger brother of cotton, coming 
 into the world much later, has thriven better by being much more left 
 
REVIEW OF CAMBKELENG. 13 
 
 ports of cotton had increased in sixty years from .200,000 to 
 .30,795,000 ; and that it was no longer necessary to subject 
 it to any other restriction than 10 per cent. that amount be 
 ing equivalent to the duties levied upon the raw materials em 
 ployed in the fabric. But this 10 per cent, is to be added to 
 the amount of any internal duty on printed cottons, and no 
 drawback to be allowed. 
 
 In the woollen manufacture, the duties varied from 50 to 67^ 
 per cent. These he thought, for the same reasons that opera 
 ted upon his mind in reference to the cotton, might be reduced 
 to 15 per cent. 
 
 In the manufacture of linens, Mr. Huskisson s plan em 
 braces a reduction to 25 per cent, over and above the amount 
 of any internal duty of excise. 
 
 The reduction generally proposed in the duties upon man 
 ufactured metals, is to 30 per cent, upon glass to 20 per cent, 
 above the excise, except in the case of bottles, which are sub 
 ject by Mr. H. to a duty of about 85 per cent. The common 
 porcelain ware he proposes to reduce from 75 per cent, to 15 ; 
 the painted or gilt to 30. 
 
 Such is Mr. Huskisson s scheme in regard to the principal 
 manufactures of Great Britain, and this is trumpeted abroad as 
 a concession to the principles of free trade ! In reference to 
 the great mass of these manufacturers, he distinctly avows his 
 conviction, that they are already secured from all foreign com 
 petition, and that there is not the remotest possibility of their 
 home market being interfered with. Indeed, the extreme so- 
 
 to rough it and make its own way in life." Truly, a most ill-favored 
 bantling ! Only 75 per cent, protection ! Alas for our own progeny ! 
 
 Mr. H. s allusion to the pampering of the woollen manufacture will 
 be intelligible, by referring to the various forms in which British 
 legislation has been extended to its protection, but more particularly 
 to the act imposing an additional duty on imported wool, by which, 
 it is said, the manufacture received a shock that has nearly proved 
 fatal to it. Let our Southern friends learn, that their cotton is am 
 ply assured to them by this experiment. 
 
11 POLITICAL PAP Mil*. 
 
 licitucle with which Mr. H. treats the protection of the British 
 manufacture, ought forever to preclude those who pretend to 
 advocate his principles, from bringing his reduction of duties 
 into our view at all. It is most apparent that his object is the 
 very reverse of Mr. Cambreleng s. If his purpose were free 
 trade, why have we these discriminations, ten per cent, upon 
 cotton, fifteen upon wool, and twenty-five upon linen ? And 
 why this constant avowal that he has ascertained that these 
 rates are sufficient to secure to Great Britain the supply of her 
 own market ? His scheme is not to buy where goods are 
 cheapest, but to excite the greatest competition compatible 
 with the preservation of their home and their foreign markets, 
 and to foster the manufacturing interest by a system of legis 
 lation that shall encourage it to its most profitable expansion. 
 As to the operation of this new tariff upon those manufactures 
 which make the wealth and prosperity of England, it is as 
 harmless as a permission extended to all the world to carry 
 coals, free of duty, to the port of Newcastle. Mr. Cambrel- 
 eng would, perhaps, consider this another concession ! But 
 until Mr. Huskisson shall proclaim that a rising and prosper 
 ous manufacture shall be sacrificed to the freedom of com 
 merce, and that the temporary inconveniences which the coun 
 try might sustain in rearing up a new system, that is to be a 
 source of wealth and power to all after ages, are to outweigh 
 the great reversionary benefits of the scheme, we cannot admit 
 that any aid has been supplied to that destructive theory, which 
 has captivated its professors by the name of free trade. 
 
 Upon the score of injury sustained by the manufactures 
 in the heavy duties annexed to the introduction of the raw 
 materials, Mr. H. adopts a principle that in its whole scope 
 and bearing is essentially protective. The reductions proposed 
 by him, on this branch of imports, are at least judicious in their 
 purpose, and may be salutary in the detail we are not dis 
 posed to question them but in no instance are any reductions 
 recommended without inculcating, in the most explicit manner, 
 that cardinal point in his policy the immense value of the 
 
REVIEW OF CAMBRELENG. 15 
 
 home supply and the consequent importance of fostering the 
 domestic manufactures, and giving them the ascendancy 
 abroad. Such notions are distinctly enforced in the following 
 remarks upon the introduction of crude copper. " These pro 
 hibitory duties have already, in my judgment, been attended 
 with serious injury ; they have prevented copper not only in an 
 unmanufactured, but in an imperfectly smelted state, from com 
 ing into this country. This metal exists in great abundance 
 not only in several parts of Europe, but also in some of the new 
 States of America. It would have been sent here as it used to 
 be, in an imperfect state, in payment for British manufactures. 
 Here it would have undergone the process of purifying, of roll 
 ing, or of being otherwise prepared for consumption, by the 
 means of our superior machinery, had it not been kept away by 
 impolitic restrictions. They operated as a bounty upon the 
 transfer of our capital to other countries, and as a premium to 
 encourage the inhabitants of those countries to do for them 
 selves that which, greatly to our advantage, we should other 
 wise have continued to do for them. At the same time, I am 
 aware that considerable capitals have been invested in our cop 
 per mines under the encouragement given by the present mo 
 nopoly, and how difficult it is to do all that the public interest 
 would require without injury to those particular interests. 
 This, in almost every instance, is the most arduous task which 
 a sense of public duty has imposed upon me. In the present 
 case, however, I believe that I may safely, and I hope with ad 
 vantage to both parties, propose to reduce the duty on copper 
 from ,54 to ^27 a ton, without committing myself not no re-c 
 ommend at a future period, even a further reduction, if it should 
 appear that the present limit is not sufficient to enable our man 
 ufacturers to preserve their foreign market, and that at a lower 
 rate of duty no great or sudden check would be given to the 
 British mines."* 
 
 * So, too, in regard to Iron Mr. Huskisson, stating the inadequacy of 
 the home supply, and commenting upon the injurious effects of the duty 
 on tlie unmanufactured commodity, asks, " Is, there no risk or danger 
 
16 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 The same protective principle is conspicuous in his policy 
 towards the silk trade. The duties on the raw material were 
 from 4J-. to 5^. ^\d. a pound on raw silk and 14^. 8*/. per Ib. 
 on organzine or thrown silk : the consequence was, as stated 
 by Mr. H., that the French manufacturers who had their silk 
 either altogether free (being a home product) or subject to 
 about Af\d. per Ib. on what they imported, were enabled to pro 
 duce the manufactured article cheaper, by this amount of duty.* 
 He proposes, therefore, a reduction on raw silk to $d. per Ib., 
 and on the organzine to js. 6d. The consideration which gov 
 erned the reduction on the organzine is in keeping with the 
 rest of his system ; it was confessedly, to protect the interests 
 of the throwsters who, it was affirmed, would have been in 
 jured by a further reduction. To this was added also a re 
 moval of the prohibition upon manufactured silks, and a duty 
 ranging from 33 to 70 per cent, ad valorem substituted for 
 their protection. The duties were reduced also, upon the dye- 
 stuffs used in this manufacture, and throughout the whole 
 course of legislation upon the question, every- idea of what we 
 understand by free trade was repudiated the express and 
 earnestly inculcated object being the encouragement and pro 
 tection of the manufacture. 
 
 It would be charging an immeasurable absurdity upon the 
 British Government, if we could suppose that in the event of 
 the home manufacture, by this experiment, being unable to 
 contend against the foreign, they would not increase their 
 duties to a standard adequate to that end. It would be at 
 war with every intelligible idea that they have heretofore pro- 
 fa? our hardware manufacturers at Birmingham and Sheffield ? Can 
 they execute orders which they receive from abroad if iron continues at 
 its present price or is to rise still higher? how many thousand work 
 men will be thrown out of employ if this branch of trade be lost to this 
 country f" 
 
 * " These duties added about 25, 30, and 40 per cent, on the prime 
 cost of the different species of silk on which they were respectively 
 imposed. Ed. Review, Nov. 1825. 
 
REVIEW OF CAMBKELENG. 17 
 
 mulgated upon the subject. Great Britain has never been 
 known to abandon a valuable manufacture because it required 
 protection. 
 
 But, it may be asked, if Mr. Huskisson s moderated duties 
 are still equivalent to prohibitions, in the large portion of the 
 manufactures referred to, why are the duties reduced at all ? 
 We answer, that a lower rate of prohibition operates as a stim 
 ulus to industry better than a higher one, because it lowers the 
 mark to which the tide of foreign competition and skill must 
 rise in order to flow in upon the home market, and therefore 
 keeps the industry of the country always upon the watch to 
 excel its neighbors ; it is a safeguard against inattention and 
 carelessness, while at the same time it is full and perfect pro 
 tection. There is another reason. Mr. Huskisson considers 
 that in the present vigor of British manufactures, a duty of 
 thirty, fifty, or seventy per cent, generally adequate to every 
 purpose of protection, and yet sufficiently low to prevent smug 
 gling in the few articles of foreign manufacture which fashion 
 or caprice have brought into request ; articles inconsiderable 
 in quantity and sought for only by the richest classes of the 
 Kingdom. As he has himself expressed it, " some fancy mus 
 lins from India, some silk stuffs, some porcelain from France, 
 objects for which curiosity or fashion may create a demand 
 in the metropolis :" and which, as he assures us, " will not in 
 terfere with those articles of more wide and universal con 
 sumption which our own manufactures supply cheaper and 
 better." These are regarded as concessions of trifling amount 
 to the opulent. Their bulk, too, is small, and the facilities of 
 introducing them very great, while the trouble of searching for 
 them, the vexation of being searched, and the expense of the 
 surveillance which is necessary to detect them, are not com 
 pensated by the value of the discovery: the game is not 
 worth the candle. The government has therefore consented 
 to their introduction at high rates, while it is certain that the 
 quality excluded is by far the greatest in quantity and the most 
 worthy of protection. 
 
18 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 As to the other articles upon which the reduced duties 
 take effect, it is not pretended that any nation has an interest to 
 make the effort to introduce them : their age and their prosperity 
 place them beyond assault. Whether cottons are rated at ten 
 or ten hundred per cent, the prohibition is just the same. " It 
 is not as deep as a well, nor as wide as a church door but it 
 is enough : it will serve." 
 
 Mr. Huskisson gives us another reason for this apparently 
 nugatory measure, which indicates a deeper knowledge of the 
 materials he has to work upon abroad, than we should at first 
 have attributed to him a reason that seems to have been 
 well sown when it fell upon Mr. Cambreleng. " It is time," 
 says Mr. H., " to consider if there be no inconvenience, no 
 unfitness, no positive injury to ourselves, no suspicion and 
 odium excited in foreign countries, by duties which are abso 
 lutely prohibitory or, if the articles to which they attach, ad 
 mit of being smuggled which have no other effect than to 
 throw the business of importing them into the hands of the 
 smuggler." He might have added, what, by the way, is pretty 
 plainly insinuated that the reduction might look like homage 
 to the free-trade illusion, and have power to persuade wise 
 American statesmen of the sincerity of Great Britain in sup 
 port of a system about which she has been perpetually talking, 
 and concerning which she has universally agreed to make no 
 substantial sacrifice : it might induce unlearned and dull rivals 
 to go and do likewise, in circumstances where the imitation 
 of the example would be something more than substituting 
 one dead letter for another. 
 
 With what success this argument may be urged, let the 
 Chairman of the Committee of Commerce and the exulting 
 citizens of Gotham answer ! The British shadow becomes, in 
 the hands of Mr. Cambreleng, a thing of life ; and what on 
 one side of the water is but a " gentle sucking dove," roars, on 
 the other, like the true lion, and is instinct with an active prin 
 ciple of mischief. 
 
 It is only necessary to read Mr. Huskisson s speech on the 
 
REVIEW OF CAMBRELENG. 10 
 
 subject of the colonial policy (March 21, 1825), to make out 
 the rest of the points which we have brought into our defini 
 tion of the English notions of free trade. This speech breathes 
 the same desire to protect the interest of Great Britain and her 
 colonies against all foreign competition, and his remarks are 
 characterized by the same ardent resolve to support the pro 
 tective system. His object is to assist the northern colonies 
 against the influence of the rivalry of the United States, but in 
 no respect whatever, does he admit the idea that trade was to 
 be regulated by the principle of unrestricted reciprocity. In 
 one particular his words are remarkable, as the subject has 
 brought him to consider a question, which we have a thousand 
 times asked the friends of British free trade to solve for us, 
 namely : Why are not the markets of England opened to our 
 grain ? We quote from the speech : 
 
 " The measure which I have to propose in respect to Can 
 ada appears to me to be no more than ah act of common jus 
 tice to that colony. It is simply this to admit, at all times, 
 the corn of that country into our consumption, upon the pay 
 ment of a fixed and moderate duty. When it is considered 
 that corn is a staple of that colony, I cannot conceive of a 
 greater act of injustice, than to have declared, to a part of our 
 own empire, as much entitled to protection as any other part 
 of it, that against that staple the markets of this country were 
 closed. How are the Canadians to pay for the supplies which 
 they have drawn from this country ? Is it fitting that when 
 they make their remittances in this staple, they should do so 
 without being able to know whether it can be received here ? 
 Whether it is to remain in warehouse, unavailable and unpro 
 ductive, and at a ruinous expense for five or six years, depend 
 ing, for its admission into our market, upon the fraction of a 
 half-penny, according to the average price in our markets for 
 a few preceding weeks ; that average influenced by the con 
 flicting tricks and artifices of the home grower and home deal 
 er ; the result of which cannot be known in Canada for many 
 months afterwards?" Might we not ask the champion of 
 
20 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 British free trade, why does not Mr. Huskisson s interrogatory 
 apply to this country ? Are there not the same considerations 
 operating upon us ? We may ask Mr. Cambreleng to give us 
 the answer why, in his brotherhood of nations, his reciprocal 
 interchange of liberal systems, and his magical circle of free 
 trade, these points are not as freely to be urged in our favor, 
 as in that of Canada ? Will he assure us that the removal of 
 these restrictions fall in with Mr. Huskisson s plan ? The 
 British statesman has not even winked at such a thought. His 
 policy seems to us an unadulterated example of the good old 
 
 rule, 
 
 That lie shall take who lias the power, 
 And lie shall keep who can. 
 
 It was even proposed as an objection to Mr. Huskisson s 
 system in favor of Canada, that a removal of the restrictions 
 upon this branch of the trade of the colony, might, perchance, 
 let in some of the forbidden American product by our northern 
 frontier. What was his reply ? It is a decisive comment on all 
 the refined speculations of Mr. Cambreleng and the whole 
 host of British authorities from which he has taken his opin 
 ions. It expounds the whole debated question of British free 
 trade. " He should be quite willing to adopt any method ne 
 cessary to prevent the fraudulent mixing of the United States 
 corn with the corn of Canada" " that with a view of remov 
 ing all cause of alarm and giving an adequate security against 
 the fraudulent introduction of Canada (American) wheat, he 
 should propose as a clause, by way of rider, that there should 
 be the same certificate of origin as in the case of sugar." 
 He was willing to rate the production of Canada at a cer 
 tain amount, and consider all beyond that amount as Amer 
 ican. 
 
 In accordance with his views of the colonial policy, Mr. 
 H. proposed to admit flour from the Canadas at about five 
 shillings the quarter ; timber at from five to twelve per cent 
 and tobacco at twenty. The duty on the first of these com 
 modities coming from the United States, is left almost at total 
 
REVIEW OF CAMBRELENG. 21 
 
 exclusion ; and, upon the remaining two, at a rate ranging be 
 tween five hundred and fifteen hundred per cent ! 
 
 Now we do not mean to condemn the policy of Great Brit 
 ain s opening an unrestricted intercourse with her own domin 
 ions (although we think Mr. Cambreleng has but a poor case 
 of free trade among the countless restrictions of the British 
 colonial possessions*), its natural tendency would be what 
 Mr. C. has stated it an increase of the navigation of the col 
 onies ; but we cannot perceive what aid this furnishes to the 
 propagation of the free-trade system. We have always under 
 stood this mystical blessing to look to the intercourse of one 
 nation with another. For free as Mr. Cambreleng pretends 
 Great Britain has made the trade with her colonies, it is nothing 
 compared with the entire disenthralment of that between our 
 own maritime States which trade, by the by, Mr. Cambreleng 
 has very seriously undertaken to prove has been languishing 
 in this pure atmosphere of freedom : of this, however, here 
 after. But until Mr. Huskisson, or some other English minis 
 ter shall consent to remove the impediments that embarrass 
 our intercourse with that nation, we have at least a right to 
 claim the benefit of the example in practice, and of the fact in 
 the argument. 
 
 Such are the lights which British doctrines and British prac 
 tice afford us in our inquiry after the nature and attributes of 
 free trade. Truly, the thing, when found, looks marvellously 
 
 * The) 7 protect the tea of the East Indies by a restriction that 
 costs the people of Great Britain something upwards of two millions 
 sterling per annum. In turn, they levy a duty upon the sugar of 
 these possessions to protect the markets of the West Indies ; while, 
 again, these latter are excluded from all the benefits of an enlarged 
 commerce, in order to favor the Canadas, which of late, have been 
 blessed with the gift of &free trade. In sooth, she is a most discrim 
 inating mother ! And Mr. Cambreleng thinks this last measure of 
 grace has been conceded to the principles of Adam Smith ! So far as 
 it is the means of stabbing at the prosperity of the United States, it 
 is the measure of the ministry. What of it belongs to the free-trade 
 doctrine, is an idle coincidence. 
 
22 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 like our protections : and we wonder that the free-trade gentle 
 men of America, who profess to follow Mr. Huskisson, should 
 abandon their leader at the most striking point in his philoso 
 phy ; that which, of all others, seems to be the tenderest object 
 of his solicitude, the prosperity of the manufactures. Mr. Hus 
 kisson is a competent and authentic witness on the subject, 
 and, we are free to say, that we are willing to stand by the 
 award of his testimony. We believe that a better illustration 
 of that gentleman s doctrines could not be afforded, than in 
 the policy inculcated by the manufacturing interests of the 
 United States. 
 
 In this exposition of the British system, it will be seen how 
 minute is the resemblance between the measures of Mr. Hus 
 kisson and Mr. Cambreleng ; and how true is the assertion of 
 the honorable chairman, that we have been adopting the pro 
 hibitory policy just at the time that our rival is "substituting 
 free trade for restrictions." We cannot but admire the fidelity 
 with which the likeness is preserved between these giants of 
 free trade on either side of the Atlantic. Mr. Huskisson takes 
 away a nugatory prohibition : Mr. Cambreleng follows suit and 
 is for taking off a necessary protection. Mr. Huskisson thinks 
 that free trade consists in carrying British manufactures all 
 over the world : Mr. Cambreleng thinks so too. Mr. Huskis 
 son talks about opening their ports to the colonies : Mr. Cam 
 breleng talks of opening ours to all nations. Mr. Huskisson 
 would take off the duty from the raw material in order to pro 
 tect manufactures : Mr. Cambreleng would do the same thing, 
 to encourage commerce. Mr. Huskisson expatiates upon free 
 trade, at the very instant that he is riveting the fetters upon 
 it : Mr. Cambreleng is tickled with the sound and expatiates like 
 wise. Mr. Huskisson throws away a counter : Mr. Cambreleng 
 a guinea. Mr. Huskisson falls to contriving snares for credu 
 lous rivals ; Mr. Cambreleng falls asleep. The resemblance 
 is complete. They are as much alike as Monmouth and Mac- 
 edon ! 
 
 We rather think that Mr. Cambreleng must renounce his 
 
REVIEW OF CAMBRELENG. 23 
 
 pretensions to be considered a pupil of Mr. Huskisson, or he 
 will be obliged to confess that his beau-ideal of free trade is 
 not to be gathered from the statute books of England. 
 
 Then, we would ask, where shall we seek it ? A great deal 
 has been said of late about this same system, but is it not 
 strange that with Adam Smith as current as the Almanac, and 
 Mr. McCulloh and the Ricardo chair, the Edinburg Review, 
 Mr. Cambreleng and the City of Gotham " airing their vocab 
 ularies" upon it in all the multiplications of arithmetic, and 
 saying it and singing it through all its moods and tenses, ad 
 dressed to all languages, people and nations, not one instance 
 is to be found of any one civilized community adopting and 
 pursuing it as a permanent policy ? If it has ever been touch 
 ed it has been, forthwith, dropped again as something too hot 
 to hold. We would seriously ask our friends, who are tilting 
 so manfully in this field, where we shall look for some exem 
 plification of their theory ? We are difficult of persuasion and 
 unwilling to trust to speculation in matters of so much mo 
 ment, and we feel particularly distrustful, with the example of 
 Great Britain before our eyes, and our knowledge of her his 
 tory. We confess that we would rather be dragged along, 
 than merely have the way pointed out for us. The land of 
 Adam Smith, of deep philosophy, of profound inquiry, and of 
 enlightenment that can take in no more light, would surely, 
 before this, have shown us some hot-bed of this new plant. 
 We have seen her manufactures grow up to be the marvel of 
 mankind, and we do not choose to depart from the science of 
 her machinery. We are not to be cheated by her rhetoric out 
 of our respect for her example. Mr. Huskisson may talk as 
 he will about a prohibition reduced to a prohibition lower in 
 the table ; he may attempt to mislead us by disproportioned 
 commentaries upon insignificant acts, or magnify the correc 
 tion of a plain abuse into an argument against the use. We 
 cannot be deceived. The thermometers of Reaumer and Fah 
 renheit may indicate the same temperature, although the num 
 bers on the scale are not the same, and we have skill enough 
 
24 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 to compute the difference, even if Mr. Cambreleng overlook 
 it. The friends of free trade will scarcely turn us to the ex 
 ample of Holland in 1816, nor to Russia in 1820.* If they 
 do, they will be called upon to explain the mystery of the 
 return of the latter of those powers, after that brief space 
 of trial, " ere those shoes were old" to the antiquated and 
 condemned systems by which she previously marched on to 
 wealth. They will have to explain the deep and pathetic 
 complaints which resounded through both of bankruptcies, 
 beggary and ruin, that marked the days of the experiment ; 
 and when the free-trade advocates have given us their solution, 
 we shall ask them to give us, besides, the Dutchman and the 
 Russian s own avouch for their account of the matter; we 
 shall ask this, because we are not willing to take another 
 speculation to make out a matter of fact. We have had 
 experience enough of the adroitness of our philosophers in 
 conjuring up theories at home. 
 
 In despair, therefore, of being enlightened in these profound 
 secrets of free trade, we shall e en turn, after all our peregri 
 nations abroad, to our friend Mr. Cambreleng, and endeavor 
 to make out, as well as we can, what is the veritable and spe- 
 
 * Mr. C., however, does refer to Russia with a sweeping re 
 proof of her present prohibitory system. In page 21 of the Report, 
 lie tells us that under the present system, " her resources must be 
 comparatively stationary and her navigation depressed. Her naval 
 power can never be formidable under such a system." We beg 
 leave to refer the learned chairman to Count Nesselrode s exposition 
 of the misfortunes experienced by that Government during her short 
 experience of the free-trade system from 1820 to 1822 (the date 
 of the minister s circular). We would also ask him if he includes 
 this power among our rivals, when lie expresses his alarm that we 
 had been " already driven too far in the rear of all our rivals, 
 for naval power and naval ascendancy?" If our policy has brought 
 us even below the rivalry of Russia, we have a right to ask the 
 chairman farther, whether he considers our restrictive system as 
 more severe than hers ? She has upwards of fifty classes of articles 
 prohibited in her tariff: we have not one. If not, how comes this 
 about . " Your reason, Jack !" 
 
EEVIEW OF CAMBRELEXG. 25 
 
 cific idea to be attached to the term. Perhaps his own lucu 
 brations will throw some light upon the matter. If we fail in 
 getting satisfaction from this quarter then Heaven help us ! 
 We renounce the enterprise as a bad job, and shall cease 
 thenceforward to regard it as a matter of reason, or a matter 
 of fact, but a plain matter of breviary, to be believed fe del 
 carbonari. 
 
 It seems, from the report, that this great desideratum in 
 national blessings was enjoyed to the fullest extent, from the 
 adoption of our constitution until the year 1807. Until that 
 year navigation was " the favorite object in all our early legis 
 lation," and the prosperity of the United States is commented 
 on, by the honorable chairman, with a fond and affectionate 
 interest. This, then, was the era of free trade, and these the 
 golden days of non-restriction* It might astonish an unlearn 
 ed reader to be told that during this very period (from 1790), 
 so pointed and severe were the restrictions imposed upon all 
 foreign tonnage, by our government, and so rigorous the pro 
 tective system, adopted as a fundamental article of our policy, 
 that the clamor of Great Britain against the illiberality of the 
 measure, almost amounted to declarations of direct hostility. 
 A tonnage duty of fifty cents per ton, and an additional duty 
 of ten per cent, on the merchandise imported, were exacted 
 from all foreign vessels entering our ports. It was considered 
 as a contumacious defiance of Adam Smith, and the most fla 
 grant violation of the sacred principles of that free trade which 
 Mr. Cambreleng holds in such veneration. f The effect of this 
 
 * We are anxious to let Mr. C. speak for himself. " The unpar 
 alleled growth of our navigation anterior to 1807 is the best evidence 
 of the influence of free trade and moderate duties on national pros 
 perity : its present stationary or declining condition the saddest com 
 mentary on the policy of restrictions." Report, p. 20. 
 
 The wise Dr. Cooper says in his tract upon the alteration of the 
 Tariff in 1823, " For thirty years past we have steadily pursued the 
 prohibitory system." Doctors differ. 
 
 f The present anxiety manifested by all parties in Great Britain 
 to persuade us against the policy of our protective measures, exhibits 
 2 
 
26 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 policy was to produce the splendid results described by the 
 report. It gave that impulse to our navigation which instant 
 ly elevated it from its cradle into a vigorous manhood, and 
 sustained it through a glorious career of successful adventure 
 that, perhaps, was never equalled in the history of any other 
 State. These restrictions were continued until the convention 
 of London in 1815, having become the subject of endless 
 strife with the Government of Great Britain, and been princi 
 pally instrumental in producing the war of 1812. By this Con 
 vention they were surrendered, and from that period, so far as 
 regards Great Britain and the United States, the navigation of 
 the two countries was placed upon that reciprocal footing of 
 equal privileges, that, to the extent of the intercourse contem 
 plated by this measure, was a full and perfect realization of 
 the most undisputed principles of free trade. Mr. Cambreleng 
 has shown, that up to this period (throwing the season of war 
 and its accompaniments out of the question) our navigation 
 regularly increased, while that of the British as regularly de 
 clined f thus confining the prosperity of our shipping to these 
 
 a state of feeling precisely similar to that displayed in 1791 upon oc 
 casion of the adoption of our navigation laws. Glasgow was in an 
 uproar, and the most melancholy forebodings were indulged as to the 
 injury this system was likely to work upon the shipping interests of 
 Great Britain. As usual, the free-trade philosophers condemned the 
 measure as one of harsh import and pernicious tendency. It was re 
 served for Mr. Cambreleng to discover, that this protection of our 
 navigation by discriminating duties, was one of the developments 
 of the free-trade principles. 
 
 * " Previous to these political restrictions from 1789 to 1807 our 
 country presented a spectacle of prosperity which had never been 
 surpassed by any nation in any age. We had not then learned to in 
 termeddle with private employments. We had no heavy taxes to en 
 courage smuggling, diminish consumption, and repress industry ; we 
 had no stimulants but profit and enterprise no guides but intelligence 
 and judgment. We had, it is true, discriminations minute and mani 
 fold, but happily for the country, our imposts were moderate, our 
 speculations harmless, and our trade was free." Report, p. 2. See, 
 also, p. 20. 
 
REVIEW OF CAMBEELENG. 27 
 
 days of discrimination and protection against foreign rivalry, 
 and then adducing the fact in support of his theory of free trade. 
 It is somewhat astounding to have such an argument thrust 
 upon us, because we are really not prepared for it. It is tak 
 ing us upon our strong suit ; it is, in fact, trumping our lead. 
 But perhaps we are mistaken, and have been all along, in 
 the error of imagining that free trade meant a trade free of 
 protecting duties, while, on the contrary, it meant a trade free 
 to us, and shut up to all the world beside. We ask pardon. 
 But our further examination does not clear up the difficulty, 
 for Mr. Cambreleng has discovered, that ever since the Con 
 vention of London the tables have been turned and our navi 
 gation has been on the decline, or at best but stationary, while 
 the British has been leaping forward with the bound of the 
 greyhound ; indeed, as Mr. Cambreleng observes, " She is 
 even overhauling our own navigation in the direct trade with 
 that country." 
 
 Now it would occur, we think, to a direct mind, to attribute 
 these effects to the most proximate and intelligible cause. We 
 should say, that for the first period above mentioned, the pro 
 tection of American industry, in all the branches of navigation, 
 afforded by the plain, solid and unequivocal tariff of 1790, gave 
 an advantage to this interest which secured it from all foreign 
 competition ; while the repeal of this tariff, by the Convention 
 of London, took away this protection and exposed our naviga 
 tion to all the dangers of a fearful competition with a vigorous 
 and sagacious rival. It is true, that during the first period, Ihe 
 system was not extended in any striking degree beyond our 
 navigation : and the expediency of that was obvious. Our po 
 sition as a neutral, among a world of belligerents, pointed out 
 to us the wisdom of gathering in the harvest of commerce. 
 Our population was small, our agriculture not overstocked, and 
 our markets good ; why seek new sources of industry when 
 there were no idle hands ? why desert a field, which was left 
 for our reaping, until it might be too late to gather the crop ? 
 We were well we could not be better. We owed no Dart 
 
28 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 of our success to free trade, except to that sort of free trade 
 which consisted in having it all to ourselves. The principle of 
 reciprocity had gone to the winds, it never entered into our 
 imaginations. The world was busy in cutting each other s 
 throats, and we were busy in keeping them alive. 
 
 But in 1815, a new state of things presented itself. Our 
 rulers how wisely, we leave Mr. Cambreleng to determine 
 chose to let go the restrictions, and we entered, once more, 
 upon the theatre of commerce, with as different sensations as 
 those with which Henry Morton visited the Bothwell-brig after 
 his return. The same zeal that had before pursued the en 
 grossing purpose of war, was now displayed in the sunshiny 
 enterprise of peace. Our productions increased with our pop 
 ulation ; we had left off carrying the products of other na 
 tions, and were anxious even for the privilege of carrying our 
 own ; our exports multiplied in quantity, and diminished in 
 value,* and our importations exceeded them in amounts that 
 fastened upon us heavy debts, which we could only pay in 
 specie. Our gold and silver took wing ; and the withdrawal 
 of these sentinels of our paper currency, gave that imprisoned 
 creation the free scope of the air. It pervaded all space, af 
 fected all values, and brought on that pestilence of unwhole 
 some credits, that had nearly overwhelmed the nation. In this 
 state of things, we were forced to turn to our reserved sources 
 of prosperity. The tariff of 1816 is not deserving of consider 
 ation as a measure of protection. It was in its greatest bear 
 ing but a measure of revenue. It was, in fact, but the reduc 
 tion of the war rates, and those unfortunate beings, who were 
 deluded into the belief that it was capable of protecting an ex- 
 
 * Cotton has always been our chief export. The following state 
 ment will show the increase in quantity and diminution in value. 
 We compute by millions without referring to the fractions. 
 
 1807 Exports of cotton. 60.000.000 of Ibs. value $14.000,000 
 
 1815 
 
 1820 
 
 1823 " 
 
 1825 u 
 
 82,000,000 
 
 17,000,000 
 
 127.000.000 
 
 * 22.000,000 
 
 173.000,000 
 
 20.000.000 
 
 176,000.000 
 
 3fi.000.000 
 
 204,000,000 
 
 25,000,000 
 
REVIEW OF CAMBBELEBTG. 29 
 
 pensive infant manufacture, learned wisdom at the most dread 
 ful temporal sacrifices. As, however, these great interests of 
 the country found favor in the sight of the Government, and 
 the successive improvements of subsequent legislation upon 
 them, began to be felt, the nation steadily revived under the 
 process ; and every year a new impulse was given to the most 
 valuable of our energies. Notwithstanding the effect of British 
 competition upon our tonnage, and the increase of the ratio of 
 that portion of their shipping employed in our trade, our own 
 navigation vigorously and rapidly augmented. We say this, 
 in the face of Mr. Cambreleng s assertions to the contrary. 
 We shall, in the sequel of our remarks, make good our ground. 
 For the present, our inquiry is confined to an investigation of 
 the principles of free trade. 
 
 So far as this investigation goes, we think we are warranted 
 in concluding, that Mr. Cambreleng s vision of non-restriction 
 will prove to be somewhat like that of Mr. Huskisson, with the 
 exception, that it does not extend to the protection of any in 
 dustry but that employed in navigation ; and we are mainly 
 doubtful if his measures are even the best for that. His will, 
 however, is good, and we sincerely believe that he is quite in 
 earnest in his zeal to increase our commerce. He is an en 
 thusiastic merchant, and the most zealous of New Yorkers. 
 He has a natural tide-water liking about him ; is in ectasies 
 with the thought of increased commissions, and sedately intent 
 in his project of converting New York into Liverpool even 
 by the transfer of the population. His whole conceptions of 
 national prosperity are summed up in a compendious system 
 of fetch and carry. He would like to carry every thing raw 
 across the ocean, and bring back every thing made up. It 
 would delight him to have the flour of New York baked in 
 London. All the sinew and muscle of the country, in his esti 
 mation, are concentrated in her tars, her wealth in her ships, 
 and her gentlemen in her factors. Five pei cent, for selling, 
 and two and a half for buying are the most exquisite of domes 
 tic operations ; and long speeches, about free trade, the most 
 
30 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 charming of diversions. We do not feel inclined to interfere 
 with his tastes, nor would we disparage the lofty pretensions 
 of our good friends in Gotham, but we are not quite so liberal 
 in our prejudices in her favor. We think it a fallacious idea, 
 that our navigation is our greatest interest. We do not think its 
 rise or decline " the index of our national prosperity and pow 
 er." We have no fears of our commercial marine, nor of our 
 want of a vigorous, brave and triumphant navy. We see no 
 reason to believe that either the one or the other will be prej 
 udiced by the protective system. On the contrary, we are 
 convinced that their surest reliance and most healthful nurse 
 will be found in that very system. Navigation is the handmaid 
 of manufactures, it is an arm, and a valuable one, of our pow 
 er, but it is neither the head nor the body. It can only flour 
 ish upon the cultivation of our other sources of industry ; and 
 notwithstanding the hypochondriacal auguries, and ill-omened 
 sighs of Mr. Cambreleng over the departing vigor of this stur 
 dy and gallant concern, we have seen it, and still see it, in 
 creasing with an exulting step. Our coasting tonnage moves 
 like a giant, and our foreign, with the occasional fluctuations 
 of different years, advances to its destinies with a stride that 
 already has struck many a fearful misgiving into the hearts of 
 our rivals. We say this, for the comfort of Mr. Cambreleng, 
 and with some hope that it may reconcile him to the perverse 
 destiny of looking upon a prosperous commerce lifting its head 
 from the midst of the phantoms of the protective system. 
 
 With these remarks, we take our leave of Mr. Huskisson s 
 and Mr. Cambreleng s free trade, having persuaded ourselves 
 that, in regard to the system of Great Britain, they have both 
 been guilty of a misnomer. We have found nothing to give us 
 a just notion of its applicability to human affairs. We end our 
 search where we began. It is a chimera ; a pleasant diversion 
 of the philosophers to amuse an idle hour ; an article of faith 
 with Mr. Cambreleng ; and a hoax with Mr. Huskisson. It is 
 the Bottle Imp, which every man persuades his neighbor to 
 buy, and which no man is willing to keep ; constantly falling 
 
REVIEW OF CAMBRELENG. 31 
 
 in value and never bringing what it costs ; a fruitful instrument 
 of juggle, that consigns the unfortunate wight that holds it, at 
 the lowest farthing, to the power of the fiend. " Miscreant dev 
 il ! if I again call on thee for thy services, it is that I may rid 
 myself of thee forever !" We would give our country the ben 
 efit of the moral " touch not, taste not I 1 
 
 We have much more interest in analyzing Mr. Cambreleng s 
 argument upon the tariff, and we approach this task better sat 
 isfied with the undertaking, because, however ambiguous the 
 doctrines of the learned chairman, and the followers of his 
 school may be, on the subject of free trade, their objections 
 against the tariff are, at least, intelligible. We have no diffi 
 culty in understanding their import. It is a question of opin 
 ions and facts ; of predictions and results, and we can compare 
 them. 
 
 It is worth while remarking the amount of promiscuous ob 
 loquy that has been cast upon this measure, and that has as 
 sailed it in every stage of its growth ; and how like a plant of 
 stubborn virtue it has grown in spite of tempest and foul weath 
 er. If half that is said of it were true, it is one of the most per 
 vading causes in nature. Do prices rise or sink, or a bank break 
 or a factory fall, or a merchant overtrade himself and burst, 
 by repletion, or under trade and collapse by attenuation, the 
 earth multiply her abundance or refuse her stores, the peo 
 ple emigrate or stand still, our rivals starve or prosper, it is 
 all resolvable into the tariff. It meets all emergencies, sup 
 ports all theories, consorts with every possible state of facts, 
 and furnishes a compendious and universal solution of all diffi 
 culties. There is, nevertheless, one thing perplexing about it: 
 in spite of persuasion and prophecy, it obstinately refuses to 
 check the growth of internal improvement, to lessen our com 
 merce, to rob the revenue, or even to starve the people. Our 
 state physicians are constantly feeling the public pulse and 
 holding consultations upon the case ; it is hard for them to 
 determine whether we get better or worse. Their embarrass 
 ments are full as vexatious as that of the worthy leech whose 
 
32 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 patient exhibited the anomalous symptoms described in the fol 
 lowing summary : " Doctor, I eat well, drink well, and sleep 
 well; what can be the occasion of it?" 
 
 The reply may be equally as applicable in the mouths of 
 our friends : 
 
 " Ah, my dear sir, I will give you something to cure all 
 that." 
 
 We are not quite sure, that on the subject of the tariff, Mr. 
 Cambreleng will be considered the oracle of the party, always 
 excepting the City of Gotham, where we do not venture to ques 
 tion his authenticity, but of the anti-tariff party at large ; 
 that numerous and respectable portion of our fellow-citizens, 
 who object to the tariff policy from all the different considera 
 tions that general, personal, local and peculiar interests have 
 conspired to collect ; a body of malcontents on sundry grounds. 
 One party objecting, because it does not protect equally ; a sec 
 ond because it protects at all ; a third, because it is against their 
 private interests ; a fourth, because it is against the Constitution ; 
 a fifth, because it is against General Jackson ; and a sixth, a 
 small, and simple party, because it is against Adam Smith ! 
 although it is obvious that Mr. Cambreleng s objections are 
 intended to cover the whole ground. He holds with them 
 all, and takes it to be, in whatsoever regard it may be con 
 sidered, altogether a thing accursed ; desecrated to the full 
 measure of the malediction upon Obadiah, "for tying these 
 knots." 
 
 It is our purpose to bring these several opinions of Mr. 
 Cambreleng into array, in order that we may test them by 
 the evidence to which they appeal, and by their relation 
 ship to each other. The report has the merit, except in 
 but few particulars, of being clear and intelligible in its lan 
 guage. It exhibits the intrepidity of assertion that belongs 
 to a writer who is proud of his responsibility, and means to 
 stand by it : we run the less risk, therefore, of misrepresent 
 ing him. His principles may be comprehended in the follow 
 ing points : 
 
REVIEW OF CAMBKELENG. 33 
 
 1. The doctrine that " restrictions are the best means of 
 permanently securing cheap commodities," is an antiquated 
 absurdity. (vide p. 5.) 
 
 2. That the protective system has been prejudicial to our 
 own domestic industry, which " would go far towards furnish 
 ing our own supplies under a system of imposts, high enough 
 to encourage manufactures, but not so high as to encourage 
 gambling." (p. 8.) 
 
 3. That it is utterly incompatible with our confederated form 
 of government. (p. 14.) 
 
 4. That restraints on foreign commerce diminish the value 
 of agricultural produce. (p. 6.) 
 
 5. That they tend to increase the tide of emigration, and 
 are now reducing the New England States to a condition " as 
 unimportant as any one of the members of the German con 
 federacy." (p. 6.) 
 
 6. That the protective system has given rise to a most 
 formidable contraband trade, while, at the same time, it has 
 encouraged monopolies, diminished consumption, and op 
 pressed the poorer classes of society with grievous burdens. 
 (p. 12, 27 et passim.) 
 
 7. That it is destructive to navigation, and has given us 
 ground to fear that our naval ascendancy is far in the rear of 
 all our rivals. (p. 18.) 
 
 8. " That no nation, whether of Europe or America, can 
 contend, in manufactures, with Great Britain," (p. 7.) and 
 that " the only result of our taxation must be to perpetuate the 
 ascendancy, even in our own markets, of the manufactures of 
 that nation." (p. 9.) 
 
 9. That notwithstanding all our legislation, we are as little 
 of a manufacturing people now, as we were at the adoption of 
 the constitution (p. 6) and that " ours is essentially an ag 
 ricultural people." (p. 7.) 
 
 10. And, finally, that our tariff is injurious to every i..tei- 
 est, and to every section of the country. (p. 8.) 
 
 Such are the cardinal points in the creed of Mr. Cambrel- 
 
34 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 eng, and generally, we believe, of those who style themselves 
 the advocates of free trade. 
 
 It is not our intention to enter into a large discussion of 
 all, or any of these dogmas. No question that has ever risen 
 in America has been more fully debated, than every thing that 
 appertains to the protective system. It has, literally, been 
 drained dry : and, we think, there never was a controversy in 
 which the force of argument was more overwhelming. The 
 friends of the present system have uniformly met the vague, 
 contradictory and indefinite theories of their opponents, with 
 sound conclusions, tested by the experience of the most en 
 lightened nations, and fortified by the constant accumulation 
 of present facts. It has been the singular fate of the advo 
 cates of free trade, to witness, in the short career of our own 
 experience, the successive demolition of every ground upon 
 which they have entrenched themselves : they have been 
 floored in every bout. Not one prediction has been verified ; 
 not one assertion made good ; not one citadel maintained. 
 Our evils, according to these gentlemen, are yet to fall upon 
 us : accidental combinations have hitherto occurred to with 
 hold the storm that they have prophecied for us. Even Mr. 
 Cambreleng, who banquets with the gust of an epicure, upon 
 any present horror, is obliged to feast on the hope of coming 
 distresses. His sympathies are, mostly in anticipation : he is 
 condolatory in advance : his sighs are not at sight. He en 
 joys, therefore, his present minor afflictions with the certainty 
 of a reversion of ill humor which, we predict, is forever fated 
 to follow his jack-o -lantern fancies at a distance that can never 
 be diminished. 
 
 Our business, for the present, is to deal with his facts. 
 
 The opponents of the protective system certainly contend 
 at great disadvantage, because they contend against the uni 
 versal testimony of nations. They are unable to afford the 
 world the lights of experience. While, on the other side, it is 
 in our power to meet them with the perplexing interrogatory, 
 Why is it that these sublimated speculations have. been con- 
 
REVIEW OF CAMBRELENG. 
 
 35 
 
 stantly urged upon us by those who have all the power to 
 adopt them, themselves, in practice, under the most favorable 
 circumstances, and who yet eschew them with the same cir 
 cumspect avoidance as the veriest ravings of the most danger 
 ous philosophy ? Why is it, that Great Britain, with a capital 
 as powerful as the lever of Archimedes, with the very perfec 
 tion of human craft, and with the most intelligent conductors 
 of human industry, has ever been distinguished for the zeal 
 with which she has descanted upon the captivations of this 
 theory, and yet has never approximated to a recognition of it 
 in any one period of her history ? 
 
 It is remarkable, that she has never yet seen a nation de 
 vote her attention to manufactures, that she did not straight 
 way resort to every expedient of diplomacy, persuasion or 
 force, to induce her to an abandonment of the purpose all, if 
 we could trust to the sincerity of her professions, for the pur 
 pose of improving the happiness and comfort of her rivals. 
 She has occasionally succeeded in the effort, and her victims 
 have uniformly found out their errors in aggravated domestic 
 calamity, and, sometimes, in the total overthrow of their best 
 interest* 
 
 She is now playing the same game with us. The American 
 tariff has waked up the slumbering serpent of Britain ; a ser 
 pent that is never seen to move while the British protective 
 systems are unthreatened from abroad, but which is never 
 quiet when England s enemies are guilty of the heresy of fol 
 lowing her example. 
 
 But to proceed to our examination : 
 
 * Of this, the Methuen treaty, concluded in 1703, with Portugal, 
 is a most conspicuous example. (Vide " Pope s British Merchant," vol. 
 iii. p. 76, and " Wealth of Nations," book iv. c. 3.) That nation, with a 
 prosperous and valuable system of manufactures, was persuaded into 
 this treaty, of three short articles, by which she surrendered the 
 right of restricting British manufactures. Her story is briefly told. 
 A thriving nation was reduced to bankruptcy, and a state of depend 
 ence worse than colonial vassalage. Mr. Methuen was applauded, 
 and the poor Portuguese laughed at. " Equo, ne credito Teucri !" 
 
36 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 Mr. Cambreleng s declarations are over-bold. The " anti 
 quated absurdity" of which he speaks in the first opinion that 
 we have imputed to him, is, to say the least of it, not an obso 
 lete one. It is consecrated by the names of the most eminent 
 statesmen of both hemispheres. The very proposition to which 
 he applies it, is, in terms, the proposition of General Hamil 
 ton.* It is the avowed doctrine of Mr. Huskisson : the " ab 
 surdity" upon which England has advanced to empire, and 
 now holds the scales of power for the world : certainly the 
 most fashionable and reputable of absurdities. It is, as we 
 affirm, the principle which has operated to preserve the ener 
 gies of our own people amidst that mighty conflict of civil 
 ized nations for supremacy, in the present peace of mankind, 
 and without which we should have sunk into the inconsidera 
 ble power that Mr. Cambreleng believes us to be. But, above 
 all, it is " an absurdity" which, if we understand Mr. Cambrel 
 eng aright, has the respectable sanction of his own name in 
 its support. His second proposition above quoted, affirms the 
 very principle : " our manufactures would go far towards our 
 own supply, under a system of imposts high enough to encour 
 age manufactures, but not so high as to encourage " gambling." 
 We ask for no more than a system to encourage our manufac 
 tures, and our difference with Mr. C., it seems, is not at last 
 one of principle, but one of degree. It is no more our wish to 
 encourage gambling than it is his. We may have different 
 notions of the rate of imposts necessary for the purpose of en 
 couragement, but we entirely accord in doctrine. We must be 
 
 * We quote from the Report on Manufactures (page 212, Phila. 
 edition). " But though it were true that the immediate and certain 
 effect of regulations controlling the competition of foreign with do 
 mestic fabrics was an increase of price, it is universally true that the 
 contrary is the ultimate effect with every successful manufacture. 
 When a domestic manufacture has attained to perfection, and lias 
 engaged in the prosecution of it a competent number of persons, it 
 invariably becomes cheaper !" " It can be afforded and accordingly 
 seldom or never fails to be sold cheaper than was the foreign article 
 for which it is a substitute." 
 
REVIEW OF CAMBRELENG. 37 
 
 permitted to say, however, that this seems to be a concession 
 on the part of Mr. C. very much at variance with his first 
 principle, and entirely subversive of his doctrine in regard to 
 the constitutionality of the measure, expressed in the third. It 
 is a concession wrung from him by the invincible testimony of 
 the facts : one that, as an American and a statesman, he could 
 not, in candor, withhold. There are some branches of our 
 protected manufactures, that it would be the rashest folly and 
 most culpable ignorance to say, have derived no benefit from 
 the protective system of this country. Our plain cottons, Mr. 
 C. is obliged to confess, form an exception lo the evils enu 
 merated in the train of our protective system and it is too 
 obvious for him, or any one else, to deny that our manufac 
 tures from leather, tin, copper, furs, and a host of other arti 
 cles, have risen to a degree of prosperity that protects them 
 forever from the competition of any rivals not under the 5 
 and 7^ per cent, tariff of 1790 but under the 10, 15 and 30 
 per cent, tariffs of 1794, 1816, 1820 and 1824. If Mr. Cam- 
 breleng means to say that this is his free-trade system why, 
 then, we shall hold it in more esteem. It is nearer in its re 
 semblance to the free trade of Mr. Huskisson, and precisely 
 in keeping with the free trade which, Mr. Cambreleng has 
 shown, worked such wonders in favor of our navigation, up to 
 1807. But, we must tell him, it is not the free trade of Adam 
 Smith, the Edinburg Review, and Mr. Ricardo the short com- 
 pend of whose doctrine is, " that the manufacture which can 
 subsist without protection, does not want it, and that which 
 cannot, does not deserve it." He may quibble with us, per 
 haps, on the difference between encouragement and protection. 
 As to the constitutional question, we can draw no distinc 
 tion. If it be unlawful in Congress to protect, it is equally un 
 lawful to encourage. The constitution does not deal with de 
 grees it gives all or none. But the distinction is equally fu 
 tile in. every other sense. To encourage our manufactures, 
 you must protect them. The very encouragement is depend 
 ent upon the protection. No man will venture his capital into 
 
POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 trade under the inducements furnished by the government for 
 his encouragement, but with the guarantee of their protection. 
 It would be a system of the most dishonorable and treacher 
 ous cruelty to extend encouragement on any other terms. It 
 would be like encouraging our population to cultivate the In 
 dian frontier, and deserting them upon the first incursion of 
 the savages. It is a practical absurdity a most pernicious 
 sophism. 
 
 *&& fourth, fifth and ninth principles in the creed of Mr. 
 Cambreleng, as we have stated them, fare no better than his 
 first and second. 
 
 They stand in the like attitude of hostility. " The restraints 
 on foreign commerce diminish the value of agricultural pro 
 duce ! and they increase the tide of emigration from the New 
 England States to the west." 
 
 " Ours is essentially an agricultural people." And "we 
 are as little of a manufacturing people now as we were at the 
 adoption of the constitution !" 
 
 Mr. Cambreleng everywhere treats the protective system 
 as one destined to raise State monopolies an odious taxing of 
 the many for the benefit of the few a plan to enrich one portion 
 of the Union at the expense of the rest. (See p. n, 12.) 
 Now, if this be true, we would ask where do these monopolies 
 exist ? and of what character are they ? If in the manufactures 
 created by the protective system, how can they be monopolies, 
 when Mr. C. tells us they would have been more numerous 
 and prosperous without the tariff than with it (page 6) ? and 
 that "we have been steadily sacrificing the commerce, naviga 
 tion and capital of New England, merely to bring forward new 
 competitors in manfacturing, to embarrass our old and skilful 
 artisans, , and to ruin themselves" (page 2). If this be crea 
 ting monopoly, it looks very much like the reverse. If discour 
 aging manufactures by ruinous duties, and bringing new com 
 petitors into the field to contend against the old ones, be a 
 monopolizing system, we have always been under a misappre 
 hension of the terms. 
 
REVIEW OF CAMBRELENG. 39 
 
 This cry of monopoly is very stale, and quite unworthy the 
 respectable character of Mr. Cambreleng s mind. There is no 
 feature, as he himself has shown, of monopoly about it. There 
 are no individuals nor companies invested with exclusive priv 
 ileges. There are no overgrown capitals to frown down the 
 attempts of the feeble. The field of competition is as open as 
 the native atmosphere, and the results have been so far from 
 those of a monopoly, that the well known cause of much of the 
 present distress among our manufacturers, and the unquestion 
 able source of that astonishing decline of prices, of which Mr. 
 Cambreleng speaks, is the extraordinary and unparalleled ac 
 tivity with which the ground of domestic manufacture has been 
 occupied by artisans of all classes, degrees and size. Scarce 
 ly a mill seat has been found, in the last ten years, in those re 
 gions of our country suited to manufacturing, and especially in 
 New England, that has not been seized upon by the greedy en 
 terprise of our industrious manufacturers.* Villages have 
 sprung up under its influence : the waste has been turned into 
 a garden ; the unoccupied and profitless population of the coun 
 try, have found labor and reward at their hands, and the 
 most happy and joyous changes have occurred in the condi 
 tion of thousands of helpless families. Whatever effect has re 
 sulted from the tariff policy, upon the success of the capitalist ; 
 however it may have trenched upon the established channels 
 of commerce, there is but one opinion throughout the Union 
 
 * It is somewhat remarkable, that the smaller manufacturing es 
 tablishments in the United States, have suffered the least from the 
 severe competition of the last year, and have bent before the storm 
 tliat has overwhelmed sturdier antagonists. The difficulties of Con 
 necticut, where there are, we believe, no large establishments, have 
 been comparatively unfelt and, generally, the moderate capitalists 
 have at least saved themselves. 
 
 Manufactures are also making their way into the South. We 
 understand that at this time an extensive cotton establishment is 
 about removing from Delaware into South Carolina. There is more 
 than one Oasis, too, in the anti-tariff desert of Virginia. Principles 
 will travel with machinery. 
 
40 POLITICAL PAPER?. 
 
 of the accumulated benefits it has dispensed upon our poorer 
 population, and of the utter absence of any one consequence 
 belonging to a monopoly. It is well enough that Adam Smith, 
 and other European writers should inveigh against the monop 
 olies with which they were conversant ; against the mischiefs 
 of old establishments, invested by royal charter with exclusive 
 privileges, or guarded, with all the force of parchment, against 
 the competition which has always proved so beneficial to the 
 arts ; but it is very unbecoming an American statesman, and 
 a philosopher, to press their sensible and well founded reproofs 
 into a service that affords no one point of resemblance or appli 
 cation. Such an effort is as discreditable to the judgment of 
 the man who makes it, as the argument, that because Great 
 Britain can manufacture wool with a protection of 15 per cent. 
 America can do it with 30 ! 
 
 But, there is one thing still more striking about this : why 
 is it that the population of New England should emigrate to the 
 agricultural districts, with all the inducements of this monopoly 
 to keep them at home ? and that when, as the chairman in 
 forms us, agricultural products are diminishing in value. The 
 people of New England are charged with a disposition to fly 
 to the agricultural districts at some thousand miles off, and 
 to encounter all the privations of a country which has scarcely 
 a market for any thing, and which pays double for every thing 
 imported, at a time when agricultural products are diminishing 
 in value, and to fly, too, from a quarter of the Union enjoying 
 the exclusive privileges of monopoly ? We insist upon it, Mr. C. 
 must give us up the reduction in the value of agricultural prod 
 uct, the monopoly, or the emigration. We think inquiry will 
 show that he is entitled to neither of them. As to the monop 
 oly^ Mr. C. cannot seriously urge it The emigration from 
 New England caused by the tariff he has asserted with some 
 emphasis, and has attempted to prove it by reference to the 
 census. His argument upon this subject is as flimsy as a 
 piece of Manchester cotton made to resemble American as 
 his own svstem fabricated after Mr. Huskisson s ! It is this : 
 
REVIEW OF CAMBRELENG. 41 
 
 The decline of population began with our restrictions in 1807. 
 .From 1790 to 1800, the increase in New England was 226,036 ; 
 from 1800 to 1810, 239,883 ; from 1810 to 1820, 188,154; 
 and up to 1828, 152,616. The ratio, he admits, might diminish, 
 " but it is evident that the amount of the increase ought to 
 have been greater in every succeeding ten years, instead of 
 declining as it has done uniformly since 1807." We presume 
 that Mr. Cambreleng will not dispute with us the proposition, 
 that a small population will increase in a greater ratio, though 
 not in greater "numbers, than a large. A man and his wife 
 may contrive to double their population in two. years, but he 
 will be an active settler, and his wife as valuable a dame as 
 the help-mate of Reuben Ring, in Cooper s romance, if he be 
 as successful in the next two years ; and nothing but a miracle 
 could assist him in the third series. Mr. Cambreleng admits 
 this, but he couples it with the remark, that " // is evident the 
 amount ought to be greater in every succeeding ten years." 
 We would ask the learned chairman, in what State the amount 
 has been greater in each succeeding ten years ? We answer 
 for him ; but one State in the Union, and that, Vermont. In 
 the last eight years, every State in the Union, with that ex 
 ception, has been declining in ratio and amount ; even the 
 great States of Ohio and New York ; and they, more than 
 others, for the very reason that they are great States. Until 
 the period assigned to the restrictions (1807), we had no large 
 new States ; the most of them were established after 1810. 
 Since that time, about 300,000 square miles have been opened 
 to emigration, and the population which has migrated thither 
 has gone, principally, between 1810 and 1820, and at this 
 time amounts to about 600,000. Now, the emigration has not 
 been in a greater ratio from New England than from the other 
 States ; for New England has actually increased in population 
 in a greater ratio than New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Vir 
 ginia and North Carolina, notwithstanding that her family is 
 larger and more thickly settled ; a circumstance that would, 
 of course, lessen the ratio. The conclusion, therefore, from 
 
42 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 the census proves nothing, or it proves too much. It proves 
 as much against the vigorous communities of Ohio and New- 
 York, as against New England ; and yet no one will believe 
 Mr. C. when he assures us that the population of these two 
 States is suffering from the restraints on commerce. 
 
 The truth is, Mr. Cambreleng is altogether mistaken in 
 imputing the common necessary emigration of New England, 
 with her present dense population, to any cause connected 
 with the tariff. There is great reason to believe that more 
 persons leave New England to pursue mechanic arts than 
 agriculture ; and the most thriving manufacturing establish 
 ments, in the new States, will be found, generally, in the hands 
 of the emigrants from New England. The western country is 
 every year becoming a more comfortable region, and the in 
 ducements to emigration, therefore, are continually multiply 
 ing ; as much in aid of the extension of the manufacturing 
 system, as of the cultivation of the soil. If any thing has 
 arrested this tide of emigration, it is to be found in the manu 
 factures ; the employment they have afforded, and the com 
 forts they have dispensed, superseding, in a vast number of 
 cases, the necessity of removal.* 
 
 To say " that ours is essentially an agricultural people," 
 is an unmeaning generality. We are essentially whatever the 
 occasion makes us ; bent by no national habitudes to any 
 particular species of labor, but remarkable, throughout the 
 \\orld, for our facile and dexterous versatility in any calling ; 
 and there never was a nation so well fitted to raise them 
 selves out of that class which Smith and Say both denomi 
 nate the beggarly countries ; countries addicted to agriculture, 
 and dependent upon foreigners. But Mr. C., who is fated to 
 afford every variety of self-contradiction, and whose report is 
 " compact of jars" to a degree that we have never seen in the 
 
 * Indeed, Mr. Hayne has charged upon the New England States 
 the encouragement of the protective system, with tins very purpose 
 of repressing emigration to the west. (See his last speech.) The 
 professors disagree ! 
 
REVIEW OF CAMBKELENG. 43 
 
 most hurried performance, is not consistent even in this simple 
 declaration. It suits his argument, more than once, to repre 
 sent us in another light. We are sometimes naturally a com 
 mercial country (p. 21). And again; we are a people of 
 such strong propensity for manufacturing, as even prematurely 
 to engage in it (p. 6). 
 
 We think, however, that we have said enough to show 
 that Mr. Cambreleng is entitled neither to the emigration of 
 New England, nor to the monopoly, in his argument against 
 the tariff ; and, it would seem, that he has as little claim to 
 set down the diminution in the value of agricultural products 
 to that source. Indeed, his own argument upon emigration 
 ought to have solved that problem for him. The cotton 
 planters have about the same sort of monopoly that the manu 
 facturers have ; and the consequences have been exactly the 
 same. Nature has imposed her protection on the product, 
 and the monopolists have increased so rapidly, that the com 
 petition has furnished a tenfold supply. Upwards of one hun 
 dred thousand square miles of land have been opened to the 
 planters, and the quantity of the material has increased from 
 about 20,000,000 of pounds in 1800, to 294,000,000 in 1827. 
 As it is the natural tendency of all competition to bring down 
 price, we have at once a short explanation of the diminution 
 of value of which Mr. Cambreleng speaks. It is needless 
 to look beyond this cause, for it is entirely adequate to the 
 effect ; and it does seem to us to argue a perversity of preju 
 dice, to travel to so remote and uncertain a source as the 
 supposed unfriendliness of the protective system to population, 
 to escape so simple a conclusion. Indeed, to our concep 
 tions, it seems particularly unfortunate in the argument, be 
 cause we could not imagine any device better calculated to 
 prevent this overstocking of the agricultural class than the 
 manufacturing system, and, especially, that kind of manufac 
 ture which consumes, in immense quantities, this very product. 
 All the economists argue strongly in favor of manufactures, 
 none more than Adam Smith, from their admirable adaptation 
 
44 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 to consume the accumulations of agriculture.* The only 
 question they have entertained was, whether manufactures 
 will not grow better without protection than with it, but of the 
 importance of their growth, and their singularly prosperous 
 influence upon a home market, we do not remember ever to 
 have read a dissenting opinion. We take it for granted, that 
 Mr. C. himself has no disposition to controvert this point 
 with us, and that he would rather endeavor to make good 
 his case by asserting, that there were actually no manufactures 
 in New England. He firmly believes that our manufactures 
 have not grown up under the influence of the tariff; but, in 
 fact, have been rather repressed and hindered by it. When 
 he proves this point to the satisfaction of one intelligent 
 friend, on his own side of the question, we shall, perhaps, 
 examine his documents, and attempt to entertain him with 
 some further extracts from the report, upon the injury done 
 to commerce by the immense diversion of capital into new 
 channels of industry upon his horror of monopolies, and 
 other matter connected therewith. For the present, we will 
 
 * Smith and Say both descant upon the value of manufactures, as 
 essential to the prosperity and greatness of a nation. They in common 
 with other economists, agree in calling the manufacturing, the rich 
 nations, and the agricultural the poor. Even Dr. Cooper (in his 
 speech at Columbia, July, 1827), does homage to the great importance 
 of this interest, and its claims to encouragement and protection. We 
 will spare the Doctor any reference to his commendations of the 
 restrictive system in 1813. He has repented of that, and sung his 
 palinode. We cannot say we are sorry for it. 
 
 Adam Smith goes further upon this subject than is generally be 
 lieved of him : as the following extract will show : 
 
 " From the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth, too, the English 
 Legislature has been peculiarly attentive to the interests of com 
 merce and manufactures ; and, in reality, there is no country in 
 Europe, Holland itself, not excepted, of which the law is, upon the 
 whole, more favorable to this sort of industry." Wealth of Na 
 tions, Hartford Edition, p. 325. 
 
 What country has been more severe in restrictions than England 
 or Holland ? 
 
REVIEW OF CAMBRELENG. 45 
 
 e en rest in the faith that there are some few manufacturing 
 establishments erected in the United States ; and that they 
 do consume kome portions of cotton, of grain, and other agri 
 cultural products. Lord Peter shall never persuade us that 
 bread is any thing but bread ! 
 
 We, therefore, dismiss this branch of the report, and take 
 the liberty to say that we presume the learned chairman means 
 merely to be pleasant, when he tells us that " notwithstanding 
 all our legislation, we are as little of a manufacturing people 
 now as we were at the adoption of the Constitution !" 
 
 Upon the sixth proposition Mr. C. has made a display wor 
 thy of himself and his subject. If we had not already become 
 familiar with the cast of his mind, we should stand aghast 
 with his deductions upon this point. It presents one of the 
 most tremendous explosions of opinion that has ever burst 
 upon the people of this land. The worthy chairman has fairly 
 wrought himself up into the true Munchausen vein, when he 
 descants upon the vigor of our contraband trade. It is impos 
 sible, he tells us, " to measure the extent of a trade, the exist 
 ence of which depends on secrecy and despatch ; but we may 
 form some opinion of its growth, by contrasting our present 
 duties, revenue and population, with those which existed more 
 than twenty years ago. Under our former moderate duties, 
 the net revenue from customs had risen to sixteen millions an 
 nually. The ten preceding years, from 1818 to 1827 inclu 
 sive, averaged about eighteen millions annually, although we 
 had, in the mean time, doubled our population and our duties. 
 Had our consumption continued to increase, even in a ratio to 
 our population, and had our high duties been enforced, instead 
 of eighteen, we ought now to have collected an annual reve 
 nue of forty or fifty millions" (p. 26). From all which he 
 has brought himself to the modest conviction, that our smug 
 gling at present strips the revenue of about TWENTY OR 
 THIRTY MILLIONS annually !!! Bravo ! And all this 
 from the tariff. The country owes her everlasting gratitude 
 to Mr. Cambreleng for this valuable discovery. 
 
46 
 
 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 Not to be behindhand with him in zeal to open the eyes 
 of our countrymen, we shall improve upon the hint he has 
 given us, and endeavor to construct a table to show the amount 
 that has been smuggled into the United States: taking his 
 $16,000,000 of customs in 1807 as zero, and rising with the 
 population. 
 
 In 1818 the customs amounted to The smuggling was 
 
 upwards of 17 millions. then about 8 millions. 
 
 1819 ... 20 "..... 6 
 
 1820 . ; 15 " 12 
 
 1821 ... 13 " 15 
 
 1822 . .17 " . . . . - .- *. 13 
 
 1823 . ... 19 " . . . . ...... 14 
 
 1824 . . 17 " . . V . . . 17 
 
 1825 . . .20 " . . . . .16 
 
 1826 . ; ; 23 " . : ;s . : I* ; -. !; . " . 15 
 
 1827 .-. .19 " ; . " :.- . . 20 
 
 1828 . .23 " . V\ fll . ; . ;. : -.; 16 
 
 Total in 11 years, . T . ;; . ! . "V . 152 
 
 The Exchequer robbed of one hundred and fifty-two mil 
 lions since 1818 ! What a lesson for the enthusiasts upon re 
 publican virtue ! What an exhibition of mercantile patriotism ! 
 What a commentary upon a custom-house oath ! And, above 
 all, what a magnificent idea for Mr. Cambreleng s brain! 
 and yet, with this awful display before him, the worthy chair 
 man is of opinion (after Mr. Huskisson), that a maximum duty 
 of thirty per cent, ad valorem, has been ascertained to be, " af 
 ter centuries of experience, the safest for the revenue, and the 
 best for manfactures" (p. 38). Why, sir, the duties up to 1824 
 were not even as high, in most cases, as 30 per cent ; and yet, 
 in the seven years under those rates, it seems (upon the au 
 thority of the committee) that we smuggled with as keen a rel 
 ish as we have ever done since. There were up to that period 
 95,000,000, unlawfully purloined from the Treasury ! And what 
 must have been the amount of merchandise thus surreptitious 
 ly introduced. In 1825 the imports were valued at $96,000,- 
 
KEVIEW OF CAMBREL ENG. 47 
 
 ooo : and that sum only yielded 20,000,000 of customs. At 
 this rate the 95,000,000, out of which the government was de 
 frauded, in the seven years of thirty per cent, duties, must 
 have represented merchandise to the value of let us see : 
 If 20 give 96, what will 95 give ? four hundred and forty three 
 millions of dollars ! And the whole 152 give us seven hundred 
 and twenty-two millions of dollars worth of goods let into the 
 country in eleven years by stealth ! It is, really, time to 
 change our system ! 
 
 But, what is remarkable about it, the tariff of 1824 made 
 but little difference in this rapacious and lawless spirit ; the 
 smuggling for the next two years being even less than before. 
 What an amount of tonnage must have been employed in this 
 illicit trade ! Nearly equal to that engaged in the lawful trade : 
 and yet scarcely a ton of it registered : for Mr. Cambreleng 
 shows us that in 1807 our foreign tonnage was 1,089,876 
 while in 1827 it was 900,199. Consequently, all the balance 
 of tonnage necessary for this immense smuggling trade 
 greater in 1827 than the lawful must have been in unregis 
 tered vessels, either of our own or foreign construction, some 
 thing like 900,000 tons of secreted shipping ! Verily, Mr. 
 C. says true, " we have vast and imaginary boundaries," and 
 some vast and imaginary statesmen ? But Mr. C claims a 
 deduction for diminished consumption. He insists that the 
 protective system of this country has curtailed the supplies 
 of the people nay, he goes further, and affirms that it has 
 particularly oppressed the poorer classes ; that the consump 
 tion, in fact, has been growing less, ever since the era of re 
 strictions. Yet, with his usual blindness to inconsistent aver 
 ments, he tells us (pages 5, 6) that the system of restrictions 
 " has derived some degree of popularity from the reduction 
 of prices" that " every year our wants have been supplied at 
 a cheaper rate," and that, " it is impossible to anticipate, 
 should the peace continue, to what minimum rates prices may 
 be reduced." With this admission, what becomes of his 
 diminished consumption ? It is against every theory of politi- 
 
48 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 cal economy to suppose that consumption can diminish under 
 this accelerated and continuing depression of prices, and, 
 much less rational is it to suppose, that smuggling could pre 
 vail to any extent, under such a state of things. Mr. Cam- 
 breleng must either assume an increase of prices, or abandon 
 his diminished consumption, and thus leave his smuggling 
 trade unmitigated by that circumstance, or else abandon his 
 smuggling altogether. There could not be woven together 
 a tissue of greater absurdities. The things are quite in 
 compatible. 
 
 But the friends of free trade have ever been remarkable 
 for the most incorrigible obliquity of argument. They never 
 fail to overleap the plain and obvious conclusions presented 
 by facts, for the sake of some remote, ungenial deduction, 
 which the facts never warrant, and which is sure even to bring 
 them into a state of direct opposition. They can see the 
 wonderful decline of prices, but they will neither understand 
 their cause nor effect. The question is, really, a very clear one. 
 The cause of the fall of prices has been, most obviously, the 
 competition both at home and abroad. The restrictive system 
 has built up manufactures at home : these have not only 
 entered into a brisk competition with each other, but they 
 have excited emulation abroad to underwork them, both in 
 foreign markets, to which we export our manufactures, and in 
 our own markets notwithstanding the duty. The effect has 
 been continual reduction of price ; the very consequence 
 attributed to this competition by General Hamilton, and pre 
 dicted, uniformly, by the friends of protection in the United 
 States. Without our domestic manufactures this result never 
 could have taken place. The British, having possession of 
 the market, would never have reduced their prices below the 
 effects of their own competition. So that, whether we could 
 now get our supplies cheaper in England than formerly, or 
 not, it is very evident that, but for our protective system, we 
 never could have done so ; and that as soon as we should be 
 exposed again to the full sweep of the British capital, undis- 
 
REVIEW OF CAMBRELEMi. - 
 
 turbed by our home competition, we should have the prices 
 up again to the old standard.* The consumer, therefore, in 
 this country has profited, and must continue to profit by the 
 measure. Mr. Cambreleng may gravely assure us of the 
 diminished consumption, but who can believe him ? Does k 
 not excite a smile to hear an observant American statesman 
 tell us, at this day, that we consume less than we did ten years 
 
 * The British are now prepared to make any sacrifices to ruin 
 our establishments. A few years of reduced prices would subject 
 them to a loss which the Government would willingly incur, if it 
 would break up our manufactures, because, released from the com 
 petition, they could indemnify themselves by the command of prices 
 which they would thus insure in an uninterrupted market. Such a 
 policy is not new to British ministers. We take the liberty to make the 
 following extract from a pamphlet published by Mr. George Tibbitts, 
 of New York, in 1829 (to which we beg leave to refer our readers 
 as one of the best expositions of the protective policy that we have 
 seen). " It was known, when the markets in Europe were shut 
 against England, by the decrees of Bonaparte, that the English Gov 
 ernment formed an establishment on the little barren island of Heli 
 goland, near the mouth of the Elbe, as a depot and place from 
 which goods could be readily got on to the continent, and from which 
 large quantities of goods found their way from England to the con 
 tinent. It was known, also, that the English Government sent large 
 sums of money to the continent as subsidies to the powers in their 
 interest, which cramped their metallic circulation at times very 
 much. But it has, but lately, been generally known, that to get this 
 money back, and keep every thing quiet at home, goods, to large 
 amounts, were sent to the continent at the distance of Government, 
 who guaranteed the adventures against loss of every kind; which cost 
 the Government millions" p. 27. 
 
 Even without the aid of Government, the manufacturers of 
 Great Britain would be content to spend something to run us down, 
 if tliey were sure of success. It is the spirit of trade. We have 
 now an exemplification of it, in the " Old" and " Opposition" lines 
 of coaches from this to Washington. The " old line" are running 
 below cost, in hopes to drive the " opposition Yankees" off the field. 
 No one doubts how the " old" will reimburse itself if they succeed. 
 At the present time the prices, like Mr. Cambreleng s, have " declined 
 astonishingly." 
 3 
 
50 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 ago ? Was there ever a fact more open to the contradiction 
 of the senses ? There is not a laborer, perhaps, in our 
 country, that does not wear two shirts now, where he wore one 
 at that time : the increasing comforts of the country are 
 marvellous to all observation : our citizens are better clothed, 
 better fed, and more steadily employed in industrious pursuits 
 than they ever were before. It is true, that a certain class 
 of merchants do not get the same extravagant profits on 
 capital, but every other interest in the country has been 
 brought nearer to an equality of comfort with them. This 
 fact is sufficient, of itself, to illustrate Mr. Cambreleng s zeal, 
 and opens the whole secret of the applauding fervors of Gotham. 
 We regard it, however, as a consummation full of splendid 
 realities, working its miracles among our people with a noto 
 riety that cannot escape even the prejudiced observation of 
 Mr. Cambreleng himself. It is in vain to say that this pro 
 cess of reduction in price has been the ordinary settling down 
 of war rates to rates of peace. The process has not even 
 followed the successive operations of that cause. The fall 
 did not commence immediately after the peace ; it came 
 almost per saltum, upon our protecting duties. The tariff of 
 sixteen did but little for it ; the tariff of twenty-four acted 
 like a charm. But what does Mr. Cambreleng mean by 
 " the salutary influence of peace on the labors of mankind," 
 if he does not include in it, the very competition of which 
 we have been speaking? And will he be so bold as to deny 
 that our protective system has given rise to no competition, 
 plainly ascribable to itself? If he does, how will he account 
 for the fact that in 1820 we exported but two millions worth 
 of domestic manufactures, and that in 1827 we exported the 
 value of six millions and a half, when the prices had fallen to 
 less than 50 per cent, upon their value in 1820 ? Does this 
 fact speak nothing in favor of our protective system, and its 
 effect upon foreign competition ? Has it excited no emula 
 tion on the part of our English rivals ? Have they had no 
 fears of the American manufactures, which could thus gain a 
 
REVIEW OF CAMBRELENG. 51 
 
 footing in foreign parts where they met upon terms of perfect 
 equality.* Have they been silent about the influence of the 
 protective system ? Or have they not given forth the usual 
 diagnostics of their irritated nervous habit, in reduplicated 
 efforts to persuade us of the value of free trade, and the policy 
 of dismissing our system ? the most certain index that Great 
 Britain ever affords of her dread of the consequences. Under 
 all these circumstances can we be so blind as to take the 
 bait? 
 
 We should say, there are motives to distrust Mr. Cambrel- 
 eng and his friends sufficiently strong to refuse his evidence 
 on the subject altogether. We cannot place confidence in 
 the judgment of one so singularly hoodwinked as to facts. 
 The interest which he represents, the tone in which he 
 represents it, and the fatal delusions of his philosophy, are 
 sufficient to discredit him as a witness. The factor part of 
 the City of New York have a very perceptible interest to per 
 suade us to take every thing across the Atlantic, and bring 
 every thing back. It is like the interest of the hack-men and 
 boot-blacks of Washington, to pray continually for foul weather. 
 "Your cursed fine days" set people to using their own re 
 sources they break up the carriage-hire and the cleaning. The 
 protective system encourages American, instead of English 
 labor, and, of course, the carrier and his agents, between 
 America and Great Britain are the losers. Its effect upon the 
 regular, substantial merchant of the country is just the reverse : 
 it expands his means, multiplies his products, increases his 
 
 * We are unable to furnish the history of the negotiations be 
 tween Great Britain and the Government of Buenos Ayres, and 
 otlier powers in South America, some two or three years back. But 
 their import is well understood. The fear of American competition 
 there has been something more than an idle vision. These things 
 will come to light in good time. Even now the British cottons, in 
 that quarter, owe their currency to fraud. They are flimsy imita 
 tions of substantial American wares, bearing counterfeit marks. 
 In the way of fair trade, it is seen that our manufactures are able to 
 keep their ground even against this competition. 
 
52 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 adventure, and bears his flag to the uttermost parts of the 
 earth. 
 
 We think we have said enough to show that the reduction 
 of prices is nothing more than the legitimate effect of our sys 
 tem. It is the effect foretold by the friends of the tariff, and 
 denied d priori by its enemies. Both parties have appealed 
 to time as the arbiter. And time has given it in our favor. 
 The free-trade politicians foretold, and Mr. C. still repeats the 
 augury, that every thing was to rise in value. We think it un- 
 philosophical, or at least, a very suspicious symptom of weak 
 ness, to ascribe predicted consequences, after they have ar 
 rived, to any other than the causes counted on by those who 
 prophecied ; and, much more so, when the predictions were 
 manifold and particular ; and when they who deny the con 
 nection between the cause and effect, can only account for the 
 contingency, by strained, far-fetched, and unintelligible conject 
 ures. But whether they be right or wrong in their philosophy, 
 all agree that the prices, as Mr. C. asserts, have declined aston 
 ishingly since the war ; and that being the case, the stupen 
 dous vision of unlawful trade which has disturbed the dreams 
 of Mr. Cambreleng, must flit away to join the other morbid 
 creations of the dreamer s fancy, in that unvisited realm of fairy 
 wonders, where the free-trade system flourishes in pure and 
 immeasurable luxuriance and where alone it flourishes. 
 
 Our next concern is with Mr. Cambreleng s picture of our 
 navigation. The seventh proposition in our list affirms, what 
 the reader will find sedulously inculcated throughout the re 
 port, that the protective system is destructive to oiw naviga 
 tion ; that it has reduced our shipping below what it was in 
 1 80 1 ; and that, by contrasting its present and past condition, 
 " we shall learn to feel no small degree of alarm, lest our fatal 
 restrictions should have already driven us too far in the rear 
 of all our rivals for national power and naval ascendancy" 
 (page 1 8.) 
 
 In the argument which we propose to hold with Mr. Cam 
 breleng on this subject, we give him warning that we do not 
 
REVIEW OF CAMBRELENG. 53 
 
 mean to take advantage of his great commercial marine em- 
 ployed in his smuggling operations ; but we would respectfully 
 suggest to the learned chairman, as some relief to his solici 
 tude for our naval ascendancy, that he has furnished us a 
 brilliant school for our navy in these stormy and midnight ad 
 ventures on the coast ; the very best training that we could 
 imagine to make brave and wily seamen for the wars. It has 
 a high Spartan smack after the best fashion of Lycurgus. 
 But as it would be ungenerous, not to say cruel, in us to use 
 these forces against the very author of their being, we shall 
 even confine ourselves to the records of the Custom-house. 
 
 Mr. Cambreleng, in this branch of his argument is reduced 
 to great distress. His case absolutely requires a destruction 
 of our navigation. It is a sine qua non to his success, and 
 make it out he must, at all hazards if not totidem verbis, then 
 totidem syllabis ; for his whole scheme of vituperation would 
 be undermined, if it should, unfortunately, turn out that our 
 navigation was in a prosperous way. It is like Shakspeare s 
 being obliged to kill Mercutio, lest Mercutio should kill him. 
 Never was the triumph of arithmetic more complete, than in 
 the hands of our worthy chairman ! He has succeeded after 
 a laborious search and many trials, through a maze of figures, 
 in finding the exact proportions he desired. The discovery 
 has done wonders, he is even astonished at his own conclu 
 sions. He knew the thing was bad enough, but he was not 
 prepared for such a charming list of horrors as he has brought 
 to light. 
 
 In the first place, insisting upon it, that the free-trade sys 
 tem prevailed up to the year 1807, it was useful to show, that 
 up to this period, the influence of this system had worked 
 miracles in favor of the navigation. He therefore tells us 
 that our foreign tonnage had risen from 127,329 tons in 1789 
 to 1,089,876 in 1807, a clear increase of 962, 547 tons in 19 
 years. Now, the common opinion has been that the free-trade 
 system had nothing to do with this on the contrary, there are 
 shrewd doubts among the professors themselves, whether there 
 
54 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 was, in fact, at that time, what might be entitled free trade at 
 all ; whether our discriminating duties and tonnage, upon 
 which we have already commented, were not part and parcel 
 of our very protective system. We think, decidedly, that 
 there was the true protective principle in it ; and so do 
 our friends on the other side of the Atlantic. But waiving 
 that, there was a still more potent cause which Mr. C. is 
 equally bound to disparage. 
 
 The foreign wars and our neutrality threw upon us the 
 carrying trade of Europe ; and the impression has been uni 
 versal, among the best informed persons in the United States, 
 that our navigation owed much of its success to that fact. But 
 this it seems is not true. It was a stumbling-block in the 
 way of Mr. Cambreleng s argument, and he demolishes it with 
 a flat rebuke upon the folly of such a notion ; " those who 
 think so, take but a superficial view of the causes which gave 
 a strong impulse to our navigation at that early period." " Our 
 navigation," he continues, " grew more rapidly before the con 
 tinental war, when we had nothing to carry but our own pro 
 duce, than it did at any period afterwards. In three years 
 from 1789 to 92 the increase was near 300,000 tons: from 
 1793 to 96 it ought to have increased a greater amount, but 
 it was not much over 200,000 tons, showing clearly a more rapid 
 increase, both in ratio and amount, before than after the war 
 broke out" (page 19). Such is the short summary by which 
 Mr. C. persuades himself that he is able to overthrow the es 
 tablished opinions of the whole nation, fortified by the most 
 irresistible documentary evidence, as well as by the personal 
 observation and experience of our citizens, in regard to the 
 extent of the carrying trade. Independent of all aid derived 
 from our tonnage returns, the statement of our exports is con 
 clusive upon the subject. The value of our whole exports, in 
 the year ending September, 1790, was $20,205,156 ; in 1791, 
 it was $19,012,041 ; in 1792 it was $20,753,098. In 1796 our 
 exports of foreign merchandise alone, were $26,300,000 ; in 1800, 
 they were $39,130,877 ; in 1805, they were $53,i79> 01 9; m 
 
KEVIEW OF CAMBBELENG. 
 
 55 
 
 1806, they were $60,283,236; in 1807, they were $59,643,558. 
 While in 1 8 18, our foreign exports amounted to $19,426,696; 
 in 1820, to $18,008,029 ; in 1824, to $25,337,157 ; and in 1827, 
 to $23,403,156. This statement furnishes the most satisfacto 
 ry evidence as to the condition of the carrying trade, which be 
 gan about 1796, and ended with our war restrictions. The 
 amount of these exports, of articles the growth of foreign coun 
 tries, shows the extent of the trade which the United States 
 carried on for other nations. In the note below,* we have given 
 a table of these exports, as compared with the domestic exports, 
 which will show, at once, the fallacy of Mr. Cambreleng s ar 
 gument. But we have to charge him with a still greater inac 
 curacy on this point. He would have us believe, that the ton 
 nage of the United States increased from 1789 to 1792 by near 
 300,000 tons. His misrepresentation in this matter is of an 
 
 * Statement showing the estimated value of the domestic and for 
 eign merchandise annually exported from tlie United States to for 
 eign countries. 
 
 
 Articles the growth, 
 
 Articles of foreign 
 
 Total value of 
 
 
 produce, or manufac 
 
 growth, produce, or 
 
 exports. 
 
 
 ture of the U. States. 
 
 manufacture. 
 
 
 1800 
 
 . $31,840,903 
 
 $39,130,877 
 
 $70,971,780 
 
 1801 
 
 47,473,204 
 
 46,642,721 
 
 94,115,925 
 
 1802 . 
 
 36,708,189 
 
 35,774,971 
 
 72,483,160 
 
 1803 
 
 42,205,961 
 
 13,594,072 
 
 55,800,033 
 
 1804 \ 
 
 . 41,467,477 
 
 36,231,597 
 
 77,699,074 
 
 1805 
 
 42,387,002 
 
 53,179,019 
 
 95,566,021 
 
 1806 
 
 41,253,727 
 
 60,283,236 
 
 101,536,963 
 
 1807 
 
 48,699,592 
 
 59,643,558 
 
 108,343,150 
 
 1818 
 
 73,854,437 
 
 19,426,696 
 
 93,281,133 
 
 1819 
 
 . - 50,976,838 
 
 19,165,683 
 
 70,142,521 
 
 1820 . 
 
 51,683,640 
 
 18,008,029 
 
 69,691,669 
 
 1821 
 
 43,671,894 
 
 21,302,488 
 
 64,974,382 
 
 1822 
 
 49,874,079 
 
 22,286,286 
 
 72,160,281 
 
 1823 
 
 / 47,155,409 
 
 27,543,202 
 
 74,699,030 
 
 1824 
 
 50,649,500 
 
 25,337,157 
 
 75,986,657 
 
 1825 
 
 66,944,745 
 
 32,590,643 
 
 99,535,388 
 
 1826 -. 
 
 53,055,710 
 
 24,539,612 
 
 77,595,322 
 
 1827 
 
 58,921,691 
 
 23,403,136 
 
 82,324,827 
 
50 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 eager and absurd aspect. We are scarcely willing to save his 
 veracity by the sacrifice which it compels us to make of his 
 judgment. In 1789 our registered tonnage, according to Mr. 
 C., was 127,329 tons; in 1790 it was 354,767 ; an increase 
 in one year of 227,436. Now does not this very increase show, 
 that in the first year of the Government but little more than one 
 third of our existing tonnage had been registered ? Is Mr. C. 
 so infatuated with his own conclusions, as to believe that this 
 increase was new tonnage? The augmentation for the next 
 year was but 8,895 tons, and of the year following, 51,017 tons. 
 Why did not the increase of the next two years hold some pro 
 portion to the first ? It is almost incredible that any intelli 
 gent writer could make such a mistake. And yet upon this 
 frail foundation Mr. C. has ventured to erect an argument, the 
 import of which is, to charge all men with superficial views of 
 the subject who could not see with his eyes the strength he at 
 taches to so flimsy a statement. The probability is, that the in 
 crease of the tonnage, in the first year, was very little above that 
 in the second ; while the enormous and increasing amounts of 
 foreign merchandise exported in American vessels, after 1796, 
 manifest the vigor of the carrying trade, and give Mr. C. s re 
 mote speculations and fantastic notions upon the influence of 
 unrestricted commerce to the winds. 
 
 As connected with this error Mr. C. attempts to alarm us 
 with another conclusion : " the mere increase of our foreign 
 tonnage, prior to 1807, exceeds the whole amount of our nav 
 igation, now employed in our intercourse between the whole 
 Union and all nations, nearly 150,000 tons" (page 18). 
 
 Although his phrase is ambiguous, Mr. C. means to assert 
 that the increase in our foreign tonnage, in those years, exceed 
 ed by 150,000 tons, our presentforeign tonnage. There is noth 
 ing wonderful in the fact if it were true, for if our tonnage had 
 been nothing in the first year of the Government, then its in 
 crease in every subsequent year would have been equal to the 
 whole amount of tonnage in that year; and Mr. C. has lent 
 his aid to make it as near to nothing as he could. It is much 
 
REVIEW OF CAMBRELENG. 57 
 
 more astonishing that the increase of the tonnage in the first 
 year of the Government, if Mr. C/s calculation were true, was 
 greater, both in ratio and amount, than it has been in any year 
 since. And yet the chairman has overlooked this singular fact 
 altogether. If he had seen it, he would, at once, have discov 
 ered that the returns of 1789 did not show the actual amount 
 of shipping for that year. This however proves nothing, but 
 what never was denied, namely, that our tonnage increased 
 very rapidly up to 1807, and the more rapidly during those 
 years in which we enjoyed our immense neutral trade. 
 
 Mr. Cambreleng goes on to tell us, that " while our navi 
 gation has remained, at best, stationary, that of our rival has 
 advanced, from 1815 to 1827,761,840 tons; the mere in 
 crease alone in British foreign navigation, amounting nearly to 
 the whole foreign tonnage of the United States" (page 21). 
 And this, he attributes to the fact " that while Great Britain 
 has retrograded from prohibitory to moderate duties, we have 
 been substituting restrictions for free trade." 
 
 If upon an investigation of the fact, it should appear that 
 British navigation so far from increasing has actually declined, 
 and, on the other hand, that our navigation has been thriving, 
 we take it for granted, that Mr. Cambreleng will not object to 
 our making advantage of the principle which he has put to this 
 test, and will be content to allow that this decline, on the one 
 side, and improvement on the other, are the fair and legitimate 
 consequences of that " simultaneous change in the policy of 
 the two nations," to which he refers. We shall hold him to 
 this admission, although we do not bind ourselves to admit 
 what we do not believe that Great Britain has advanced one 
 step towards a free-trade system. 
 
 In support of his position Mr. Cambreleng has overwhelm 
 ed us with figures. We shall give these an attentive examina 
 tion, and offer a few of our own in return. To prove that our 
 navigation has remained, at best, stationary, he has given us a 
 table of American shipping (registered and enrol led) for each 
 year up to 1828. As his remarks do not apply to the period 
 
58 POLITICAL PAPER- . 
 
 up to 1807, we shall confine our view to the tonnage employ 
 ed in foreign trade, since 1815. By Mr. C. s own table, No. 4. 
 the correctness of which we shall have occasion hereafter to 
 dispute, it will appear that the average annual tonnage from 
 1815 to 1820, inclusive, is 783,021 tons, while the annual aver 
 age from 1821 to 1828, is 836,398 tons ; an excess of 53,377 
 tons in favor of each year of the latter period : and of the 
 eight years from 1821 to 1828, inclusive, the increase in the 
 annual average tonnage of the four last years over the four for 
 mer, are 88,266 tons. This is what Mr. Cambreleng calls re 
 maining at best, but stationary. 
 
 Mr. Cambreleng, however, has been guilty of a deception, 
 which whether it springs from ignorance or from design, is 
 equally discreditable to his argument. In his note to his table 
 No. 4, he has told us that the registry of tonnage was correct 
 ed in 1818. The registry up to that period, contained many 
 vessels that had been lost, rotted away, or sold, and in that 
 year these were ascertained, and a corrected registry was 
 made. This corrected list ought to have been furnished. 
 But Mr. C. chose only to give us the old list with all its errors. 
 The new one would have presented an entirely different case.* 
 It would have shown a steady increase in the tonnage every 
 
 * We give this list from Watterston and Van Zandt s tables. 
 
 In 1818 the registered tonnage amounted to . 000,088 tons 
 
 1819 . . .... ..... . 012,930 " 
 
 1820 - . . . . ,;. . . ... "... ...; .;;.. . . . 019,047 " 
 
 1821 ... . . . . . , . 019,890 " 
 
 1822 . . . . . ... 028,150 " 
 
 1823 . . . . . . . . . 039,920 
 
 1824 . . . . . . . , 990,072 " 
 
 1825 . . . . ... . . . 700,788 " 
 
 1820 . . ... . . . . 737,978 " 
 
 1827 .,.>,. . . .... . 700,903 " 
 
 1828 . . . .... , . ,. 812,019 " 
 This statement shows an increase of American registered tonnage 
 
 of 200,531 tons in 11 years. Mr. Cambreleng has asserted, upon the 
 faith of a table that he knew to be untrue, that our tonnage has de 
 creased, since 1819, by 52,781 tons. 
 
REVIEW OF CAMBBELENG. 
 
 59 
 
 year since that period. It will remain for Mr. Cambreleng, 
 and the committee to explain with what views this misrepresen 
 tation has been promulgated. 
 
 There is a record of the registers granted, and another of 
 the tonnage entering and departing from the United States in 
 each year. If instead of looking at the registered tonnage Mr. 
 C. had looked at the tonnage arriving and departing in the 
 same periods, he would also have found an increase in our 
 navigation. In order therefore to supply what Mr. Cambrel 
 eng seems carefully to have concealed, we have annexed a ta 
 ble showing the amount of American tonnage entering and de 
 parting from the United States since 1821.* There having 
 been no note taken of the departing tonnage until 1820, we are 
 
 * Table showing the tonnage entering and departing from the 
 United States, and also showing the aggregate of foreign and Ameri 
 can tonnage employed in our trade. 
 
 
 American 
 vessels 
 
 American 
 
 vessels. 
 
 Foreign 
 vessels 
 
 Foreign 
 
 vessels 
 
 Aggregate 
 of Ameri 
 
 Aggregate of 
 American & 
 
 
 enter 
 
 depart 
 
 enter 
 
 depart 
 
 can & for 
 
 foreign ves 
 
 
 ing. 
 
 ing. 
 
 ing. 
 
 ing. 
 
 eign ves- 
 
 sels depart 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 selsent ring 
 
 ing. 
 
 1821 
 
 705,098 
 
 804,947 
 
 81,526 
 
 83,073 
 
 846,624 
 
 888,020 
 
 1822 
 
 787,901 
 
 813,748 
 
 100,541 
 
 97,490 
 
 888,502 
 
 911,238 
 
 1823 
 
 775,271 
 
 810,761 
 
 119,468 
 
 119,740 
 
 894,739 
 
 930,561 
 
 1824 
 
 850,033 
 
 919,278 
 
 102,367 
 
 102,552 
 
 952,400 
 
 1,021,830 
 
 1825 
 
 880,754 
 
 960,360 
 
 92,927 
 
 95,080 
 
 973,681 
 
 1,055,446 
 
 1820 
 
 942,200 
 
 953,012 
 
 105,054 
 
 99,417 
 
 1,047,860 
 
 1,052,429 
 
 1827 
 
 918,301 
 
 980,542 
 
 137,589 
 
 131,250 
 
 1,055,950 
 
 1,111,092 
 
 1828 
 
 868,381 
 
 897,404 
 
 150,223 
 
 151,030 
 
 1,018,604 
 
 1,048,434 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 7,678,300 
 
 8,019,090 
 
 1800 
 
 682,871 
 
 
 122,403 
 
 
 805,274 
 
 
 1801 
 
 849,302 
 
 
 157,270 
 
 
 1,000,572 
 
 
 1802 
 
 798,805 
 
 
 145,519 
 
 
 944,324 
 
 
 1803 
 
 787,424 
 
 
 163,714 
 
 
 951,138 
 
 
 1804 
 
 821,962 
 
 
 122,141 
 
 
 944,103 
 
 
 1805 
 
 922.298 
 
 
 87,842 
 
 
 1,010,130 
 
 
 1806 
 
 1,044,005 
 
 
 90,984 
 
 
 1,134,989 
 
 
 1807 
 
 1,089,876 
 
 
 86,780 
 
 
 1,170,050 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 7,973,200 
 
 
 The departing tonnage of this latter period is not furnished. 
 
60 POLITICAL PAPER?. 
 
 unable to give the comparison in a former period. This state 
 ment, however, will manifest what dependence is to be placed 
 upon the assertion that our navigation is, at the best, but sta 
 tionary. In every view it is worthy of remark, that the ton 
 nage has increased in a more rapid ratio since 1824, than be 
 fore, and in the year 1827 was but little short of the amount 
 employed by the United States in that most prosperous period 
 when we enjoyed, almost exclusively, the commerce of 
 Europe : and showing, we think very conspicuously, how far 
 from hostile the restrictive system has been to our trade. 
 
 We have framed the table last referred to, with reference 
 to another view, in which we wish to present this question of 
 commerce and navigation to our readers. Our foreign trade 
 is to be measured by the tonnage employed in its transporta 
 tion, whether in our own, or foreign shipping. We have there 
 fore given the foreign tonnage engaged in American trade and 
 the aggregate of that and our own, from the )iear 1800 to 
 1807, and from 1821 to 1828. The whole amount thus em 
 ployed in the first eight years is 7,973,206 tons. In the latter 
 period it is 7,678,360 tons, both computed of the tonnage en 
 tering. The aggregate of the tonnage departing, during the last 
 period, is 8,019,690 tons. This affords a fair exhibit of the 
 American shipping when engaged under circumstances of the 
 most extraordinary advantage to trade, and subsequently, when 
 it had to contend against a world at peace, and all the compe 
 tition of foreign nations struggling to gain an ascendancy for 
 their marine. The comparison, certainly, presents any thing 
 hut a declining state of trade, and wholly discredits the puerile 
 ond melancholy deductions of Mr. Cambreleng. When it is 
 understood further, what is affirmed upon the most respecta- 
 l.le authority,* that our tonnage, of late years, is rated at less 
 ;han its actual capacity, from some difference in the mode of 
 
 * Some intelligent merchants and ship owners have estimated the 
 
 < ifference at 40 or 50 per cent., and others still higher. It is said to 
 I not uncommon for a ship rated at 800 tons to carry a cargo of 450, 
 
 < r 500 tons. Essex Register, March, 1830. 
 
REVIEW OF CAMBRELENG. 
 
 constructing our ships, there is ground to believe that our ton 
 nage at this period is even greater in amount than it ever was 
 before. 
 
 But it is not to our foreign tonnage alone that we must 
 look to settle this question. Our coasting tonnage is quite as 
 important in our view, in a discussion of the effects of our pol 
 icy upon our navigation. It is in many respects a more valua 
 ble branch of our marine than the former. It is more within 
 our control ; equally good as a nursery for our seamen, and of 
 the most essential benefit in the administration of our manu 
 facturing system at home. We can guard and protect it 
 against outward injury and foster it, when our foreign channels 
 of commerce are cut off. 
 
 This tonnage has increased at a steady pace, even when 
 Mr. C. alleges that our foreign tonnage has been declining ; 
 although he would have us believe " that they uniformly rise and 
 decline together" (page 20) to contradict which assertion 
 we have only to refer to its increase even up to the period of 
 the war.* It is to be observed in reference to it, that this 
 tonnage, as Mr. Cambreleng s table No. 4 demonstrates, has 
 increased since the restrictions of 1824 both in a greater ratio 
 and amount than it ever did before. It is peculiarly affected 
 by the protective system, and from its occupation must necessa 
 rily thrive with the extension of our manufactures. 
 
 * In fact the enrollments were -more numerous, during the war, 
 than in 1807, as will be seen by reference to Seybert s Statistics, 
 page 317. We give the entries of those periods : 
 
 1807 . . . i ... . . 318,189 tons. 
 
 1808 . . ..... . . 387,684 " 
 
 1809 . . . . . . . . . 371,500 " 
 
 1810 . . .... ... . 371,114 " 
 
 1811 ... . .,:.. . . 386,258 " 
 
 1812 ....... . . . . 443,180 " 
 
 1813 . . . ". . . . . . 433,404 " 
 
 1814 . . . . . . . . . 425,713 " 
 
 These entries show no fixed proportion whatever witli the regis 
 tered tonnage. 
 
POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 In treating upon this subject, Mr. C. is ludicrously at fault 
 He is puzzled at every turn with his own documents. Dr. 
 Syntax in search of the picturesque, had not more calls upon 
 his fancy to make up his sketch, than the laboring Atlas of 
 the free-trade trade cause, in this his emergency. But he has 
 a faith that will remove mountains, and a perseverance that is 
 never to be daunted. 
 
 He has looked at the thing in every light ; turned the 
 tables upside down ; counted the figures backwards, and 
 tried the question through all the categories. " The tables 
 are all lies," quoth the chairman. " The conclusion cannot 
 be got out collective so we will try it confuse et distributive" 
 said he. 
 
 Although the returns show an increase, he assures us that, 
 " unfortunately, it is only in appearance" (page 18). We 
 doubt his sincerity in that " unfortunately." Right glad would 
 he be if this obstinate coasting trade had never increased a 
 ton ! But we will hear his account of the matter. "It grows 
 out of additions to our territory," and our steamboats on the 
 lakes, the Mississippi, Missouri and Ohio ;" and " out of our 
 coasting trade with Florida and Louisiana." But that does 
 not reduce it enough ; so he gives us a residuary clause to cover 
 the balance, " and a portion of it is merely nominal." Is it 
 not wonderful that our coasting trade should increase with our 
 territory ? And that our tonnage should be enlarged by the coast 
 ing trade with Florida and Louisiana ? We are surprised that 
 the learned chairman did not also aver, that it had unfairly in 
 creased, with our population. Indeed, he does say as much ; 
 "a just and accurate statement, if it could be made in 1828 
 of the tonnage in the same commercial circle which existed in 1807, 
 would show an actual decline since the war !" Possibly enough. 
 And carry the calculation a little further, if it could now be as 
 certained what had become of our coasting vessels employed in 
 1807, there is good ground to think that they are all rotten : 
 a total decline ! It is upon the increase of our commercial cir 
 cle, and our population, and our new business, with the muiti- 
 
REVIEW OF CAMBRELENG. 63 
 
 tude of new matters which make up the political aspect of 
 1828, that we expected to find an increase of tonnage. But 
 what part of it is merely nominal? Mr. C. has attempted, in a 
 note to his table No. 4, to give us some explanation of this 
 but to us it is utterly unintelligible. It is a round assertion 
 that the tables are not correct : that there are 277,804 tons of 
 the registered shipping of 1828 included in the coasting ton 
 nage ; that the registered tonnage was corrected in 1818 and 
 200,000 tons were struck out of that list ; and supposing that 
 the error in the coasting tonnage was only half that amount, 
 then it follows that the whole amount is reduced from 881,605 
 down to 503,605 ; and then deduct something else ; and then 
 suppose another supposition, and then it results, in the 
 grand conclusion, that we have actually less enrolled and li 
 censed tonnage now than we had in 1807. Admirable reason 
 ing ! Here let arithmeticians and statesmen come to study 
 the edifying process by which 500,000 tons of substantial ship 
 ping paying its yearly stipend to the Government, may be re 
 duced to a fraction below nothing ? Here let Congress learn 
 the efficacy of Dr. Doubty s philosophy, and, from this time 
 forward, let no man say " it is, but // seems to be !" 
 
 Before, however, we bend under this all-prostrating blast of 
 suppositions, we beg to hold some further discourse with the 
 chairman. He affirms that from 1789 to 1807 our coasting 
 tonnage increased 342,573 tons. Upon examining his table 
 No. 4, we find that he states the tonnage of 1789 at 77,669 
 (which by the by, is obnoxious to the same remark as the reg 
 istered tonnage of that year ; namely, that it exhibits not more 
 than one half of the actual tonnage, as the return for the next 
 year, 132,123 tons will show) while the tonnage of 1807 
 is set down by him at 360,834. Now the difference between 
 these is 283,165. How does Mr. C. make his 342,573 ? He 
 does not tell us the process by which this is effective, but he is 
 obviously playing off some arithmetical juggle upon us again, 
 and, what is very remarkable, the same tables which are too 
 good for the era of restrictions, and which exaggerate the state 
 
> POLITICAL PAPKK>. 
 
 of things hideously, when they war against his theory, are, really, 
 not bold enough for him to get along with in his free-trade 
 era. Were there no mistakes in the tonnage returns previous 
 to 1807 ? no registered tonnage ranked in that list? no deduc 
 tions to be made of any sort ? This is a vexatious inquiry, and 
 we would entreat the learned chairman to edify us. 
 
 There is one fact that we think ought to have struck even 
 the obstuse prejudices of Mr. C. hard enough to have been felt 
 by him, in making up his calculations. If the mixture of for 
 eign tonnage with the coasting was a matter to disturb the 
 computations for 1828, how does it happen that this tonnage 
 in 1827 was 868,171, and in 1826, 798,815 tons, and why has 
 it gone on regularly increasing every year ? This can only be 
 accounted for by the supposition, that in every year the coast 
 ing has its due proportion of registered tonnage mixed with it, 
 and, consequently, that circumstance does not effect the ratio 
 of the increase. No one has ever supposed that our coasting 
 trade was carried on by vessels which were not sometimes em 
 ployed in foreign trade, but, undoubtedly, the coasting trade is 
 as vigorous and improving, in one aspect, as in the other. 
 This circumstance might be good to show that the aggregate 
 returns of our coasting and foreign tonnage did not accurately 
 show the number of tons of American shipping, but it can have 
 no sort of bearing on the question of the relative increase of 
 either. When we come to speak of Mr. Cambrel eng s views 
 of British navigation we shall show of how little moment he 
 deems this intermingling of coasting and foreign tonnage, where 
 his purpose is to fabricate an argument against us. 
 
 There is still another remark to be made upon his state 
 rnent in reference to this matter. He affects to undervalue 
 the treasury returns of the coasting tonnage at this time, by 
 telling us that when commerce is active, as it was in 1807, 
 " some reliance may be placed on the tables of coasting ton 
 nage ; but when trade is dull we know not what portion, of our 
 vessels enrolled and licensed, is actually employed !" (p. 20). 
 If our trade were dull now, how does he account for the rapid 
 
REVIEW OF CAMBRELENG. 65 
 
 increase, shown by his tables, in this tonnage ? This is the 
 very point between us. Whether the tables are true or false, 
 they show an increase, every year, of vessels paying for enrol 
 ments, and a greater increase than ever was known before. 
 In the face of this fact will he assure us that the coasting trade 
 is dull ? We know it to be untrue, and so does every intelli 
 gent merchant in the country. 
 
 But we have another reason to impeach the veracity of Mr. 
 Cambreleng s statistics. He has informed us, as we have 
 stated above, that in 1818 the permanent tables of registered 
 tonnage VI&CQ corrected, when an error of 200,000 tons was dis 
 covered. And therefore, he concludes, but with what reason 
 let the logicians determine that in 1828 the error is to the 
 same amount. And because the error is the same, at this last 
 period, then there must be, at least, half that amount of error 
 in the enrolled tonnage ; and therefore again, the sum of enroll 
 ed tonnage must be subject to a deduction of 100,000 tons ; 
 ergo, the coasting trade is on the wane. We have never seen 
 a more sorry enthymeme ! The whole sequence of the syllo 
 gism, is false. 
 
 In the first place, he has given us no proof of his 200,000 
 tons. If Watterston and Van Zandt s tables, commencing 
 at page in, give us the corrected list of registered tonnage, 
 then the amount in 1818 was reduced from 755,101 tons to 
 605,088, the reduction being 149,013 tons : and if that list, 
 continued by them up to 1826, and by the treasury reports to 
 1 828,* be, as we have no reason to doubt, the corrected 
 record of registry, then in 1828 the true amount of perma 
 nent registered tonnage differs from that of Mr. Cambrel 
 eng s uncorrected list of that year (824,781) but 12,162 
 tons: and, of course, he is to apply but 6,08 1 tons to the coast 
 ing tonnage. In the second place, we deny any necessary 
 connection between the errors in the registered tonnage and in 
 the enrolled and licensed : and we say this, because the errors 
 of the latter have been corrected as well as of the former, and 
 
 * Vide Ante, p. 47, where we have given this list. 
 
CO POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 will show, upon the same authority quoted by us above, that 
 up to 1828, there was no material difference between the un- 
 corrected list of enrolled and licensed tonnage and the correct 
 ed one. In 1826, according to Watterston and Van Zandt, it 
 was but 2,603 tons.* 
 
 We are still, however, at a loss to understand why Mr. C. 
 should resort to the lists of registered or enrolled tonnage to 
 exhibit the state of the navigation, when he had a much more 
 infallible guide before him : unless it be that he found in the 
 obscurity of the first a pretext for indulging in conjectures that 
 better suited the purpose of his argument than the incontro 
 vertible facts of the latter. For, whether the permanent tables 
 of the tonnage be true or false, there can be no unceriainly in 
 the yearly returns of the shipping which enters and departs 
 from the United States. And, as these represent accurately 
 the number of voyages made in each year, they furnish the only 
 sure and unquestionable indices of the state of our trade with 
 every quarter of the world. It is because they do so, that we 
 have already given some extracts from them, and we rely upon 
 them, in preference to any other proofs that can be afforded. 
 They exhibit the shipping that pays the tonnage duties an-d 
 licenses, and, consequently, present the actual employment of 
 our commerce. We hold it therefore a disingenuous thing in 
 Mr. C. to give us what he acknowledges to be an uncertain 
 guide to the state of the commerce of the country, when he had 
 a better one at his disposal. It is cheating us by false tokens : 
 giving the official and authoritative sanction of a grave com 
 mittee of law-givers to an affirmation that, in its scope and pur 
 pose, is absolutely untrue. But Mr. C. is bent upon destroy- 
 
 * The corrected list of tonnage enrolled and licensed is thus stated 
 in the tables referred to : 
 
 1818 618,480 1821 677,137 1824 697,580 
 
 1819 647,134 1822 693,415 1825 699,262 
 
 1820 660,065 1823 671,765 1826 762,153 
 This table excludes the tonnage employed in the whale fishery, 
 
 and from the year 1823, it excludes the steamboat tonnage, which, 
 in 1826, was 34,058 tons. 
 
REVIEW OF CAMBR1LLENG.. 67 
 
 ing o.ur navigation, and the virtue of the end has cast its proper 
 hue upon the means. 
 
 Still, there is but little gained to Mr. Cambreleng s argu 
 ment, if his statements were open to none of these exceptions : 
 for even admitting that the return of the permanent registered 
 tonnage, or of the enrolled, was defective to the extent that 
 he has alleged, there is nothing in the fact to impair the value 
 of the comparison of our present tonnage, with the tonnage 
 of twenty years ago, as there is no reason afforded us to sup 
 pose that the same accidental disturbances did not exist then 
 as fully as at present. 
 
 Besides our list of entering and departing tonnage, which 
 we assert to be the best evidence of trade, there is another 
 method of determining the increase, equally as sure, though 
 not as minute ; that is, by an estimate of the bulk of our ex 
 ports. If the qua?itities of products exported have greatly 
 increased since 1818, it follows, that the shipping employed 
 in its transportation must have experienced some commen 
 surate increase. An examination into the quantity of our 
 exports, and especially of cotton, will show that this induce 
 ment has been supplied, to a very notable degree, since 1818. 
 Overstocked markets and occasional depressions of trade 
 may have- produced some vibrations in the scale, but the per 
 manent and manifold increase of our products, obvious to any 
 one who will take the trouble to examine the numerous 
 treasury returns belonging to this concern, leaves no room to 
 doubt the justice of our position. 
 
 We proceed, from this view of our own tonnage, to Mr. 
 Cambreleng s comparison of it with the British. It is as 
 much his purpose to show the ruinous effects of our policy by 
 this contrast, as by the comparison he has made of our 
 present navigation with that of his favorite era of pretended 
 free trade. This has furnished a rich field for his excursive 
 genius. Here he rambles, at pleasure, through his Cimmerian 
 wilds of uncertainty, and expatiates, with the ardor of a gifted 
 spirit of romance, unchecked by the proximity of the depart- 
 
CS POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 ments, and your scurvy pestilent documents. Here he hopes 
 to indulge in the luxuriance of fabricated vouchers, without 
 the fear of " some damned good natured friend" to tell him 
 of his faults. But let him not deceive himself ! We have 
 him in leading strings still ; and we shall not be overhasty to 
 be persuaded to let go our hold. 
 
 In the course of our remarks on Mr. Cambreleng s esti 
 mates of American navigation, we have had occasion to 
 show, that where there were two lists before him, namely, 
 the permanent registry of the tonnage, and the yearly employ 
 ment of it, finding that the first presented the most unfavor 
 able view of the navigation, he chose to depend upon it, 
 although he was aware of intrinsic defects sufficient to bring 
 it into disrepute and to pass the other by, as unworthy to 
 be mentioned seeing that it told a tale not altogether con 
 sistent with his theory. The very same thing has happened 
 in Mr. Cambreleng s view of British navigation, and, strange 
 as it may appear, the worthy chairman has made, in this in 
 stance, the very opposite choice. In Great Britain there is a 
 list of tonnage registered, and also, annual returns of its employ- 
 mentj which present much greater diversity in the results than 
 we have been able to discover in the American. It is singular 
 too, that our discriminating advocate of free trade should 
 not have had, in the case of the British tonnage, the same 
 motive to renounce the registered list that he had in the case 
 of our own ; for, in the British return there is no room for an 
 error similar to that which was discovered in ours in 1818.* 
 The British registry contains not only the number of tons, 
 but likewise a specification of the vessels, and the number 
 of seamen employed by them in each year an advantage 
 that does not belong to our own Treasury reports. The 
 second return, of the British shipping is intended to show the 
 number of entrances and departures, and consequently, in 
 this return, the same ship may contribute to swell the list of 
 
 * The British shipping was registered do now under Mr. II u skis- 
 son s lute consolidation of the navigation laws, in the Gtli George IV. 
 
REVIEW OF CAMBRELENG. 69 
 
 tonnage by the amount of her frequent entries. Now Mr. 
 Cambreleng has chosen the second, because it will make the 
 tonnage appear to the greatest advantage, while he has se 
 lected the first return of the American, for the converse rea 
 son. We have shown, also, that the departing tonnage, in this 
 country, is invariably the largest, inasmuch as it embraces all 
 new built vessels which leave our ports and which may be 
 sold abroad. Mr. Cambreleng, perhaps aware of some such 
 advantage on the part of the British, has chosen to bring into 
 the contrast the tonnage cleared out from British ports in each 
 year. Thus we stand to be compared : on the American side, 
 the worst aspect in which our tables could present us ; on the 
 British side the very best. Truly, Mr. C. is an able general, 
 and marshals his forces with a considerate eye to his weak 
 points ! He understands the art of putting his best foot fore 
 most. Having thus drawn -up his battle, he falls pell mell 
 upon us with all the fury of Friar John of the Funnels upon 
 the Cake bakers of Lerne, and causes us, certainly, a sore 
 dismay. 
 
 Now, we do not say that our adversary has not truly sta 
 ted the amount of British tonnage clearing outwards to all 
 parts of the world ; but we know that the British statements of 
 tonnage clearing outwards in foreign trade, include the clear 
 ances to Guernsey, Jersey, Man, Alderney and to all their 
 colonies and possessions abroad, since all these are ranked 
 as foreign ports, and not included in the coasting tonnage,* 
 and that in all these voyages, most of which are much shorter 
 than a great many of our coasting voyages, the entries are re 
 peated at every trip. We know further, that in the year end 
 ing January 5th, 1827, when Mr. Cambreleng states the clear 
 ing tonnage to have been 2,676,263 tons, the actual tonnage 
 which cleared outwards from Great Britain and Ireland for for 
 eign nations, was 918,213 tons ; the rest is made up by the 
 
 * Ireland, until 1823, was regarded in the same point of view 
 since that period, the intercourse between the two Kingdoms has 
 been included in the coasting trade. 
 
70 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 clearances to the possessions above mentioned, of which that 
 to Ireland alone was 760,000.* 
 
 In order to comprehend better the nature of the Brit 
 ish registered tonnage by their returns, it must be understood 
 that the laws of Great Britain require all vessels to be reg 
 istered, except those of a burden less than fifteen tons em 
 ployed in the river or coast navigation of the Kingdom or 
 the Colonies, and vessels under thirty tons employed in the 
 Newfoundland fishery :f which circumstance, at once, plainly 
 indicates the impossibility of making a fair comparison of 
 the British tonnage with ours by the official returns of the 
 two countries. 
 
 By this system of registry, the British list of registered 
 ships comprehends what is equivalent to our shipping employ 
 ed both in the foreign and the coasting trade, and if it could 
 be ascertained what was the actual amount of American regis 
 tered and enrolled tonnage, this would be the proper aggregate 
 to compare with the British register list. Such a comparison 
 would show, that at this period we are at no great distance in 
 the rear of our British rivals, perhaps not 500,000 tons. But 
 our concern, at present, is with the increase or decline of the 
 navigation of Great Britain. 
 
 In an essay upon this subject from BlackwooeFs Magazine 
 for September 1828, the writer remarks, in reply to some such 
 argument as Mr. Cambreleng has set up ; " It is needless for 
 us to say that the tonnage entries are of no moment, if they 
 be not accompanied by a corresponding increase in the num- 
 
 * We are indebted for these details to a valuable communication 
 published in the Essex Register, March 8, 1830. And they are con 
 firmed by a reference to Blackwood s Magazine, 1827, in a review of 
 Mr. Huskisson s speeches on the Shipping Interest of Great Britain. 
 
 We perceive that the Essex Register is still going on with the 
 subject ; and we are quite certain that Mr. Cambreleng is in very 
 good hands. The materials are ample, to show that the report pre 
 sents the most unwarrantable misrepresentations, both of British and 
 American Shipping. 
 
 f Abbot on Shipping, p. 28. 
 
REVIEW OF CAMBRELENG. 
 
 71 
 
 ber of ships and seamen possessed by the country. According 
 to parliamentary papers this country possessed 
 In 1826 . . . 24,625 ships which measured 2,635,644 tons. 
 In 1827 23,199 " " " 2,460,500 " 
 
 Decrease the last year 1,426 
 This country possessed 
 Iul816 . . . 25,864 ships 
 la 1827 . 23,199 " 
 
 175,144 
 
 2,783,940 
 2,460,500 
 
 Decrease since 1816 2,665 . . . 323,440"* 
 
 The above short statement is quite sufficient to show, that 
 with all the attempts of Mr.Huskisson and following him, of 
 Mr. Cambreleng to propagate a belief in the prosperity of 
 British navigation, it has been declining, while ours has gone 
 on multiplying, notwithstanding that " simultaneous change of 
 policy" to which Mr. C. has attributed such melancholy effects. 
 And this exposition enables us to attach a proper value to the 
 fulsome and unmerited encomiums which our worthy chairman 
 has passed upon those " fundamental changes" that " have re 
 generated the British empire, given a wide range to her com 
 merce, and an active impulse to her power and resources." 
 
 Mr. C. proceeds, -very gravely, to tell us, " that the mere in 
 crease" in the coasting tonnage of Great Britain, " for five years, 
 is more than equal to the whole enrolled and licensed tonnage 
 of the United States, whether employed on our coast, on the 
 Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, on our nothern lakes, or in the 
 fisheries" (page 22). We say in answer to him, that we have 
 
 * We annex a list of the amount of British shipping, as given in 
 the article above referred to in filackwood s Magazine, 1827, estima 
 ted from the public documents of that nation. 
 
 1316 No. oi 
 1817 
 
 ships 25.864 meas 
 25,246 
 
 iring 2,781,940 to 
 2,684,-986 
 
 ns, emplo 
 
 ying 178,000 mei 
 171,013 
 
 1818 
 
 25.507 
 
 2,674,468 
 
 
 173,609 
 
 1819 
 
 25,482 
 
 2,666,396 
 
 
 174,318 
 
 1820 
 
 25.374 
 
 2.648,593 
 
 
 174,514 
 
 1821 
 
 25,036 
 
 2,560,303 
 
 
 169,183 
 
 1822 
 
 24,642 
 
 2,519,044 
 
 
 166,3-33 
 
 1823 
 
 24,542 
 
 2,506,760 
 
 
 165,474 
 
 1824 
 
 24,776 
 
 2.559,587 
 
 
 168.637 
 
 1825 
 
 24,280 
 
 2,553,682 
 
 
 166! 183 
 
 1826 
 
 24.625 
 
 2,635,644 
 
 
 167,536 
 
 1827 
 
 23,199 
 
 2,460,500 
 
 
 151,515 
 
f2 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 grounds to believe that the whole coasting tonnage of Great 
 Britain not the mere increase of it does not equal the coast 
 ing tonnage of the United States. Our coasting tonnage pays 
 for its license once a year, and is reported but once in each 
 year to the Government. The British tonnage is entered at 
 each port in every voyage, and consequently, the same vessel, 
 in its weekly or daily voyages backwards and forwards, adds, 
 at each entry, its full amount of tonnage to the return. " Many 
 of them come with one tide and return with the next." The 
 comparison, therefore, between the two, is wholly dispropor- 
 tioned. The whole British coasting tonnage has been estima 
 ted, in 1827, at about 500,000 tons ;* while ours, according to our 
 Congressional reports, was, in the same year, 873,437 tons 
 the difference being greatly in our favor. Mr. Cambreleng, 
 with a credulity that sorts well with the complexion of his 
 prejudices, has actually set down the coasting tonnage of Great 
 Britain in 1827, at 8,648,868 tons ! and its increase, in four 
 years, at 1,121,021, tons ! ! His increase of the British foreign 
 tonnage, during the same period, is stated at but 337,467 tons. 
 We are surprised that Mr. C. should not have been admonished 
 by this discrepancy itself, of the enormous mistake he had fall 
 en into. The coasting tonnage of Great Britain increasing in 
 a ratio of more than three to one over the foreign ! And the 
 disproportion between the two so exorbitant as eight millions 
 to two ! the mere increase of coasting tonnage, in four years, 
 nearly equal to one half of the foreign commercial marine of 
 the most gigantic maritime power on the globe ! All this ap 
 parent upon the statements of the learned chairman himself ; 
 
 * " If 5000 vessels averaging 100 tons, and five liands make eight 
 voyages each annually, in the coasting trade, they will give 8,000,000 
 tons of inward tonnage in the general return. They will employ 
 25,000 seamen." 
 
 " We have been assured by those who are conversant with the sub 
 ject, that the whole coasting trade does not employ more than 500,- 
 000 tons of shipping ; looking at the actual number of ships, and ex 
 cluding their repeated voyages." Blackwood s Magazine, vol. xxii. n. 
 140. 
 
REVIEW OF CAMBRELENG. 73 
 
 and yet not one misgiving of his own conscience to induce a 
 stricter examination. In our own country, he has discovered that 
 the coasting and foreign tonnage hold a close relationship, and 
 that one waits upon the other. But in England, it seems, things 
 are quite the reverse ; the home trade there is worth four times 
 as much to the shipping interest as the foreign. What a com 
 mentary upon the value of the protective system ! What a. 
 complete overthrow to all the refined speculations about the 
 value of foreign trade, in which our acute system-monger has 
 indulged. Mr. C. is evidently startled at his eight millions of 
 coasting tonnage, and its vast increase in four years. It is al 
 most too much for him. He falls into a speculation how such 
 a thing could be not at all doubting that it was and, there 
 fore, hints, that although this increase is principally owing " to 
 the rapid increase of her navigation in the coasting trade," yet 
 it was partly owing " to the inclusion of the Irish tonnage /" 
 Yes, Mr. Cambreleng ! and partly to a slight confusion of ideas, 
 besides ! The fact is, Mr. C., by too closely following Mr. 
 Huskisson, has got fairly bewildered, and has almost strangled 
 himself with his subject. We have no disposition to press the 
 point further upon him. His ignorance is manifest, and we ap 
 prehend no danger whatever from permitting him and his 
 statements henceforth to go at large. 
 
 Being aware of the dissimilarity between the British and 
 American systems of recording the tonnage, we do not at 
 tempt to institute comparisons founded on the returns of the 
 two countries. The British register list contains both their 
 foreign and coasting tonnage, with the exceptions that we have 
 mentioned before, of vessels under fifteen tons, etc. Our list 
 of enrolled tonnage, perhaps, contains some portions of the 
 registered, and consequently the aggregate of the two may not 
 fairly represent the amount of tonnage. 1 * The British returns 
 
 * Mr. Cambreleng tells us that it contains 277,804 tons. We 
 
 have no other authority for this fact, and we are therefore obliged to 
 
 confess our doubts. It may turn out to be like the 200,000 tons error 
 
 in the registry. Our own opinion is, though we do not speak with 
 
 4 
 
74: POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 of the employment of their shipping in the coasting trade 
 contain reduplications of the same tonnage at every time it 
 enters or leaves a port of the kingdom. Our returns of the 
 enrolled tonnage give no such repetitions ; and consequently 
 there are not sufficient points of resemblance upon which we 
 may compare them with each other. We have, however, the 
 number of British ships and seamen employed in their marine, 
 both coasting and foreign, and the exhibition of this displays 
 an almost uninterrupted decline of British navigation since 
 1816. Our own returns of registered shipping and of enrolled, 
 together with the returns of the employment of both, show 
 in each of these departments a visible increase since 1816, and 
 particularly since 1824. The conclusions these documents 
 afford are irresistible. Mr. C. may entertain us with disquisi 
 tions upon free trade, and speculate in unauthorized and ex 
 travagant suppositions ; he may hunt through the multitudinous 
 varieties of figures, in the reports, to select unfavorable pro 
 portions out of them, where by chance he may find, in some 
 distant eras, a few disconnected facts, to give a seeming to 
 his theory ; but he can never persuade us to resist the evidence 
 we have furnished him of the prosperity of our navigation, 
 and the decline of our rival s. Trade may at one period be 
 dull, and at another active this fact does not alter the gen- 
 certainty, that what is returned as the permanent enrolled tonnage 
 of each year, contains no part of this registered tonnage, or, if any, 
 a very small one, and, that in some of tlie numerous aggregates, 
 made up at the Treasury Department, an accurate list of the actual 
 tonnage is exhibited. If this supposition be correct, the present 
 tonnage of the United States is upwards of one million seven hun 
 dred thousand tons. (We have not seen tlie returns of 1829 ; but we 
 are told that they show a still greater increase in tlie coasting ton 
 nage.) At all events, the returns of the whole tonnage, " rough-hew 
 them how you may " make what allowance Mr. Cambreleng chooses 
 show constant and unequivocal increase in the shipping of the 
 United States, which is the main point, and may reassure Mr. C., if 
 he be not too far gone in despondency, that our commercial marine, 
 and our " naval ascendancy" are both in very good keeping. 
 
REVIEW OF CAMBIIELEXG. 75 
 
 eral result. We do not mean to contend that our navigation 
 is as profitable to us, as it has been, or that our mercantile 
 adventure brings in its former harvest to the country ; but we 
 clo contend, that we have bettered it by our system, and saved 
 it from the paralysis to which this ill-begotten madness of 
 free trade might have exposed us. We would now prefer to 
 return to our discriminating tonnage duties, rather than re 
 lax them another degree, and we would endeavor to bring 
 about, as much as possible, that kind of free trade, of which 
 we once experienced the benefits whose characteristic feature 
 was to have the freedom all on our own side, leaving to our 
 antagonists none. We are not afraid of the countervailing 
 policy of our rivals. They will countervail when they can, 
 with very little regard whatever their admiration may be 
 to our generosity. Great Britain has steadily met us in this 
 way ever since we became a nation : and her whole object 
 now, in opening the trade of Canada and reducing her duties 
 let Mr. Huskisson and Mr. Grant, and their ally Mr. Cam- 
 breleng, descant upon it as they may is to vex and embar 
 rass our trade. Their designs are hostile, and should be met 
 as such. The threat to throw in upon us, from Canada, a flood 
 of contraband commerce, is an insolent bravado, which the 
 spirit of our nation should meet as it deserves. If its design 
 be to force us into a system of measures necessary to them, 
 and injurious to our interests, we should treat it as a defiance, 
 and let Great Britain know, that, powerful as she may esteem 
 herself, and arrogant as she is, she is, at least, as vulnerable 
 as ourselves. If we mistake not, she has already found the 
 wide frontier of Canada as troublesome to her as it can pos 
 sibly be to us. We do not speak without warrant when we 
 say that, at this very moment, the American manufactures 
 travel as smoothly across that frontier as the British, and if 
 Mr. Cambreleng desires evidence of the fact he may find it 
 among his own constituents. The opening of the British 
 Northern Colonies is the least of all possible concessions to 
 ihe spirit of free trade ; it is like other gulls that have de- 
 
<0 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 ceived our sapient merchant statesmen : it may furnish a 
 text for his preaching, but it will bring upon him the laughter 
 and ridicule of those who have caught him in so feeble a 
 snare. When we broke up the trade of British vessels from 
 the West Indies, this same rival of ours made such another 
 concession to the principle, when she opened the island of Ber 
 muda. Mr. Cambreleng would call this, perhaps, a step in 
 the advance of liberal legislation. It was a countervailing 
 measure of hostile aspect. It did for her what it was intended 
 to do gave her the carrying of American products destined 
 for the West India market. Its object was protection, not 
 free trade to expand her own trade by crippling that of her 
 rival. In short, to make the trade free to herself, but to 
 nobody else.* We have no reason to expect any other measure 
 of liberality from foreign powers. They are all interested in 
 procuring as much freedom of trade as it is possible to get 
 without reciprocating it and our interest is very much like 
 theirs. 
 
 The eighth and tenth propositions imputed to Mr. Cam 
 breleng, we leave to stand upon their own merits. They are 
 mere assertions inconsistent with all the facts we have ex 
 hibited. 
 
 We have thus noticed, more minutely than we at first 
 intended, the principal heresies in doctrine, and the gross 
 misstatements of facts, contained in the report Mr. Cam 
 breleng has copied, almost without the intermixture of an 
 
 * We have an amusing exposition of this free-trade principle, in 
 one of the resolutions of the free-trade Chamber of Commerce in 
 Baltimore, published for the edification of Congress, in March, 1822. 
 " Resolved, As the opinion of this Chamber, that commerce flourishes 
 most where it is most free ; that the importance and value of the 
 American Commerce will be promoted by allowing our seaports to 
 be made the depot of all foreign productions, subject, nevertheless, 
 to such duties as the wisdom of Congress may prescribe ; and, Pro 
 vided, That no drawback of duties is allowed on exportation by any 
 foreign vessel." Well done, gentlemen ! a fine crank free trade but 
 somewhat lop-sided. 
 
KEVIEW OF CAMBRELENG. 77 
 
 original idea, his notions, as well as the facts he has brought 
 to illustrate them, from Mr. Huskisson s several speeches in 
 Parliament. Mr. Hnskisson has not escaped censure, both in 
 Parliament and out of it, for some disingenuous collocation 
 of facts, and for a studied effort to conceal unfavorable con 
 clusions. We have seen how far his imitator and disciple in 
 this country has been true to the school of his master ; but 
 what in Mr. Huskisson, might be regarded as perhaps a ve 
 nial duplicity, becomes a reprehensible extravagance in Mr. 
 Cambreleng, because its tendency, if it have any power, is to 
 expose us to all the machinations of our rivals. If British 
 ministers could desire to influence American counsels, for 
 their own advantage, their purpose could not be better accom 
 plished, than by the wrong-headed zeal of our Chairman of 
 the Committee of Commerce. They fear the effect of the 
 American tariff, and are full as importunate in persuading us 
 to forego this system as Mr. Cambreleng. Their urgency in 
 the enterprise betrays their interest and that alone is a suffi 
 cient reason to distrust them. There have been some reduc 
 tions of duties in England, that, perhaps, were salutary, but we 
 have shown the grounds upon which they have been allowed. 
 The British restrictions, in the mildest shape and most re 
 duced forms, are actually higher protections to industry than 
 our heaviest duties. If what in Great Britain is called the 
 free-trade system had its full sway, still to be on a footing 
 with that nation, and enjoy the benefit of the same policy 
 here, it would be necessary for us rather to rise than fall in 
 our restrictions ; so different is the posture of the two powers. 
 Our country has attained to a maturity that gives her a com 
 mand almost over the whole globe ; the other is yet, compara 
 tively, in its infancy, and Mr. Cambreleng would persuade us 
 into an equal competition ! It is like a boxer from the train 
 ing school of Barclay, inviting an unpractised hand into the 
 ring, on equal terms. As it is our destiny to be obliged to 
 contend with this adversary, we claim the privilege of choosing 
 the weapons. The American rifle is a very sure shot, and we 
 
78 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 choose to fight with it : our antagonist is likely to be discon 
 certed by the choice. 
 
 There is one portion of Mr. Cambreleng s report which we 
 do not find so much reason to quarrel with. It is the discus 
 sion that he has introduced upon the impolicy of taxing the 
 raw material used in our manufactures. Upon this point, the 
 resemblance between our interest and that of Great Britain is 
 sufficiently close to render all that Mr. Huskisson has said, 
 and all that Mr. Cambreleng has repeated in reference to it, 
 fully entitled to our consideration. We think Mr. C. un 
 doubtedly right in his position, that a tax upon the raw mate 
 rial operates as a bounty in favor of the foreign manufacturer, 
 and if we could believe that Mr. C. advocated the repeal of 
 these duties, with a view to the protection of our manufactures, 
 we should hold his zeal in more respect ; but regarding it only 
 as a concomitant of his unqualified repeal of all protecting re 
 strictions, we cannot but condemn his principle, along with his 
 motives. We think it rather hard, that the protective system 
 is to be prostrated through this defect as Mr. Cambreleng 
 well knows, that the advocates of the manufacturing interests 
 of the United States clearly pointed out, in advance, the very 
 evils which form the ground work of his present assault. They 
 foresaw the injury that was about to be done to the interests 
 they sought to protect : but if we mistake not, Mr. Cambreleng 
 himself, and others of his way of thinking, voted for these du 
 ties, and enlisted forces to sustain them, with no other purpose 
 than to render the law odious to the people and injurious to 
 the manufacturers. These provisions were forced, therefore, 
 upon the friends of our manufacturers, who had the alternative 
 presented them of no protection at all, or protection encum 
 bered with all the trammels of these premeditated mischiefs. 
 It is therefore, we think, ungracious in Mr. C. to lay these im 
 perfections at the door of the protective system, and much more 
 so to use them with so exulting a tone of triumph, as the 
 legitimate issue of a system of policy that not only disclaims, 
 
REVIEW OF CAMBRELEXG. 79 
 
 but absolutely holds them in a common abhorrence with its 
 opponents. 
 
 Nothing has struck us more, in the course of our review of 
 the Report, than the almost slavish fidelity with which it has 
 copied its opinions and facts from Mr. Huskisson s speeches, 
 even down to the ridiculous assertion that the free-trade doc 
 trine numbered among its supporters the name of Mr. Pitt, 
 whose whole system of administration was notoriously one of 
 restrictions and protections upon every branch of industry. 
 But it does not often happen that the repetition, by the disci 
 ple, of the lecture of his master, should, of itself, import an im 
 peachment of their wisdom. This, however, is the fact, in the 
 present instance. The adoption of Mr. Huskisson s views by 
 Mr. Cambreleng, is an emphatic condemnation of their propri 
 ety in English policy. Mr. Huskisson recommends the meas 
 ure of entering into reciprocity treaties with foreign nations, 
 upon the ground that they will be favorable to the increase of 
 the proportion of British navigation employed in the trade, and 
 illustrates his position by showing, what Mr. Cambreleng has 
 repeated after him, that the quantity of British tonnage em 
 ployed in the American trade has increased since the Conven 
 tion of London.* Mr. Cambreleng, who seems not to be aware 
 that he is on this side of the Atlantic, recommends the same 
 measure in order to prevent this increase. Either he or his or 
 acle must be mistaken. We leave them to settle that point be 
 tween them, and, for ourselves, are content to recommend a 
 
 * There is some divergence of opinion between Mr. Huskisson and 
 the British writers upon the effect of the reciprocity treaties. They 
 affirm and show by parliamentary returns, in opposition to Mr. H., 
 that the shipping- interest of Great Britain has suffered very mate 
 rially by these treaties ; and that the amount of British shipping em 
 ployed in the trade of foreign countries, on the whole, has diminished. 
 In our trade, we do not deny its increase ; Mr. H. attributes this to the 
 Convention of London. If this be true, it is a strong argument in fa 
 vor of our return to discriminating duties again. We are altogether 
 certain that it has not resulted from the protective system of this 
 country. 
 
80 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 reciprocal treaty with all those nations whose navigation is not 
 as vigorous as our own, and to refuse such alliances with pow 
 ers that are able to navigate on cheaper or more advantageous 
 terms than we do ourselves ; in other words, as we have be 
 fore declared, to give as much encouragement to our own 
 navigation as we can, and as little as possible to that of our ri 
 vals. Every privilege which we can acquire for our shipping 
 abroad, is, in its effect, protection and encouragement, and there 
 fore enters into our system. Indeed, we are not inclined to 
 dispute with Mr. Cambreleng, that it would be to our advan 
 tage to extend this system to all the world, as we believe that we 
 can build and navigate at less expense than any of our com 
 mercial rivals, and, consequently, that we should be able to 
 wrest from them the carriage of their own merchandise. We 
 are even willing to reciprocate with Mr. Huskisson, if he will 
 open the ports of Great Britain completely to our rivalry not 
 confining the free trade to articles the growth or manufacture 
 of either country. We opine that in one year we should give 
 the free-trade philosophers of Great Britain a commentary upon 
 their text that they might study to advantage for the rest of 
 their lives. This perfection of the theory, however, does not 
 enter into the views of the British statesmen. They are not 
 willing to go further than to allow each country to carry its own 
 products thus defining the high-water mark to which the flood 
 of free trade is permitted to rise. We would suggest it to the 
 consideration of the philosophers, whether this also be not an 
 unwarrantable interference with the laws of nature. 
 
 We have some complaints to make against the opponents 
 of the tariff system in general. We have to charge them with 
 a want of candid and fair argument of the question. They 
 have never been content to rest their principles upon the proof 
 of facts, but, on the contrary, have exerted all their ingenuity 
 to escape the conviction which daily experience is constantly 
 affording. The report is almost the only document that has 
 been published in the United States, that professes to deal with 
 the subject as one to be adjudged by the present or past histo- 
 
REVIEW OF CAMBKELENG. 81 
 
 ry of the country. The mode of assault heretofore practised, 
 from which even the report is not altogether free, has consisted 
 rather in awakening the prejudices and alarming the fears of 
 particular interests, than of canvassing principles and discuss 
 ing the value of passing experiments. The planters of the 
 South have been wrought up into a state of feeling amounting 
 to terror, lest Great Britain, in some vindictive moment, should 
 deny herself the use of American cotton in her manufacture. 
 A vain fear ! Our restrictions have already been in operation 
 for twelve years, and our exports to Great Britain have been 
 continually increasing. If that nation could procure cotton on 
 better terms elsewhere, or cultivate it in her own colonies, she 
 has had every motive to do so. During our war she was 
 obliged to resort to Brazil, to Eygpt, and to the East Indies 
 for her supply. Her demand at that period was entirely suffi 
 cient to give a permanent impulse to this cultivation, if these 
 countries had been able to gratify her wants. With the peace, 
 however, she came back to us, and her continuance in our mar 
 ket is nothing less than a vital concern with her stimulated 
 by no sense of friendship, nor sympathy of kindred, but by that 
 paramount and omnipotent instinct, of interest and necessity, 
 which must endure as long as the South can furnish the pro 
 duct on cheaper terms than the rest of the world and no 
 longer. 
 
 The same species of argument has been directed to all that 
 class of artisans employed in the several branches of ship build 
 ing. They have been threatened with the loss of their daily 
 bread. We trust that we have sufficiently shown how futile is 
 this threat. Our ship building daily increases, not only for our 
 own service, but for the use of other nations. The tariff, so far 
 from injuring this interest, has had a visible effect upon its pros 
 perity. Our returns, as we have most conclusively proved, show 
 a greater ratio of increase in American built ships since 1824, 
 than before that period. 
 
 The same alarmists have attempted to frighten the farming 
 interests, by assuring them of a certain decline in their agri- 
 4* 
 
82 POLITIC AT. PAPERS. 
 
 cultural products. Our landed proprietors are not so simple 
 as to be deceived by this outcry. They know, from unhappy 
 experience, how completely the foreign demand for the produce 
 of the soil has been closed against them, and they can calcu 
 late the benefit, better than we can do it for them, of raising 
 up a market for their commodities at home. It is a plain prop 
 osition, level to every man s understanding, that the manufac 
 turer of the fabrics to be used in the country had better be fed 
 by American productions, than by the growth of any other land : 
 and the withdrawal of a large mass of our population from ag 
 riculture, to other employments, must operate favorably for 
 those who are still left in possession of the soil. 
 
 Loud and melancholy predictions have been made of the 
 failure of the revenue and the necessity of a resort to direct 
 taxation. The treasury, however, thrives amid all these augu 
 ries, and the customs continue ample and abundant, fluctua 
 ting, it is true, from year to year, but still holding their ground 
 without the prospect of a deficiency. Indeed, it has already 
 become a matter of speculation what we shall do with our sur 
 plus funds after we have paid off the debt. We can hardly 
 charge our opponents with the folly of believing that there is, 
 yet, the remotest possibility of a resort to internal taxation : 
 that argument seems to have died at the moment of its birth. 
 
 Last of all, with a genuine demagogue spirit, they have 
 appealed to the passions and prejudices of the ignorant, by 
 disseminating an opinion that the protective system is a con 
 trivance to tax the poor man s pittance with no better purpose 
 than to increase the store of the rich. This argument is more 
 than once repeated in the report. We have no design to make 
 a formal refutation of it, but we hold it altogether unworthy of 
 the station and pretensions of the chairman of the Committee 
 of Commerce. It is a wretched theme of the hustings, and 
 never urged but in the presence of the multitude. We do 
 not know a fairer mode of taxation when taxation is neces 
 sary than that which reaches the commodities in most com 
 mon use : it is equable and diffusive, and operates in fairer 
 
REVIEW OF CAMBRELENG. 83 
 
 proportion upon the wealthy than any other ; they have their 
 dependants, correspondent to their affluence, and pay the tax 
 in the same ratio. The laborer avoids its pressure by throwing 
 it into his wages the employer takes it without the possibility 
 of shifting it upon another. 
 
 Such have generally been the topics of alarm insisted upon 
 by the opponents of the protective system ; but they have 
 never before attempted, that we are aware of, to show that 
 their fears have been justified by the results. That enterprise 
 has been left to the Committee of Commerce. With what 
 success the effort has been attended, we leave it to our readers 
 to determine. It has been our aim to show that the public 
 mind has been grossly abused, and we have endeavored to ex 
 pose the misrepresentations by which the advocates of free 
 trade have attempted to forestall the judgment of the nation, 
 and turn it from its wisest and best designs. Time, which ac 
 complishes all things that are to be accomplished, has already 
 set its seal upon this pernicious abuse, and furnished the most 
 abundant proofs of the incapacity and if we did not hold the 
 individuals in too much respect, we should say imbecility of 
 that rash party whose counsels have so long sustained the un 
 happy warfare of opinion that still agitates the country. 
 
 This domestic dissension has enlivened the hopes of our 
 enemies, who are not only anxiously watching the strife, but 
 participating in it by the loud and frequent plaudits with which 
 they cheer up the discomfited champions of free trade both in 
 Congress and out of it. The busy genius of hostile rivals is 
 abroad, and all the appliances that artful rhetoric and counter 
 acting measures can afford, have been lavished to sustain the 
 banner of opposition against our established, and, we may say, 
 successful policy. 
 
 We have never pretended to assert that the prosperity or 
 happiness of the country was concerned in the attempt to 
 build up manufactures uncongenial with our habits, or inappli 
 cable to our local resources.* Our protective system has been 
 * The Edinburg Review, of October last, contains an essay on the 
 
84 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 exclusively applied to the encouragement of those branches of 
 industry in which we are able to excel to which the mineral, 
 animal and vegetable wealth of our soil has invited us, and in 
 reference to which, therefore, we enter upon the career with a 
 certainty before us, that the few years of infant helplessness 
 being overcome, we shall walk into the field of competition 
 with all advantages. The report seems never to have regard 
 ed the question in this point of view : it has taken it for grant 
 ed that the struggle is to be perpetual without an accession of 
 
 French commercial system, the object of which is to show, that the 
 restrictive policy has been hurtful to France, in some of the branches 
 of industry to which it has been applied. It seems that in that King 
 dom they have attempted to manufacture iron, with wood for their 
 fuel. Their coal is at a distance, the roads proverbially the worst in 
 Europe, and wood scarce and dear. We are not surprised to learn 
 that, under such circumstances, France cannot rival Great Britain in 
 this manufacture. We think it folly in her to attempt it until she 
 cfin provide a cheaper fuel. It is, perhaps, an equally unwise attempt 
 in France, to restrict her supply of sugar to the islands of Martinique, 
 Guadaloupe, and the Isles de Bourbon, since they are by no means 
 large enough to supply her wants in this article. These are evident 
 ly examples of the impolicy of forcing national industry into channels 
 where, from fixed and natural causes, they can never excel. It is 
 unfair to judge the protective system by such instances. Its advo 
 cates here do not predicate its success, under such circumstances. 
 They ask for the national protection for that industry which we pos 
 sess every means of bringing to perfection. 
 
 But there is one thing in the review above cited, worth attending 
 to, and to which we especially invite the notice of Mr. Cambreleng. 
 The Reviewer asserts that the protected commodities in France, with 
 which he finds so much fault, have all risen enormously in cost to the 
 people, and this is the foundation of his reproof upon the system. 
 How does it happen that the reduction of prices, from the war rates 
 to the ordinary prices of peace (see Mr. C. s report, page 5), has not 
 been felt in France ? That these restricted commodities have risen 
 there, while ours have fallen ? Simply, because France has unwise 
 ly attempted to force an industry to which her resources were not 
 adapted ; and the United States have applied their means to the en~ 
 courayement of an industry to which they were adapted. There is tho 
 difference, and there the mystery of our low prices. 
 
REVIEW OF CAMBRELENG. 85 
 
 strength or skill ; that practice is to produce no perfection, 
 and science no improvement. Our success, thus far, has most 
 signally refuted this idea. We have not yet entered upon any 
 important manufacture without, in a few years, bringing down 
 the price, and even adding some valuable items to our exports. 
 AVith such evidences before us, we are astonished at the divis 
 ion of opinion in the country, as to the policy of extending a 
 liberal measure of encouragement and protection to these use 
 ful endeavors. We have not been able to discover that any 
 department of industry has suffered by the adoption of the 
 system, while it is evident that the nation has received many 
 present benefits, and laid up a sure and splendid reversion of 
 wealth for ages to come. Her duty is to cherish these at 
 tempts by a careful and considerate protection ; " to lift up 
 them trtst fall,* and strengthen such as do stand." And we do 
 not doubt the speedy approach of that day when the over- 
 wntlming opinion of the country at large shall applaud and 
 sustain the protective policy that has now gained its foothold 
 In the public counsels. 
 
 Tt is GIT own consolation to see the strong safeguard of in- 
 tei est rapidly throwing its arm over every quarter of the coun 
 try. Manufactures are extending into every State ; and the 
 sensibilities of our southern friends begin to revive from the 
 slioek occasioned by the doleful prophecies uttered against 
 their prosperity. To their astonishment they still find a mar- 
 kei abroad for their cotton, and a rich one rapidly growing up 
 about their at home : they are not yet stripped of the necessa 
 ries of life, and even get the essential articles of clothing at a 
 v eductiou of price that is quite unaccountable. Our popula- 
 ; : ^n are summoned to new fields of industry and to new sources 
 of pio:":- : and while peace and plenty smile upon us in our pur- 
 buts. ive si:* every day contributing to render the nation more 
 muepc:-deut of foreign supplies of whatever is essential to our 
 comfort and power. We feel assured that under the influence 
 of this jsyptem our national difficulties come when they may, 
 to embroil us with other States will find us a self-possessed, 
 
POLITICAL PAPF 
 
 vigorous and nmtklul people, ready to make the best of the 
 the case and feariess of the ereiit. Our armies will march with 
 tfce muniments of war Kl*iify furnished from our own la 
 bor, our navy wffl float upon the ocean dressed in the can- 
 Tass of the oumaiij, and oar citizens will await the issue of the 
 strife surrounded with the wealth of their fields, their mines 
 2 : v : :. ; : ; : . -. - 
 
DOMESTIC INDUSTRY. 87 
 
 ADDRESS 
 
 OF THE FRIENDS OF DOMESTIC INDUSTRY, ASSEMBLED IN 
 CONVENTION, AT NEW YORK, OCTOBER 26, 1831, TO 
 THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES. [DRAFTED BY 
 A COMMITTEE OF WHICH MR. KENNEDY OF BALTI 
 MORE AND MR. DULTON OF MASSACHUSETTS WERE 
 MEMBERS.] 
 
 FELLOW-CITIZENS : A numerous delegation from sev 
 eral States in the Union have convened in the city of 
 New York representing great national interests which they are 
 anxious, by the most efficient but peaceable means, to defend 
 and support In addressing themselves to the people of the 
 United States, they invoke their candid attention to several 
 topics of great national importance, without assuming any au 
 thority ultimately to decide them ; conscious that their reason 
 ings and opinions can have, and ought to have, no other influ 
 ence or force than belongs to their truth and soundness. 
 
 A system of laws imposing duties for the encouragement 
 and protection of domestic industry, upon the faith of which a 
 large portion of the people of this country have invested their 
 property and given a new direction to the labor, and with a 
 continuance of which are completely identified all their hopes 
 of maintenance for themselves and their families, has been re 
 cently denounced as "distinguished by every characteristic 
 which may define a tyranny the most odious." The entire ab 
 olition of this system, vitally involving the interest of farmers, 
 mechanics, manufacturers, merchants and all the laboring 
 classes, has been demanded in a tone that offers no hope of 
 
POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 condition or compromise. A submission to such a demand, 
 with or without the consent of those who must be the victims, 
 would be marked by such scenes of ruin and despair, as no 
 one, not blinded by the strongest passions of our nature, could 
 witness without compunction. 
 
 We address ourselves, then, to the enlightened patriotism 
 of our fellow-citizens in every part of the Union ; and we earn 
 estly entreat them to accompany us in the examination which 
 we propose to make of the arguments and statements recently 
 put forth ; appealing to their clear discernment of truth, their 
 high sense of duty, and their calm moral courage to avert the 
 evils that now seems to threaten the prosperity and peace of 
 the country. 
 
 Of these topics, the first in order and the gravest in char 
 acter, respects the constitutional power of Congress to pass the 
 laws which are the subject of complaint. 
 
 As a constitutional question, the inquiry is not whether the 
 laws are wise or unwise, whether in their operations they are 
 always equal, or sometimes unequal, or whether individuals 
 may not think them so wide a departure from a just adminis 
 tration of the powers of the government as to be, in an indefi 
 nite and loose sense, inconsistent with the spirit of the consti 
 tution. The true and real question is, do they exceed the pow 
 er of the law-giver ; and do they, for that reason, fail to be ob 
 ligatory ? 
 
 We dissent from the notion that laws plainly unconstitu 
 tional may be yet so framed as to escape the animadversion of 
 courts of law. If unconstitutional, their true character will 
 either appear on their face or may be made to appear by sta 
 ting the facts which fasten that character upon them. And if 
 the motives which are supposed to have influenced Congress in 
 their enactment are not facts which may be properly inquired 
 into to give them this character, the reason is, not that Con 
 gress has executed an unlawful power or veiled an unlawful 
 purpose under a general law, but that the general power being 
 given to Congress to pass such laws, the purpose of the law, 
 
DOMESTIC INDUSTRY. 
 
 like its occasion, its duration, or any other part of its charac 
 ter, is constitutionally referred to the discretion of Congress. 
 
 The present constitution has been in operation (with a suc 
 cess not more gratifying to ourselves than surprising to the 
 rest of the world) for forty-two years. Twenty-one different 
 Congresses, regularly elected and appointed by the people, 
 and their agents, and the State Legislatures, have successively 
 assembled to enact laws under its authority. Seven distin 
 guished individuals have been called by the voice of the coun 
 try to the chair of the chief magistracy, all holding and some 
 of them, on various occasions, having exercised the power of 
 giving a negative to such acts of Congress as, in their opinion, 
 transcended the just limit of legislative authority. During the 
 same period a supreme judicial tribunal has existed, not less 
 distinguished for purity and talent than for dignity and import 
 ance, whose high function it properly is to pronounce its sol 
 emn judgment on the constitutional extent of the power of Con 
 gress whenever any exercise of that power is complained of 
 and the case is brought duly before it. Most of these succes 
 sive Congresses have passed laws similar in character, in de 
 sign, and in effect, to the acts now complained of; and all of 
 them have unequivocally sanctioned their principle. All these 
 chief magistrates, in like manner, have, without doubt or hes 
 itation, recognized the existence of the power ; and no ques 
 tion of its validity has been raised in the judicial tribunals. 
 It is under this weight of authority, and this length of practice 
 in its favor, and after the investment, upon the faith of it, of a 
 capital probably amounting to two hundred and fifty millions 
 of dollars, that a disposition has now sprung up to deny the 
 power altogether, and to propose, if its exercise be persisted in, 
 a resort to such means of redress as threaten the Union. 
 
 We cannot but persuade ourselves that before the Ameri 
 can people abandon a system of laws, now of long continu 
 ance, passed at different times by the constituted authorities 
 with the full approbation of the whole country ; and especially, 
 before they break up their Government and return to a state 
 
90 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 of anarchy, on the ground that such laws are unconstitutional, 
 they will give to that question a very careful and serious con 
 sideration. 
 
 Before proceeding to express the general views entertained 
 on this important subject by the members of this convention, 
 it is not altogether uninteresting to inquire how far admissions 
 or concessions have been made by those who deny the exist 
 ence of the power, notwithstanding the general and positive 
 terms in which that denial is expressed. 
 
 It seems to us, indeed, that the plain object of the con 
 stitution, and the strong reason of the case, have driven those 
 who deny the power, even upon their own mistaken view 
 of its source, into the necessity of making admissions which, 
 when made, leave no ground for their argument. They deny 
 that Congress can rightfully lay duties for the sole, or the 
 main purpose, of encouraging manufactures ; but they admit, 
 at the same time, that Congress may lay duties for revenue, 
 and that, in laying such, duties, it may so arrange them as in 
 cidentally to give protection to manufactures. They admit, too, 
 that Congress may lay duties not designed for revenue, but 
 designed to countervail the injurious regulations of foreign powers. 
 Are not these concessions inconsistent with the main propo 
 sition ? How can it be longer denied that Congress may lay 
 duties for protection, after it is conceded that it may arrange 
 duties with that view ? It cannot be true that the power was 
 given for revenue only, and that it ought to be strictly confined 
 to that object, and true, also, that, in selecting subjects of 
 duties, regard may be had to a different object. 
 
 An individual in society is the consumer of a particular 
 foreign article ; he finds it heavily taxed by duties, while other 
 articles, equally capable of producing revenue, are untaxecl. 
 Does it make any difference to him, whether the article neces 
 sary to him was seized on, as the main purpose of the law, 
 with the sole object of protection, or whether it was only inci 
 dentally selected in order to favor the manufacturer, while the 
 commodities consumed by his neighbors, though equally fit 
 
DOMESTIC INDUSTRY. 91 
 
 subjects for a tax for revenue, are passed over in this inci 
 dental arrangement ? Will not every ingenuous mind at once 
 agree that if the power to lay duties was conferred on Con 
 gress for the sole purpose of revenue, it is a violation of its 
 trust to mingle any other purpose with that, as much as it 
 would be to substitute an entire new purpose for it ? Con 
 gress cannot look with one glance to revenue, and the other 
 to protection, if the Constitution limit its power to revenue 
 alone. When it is thus said that protection is a fit object to 
 be regarded incidentally, in laying duties, but that the general 
 purpose must still be revenue, who shall inform us how much, 
 in the motives of Congress, must be the main purpose of 
 revenue, and how much may be the incidental purpose of pro 
 tection ? How high may the incidental object rise, and the 
 law be yet constitutional ; or at what point will it have ap 
 proached so near the main, or the only object of the duty, as 
 to render the law void ? It may be answered, possibly, that 
 the admission goes no farther than this : that when Congress 
 has already resolved to lay duties, then it may, as a subsequent 
 resolution, resolve to lay them on such a selection of articles 
 as shall best favor manufactures. But would not such a subse 
 quent resolution be wholly aside from the exercise of a mere 
 revenue power ? Would it not be a clear imposition of duties 
 for protection ? And might it not lead, practically, to the same 
 consequences, since, under this admitted power of selection 
 and arrangement, the whole burden of the Government might 
 be laid with a direct view to protection merely. 
 
 The other admission, that is, that Congress may lay duties 
 to countervail the commercial relations of other States, seems to 
 us still more decisive. This concedes, at once, that the power 
 to lay duties is not a mere revenue power for here is one 
 admitted case, in which it may properly be exercised, which 
 has no relation to revenue. Yet this is no particular or specified 
 power. The Constitution no more points out this, as being a 
 proper object, than it points out protection. If it be pro 
 vided for at all, it is because it is embraced in the general 
 
y^ POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 words of the grant. It is there, or it is nowhere. Laws, 
 laying duties to countervail the regulations of other States, 
 are regulations of trade. They are not only like laws of pro 
 tection, but they are, emphatically, themselves laws of protec 
 tion. They have usually no other end or design than to pro 
 tect the manufactures or other interests of our own citizens 
 from the effect of unequal competition or monopoly on the 
 part of other nations. Congress, then, upon this admission, 
 may lay duties with the single object of encouraging certain 
 descriptions of domestic employment or industry ; and it re 
 mains for those who concede this, and yet deny the general 
 power, to show how it is, that Congress has power, in its dis 
 cretion, to protect some classes of industry and no power, in 
 the same discretion and by the same means, to protect others. 
 But the admission goes still further. It not only furnishes an 
 analogy for the case in argument, but meets and covers that 
 identical case. The laws so much opposed, and whose con 
 stitutional validity is so loudly denied, are themselves no other 
 than so many acts passed to countervail the injurious com 
 mercial regulations of foreign States. 
 
 The United States have not been the first to reject the 
 theory of free trade. They have not introduced into the 
 world new modes of legislation. They have not originated a 
 system of protection ; far otherwise. At the very moment 
 they had succeeded to throw off their colonial bondage and 
 had established their own independence, they found that their 
 condition, so far as respected commerce, agriculture and 
 manufactures, was but partially bettered by the change, be 
 cause they found the ports of the leading states of Europe 
 shut against their ships and against their products. They 
 offered free trade to all nations ; but the nations, with one 
 accord, rejected their offer. The subjects of other States 
 were protected, as against them, by the laws of other States ; 
 but they were protected against nobody. It is undeniably 
 true, that this condition of things was one of the very causes 
 which led to the adoption of the present Government. It is 
 
DOMESTIC INDUSTRY. 93 
 
 unquestionable, as matter of historic record, that one strong 
 motive for forming and establishing the present constitution 
 was to organize a Government that should possess the power of 
 countervailing these foreign regulations by adequate measures, 
 and thereby protecting the labor and industry of the people 
 of the country. Countervailing laws were accordingly passed 
 at the very first session of the first Congress ; others have 
 been passed at various times since ; one and all, they partake 
 of the same character ; they are all countervailing laws ren 
 dered expedient and necessary by the policy pursued by 
 other nations. The Republic is now composed of thirteen 
 millions of people ; all the principal products of eight or 
 nine of these thirteen millions are, at this moment, shut 
 out from the great market of consumption abroad, either by 
 absolute prohibition or by high duties ; and it is to meet 
 this state of things, it is to countervail these foreign regulations, 
 so injurious to us ; it is to place ourselves on some footing of 
 equality ; it is to rescue the labor of the American people 
 from an inferiority, a subjection, at once dishonorable and 
 burdensome, at once degrading to its character while it in 
 creases its toils, that those very laws were originally passed, 
 have all along continued, and now exist. They are, therefore, 
 countervailing laws and no other in every just sense of these 
 terms. 
 
 Having made these remarks on what is conceded by those 
 who deny the power of Congress to protect manufactures, and 
 on the effect of that concession, we proceed to present the 
 view which this meeting entertains on the general consti 
 tutional question. 
 
 By the Constitution Congress has power " to lay and col 
 lect taxes, duties, imposts and excises." It has power also 
 " to regulate commerce with foreign nations." 
 
 The power to lay duties is accompanied by one express 
 qualification or limitation, which is, " that all duties shall be 
 uniform throughout the United States." The power to regu 
 late commerce has its limitation also, which is, that no regula- 
 
POLITICAL PAPEKS. 
 
 tion of commerce shall give preference to the ports of one 
 State over those of another ; and there is another limitation, 
 which may apply to both clauses, namely, that no export duty 
 shall ever be laid. 
 
 Here then is a grant of power in broad and general terms, 
 but with certain specific limitations, carefully expressed. But 
 neither of these limitations applies, in any manner, to that 
 exercise of the power which is now under consideration. 
 Neither of them, nor any other clause or word in the whole 
 Constitution manifests the slightest intention to restrain the 
 words so as to prohibit Congress from laying duties for pro 
 tection. The attempt is nothing less than to add a restriction 
 which the Constitution has omitted. Who has authority to 
 add this ? If other restrictions had been intended they would 
 have been expressed. When the business of limitation was 
 before the convention what was omitted was as much an 
 exercise of intention as what was expressed. It stated all the 
 restraints on Congress which it intended ; and to impose 
 others now would be, not to interpret the Constitution, but to 
 change it ; not to construe the existing instrument, but to 
 make another. 
 
 The words of the grant being general, to lay duties and 
 to regulate commerce, their meaning is to be ascertained by 
 reference to the common use and import of language. No 
 unusual signification is to be given to the terms, either to 
 restrain or enlarge their import. Congress, in its discretion, 
 is to lay duties and to regulate trade for all the objects and 
 purposes for which duties are ordinarily laid and trade ordi 
 narily regulated. If such a thing was never before heard of 
 as laying duties and regulating trade with a view to encourage 
 manufactures, then it might be said that the convention did 
 not contemplate such an exercise of the power by Congress. 
 But it was perfectly known to the convention and to the people 
 of this country that one leading object with all govern 
 ments, in laying duties and regulating <*ade, was, and for a 
 long time had been, the encouragement of manufactures. 
 
DOMESTIC INDUSTRY. 
 
 95 
 
 This was emphatically true of England, whose language the 
 convention spoke and whose legal and legislative phraseology 
 was theirs also. Every leading state of Europe was, at that 
 moment, regulating its commerce for purposes of this nature. 
 Such a purpose, indeed, had been long sought to be accom 
 plished by some of the States themselves, by their own regu 
 lations of trade. Massachusetts had attempted it, New York 
 had attempted it, Virginia had attempted it, and we believe 
 other States had done the same. How ineffectual all their 
 attempts were for want of union and a general system, was 
 soon seen and felt by the whole country ; but they show to 
 what ends, and to what uses the power to regulate trade was 
 understood to extend. But not only in other nations, and in 
 the States, before the adoption of the present Constitution, as 
 we shall have occasion to show hereafter, but in the United 
 States since, and in the administration of this very Constitution, 
 regulations of trade have been made, in almost innumerable 
 instances, with no view to revenue, but with a sole and exclusive 
 regard to protection. 
 
 If our understanding of the Constitution be not according 
 to its true meaning, that instrument has been grossly violated 
 from the very beginning. What are all the registry acts, what 
 the bounties on the fisheries, but so many avowed efforts to 
 protect American Industry, under the power of regulating 
 trade ? On what foundation does the whole system of the 
 coasting trade stand ? The American ship-builder and ship 
 owner has enjoyed, from the first, and we think properly, not 
 only protection in that trade, but the monopoly of it. He 
 shuts out all foreign competition, and he does so on the ground 
 that the public good is promoted by giving him this advantage. 
 We think he is right in asking this, and the Government right 
 in granting it. Yet this is not free trade : it is preference ; it 
 ^protection, and protection of a .manufacture under the power 
 to regulate trade. The laws giving this protection to the man 
 ufacture and the use of ships may be wise, and laws protecting 
 other manufactures, may be unwise. But the first cannot be 
 
96 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 constitutional and the latter not constitutional. If there be 
 power for one, there is power for both. Both are drawn from 
 the same grant, both operate by the same general means, and 
 both regard the same object, the protection, namely, of Amer 
 ican labor and capital against foreign competition. If it be 
 said that the navigation act is founded in national policy and 
 that it is essential to national defence and national independ 
 ence, we admit it. But we answer, in the first place, that Con 
 gress could not exercise a power not granted, merely because 
 it might be useful or necessary : and, in the second place, we 
 say that the same remark is true of the policy of protecting 
 manufactures. That policy, also, is essential to national inde 
 pendence. Iron, hemp and clothing for sailors and soldiers 
 are not less indispensable to national defence than ships and 
 seamen. Not only in the general use of language, then, does 
 the power of laying duties and regulating trade extend to the 
 protection, by the use of such means, of domestic manufac 
 tures, but such has been the constant interpretation of the Con 
 stitution itself. 
 
 We think, indeed, that when a general power is given to 
 Congress by the Constitution of the United States, in plain 
 and unambiguous words, their acts are constitutional and 
 valid if they are within the scope of the granted power ; and 
 that, in considering the validity of the law, the motives of the 
 legislature can never be investigated. Having granted the 
 power, with such limits expressed as were thought proper, its 
 exercise, within those limits, is left to the discretion of Con 
 gress. 
 
 What is the true character of the opposite doctrine ? It is, 
 that the constitutionality of a law depends, not on its provis 
 ions and enactments, but on the motives of those who passed 
 it. Is not such a notion new? How are we to ascertain 
 the motives of a legislature ? By private inquiry ; by pub 
 lic examination ; by conjecture ? The law may be passed 
 on mixed motives : some members voting for revenue ; some 
 for protection ; or one house may act with one view, and the 
 
DOMESTIC INDUSTRY. 97 
 
 other house with another. What will be the character of such 
 a law ? 
 
 According to this new theory, if the motives be constitu 
 tional then the act is j if the motives be unconstitutional then 
 the act is unconstitutional also. It follows, therefore, that a 
 law passed by one Congress may be constitutional which, if 
 passed by another, though in the same words, would be unconsti 
 tutional. Besides, on this theory a law may be unconstitution 
 al for its omissions as well as its enactments ; because, in lay 
 ing duties, articles may be omitted as well as articles inserted, 
 from a design to favor manufactures. 
 
 We may pursue this inquiry a step further. 
 
 In order to ascertain whether an act were passed primarily 
 for revenue, the construing pow-er must be authorized to inquire 
 whether that revenue be necessary. For if it be conceded that 
 Congress has a constitutional power to raise an indefinite 
 amount of revenue, such a concession will cover any system of 
 imposts that may ever be adopted. The right to raise more 
 revenue than the expenses of government require implies the 
 exercise of a power to tax under circumstances in which the 
 raising of revenue cannot be a primary purpose, but in which 
 a purpose to protect industry or, in other words, what has been 
 called the incidental object, may be rendered, in effect, the 
 principal object of the tax, although veiled under the revenue 
 power. For these reasons we say it follows, as an inevitable 
 consequence, under this view of the source of the protective 
 power, that the constitutionality of any system of imposts, 
 professing to be directed to revenue, must depend upon 
 the fact whether that revenue be necessary to the Government 
 or not. 
 
 The statement of such a consequence is sufficient to show 
 what endless difficulties must embarrass the operations of the 
 Government in defining the limits of this incidental protection, 
 which has been alleged to be the only protection that the Con 
 stitution allows, and of itself affords, what we conceive to be, 
 an unanswerable argument against referring the right to pro- 
 5 
 
98 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 tect industry exclusively to that clause of the Constitution 
 which authorizes Congress to lay imposts for the purposes of 
 revenue. 
 
 To determine whether any proposed amount of revenue be 
 necessary would, in a great number of cases, prove a fruitful 
 source of vexatious and unprofitable controversy. One party, 
 conceiving it wise to improve the face of the territory with ex 
 pensive roads and canals, to provide fortifications and the mu 
 nitions of war, and to accumulate treasure in the expectation 
 of national difficulties-, would find good reason to maintain that 
 a large revenue was indispensable to the nation. With this 
 party a high and burdensome rate of imposts, fully adequate 
 to the most extensive protection of manufactures that has ever 
 been asked for, would be a constitutional application of the 
 revenue power. Another party, more thrifty in their policy, 
 holding that the expenditures of the Government should be 
 graduated to the lowest practicable scale of economy, would 
 contend that nothing should be raised by duties above the or 
 dinary supplies necessary for the pay of the public agents. 
 With this class all the excess, above the sum that they might 
 hold to be necessary, would be the fruit of an unconstitutional 
 tax. Who should judge between these conflicting opinions? 
 If such were the limits upon the power of Congress it would 
 be true, as has been said, that there might be acts in violation of 
 the Constitution which would elude the notice of the judicial 
 tribunals ; but the evident absurdity of subjecting the right to 
 exercise fundamental powers to so vague and intangible a 
 standard of interpretation, furnishes one of the most satisfacto 
 ry proofs that no such intention existed in the minds of those 
 who framed our Constitution. 
 
 Pursuing the investigation, it will be found that the difficul 
 ty attending this notion of the source of the protecting power 
 does not end with the impracticability of determining upon the 
 necessity of revenue. It goes still deeper. It is affirmed, and 
 no doubt with truth, that a reduction of duties upon the neces 
 saries or customary luxuries of a nation frequently increases the 
 
DOMESTIC INDUSTRY. 99 
 
 revenue. In such an event the defenders of the position that 
 the power of Congress is limited to the supply- of a necessary 
 revenue, will find themselves unexpectedly put in possession of 
 a surplus income which, according to the assumed principle, 
 they had no right to raise ; and it will be apparent that the peo 
 ple will be even more taxed then they were before ; for the duty 
 having been rendered productive of a larger amount of reve 
 nue to the Government, a greater aggregate sum will have been 
 taken from the pockets of the people ; and it will then be found 
 that Congress, instead of lessening the public burdens by their 
 reduction of duties, will have only been encouraging the con 
 sumption of a greater quantity of the taxed article. A large 
 consumption with a small tax being, in this case, more than 
 equivalent to a small consumption with a large tax. And thus, 
 in spite of all the precautions which the most scrupulous guar 
 dians of the Constitution may exercise, the public functionaries, 
 against their will and with the most conscientious desire to 
 avoid infractions of the law, will oftentimes be fated to discov 
 er that they have produced unconstitutional results. The only 
 remedy for which would seem to be to abandon this intracta 
 ble mode of taxation by imposts and resort to direct taxes upon 
 the people. 
 
 As long, however, as such results may follow the reduction 
 of duties, it will be seen that a system which merely increases 
 the consumption of imported commodities without diminishing 
 the revenue will be, in effect, the adoption of a policy for the 
 encouragement of foreign industry. And we might here pause 
 and ask, whether it can be supposed that the founders of our 
 Government intended to give a power to Congress to adopt a 
 scheme of policy directed to the encouragement of foreign .la 
 bor by a scale of low duties, without also allowing to that body 
 a right, when they found it convenient, to encourage domestic 
 ijtdustry by a higher scale of duties? Let those who answer 
 this question in the affirmative, show some reason for the opin 
 ion that the convention which framed the Constitution should 
 set more value upon a power to encourage foreign industry, 
 
100 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 under any possible necessity to exercise it, than upon a similar 
 power to encourage and protect our own. 
 
 We think we have said enough to indicate the pernicious 
 tendencies of the doctrine, sustained by many eminent citizens 
 of our land, which ascribes the right to protect domestic man 
 ufactures, solely to the revenue power conferred by the Con 
 stitution upon Congress ; and have demonstrated that this 
 error, if adopted, must lead the public functionaries into prac 
 tical embarrassments entirely irreconcilable with a wholesome 
 administration of the laws. 
 
 With a view to show that the protection of manufacturing in 
 dustry is mainly refe.rrible to the power to regulate commerce, 
 and was intended to be embraced by the clause of the Consti 
 tution that invests the supreme legislature with that power, in 
 addition to the suggestions that we have already made, we 
 deem it not unprofitable briefly to recur to the history of the 
 country, from which we shall derive lights that may guide us 
 to the most unerring conclusions in confirmation of our doc 
 trine. The narrative of events from 1783 to 1787, the cir 
 cumstances attending the adoption of the Constitution and the 
 range of its early operations, while yet in the hands of its au 
 thors, afford a mass of testimony that Congress has but re 
 sponded to the expectations of the country in so regulating 
 trade as to furnish the requisite protection to the expansion 
 and growth of our own labor. 
 
 The regulation of commerce was not a new term invented by 
 the framers of the Constitution. It was at the time of the 
 adoption of that instrument by the people a term familiar to 
 their apprehension and impressed upon their understandings, 
 by the strongest comments that the history of oppression could 
 furnish. The war of the revolution, that had just closed, 
 sprang out of the conflicts in which this subject had been pre 
 sented in the countless forms which an engrossing topic of 
 complaint may be supposed to assume in the discussions of an 
 excited and rebelling people. The same subject had been 
 canvassed in the British Parliament until argument and decla- 
 
DOMESTIC INDUSTRY. 101 
 
 mation were exhausted. The mother country had regulated 
 the commerce of the colonies, through a series of odious and 
 unfeeling restrictions, for more than a century, until the phrase 
 had acquired the notoriety of a hateful grievance. She had 
 fettered their trade by cruel prohibitions, and controlled their 
 labor by systems of denial that reduced them to the lowest 
 state of suffering ; yet it is remarkable, that, deeming this 
 oppressive policy a lawful exercise of the prerogative of regu 
 lating commerce, the colonies submitted to these evils with a 
 resignation that indicated their sense of the duty of obedience 
 to an acknowledged though misused power. All manufac 
 tures calculated to bring wealth into the country, were strictly 
 forbidden ; the erection of forges, for example, was denounced 
 as a nuisance, and these establishments were liable to be 
 abated by that name : it was declared unlawful to export the 
 simplest fabrics, even of shoes or hats, from one province to 
 another. Still the people did not deny the legality of these 
 attempts to regulate commerce. But when the right was assumed 
 to collect revenue in the colonies for the benefit of the mother 
 country, the first assertion of such a principle was met by 
 open rebellion. The distinction was palpable enough, to 
 every man, between these two pretensions of authority. It is 
 worthy of remark, that Lord Chatham, in 1765 in the British 
 House of Commons, distinctly defined the two branches of 
 power in terms that literally apply to the subject we have been 
 discussing, and which show how clearly they were brought to 
 the notice of the country : " there is a plain distinction," is 
 his language, " between taxes levied for the purpose of raising 
 a revenue, and duties imposed for the regulation of trade, for 
 the accommodation of the subject ; although in the conse 
 quences, some revenue might incidentally arise from the latter" 
 Indeed, the whole tenor of the public discussion on those 
 subjects so rife at that period throughout England and America, 
 furnishes the most conclusive evidence that a specific idea 
 was attached to the phrase incorporated into our Constitution, 
 and that its scope was to include the idea of levying duties 
 
102 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 in such a form as to encourage and protect, or, at least to 
 control and direct, the growth of domestic industry. 
 
 The complaints against the articles of confederation, for 
 which the Constitution was substituted, embraced, among other 
 things, an objection to the forms by which the legislation in 
 reference to the regulation of commerce was impeded; and it 
 was a prominent design of the new constitution to remedy this 
 defect. The right to lay even prohibitory duties was freely 
 admitted in the discussions upon the Constitution ; and we may 
 safely affirm that the whole nation, at that day, regarded such 
 a power as one of the necessary conclusions from the grant 
 that had been made. The subsequent action of the Govern 
 ment corroborates this idea. The first approaches of the peo 
 ple to their new rulers were made in behalf of the exercise of 
 a protecting power in favor of their industry. They spoke of 
 the injury they had sustained under the former state of things ; 
 of the ruinous competition to which the policy of the mother 
 country had exposed them ; and demanded the establishment 
 of a system of measures that should accomplish their favorite 
 purpose of creating a vigorous domestic manufacture. The 
 unrestrained admission of British goods had reduced our man 
 ufacturers and artisans to absolute want: the free entry of 
 British shipping had expelled our vessels from the ocean. 
 From Charleston to Boston this condition of things was the 
 subject of one loud and continued remonstrance ; and the rem 
 edy for it was a prominent object in the establishment of anew 
 general government. The ship -builders and the ship-owners 
 complained that foreign bottoms brought to the country all 
 that was imported, to their ruin ; and they besought their fel 
 low-citizens to join them in measures of protection. The man 
 ufacturers and mechanics declared that it was of little import 
 ance to them in what bottoms articles were imported, since 
 this unrestricted importation, in whatever bottoms, threatened to 
 reduce them to starvation. Both had applied to their own 
 State governments for redress, but these governments, from 
 want of concert, could give no effectual relief. Attempts had 
 
DOMESTIC INDUSTRY. 103 
 
 been made to amend the articles of confederation for the very 
 purpose of conferring this power upon Congress ; but these at 
 tempts had failed. Hence it was that the establishment of 
 the present government was hailed with the utmost enthusiasm 
 and celebrated in the principal cities, by all classes, with man 
 ifestations of hope and joy. 
 
 The earliest legislation of the new government avows and 
 adopts the principle for which we have been contending. The 
 first important act on the statute book contains the following 
 preamble: "Whereas it is necessary for the support of gov 
 ernment and the encouragement and protection of manufactures 
 that duties be laid on goods and merchandise." This pream 
 ble was written, supported and passed by those who had come 
 recently from the convention where the Constitution had been 
 formed. They were carrying into effect their own instrument. 
 They seem, indeed, for preambles are quite unusual, to have 
 introduced this for the purpose of showing the country that its 
 expectations would be fulfilled, and that the manufactures of the 
 nation would be protected. If, therefore, the existing laws vi 
 olate the Constitution, the original act violated it. If this 
 charter of right be marred now, it was marred then, and mar 
 red by those who made it. 
 
 If protection be unconstitutional this law carries unconsti 
 tutionally in its front ; and yet not one member of the first 
 Congress appears to have thought it unconstitutional. In the 
 whole course of the debates, protracted through several weeks, 
 no one expressed a doubt of the power of Congress to lay du 
 ties for protection ; we may therefore affirm that the power was 
 admitted by all. Some articles were taxed for revenue only ; 
 some for protection only ; and some for both. The published 
 debates show all this, and, as we have already said, every Con 
 gress, from that day to this, has recognized the same power. 
 Every president, beginning with him who is justly esteemed the 
 Father of his Country, has sanctioned it, and most of them have 
 recommended its exercise in earnest terms. Indeed, it has 
 been constantly exercised ; protection has been given by the 
 
104: POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 registry acts ; it has been given by the tonnage duly acts ; it 
 has been given by the acts regulating the coasting trade ; it has 
 been given to the fisheries; it has been given to the cotton of 
 Carolina ; to the coal of Virginia ; to the hemp of Kentucky ; to 
 the lead of Missouri and Illinois ; to the sugar of Louisiana, to 
 the iron of the middle, western and southern States ; and it has 
 been given to the various artisans, mechanics and manufactu 
 rers. It is now forty-two years since this system of protection 
 began, and it has never been intermitted or suspended, with 
 regard to many commodities, for a single hour. Is all this leg 
 islation now to be deemed unconstitutional ? Are all these in 
 terests to be brought into jeopardy, and perhaps to ruin, upon 
 this modern construction of the Constitution ? 
 
 Not only has Congress thus constantly exercised this 
 power, but it has thought itself, from the first, under peculiar 
 obligations to exercise it. It has considered that it would be 
 guilty of a plain breach of duty if it should not exercise it ; 
 and so it was declared in its first session. This policy was 
 more earnestly enforced upon Congress because the States 
 had surrendered their whole power on this question, and were, 
 themselves, prohibited from exercising- it by the Constitution 
 itself; since as they could not, as separate States, exercise it 
 well, it was taken away from them and vested in the national 
 legislature. It was said, therefore, and said truly, that it 
 would be a fraud upon the States, if Congress, now the sole 
 possessor of the power, should refuse to exercise it. The Con 
 stitution had declared, that no State should lay any duty ex 
 cept for the mere purpose of enforcing its inspection laws. Is 
 it conceivable, that the people would agree to deprive their 
 own State governments of the power of protecting manufactures, 
 by suitable regulations of trade, without the consent of Con 
 gress, for any other reason than because this power was in 
 tentionally transferred to the general Government? The doc 
 trine now advanced, imputes the strangest absurdity, both to 
 the framers of the Constitution and to the people. It supposes 
 them, instead of creating a new remedy for acknowledged evils, 
 
DOMESTIC INDUSTRY. 105 
 
 to have forever abolished the poor but only remedy which 
 already existed. It supposes, that instead of giving to Con 
 gress, as was their avowed design, effectual power to protect 
 manufactures, they did no more than prohibit the States 
 from exercising that power, and extinguish it as a thing to 
 be deprecated everywhere and altogether. It supposes 
 them to have imposed new shackles on their own limbs, and 
 to have surrendered themselves, thus voluntarily bound, to 
 the mercy of their foreign competitors and rivals. We can 
 not yield our assent to opinions which ascribe purposes like 
 these, or a policy like this, either to the Convention or to the 
 people. 
 
 It only remains for us to add, that the public judgment 
 has. at all times, affirmed the existence of this power, and ap 
 proved its exercise. Even at this moment, there is no reason 
 to doubt that nine-tenths of all the people hold the power to 
 be constitutional. It is, therefore, not only against the words 
 of the Constitution, against the manifest design of the nation 
 in establishing it, against the uniform sense of Congress in 
 passing laws under it, against the practice of forty years, never 
 stayed nor suspended, against the opinion of every tribunal 
 in the country, as far as we are informed ; but it is also against 
 the entire conviction of a vast majority of the people them 
 selves, that these new and what we think dangerous opinions, 
 are now brought forward as the true doctrines of the Constitu 
 tion. 
 
 It is an error to suppose that the regulation of commerce 
 should necessarily imply the denial of a right to restrict, di 
 minish or prohibit any particular branch of it. The suppression 
 of any trade, injurious to the community, is as much a national 
 concern, and as valuable an exercise of power, as the encour 
 agement of other branches ; and, indeed, in practice it must of 
 ten occur that the conferring of special advantages upon one 
 branch of trade may operate partially to the disadvantage of 
 all others. Such is often the effect of treaties that reserve to 
 the vessels of part cular nations free entry to our ports : the 
 5* 
 
106 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 commerce with such nations is promoted to the diminution of 
 fhe trade with others not embraced in the privilege. This, 
 however, is a lawful, just and profitable regulation of com 
 merce. Commerce includes all kinds of traffic, whether sus 
 tained upon the ocean in ships, or transported on roads, rivers 
 or canals : whether it belong to the system of domestic ex 
 changes, or is conversant with the occupations of foreign coun 
 tries ; and it is the appropriate function of Congress to regu 
 late it in such manner as their wisdom may dictate, unlimited 
 by any restraints except those which the Constitution imposes 
 on the power over the domestic intercourse of the States. The 
 regulation of our commerce with the Indian tribes has sub 
 jected the traffic, from time to time, to all such restrictions as 
 the national legislature found it prudent to adopt ; and yet this 
 right of regulation has passed unquestioned, though it has 
 been directly exercised to the diminution of any species of 
 traffic that has been considered hurtful. 
 
 It is nothing more than a regulation of commerce to shape 
 our policy, in reference to our intercourse with foreign nations, 
 by such rules as shall increase the products of our own labor 
 to an amount that may render them also the subjects of a 
 foreign trade, and thereby extend our commerce to new re 
 gions, and give it new accumulations of commodities. The 
 agricultural products of a nation are not the only elements of 
 its trade ; its manufactures may be as desirable to foreign com 
 munities, and their transportation and exchange may become 
 fully as valuable foundations of a rapid, enlarged and profita 
 ble commerce. Why, then, should the power to regulate com 
 merce be supposed to be arrested at that middle point between 
 the prosecution of an old trade and the commencement of a 
 new one that may, eventually, be rendered more expansive, 
 useful and productive than any other ? Such a restraint would 
 seem to be utterly incompatible with the genius and character 
 of any vigorous community, but especially with that of a young 
 and healthy nation. 
 
 Before we leave this branch of our inquiry we are anxious 
 
DOMESTIC INDUSTRY. 107 
 
 to present the constitutional question in one more point of 
 view. The best expositor of the Constitution is that instru 
 ment itself. 
 
 The tenth section of the first article of the Constitution pro 
 vides that " no State shall, without the consent of Congress, lay 
 any imposts or duties on imports or exports except what may 
 be absolutely necessary for executing its inspection laws." The 
 limitation which is here set upon the legislation of the States is 
 within the control of Congress. The consent of that body re 
 leases any State from the restriction expressed in this clause ; 
 and consequently Congress may permit either or all of the 
 States, separately, to levy such duties upon imports as they 
 may think convenient : it may allow the State of South Caro 
 lina, for example, to enact a tariff of the highest rates of duties, 
 directed exclusively to the protection of any branch of indus 
 try they may wish to foster. It will be observed that the terms 
 of this clause of the Constitution absolutely forbid the idea that 
 such a power is to be exercised for revenue. The State that 
 imposes the duty is inhibited from taking the avails into its 
 own treasury, but must pay them over to the general govern 
 ment ; while that government, on the other hand, has the full 
 est power to levy and collect its own revenues, and consequent 
 ly cannot be presumed to yield its consent to the State enactment 
 upon considerations of that nature. That consent, therefore, 
 is intended to be given, if it be ever asked, from a conviction 
 of the beneficial effect expected to be produced in the State 
 that levies the duty or in other words, of its value as a pro 
 tection to State labor. With such a power on the part of 
 Congress to permit a protective system to be enacted in the 
 States severally, it would seem to be a solecism to suppose that 
 the exercise of a similar power was intended to be denied to 
 the national legislature itself to whom has been emphatically 
 entiusted the whole complicated and interesting concern of 
 regulating commerce. 
 
 In dismissing this review of the principles and practice of 
 ur Government in their relation to an imDortant constitutional 
 
108 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 right, we take the occasion to say that we contemplate the 
 character of the present opposition to what we have endeav 
 ored to exhibit as the legitimate powers of Congress, with re 
 gret : and if we could persuade ourselves that is was destined 
 to command the assent of any large portions of our population, 
 we would say that we view it not without alarm. This oppo 
 sition appeals not to the discretion of Congress ; it seeks no 
 modification, nor qualification, but demands an entire and ab 
 solute surrender of the principle. - It is for the American peo 
 ple to decide whether this surrender can be made. For our 
 selves, we do not scruple to declare that, in our opinion, to 
 give up this power would be to give up the Constitution. If 
 Congress be stripped of this prerogative and the restriction 
 against its exercise be still imposed upon the States, it is quite 
 plain to our apprehension, that the doom of our happy and 
 prosperous Constitution is sealed. We consider this question, 
 therefore, as vital ; and we look to the perpetuation of the pow 
 er which we have labored to defend, and its just exercis-e, to 
 be indispensable to the preservation of that government which 
 has conferred on the people of these States innumerable bless 
 ings. 
 
 You are next invited to examine the subject in its connec 
 tion with the principles of an enlightened political economy. 
 The system which we maintain rests upon the following prin 
 ciples : 
 
 All the means of human enjoyment, and all the accumula 
 tions of wealth, are the product of human labor. National 
 happiness and national wealth are, therefore, promoted in pro 
 portion to the active industry of the community ; and that in 
 dustry is in proportion to the inducements to labor, arising 
 from the amount and certainty of its remuneration. The im 
 mediate instrument for calling labor into action is capital. 
 Capital is necessary to furnish the laborer with the means of 
 applying his labor to advantage, whether in the simple tools 
 of agriculture and some of the mechanic arts, or in the com 
 plicated and expensive machinery applied to certain branches 
 
DOMESTIC INDUSTRY. 109 
 
 of manufacture, the modern improvements in which have add 
 ed so much to the productive power of man. 
 
 It is a settled axiom, that the industry of a nation is in pro 
 portion to the capital devoted to its maintenance. It is, there 
 fore, thought to be a wise policy to multiply the inducements 
 to apply capital to the employment of labor at home, rather 
 than to the purchase abroad and traffic in commodities of for 
 eign production, by which the capital of the country is made 
 to set in motion foreign labor. This is founded on the princi 
 ple, universally admitted, that there is, in every nation, a power 
 or capability of labor beyond that actually put forth ; and 
 that its effective industry is proportioned to the stimulus ap 
 plied in the shape of capital. This constitutes the American 
 System. It invites the application of American capital to stim 
 ulate American industry. It imposes a restriction, in the form 
 of an imposed duty, on certain products of foreign labor ; but 
 so far as relates to American capital, or American labor, it 
 simply offers security and inducement to the one, and gives 
 energy and vigor to the other. The purpose of the protec 
 tive system being thus directed to the utmost expansion of the 
 industry of the nation into every channel of domestic competi 
 tion, it would seem to be manifestly erroneous to call such a 
 system restrictive, inasmuch as the avenues of labor in the in 
 ternal organization of any community are much more numerous 
 and extensive than those which belong to foreign trade : while, 
 on the other hand, there are no restrictions so severe upon the 
 occupation of our citizens, and none that so irresistibly impel 
 labor into a small number of channels as those that are crea 
 ted by the capital and industry of older nations when concen 
 trated and brought into competition with the capital and indus 
 try of a young people in their first attempts to possess them 
 selves of the arts that create and accumulate wealth. A na 
 tion that is devoted to agriculture only, and is dependent upon 
 breign labor for its manufactures, presents the spectacle of a 
 people whose industry is confined to the single occupation of 
 cultivating the soil, and transporting its products abroad, and 
 
1 10 POLITICAL PAI KRR. 
 
 is always subject to be disturbed by the policy of those on 
 whom it depends for the purchase of its products : but the 
 same nation, when encouraged in the attempt to supply itself 
 with manufactured fabrics, releases its labor from the re 
 straints of its previous straitened condition, and is seen rapid 
 ly diversifying its pursuits until they finally cover the whole 
 space that was originally divided between itself and the people 
 that supplied it with manufactures. 
 
 It is true, that a different system of political economy is 
 maintained by a certain school of theoretical writers. It is 
 contended by them, that restriction upon the importation of 
 foreign commodities, under any circumstances, is a mistaken 
 economy ; that foreign manufacturers should be allowed freely 
 to bring in their wares, although they will receive from us noth 
 ing in exchange but the precious metals. This is the system 
 which has been lately called enlightened We, on the contra 
 ry, believe it to be founded on mistaken views ; and that a 
 practical application of it would paralyze the industry of the 
 country. The fundamental principle in this system, is one 
 which we deem totally erroneous. It considers the profits of 
 capital, as constituting the only source of national wealth. It 
 assumes the fact, that the wages of labor are barely sufficient 
 to support the laborer, but leave him nothing for accumulation. 
 Now, whether this may or may not be true, in the fully peo 
 pled countries of Europe, it is palpable to the slightest obser 
 vation, that in reference to labor in the United States it is ab 
 solutely and totally false. Such is the abundance of the means 
 of subsistence in this favored country, that the laborer is able 
 to accumulate capital out of his surplus earnings. We every 
 where see capital accumulating in connection with labor. La 
 bor is not with us, as the theory supposes, the mere instrument 
 of capital, the mere handmaid to furnish the profits of the cap 
 italist ; it is, on the contrary, an intelligent, active principle, 
 the partner and sharer in the increase of wealth produced by 
 the united action of both. We have no class in America cor 
 responding with the operatives, the human machines of Europe. 
 
DOMESTIC INDUSTRY. Ill 
 
 We, therefore, totally deny the correctness of the position, that 
 "the question relates exclusively to the application of capital." 
 We deny that " the power of government is limited to its trans 
 fer horn one employment to another," By increasing the stim 
 ulus to labor, resulting from the application of capital, to home 
 production, additional capital can " be generated by an act of 
 legislation." It is said that this system " oppresses the many 
 for the benefit of the few." We, on the contrary, believe, that 
 while it benefits all, its highest recommendation is found in its 
 beneficial action upon the many the laboring classes, the 
 workingmen. If there is any one principle in political econo 
 my, which is perfectly well established, it is, that the profits of 
 capital, employed in any one branch of industry, cannot, for 
 any length of time, exceed the average rate in other employ 
 ments ; it being the constant tendency of free competition to 
 equalize profits. It is, therefore, an argument altogether falla 
 cious, to suppose that this system favors capital devoted to one 
 branch of business more than that devoted to another ; or ben 
 efits any one class of individuals to the prejudice or exclusion 
 of others. 
 
 It is also said, that " it is equally untrue that such a system 
 gives greater employment to labor." 
 
 We dissent from this doctrine, and are fortified by the opin 
 ion of the author of" The Wealth of Nations," whose language 
 we think it useful to quote ; " The capital of the manufact 
 urer," says this writer, " puts immediately into motion a much 
 greater quantity of productive labor, and adds a much greater 
 value to the land and labor of the society, than an equal capi 
 tal in the hands of any wholesale merchant." "After agricul 
 ture, the capital employe*cl in manufactures puts into motion the 
 greatest quantity of productive labor, and adds the greatest 
 value to the annual produce. That which is employed in the 
 trade of exportation has the least effect of any of the three." 
 " The capital employed in the home trade of any country will 
 generally give encouragement and support to a greater quanti 
 ty of productive labor, in that country, and increase the valu-: 
 
112 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 of its produce more than an equal capital employed in the for 
 eign trade of consumption, and the capital employed in this 
 latter trade has, in both these respects, a still greater advan 
 tage over an equal capital employed in the carrying trade." 
 " That part of the capital of any country which is employed in 
 the carrying trade is altogether withdrawn from supporting the 
 productive labor of that particular country to support that of 
 some foreign countries." 
 
 In accordance with these positions, we maintain the effi 
 ciency of labor to add to the power and riches of a country, 
 against the theories of later writers who attribute every thing 
 to capital. In fact, we consider it the most important and val 
 uable feature in our system, that it tends directly to increase 
 the effective power and remuneration of labor, thus multiplying 
 the means, the comforts and enjoyments, of the laboring classes, 
 and raising them in the scale of civilization and social life. 
 This political effect on the character of society may be consid 
 ered its highest recommendation. It is thus made to give 
 strength and permanency to our free institutions. 
 
 The peculiar advantage of the United States consists in the 
 abundance and cheapness of fertile lands, affording an easy 
 subsistence and high remuneration to labor. We consider the 
 system of establishing manufactures and the. arts among us, as 
 distributing and equalizing these peculiar advantages, through 
 all the departments of industry and through all classes of so 
 ciety. 
 
 This effect, we believe, to be deducible from the system, 
 according to the most approved principles of political econo 
 my. But we consider all speculation on this subject, founded 
 on the ultimate tendencies of human action and the averages 
 of contending principles, as very uncertain guides in legisla 
 tion, compared to the surer test of experience, and those prac 
 tical results which are obvious to the senses. 
 
 Mistaken and preposterous assumptions of the merits of 
 what is called free trade have, under the ever-active delusion 
 of British influence, afforded pretexts latterly to the opponents 
 
DOMESTIC INDUSTRY. 113 
 
 of the protective system, which it is proper to dispel. It is not 
 long since no one believed in the power of propelling boats by 
 steam, and every one believed that the British debt was to be 
 paid off by the sinking fund ; similar mistakes exist as to 
 free trade. As a municipal principle, there is no question of 
 the great advantages of free trade. The United States, in 
 their coasting trade and domestic exchanges afford the most 
 striking illustrations of them ever witnessed but, as between 
 foreign nations, there is no free trade there never was there 
 never can be. It would contravene the arrangements of Prov 
 idence, which distribute mankind into different communi 
 ties, separated originally by confusion of tongues, and pre 
 vented from all rushing together into the most favored lati 
 tudes, by local attachments and foreign antipathies, which are 
 the germs of national preservation, by means of national emu 
 lation. 
 
 Much of the suffering which it is alleged is felt in certain 
 portions of the United States (if their complaints have, in fact, 
 any foundation) it is to be attributed to the very circumstance 
 that they are placed in the circle of twenty-four common 
 wealths, enjoying the most complete freedom of trade, the op 
 eration of which has been to expose those who have not the 
 inclination to employ their labor to the full extent of its capa 
 city, to the severe rivalry of more industrious and thrifty com 
 munities, living under the protection of the same general gov 
 ernment. 
 
 Nations are adversary to each other ; their commercial in 
 tercourse is regulated by treaties always made with a view to rel 
 ative advantages, and to provide for those hostilities which are 
 of perpetual recurrence. The vexatious provincial tariffs which 
 formerly fettered intercourse and almost destroyed traffic in 
 the interior of nations, suggested the idea of that free trade, 
 which has since been misunderstood and egregiously misap 
 plied by mere speculative writers. The tariff acts, which even 
 now impose duties on the wines of Spain at provincial borders 
 and on those of France at city gates, are grievances, for which 
 
POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 free trade is a happy substitute ; but the principle is entirely 
 municipal and in no respect applicable, without disadvantage, 
 to independent nations. The vessels of the United States are 
 navigated with fewer hands and make their voyages in shorter 
 periods, than others ; hence, what is called the reciprocity prin 
 ciple, originating in the first treaty between the United States 
 and France, has been wisely proffered by the United States to 
 many other nations, because it is supposed that our navigation 
 would supplant theirs. But the artificial systems of England, 
 France, Spain and the other nations with which the United States 
 have most intercourse, render it extremely improbable that any 
 approximation to the footing of free trade should ever be ar 
 ranged between them, even by treaty. For us to attempt 
 while they reject it, would be a complete surrender of our 
 selves as a voluntary sacrifice to the policy and cupidity of for 
 eign governments ; to create a government for the benefit of 
 others and not for ourselves. A tariff of duties on commerce 
 between New York and New Jersey would be as injurious as 
 unconstitutional. Free trade between these States and among 
 all the States of the Union is the main spring of general wel 
 fare, and one of the strongest links of the chain that connects 
 them ; but free trade between New York and Liverpool would 
 ruin the farmers of England through our superabundant bread- 
 stuffs, and the manufacturers of the United States by the supe 
 rior capital and proficiency of England in manufactures, and 
 the degraded state of the operatives. An unrestricted inter 
 course between two nations reduces the labor of one to the 
 same scale of compensation with the labor of the other, and 
 such a consequence is certainly to be deprecated by that na 
 tion whose labor stood highest on the scale. This considera 
 tion forms a striking argument against the policy of such a 
 system between foreign States. While, on the other hand, it 
 is no less desirable that, among the separate communities as 
 sociated under the same government, this reduction of the 
 higher labor to the scale of the lower should take place, inas 
 much as the interests of these dome? tic communities are equally 
 
DOMESTIC INDUSTRY. 115 
 
 the objects of the protection and solicitude of their common 
 governors. 
 
 The freest of free trade is, after all, but a chartered liber 
 tine. The United States could not share their coasting trade 
 with England without disadvantage : the most extravagant 
 advocates of free trade (it is believed) have never yet dreamed 
 of sharing our river trade with foreigners. To throw open the 
 Ohio and Mississippi, the Hudson and the Delaware to British, 
 French and Dutch navigation, would be of no advantage to our 
 own. England could not open her maritime coal trade, the 
 great nursery of her seamen, to the enterprise of New England 
 without losing at least one half of it. She even refuses us a 
 passage through the St. Lawrence, although we own part of 
 that river. The greatest commercial nations of the middle 
 ages, the Hanseatic League, and Holland, the maritime won 
 der of the world, became such by the exclusive enjoyment of 
 the fisheries and the trade to India and other monopolies, which 
 they maintained at the charge of long and bloody wars Eng 
 land struck the vital blow at Holland, not so much by naval 
 victories as by her navigation act. The commercial and the 
 military marine of the United States have risen to eminence 
 upon similar interdiction. With free trade we should have 
 neither the one or the other, but be a poor, dependant, pastor 
 al people. It is only about ten years since a project for redu 
 cing the duties was first suggested in England, in a petition tc 
 Parliament from the merchants and traders of London In 
 1825 some slight and cautious reductions were accordingly 
 made, but in nothing to effect the commercial monopoly and 
 maritime -ascendancy of Great Britain. Her colonial commerce 
 is mostly exclusive. The freedom of the trade of the Susque- 
 hanna river is now in dispute between the States of Maryland, 
 Pennsylvania and New-York. So intractable is free trade in 
 fact, while fruitful of speculation. Within a few years Russia, 
 misled by this delusion, and Holland under the influence of 
 England, made experiments of free trade, which Russia soon 
 found intolerable and abandoned, and which has contributed 
 
116 TOLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 to reducing Holland from once being the richest nation of Eu 
 rope to being one of the most impoverished and indebted. In 
 fine, the dogmas of free trade, which are said to be taught in 
 some colleges, may serve to inflame youthful imaginations, but, 
 as they have never actuated a practical statesman, they can 
 never mislead any well-informed mind. What is called the 
 American System, is the system of Europe ; is the universal 
 system ; and (if the experience and common sense of mankind 
 be any standard of right) is the true and the only system of 
 intercourse among nations. 
 
 It is doubtless true, that during the last half century, a more 
 enlightened philosophy has been applied to the affairs of man 
 kind ; that political economy is much better understood, its 
 principles more fully developed, and more judiciously applied. 
 The sense and experience of men had gone far to correct the 
 erroneous legislation of former times, and to develope and mul 
 tiply the true sources of national wealth. But the modern the 
 ory is not content with the attainment of practical benefits 
 merely; it seeks, by an unqualified application of certain gen 
 eral principles, to produce a thorough revolution in the busi 
 ness of men and the relations of nations. It is against these 
 extremes of visionary good and practical mischief, that we de 
 sire all men of reflection and sober judgment to make a stand. 
 We ask them to look at the present condition of our country 
 and to examine the operation of the present system upon all 
 its great interests. Above all, we ask them to look to the 
 practice of all foreign nations, rather than to the speculations 
 of their writers. They will then find that those who have 
 taught us this theory of free trade, are too wise to practise it ; 
 that they continue to act and to legislate upon the system of 
 protecting their own industry, though some of their writers and 
 orators recommend to all other nations to abandon it. 
 
 A reference to our own experience is, however, the best 
 criterion by which to test the correctness of the system which 
 we support. It is not new ; the principle was applied, as 
 we have already stated, to our navigation, from the establish- 
 
DOMESTIC INDUSTRY. 117 
 
 ment of the Federal Constitution, prohibiting foreign shipping 
 from the coasting trade altogether, and imposing a high dis~ 
 criminating duty on foreign tonnage. If this discrimination 
 has been abandoned, in respect to those nations who would 
 consent to a system of reciprocity, it involves no surrender of 
 the principle. Trade can only be carried on between nations by 
 mutual agreement ; and mutual protection leads to reciprocity 
 as the only equitable arrangement. The mechanic arts have 
 also been the subject of protection from the establishment of 
 the government; and it cannot be doubted that to this circum 
 stance they owe, in a great measure, their success ; a success 
 which has made the mechanics of the United States one of the 
 main pillars of our national strength. Agriculture has like 
 wise had a full share of the benefit of this protection ; and in 
 truth it may be said, that as our Government commenced its 
 career with the establishment of the germs of the protective 
 system, so it has continued ever since, gradually nurturing and 
 invigorating them until they have reached their present growth. 
 Some interruptions have occurred in the march of this policy, 
 but these interruptions owe their origin to accidental circum 
 stances which dictated the necessity of relaxing the system for 
 the benefit of other interests that were more immediately con 
 cerned in availing themselves of the advantages of foreign trade. 
 These, however, are to be regarded not as proofs of the use- 
 lessness of the system, but as exceptions growing out of the 
 pressure of temporary accidents. The events that followed the 
 French revolution gave a new and unexpected direction to the 
 enterprise of our citizens. The disturbed state of the conti 
 nent of Europe, and the prevalence of universal wars through 
 out the nations of that quarter of the globe, placed the United 
 States in the position of the only neutral among many bellig 
 erents, and so obviously opened the way to commercial wealth 
 to our citizens, that all other interests sank into insignificance 
 compared with those which were concerned in pushing a for 
 eign commerce into every region where the strife of the con 
 tending parties excluded the competition of the belligerents 
 
118 POLITICAL TAPERS. 
 
 themselves, and left to the United States the undisputed mo 
 nopoly of trade. To this fortunate conjuncture of circumstan 
 ces is to be ascribed the most rapid growth that has ever been 
 traced in the history of any empire. The United States not 
 only became the medium of the commerce of the world, but 
 their peaceful position attracted the emigration of all those 
 who had the means and the wish to escape from European 
 troubles. 
 
 Among the advantages which have resulted to us from 
 this state of things we have suffered one evil, the effect of which 
 is not obliterated, even at this day. Accustomed for twelve or 
 fourteen years to commercial speculations of unparalleled activ 
 ity and success, we were taught to think that our national pros 
 perity was inseparably connected with the prosecution of that 
 kind of trade in which our citizens had been engaged, and we 
 were thus insensibly educated in the opinion that the great in 
 terests of our commonwealth would be always concerned with 
 a foreign commerce exclusively employed in transporting abroad 
 the products of our agriculture and receiving returns in the 
 manufactured commodities of other nations. 
 
 There was another circumstance that gave great authority 
 to this delusion. The cotton manufacture of Great Britain 
 was rapidly arising into the greatest activity and vigor. It 
 was in process of time discovered that the raw material for 
 this manufacture could be produced in the United States 
 under more favorable circumstances than in any other part 
 of the world. At first, but two or three of our States were 
 employed in the cultivation, and the demand from England 
 was even greater than the supply. The profits of this cultiva 
 tion, therefore, were almost unlimited. The portions of ter 
 ritory employed in the growing of cotton were small, and the 
 common opinion was that but few districts, in comparison 
 with the great extent of our surface, could be appropriated to 
 the culture. In the mean time, the cotton fabrics were diffused 
 over Europe and took the place of large quantities of those 
 manufactured from wool, silk and flax. Every year demon- 
 
DOMESTIC INDUSTRY. 119 
 
 strated the increasing importance of this manufacture both in 
 Europe and America, and the demand still continued to out 
 run the supply. These circumstances had their influence in 
 impressing upon our citizens an exaggerated idea of the per 
 manence and value of this source of agricultural wealth, and, 
 along with it, the value of the trade which was concerned in 
 the transportation of it. It persuaded our planters to believe 
 that they possessed an almost inexhaustible source of riches : 
 it unfitted them for sober calculations upon the effects that 
 would follow the extension of the culture of cotton over the 
 fertile regions that yet lay in wilderness behind them : and it 
 equally disinclined them to foresee the possibility of the 
 manufacture itself reaching a term at which it might become 
 stationary and which was, therefore, eventually to set a limit 
 upon the demand, at the very period when the supply would 
 be increased in an almost infinite ratio by the spread of popu 
 lation over other States of our union, even more propitious 
 than their own to the production of the plant. It may, there 
 fore, be considered a misfortune, consequent upon their former 
 prosperity, that our citizens were almost irresistibly led by it 
 into delusive estimates of the true and permanent sources of 
 national wealth. It was one result of this state of things 
 that, while our countrymen were intent upon gathering the 
 harvest which the distracted condition of the world had 
 strewn before them, they were unmindful of the future and 
 neglected to treasure up the elements of strength and pros 
 perity which lay hidden in the bosom of the nation ; and 
 which, as they were independent of foreign legislation or ex 
 ternal accidents, were most likely to furnish the means of a 
 stable and enduring happiness. 
 
 Troubles soon afterwards broke out at home. A war 
 threatened and our citizens were suddenly called to meet a 
 tremendous emergency. Our commerce was put in fetters by 
 non-importation acts and embargoes ; and the crisis that suc 
 ceeded found us without the most ordinary resources of an 
 independent people. Our armies went to the frontier clothed 
 
120 POLITICAL TAPERS. 
 
 in the fabrics of the enemy ; our munitions of war were 
 gathered as chance supplied them from the four quarters of 
 the earth ; and the whole struggle was marked by the prodi 
 gality, waste and privation of a thriftless nation, taken at 
 unawares and challenged to a contest without the necessary 
 armor of a combatant. 
 
 When it pleased Heaven to rescue us from the imminent 
 hazard of this doubtful and disproportioned conflict, we saw 
 around us a nation of eight millions of people possessed of a 
 territory nearly equal to the continent of Europe, rich in the 
 ungathered resources of every kind of wealth, just emerging 
 from a war of two years and a half, with an enemy who had 
 never assembled an army of more than thirty thousand men 
 and yet deranged in all its channels of industry, exhausted, 
 and on the verge of bankruptcy. Nothing but the most per 
 verse neglect of the fundamental precepts connected with the 
 proper administration of the concerns of a commonwealth 
 could have produced such a result ! 
 
 These disasters opened our eyes to some important facts. 
 They demonstrated to us the necessity of extending more 
 efficient protection, at least, to those manufactures which were 
 essential to the defence of the nation. They proved to us the 
 value of a national currency, and the duty of protecting it 
 from the influence of foreign disturbance : and among other 
 things of equal moment, they made us acquainted with the 
 fact that the British manufacturers could find a large and, if 
 necessary, a complete supply of cotton from other soils than 
 our own. 
 
 All these matters came into review before Congress at the 
 close of the war. A proper occasion for their discussion 
 arose when the question was submitted as to the reduction 
 of the war duties. The return of peace made it necessary 
 for the legislature to take off the taxes that had been imposed 
 for defraying the expenses of the war ; and in this reduction 
 of duties to what it was considered should be a permanent 
 standard, the cotton-planting interest urged with great force 
 
DOMESTIC INIH STKV. 121 
 
 and propriety, the necessity of retaining such a duty as should 
 exclude from the American market all fabrics made from the 
 cotton of the East Indies. It was an anomaly apparent to 
 every citizen of the United States, that our Government, pos 
 sessing so many facilities for supplying Europe with cotton, 
 should, nevertheless, allow a trade that threw in upon us vast 
 quantities of cotton cloth produced at a distance of ten thou 
 sand miles ; that our most common household supplies should 
 be furnished from such a quarter. Nothing was more gener 
 ally acknowledged than the duty of the Government to pro 
 tect the cotton grower against such a competition ; and this 
 argument was addressed to the nation by the cotton-growing 
 States, even with the conviction, at that time prevalent among 
 themselves, that its success would be to give them what may 
 be termed a species of monopoly in the supply. 
 
 The duty was retained ; and it is important to know that, 
 being designed for the protection of the cotton grower, it was 
 graduated to a scale precisely adequate to that purpose. His 
 interest required the exclusion of the East India fabric, but 
 was supposed to be hostile to the attempt of the American 
 citizen to manufacture the material ; the duty, therefore, was 
 adapted to the first purpose, but not to the latter. It ban 
 ished the foreign manufacture : it did not protect the home ; 
 being thus accurately adjusted to the wants and wishes of 
 the planting interest, without professing to serve any other. 
 
 This placed our commerce upon the most favorable footing 
 for the cotton grower that could be desired ; and the nation, 
 having thus performed its duty to this valuable interest, turned 
 its attention to other branches of industry. 
 
 The Tariff of i8l6, it may be remarked, was a measure 
 that met the approbation of the large majority of the people 
 in every section of the Union. No partial nor local consider 
 ations were embodied against the operation of either its prin 
 ciples or policy. . The southern States were even more for 
 ward than their northern confederates in recommending the 
 policy and defending it in the councils of the nation. By this 
 6 
 
122 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 tariff various manufactures were attempted to be established 
 in the United States. The want of skill and capital exposed 
 these infant institutions to a fierce and vindictive competition 
 from the manufacturers of Great Britain ; and, in three years, 
 almost every capitalist who had ventured into this field of 
 enterprise was broken up, The heavy loss and distress that 
 visited this endeavor to establish manufactures subsequently 
 urged the subject of more extended protection upon Congress, 
 and the result, after various struggles, close and elaborate 
 inquiry and careful attention to the expanding means of the 
 country, was the establishment of a vigorous system, which 
 has diffused health and strength into the industry of the 
 nation, and added to the wealth of every class of the com 
 munity. 
 
 We ask attention to another topic. Revulsions in trade 
 are unavoidable : the balance of supply and demand cannot 
 always be regulated with precision. There is a tendency, 
 growing out of a prosperous commerce, to push success to an 
 extreme which produces reaction. To these periods of em 
 barrassment, of general stagnation, and severe pressure for 
 money, the United States have been peculiarly subject. We 
 attribute this, in a great measure, to our having depended, in 
 so great a degree for our manufactures, upon the nations of 
 Europe. Importation is induced more frequently by the neces 
 sity or hope of the manufacturer to find a market, than by 
 actual reference to the wants or means of the country. A 
 reduction in the prices of exports, following an excessive im 
 portation, causes a state of exchange which leads to an expor 
 tation of specie ; the moment this exportation touches that 
 portion of the precious metals necessary to sustain the money 
 circulation, the operations of the banks become embarrassed, 
 and distress and dismay are spread through all classes of the 
 community. 
 
 We believe that the system which furnishes a nation with 
 manufactures, essential to its daily wants, from its own in 
 dustry, is the best possible security against violent changes in 
 
DOMESTIC INDUSTRY. 123 
 
 its currency : changes which paralyze all industry, and dis 
 turb all trade ; and we therefore submit it to the experience 
 and judgment of the American people whether the protective 
 system is not, in this particular, more advantageous to the 
 country than that which, after deluging our markets with for 
 eign manufactures, draws from us, in return, not a useless 
 commodity,, but the instrument by which our exchanges are 
 performed, the very basis of our bank circulation, the essential 
 principle of commercial confidence. 
 
 Mistaken opinions in regard to the effect of the tariff upon 
 the prices of commodities used in the United States and upon 
 which the protective system has been brought to bear, have 
 furnished some popular objections against the wisdom of the 
 policy. It has been said that the effect of a duty is necessarily 
 to increase the price of any article upon which it is laid to the 
 full amount of the tax. It would be easy to show, by a minute 
 survey of the whole field of American industry, that, so far 
 from this being true, the invariable operation of the tariff has 
 been to lower the price to the consumer of every article that 
 has been successfully manufactured under the protection. 
 Such a survey would require more detail than the purpose of 
 this address allows, but we propose to examine the operation 
 of the tariff upon some of our most important staples. 
 
 In the article of cotton it is admitted that our manufacture 
 has arrived at such perfection in the production of the coarse 
 fabrics, that they are not only furnished at little more than one- 
 half of the cost which the imported articles of the same kind 
 bore a few years ago, but they are produced as cheaply at the 
 present time as our foreign rivals, under all the excitements 
 of American competition, are able to furnish them. They 
 have had a constant and increasing demand for several years 
 for exportation as well as for home consumption. None but 
 the finer qualities are now imported, which are little, if at all 
 affected by the minimum duty. The price of raw cotton has 
 fallen but about a cent a pound within the last four years, 
 while the price of cotton goods of sheetings, for instance, 
 
 I 
 
- 
 
 : 
 
 
 - 
 -- 
 
 : . .-. 
 - 
 
DOMESTIC INDUSTRY. 125 
 
 recommended prohibitory duties in favor of the manufacturers 
 of this article: u for," says that report, "they are entitled to 
 preeminent rank. None are more essential in their kinds, 
 none so extensive in their uses. They constitute, in whole or 
 in part, the implements or the materials, or both, of almost 
 every useful occupation. Their instrumentality is everywhere 
 conspicuous. It is fortunate for the United States that they 
 have peculiar advantages, for deriving the full benefit, of this 
 most valuable material, and they have every motive to improve 
 it with systematic care. It is to be found in various parts of 
 the United States in great abundance, and of almost every 
 quality ; and fuel, the chief instrument in manufacturing it, is 
 both cheap and plenty." This report, which is a treatise on 
 Political Economy, at least equal to any thing that has appear 
 ed since its publication, states that the average price of iron 
 before the revolution, was about sixty-four dollars per ton, and 
 that at the time of that report it was about eighty dollars. 
 Soon after it appears to have risen to ninety-five dollars, and 
 in 1814 was as high as one hundred and fifty dollars. After 
 the ineffectual Tariff of 1818, which ruined numbers, induced 
 by its vain protection to make investments in the manufacture 
 of iron, it rose from ninety to one hundred and five dollars per 
 ton. Under the influence of the duties of the acts of 1824 and 
 1828, it has declined to its present prices of from seventy-five 
 to eighty-five dollars per ton, and there is every reason for the 
 confident belief entertained, that if our own market be protect 
 ed against the formidable and incessant endeavors of the 
 British manufacturers to control it, the price of iron will, be 
 fore long, decline to from fifty to sixty dollars per ton. Such 
 is the irrefutable proof of all recent experience. Cut nails, 
 which in 1816 sold for twelve cents per pound, are now sold for 
 less than half that sum, under the permanent security of five 
 cents per pound, which has given our manufacturers their own 
 market. " The United States (says Hamilton s report before 
 mentioned) already in great measure supply themselves with 
 nails. About one million eight hundred thousand pounds of 
 
126 POLITICAL* PAPERS. 
 
 nails and spikes were imported into the United States, in the 
 course of the year ending the 4th of September 1790. A duty 
 of two cents per pound, would, it is presumable, speedily put an 
 end to so considerable an importation. And it is in every 
 view proper that an end should be put to it. 
 
 Bar iron, which sold at Pittsburg in 1829 at $122, sells 
 there now at $95. Castings, which were $63, are now $50 per 
 ton. Such are the practical results, proving the operation of 
 the tariffs on the market for iron. The duty, by the law of 
 1816, was so inadequate as to cause nothing but ruin to those 
 concerned, and enhancement of price to the consumer. The 
 act of 1818 was some amelioration ; the acts of 1824 and 1828, 
 which increased the duty, decreased the price. Hammered 
 bar iron, under a duty of twenty-two dollars and forty cents a 
 ton, is at a lower price than when under a duty of nine dollars 
 a ton, and improved in quality from five to ten per cent, by 
 the greater care and skill which more extensive investment has 
 naturally created under more certain protection. The efforts 
 of the English manufacturers to destroy the American manu 
 facture of iron, and possess themselves of our market, have 
 occasioned extensive bankruptcies among them in England, 
 and reduced the price of iron considerably below the cost oi 
 manufacture; insomuch that a convention of iron manufactur 
 ers, recently held there, resolved to reduce the quantity made 
 twenty per cent, throughout the United Kingdoms. With the 
 control of our market they would infallibly regulate both the 
 price and the quantity of the iron in this country thirty-one 
 establishments of which have appeared in Western Pennsyl 
 vania alone, since the last Tariff act. 
 
 The influence of protection upon wool, while it has been 
 most beneficial upon the farming States, has had no tendency, 
 that we are aware of, to injure the plantation States. The 
 number of sheep in the United States is computed at about 
 twenty millions ; and their increase at about five millions since 
 the act of 1828, which gave a great impulse to the stock. The 
 farmers of Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, and the 
 
DOMESTIC INDUSTRY. 127 
 
 other wool-growing States, have an interest in this national 
 property, taken at fifty-five cents per pound, nearly equal to 
 the capital of the plantation States in the cotton crop of this 
 year, reckoning it at thirty millions of dollars. There is no 
 doubt that, within three years to come, the farming capital in 
 wool will be more valuable than the plantation capital in cot 
 ton. Without protecting duties American wool would be re 
 duced one-half in quantity and in price. The large flocks 
 which now cover the immense and inexhaustible pastures of 
 the United States, most of them more or less of the fine Span 
 ish breeds, must be again slaughtered, as has been heretofore 
 the case, for want of due protection, and this great capital in 
 fleece sacrificed to that of cotton with enormous loss to one 
 interest, and with no possible advantage to the other. For, 
 like every thing else, woollen goods have fallen from twenty to 
 twenty-five per cent, since the last tariff. The immediate effect 
 of that act, by calling a large number of additional clothiers 
 into active enterprise, was to cause a decline in prices ruinous 
 to many of those before engaged in the occupation. .Under 
 the influence of the improvement in the price of wool, woollen 
 manufacturers have rallied again, but, at least as respects 
 them, the charge of monopolizing prices is a cruel mockery. 
 The advantages of the Tariff, in its operation upon wool, have 
 thus far been confined almost exclusively to the farming in 
 terest ; the manufacturers have yet all their way to win, and 
 the effect of that competition, which is the result of protection, 
 cannot be known until it has had longer time for operation. 
 
 The finest cotton and woollen manufactures are not yet 
 much made in the United States, but we may assert, without 
 fear of contradiction, that nine-tenths of the American people, 
 who do not affect foreign luxuries and fashions, may be clothed 
 with woollen, cotton, fur and leather fabrics of their own 
 country, better and cheaper, than either could have been ob 
 tained abroad if the tariff had never been enacted. The great 
 est mistakes prevail in this respect ; it is continually said that 
 hats, coats, boots and other articles of dress are dearer here 
 
128 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 than elsewhere. Such is not the case with all those who are 
 independent of foreign fashions. Those who enjoy superior 
 wealth and study superior elegance, are at liberty to gratify 
 their caprice, at that additional expense, which such a gratifi 
 cation costs in all countries, in none more than in Great 
 Britain, where the opulent and noble are in the habit of pay 
 ing more extravagantly for French, Asiatic and other luxuries, 
 than some of our opulent citizens choose to pay, in like man 
 ner, for luxuries imported from abroad. 
 
 While we assert that it has been the effect of the protective 
 system to benefit the consumers by giving them manufactures 
 cheaper than they had them before, we are willing to admit 
 that prices have had a correspondent fall in the same articles 
 abroad ; but this fall of price abroad has been the result of 
 the competition of American labor. It is impossible to advert 
 to the fact that the United States export to foreign markets 
 six times the quantity of domestic manufactures that they ex 
 ported in 1820, and at present furnish incomparably the largest 
 share of the home demand, without perceiving the tendency 
 of such a competition to reduce the price of the same articles 
 among all those nations who aim at supplying us. 
 
 But we hold it to be a common error to consider the com 
 parative cheapness of the foreign and domestic commodity a 
 test of the value of the system. Even if it were true that the 
 domestic product were not reduced in price, and were to be 
 procured only at a higher cost than the foreign, still the benefit 
 of the system would be found in the fact that it enables the 
 domestic consumer to afford the higher price for the manufac 
 ture, and thereby to furnish himself on better terms than he 
 could have done when obliged to depend upon the foreign im 
 ported commodity, that, in other words, the increase of price, 
 if it has taken place, cannot be called a tax upon the con 
 sumer, if the same system which has increased the price has 
 also increased his means of paying it. That this increased 
 ability to pay has occurred to a most beneficial extent, is evident 
 in the invigorated condition of our agriculture in the last three 
 
DOMESTIC INDUSTRY. 129 
 
 or four years, during which period the value of the labor of the 
 farmer, and with it the value of his land, it is well known, has 
 risen some twenty or thirty per cent. This augmentation in 
 the value of agricultural labor and capital can be ascribed to 
 no other cause than to the increase of the manufacturing class 
 es, and to the rapid growth of our home market under the 
 protective system. During this period there have been no 
 wars to create a demand abroad for our grain, but on the con 
 trary, all the producing nations have been exerting their in 
 dustry to the utmost, and maintaining a rivalry against our 
 own citizens which would have visited them with the most dis 
 astrous consequences if they had not found a steady and val 
 uable market at home. The fact, too, that agricultural pro 
 ducts have risen while manufactured goods have fallen, furnish 
 the best proofs that the fall of prices are to be mainly attrib 
 utable to the competition of domestic labor. 
 
 The loudest complaints of oppression proceed from the 
 South, particularly from South Carolina ; but that these com 
 plaints are not owing to the tariff acts, is unquestionably proved 
 by the fact, that their public press, their memorials to Con 
 gress, and other mediums of complaint, were as much bur 
 dened with them before those acts, as they have been since. 
 In the acquisition of the extensive and fertile territories an 
 nexed to the United States by the purchase of Louisiana, the 
 lands and property of the plantation States could not fail to be 
 depreciated, by a vast accession of lands, at least as fertile, for 
 all similar purposes. But it is inconceivable how a steady 
 market for at least two hundred thousand bales of cotton a 
 year, liable to no fluctuation from foreign influence, can be in 
 jurious to the cotton-growing States ; and, certainly, if the in 
 habitants of the less exuberant and more industrious latitudes 
 of the central and eastern States, were not, from the influence 
 of climate, or some other cause, less liable to excitement and 
 less addicted to complain than their southern brethren, they 
 have had much greater cause for it. 
 
 The article of sugar is a production of the planting States 
 6* 
 
130 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 receiving the full benefit of the protecting system. If any ap 
 plication of the system operate as a tax on consumption, it 
 would apply to the duty on sugar. It is true, the cotton plant 
 ers of South Carolina will not admit that protection to the 
 cultivation of sugar is any offset to their own fancied oppres 
 sions ; but it is apparent that the lands and capital, devoted to 
 the cultivation of the sugar cane, are so much of both with 
 drawn from the cultivation of cotton, relieving that culture 
 from the effect of over production, the only evil which it has 
 any reason to fear. 
 
 The breadstuffs, lumber, and nearly all the other staples of 
 all the grain-growing States are excluded from European mar 
 kets by prohibitory duties. While the export of cotton has quad 
 rupled, that of breadstuffs has diminished in a much greater 
 ratio with relation to the population of the States that produce 
 them. If, instead of spending their time in unavailing com 
 plaints, they had not conformed to circumstances, and turned 
 their attention to manufactures, their grievances would have 
 been infinitely greater than any of which the southern States 
 have ever complained. Nothing could relieve the farming in 
 terests of the middle States but their own manufactures and 
 the manufactures of the eastern States. They alone supply 
 that market which Europe denies. In addition to the incal 
 culable consumption of breadstuffs by the manufacturers of 
 the grain-growing States, what is equivalent to a million of 
 barrels of their breadstuffs is imported every year into the 
 eastern States ; a relief, without which the susceptibility of 
 these States would have been tried to a degree of endurance 
 far beyond that exacted from their brethern of the south. It 
 cannot escape observation, that while their sufferings are 
 announced in most eloquent language, and in unintermit- 
 ting remonstrance, yet there has been so little specifica 
 tion of the supposed causes, that it is denied by many, among 
 themselves, that they suffer at all. There is even good rea 
 son to believe, that within the last five years the interest on 
 planting capital has been more productive to the owner, than 
 
DOMESTIC INDUSTRY. 131 
 
 the interest on the same amount of capital employed in man 
 ufactures. 
 
 The States of New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio invested 
 a capital of enormous amount, which may be reckoned as at 
 least fifty millions, within the last ten years, in what are called 
 internal improvements, canals, railways, and other facilities of 
 transportation. This capital depends entirely upon domestic 
 industry for its fruits. It would be a dead loss to the four 
 millions of people who have expended it, and might as well be 
 abandoned at once, without the protected products of domestic 
 industry for its returns. Foreign commerce can yield it little 
 or no service ; and to destroy those guards which secure to it 
 the home market, would be to render it altogether a useless 
 expenditure. Foreign commerce would in this way lose also 
 one of its most productive resources. 
 
 In -our review of the operation of the tariff upon the various 
 interests of the several States, it must never be lost sight of, 
 that the one-fifth of the cotton crop which is consumed at 
 home, for which we may estimate the sum paid at six millions 
 of dollars, is, in the course of a very short time, worked up by 
 manufacture to at least thirty millions of dollars, which is the 
 worth of the raw material wrought into the various articles 
 produced by manipulation : thus one-fifth of the crop of cotton 
 manufactured becomes as valuable as the whole cotton crop, 
 in the short space of six months after its purchase ; and in the 
 mean time diffuses competency and comfort among large num 
 bers of the laboring classes of the community. 
 
 The policy of the protective system is amply and happily 
 illustrated in the growth and prosperity of the United States. 
 The Union teems with proof of its wisdom. All that Hamil 
 ton s masterly report predicted of its benefits, has been un 
 folded and is progressive beyond the most sanguine anticipa 
 tion. All the objections refuted in his argument have disap 
 peared in experience. The antagonist of the system not long 
 since declared that it would infallibly diminish, if not destroy 
 the revenue, and compel a resort to loans and taxes for the 
 
POLITIC AT, PAPERS. 
 
 support of Government : their present complaint is that the 
 revenue is excessive. Redundant importations, some years 
 ago, imposed the necessity of a loan ; the manufacturing estab 
 lishments now spreading throughout the United States, sustain 
 their agriculture, have revived their commerce, have vastly in 
 creased their coasting trade and domestic exchanges, and 
 have mainly contributed to an abundance of the precious metals ; 
 they are the stablest pledges of independence and permanent 
 peace, and the most accessible objects of taxation and produc 
 tive resources in case of need. It was said that hidi duties 
 
 O 
 
 would demoralize the commercial character of the United 
 States, and the evils of smuggling are still insisted on and de 
 picted in the most prominent colors. We know of no smug 
 gling ; nor do we believe that it exists to any considerable ex 
 tent. It is true, frauds have been practised upon the revenue 
 laws to a degree that demands the notice of Government ; but 
 we are happy to have this opportunity to bear testimony to 
 the high and honorable character of our merchants, and to say 
 that where frauds have been discovered they have had their 
 origin with those who are alien to our clime, our laws, and all 
 the considerations connected with our welfare. They are frauds 
 that effect, comparatively, but a small portion of that vast 
 amount of labor that owes its support to -the protective sys 
 tem. 
 
 It was affirmed that this system would undermine commerce 
 and ruin navigation ; but they flourish and prosper beyond all 
 expectation. It was to create a moneyed aristocracy : if aristoc 
 racy be possible with our institutions, it certainly has not 
 found an abiding-place among manufacturers. It was to inflict 
 a class of paupers upon our population : no such class exists 
 among the industrious. It is still denounced as taxing the 
 many for the benefit of the few : but the many, with the power 
 in their hands to change it, are its sturdy friends and support 
 ers, proving that they, at least, deem themselves gainers by the 
 system ; while the few, on the other hand, never cease to tell 
 us of the grievance of being subject to the majority. 
 
DOMESTIC INDUSTRY. 133 
 
 A rapid increase of population, dwellings, culture, of the 
 comforts of life and of the value of property, wherever manu 
 factures prevail, bespeak their capacity to diffuse happiness and 
 wealth. The new industry that has been brought into existence 
 has induced the consumption of increased amounts of the pro 
 ductions of the land, and has added to the prosperity of every 
 class of agriculturists. During the last six years ; under the 
 benefit of protection, four hundred sugar plantations have been 
 added to the three hundred previously existing in the State of 
 Louisiana, which now supplies two-thirds of the demand of the 
 whole Union. In the mean time, the price has been continually 
 falling, and there is every reason to believe that, within a short 
 period, besides furnishing the home market, our planters will 
 have a surplus for exportation. 
 
 Our warehouses, workshops, and stores, abound with excel 
 lent and elegant wares of American fabrication, almost exclud 
 ing those from abroad. Silver and plated-ware, the richest 
 glassware, porcelain, household furniture and pleasure carri 
 ages, every article of woollen and cotton clothing, copper, brass 
 and tin wares, hardwares, arms of all sorts, saddlery, and every 
 thing else made of leather, drugs, paints and oils, tools, uten 
 sils, and implements of all sorts, every kind of machinery, from 
 the smallest instrument of cutlery to a steam engine ; nearly 
 every thing that can be made of wood, iron, wool, cotton, glass, 
 furs, the precious metals, whatever ministers to comfort, and 
 most of the luxuries ; all the substantial and ornamental means 
 of habitation, subsistence, transportation by land and wate^ 
 clothing and defence, are to be seen in every street, of every 
 town, in every stage of process and transition, from the raw 
 materials,, which are abundant and excellent, to the removal of 
 the finished article to distant places of purchase. The princi 
 ple commerce among the several States of the Union is em 
 ployed in the transportation of domestic manufactures, and 
 managed by domestic exchanges, which have increased above 
 all computation within the last few years. They insure domes 
 tic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, and promote 
 
134 POLITICAL PAPKKP. 
 
 the general welfare, by bonds stronger than any political ties ; 
 infinitely stronger than armies or navies. Protection to these 
 resources is, as it were, the Providence of our political being, 
 ever guarding the industrious citizen, while adding to the na 
 tion s wealth. Without that Providence not a laborer, not an 
 artisan, whatever his calling, but would be straightened and 
 brought to ruin. Distress would be intense and universal. 
 Stop the loom and the plough would work in vain ; the ship 
 would be unfreighted, and universal stagnation would succeed 
 to the present healthful activity of our land. Is there an 
 American who would raise his ruthless hand against the sys 
 tem which prevents such a calamity ? who would recolonize his 
 country from an unnatural disgust for its own productions, and 
 morbid preference for those of Europe ? who would bow be 
 fore the woolsack of England, but spurn the golden fleece of 
 his own soil. 
 
 Aversion to manufactures has engendered, of late, bitter 
 local prejudices in parts of those States in which they do not 
 flourish. Not long ago their promotion was in universal 
 favor. When the venerable survivor of the framers of the 
 Constitution took the oath of fidelity to it, on commencing his 
 illustrious presidency, the whole nation thought that he proved 
 his patriotism by being clothed in a suit of American broad 
 cloth. To doubt the constitutionality of protecting manu 
 factures was not then conceived. Even to question the policy 
 of promoting them was limited to very few. The statesmen 
 and the patriots of the south were among the foremost to vin 
 dicate both. 
 
 The general pacification of 1815 exposed our market to 
 the overwhelming force of English capital and skill, with more 
 fearful odds than we had to contend against in the hostilities 
 then closed with Great Britain. The inflexibility of her 
 restrictive system, and the exuberant resources of our own 
 country for manufactures, alone enabled us to withstand the 
 great influx of her fabrics, and constrained us to protect our 
 market by that system which has led to our present pros- 
 
DOMESTIC INDUSTRY. 135 
 
 perity. Is it the cotton-growing States who would subvert 
 this prosperity and lay us once more prostrate before the 
 power of our rival ? Those States who, for the article of cot 
 ton, enjoyed a duty which did not merely promote, but abso 
 lutely created its culture ? a tax upon all the other States, which 
 was represented as a grievance by the report of the Secretary 
 of the Treasury in the very infancy of our Government ? a tax 
 which diverted labor and capital into new channels for the 
 exclusive benefit of those States, at the expense of all the 
 rest ? a tax which had not the remotest connection with the 
 revenues of the country, but was imposed merely for protec 
 tion ? Is it, above all others, the State of South Carolina that 
 can complain of a protective impost, while she enjoys a heavy 
 duty on indigo, which she has ceased to produce, and which 
 therefore all the manufacturing States pay under circumstances 
 aggravated by the fact that while they are obliged to submit 
 to this tax on an article indispensable to their manufactures, 
 the very State for whose benefit it was imposed, declines to 
 cultivate the article ? 
 
 By a special resolution of this convention, an inquiry was di 
 rected into the moral influence of our manufactures ; in com 
 pliance with which we feel authorized to say, in a word, that 
 the imputations sometimes cast upon the morals of manufac 
 turing communities have proved, according to the experience 
 of this country, to be without the slightest foundation. On 
 the contrary, it is believed that the moral and religious educa 
 tion of those employed in manufactures is, at least, equal, if 
 not superior, to that of other classes of the community. 
 
 In concluding this address we would take occasion to ob 
 serve that the present posture of the affairs of the United States 
 impress upon us the necessity of declaring what we believe to 
 be the sentiment of the friends of American industry, in ref 
 erence to a great question which must, in a short time, occupy 
 the attention of Congress. Up to this period, the revenue of 
 the Government has not exceeded its wants. The debt has 
 required a system of duties that would supply at least ten 
 
136 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 millions of dollars every year towards its extinguishment. 
 That debt, under the present course of liquidation, will soon cease 
 to exist. The nation will then naturally expect some reduc 
 tion of duties. Participating in the common feeling on this 
 subject, we cannot close this address without respectfully sub 
 mitting to public consideration the expediency of applying 
 that reduction to such commodities as are incapable of being 
 brought within the scope of the protective system ; holding 
 it, as we do, to be indispensable to the best interests of the 
 American people that that system should be sustained and 
 preserved, without diminution, in its application to every 
 branch of domestic industry that may be benefited by its in 
 fluence. 
 
 Thus, fellow-citizens, we have submitted to your considera 
 tion our views of the construction of the Constitution upon 
 the great question of protection. If it be the true one, you 
 will sanction and sustain it : if it be otherwise, let it be re 
 jected ; for the Constitution is the supreme law. 
 
 We have also submitted our view of the true policy of this 
 country. We have stated and urged those principles, on 
 which the system of protection rests, which we believe to be 
 supported by the maxims of a sound philosophy, the experience 
 of mankind and our own. It remains with you to deter 
 mine, whether that system of protecting your own industry, 
 under which you have long advanced and are now prospering, 
 shall be continued or abandoned ; whether you will hold fast 
 to that which your experience has proved to be good, or yield 
 yourselves the victims of rash and untried theory. That 
 nearly five hundred of your fellow-citizens should convene, 
 from sections of the country more than five hundred miles 
 apart, to consult on these engrossing subjects, is itself an 
 argument of the deep solicitude felt by the country at large in 
 their discussion. To have separated without vindicating them, 
 would have been a desertion of the trust committed to us. 
 Their importance required that fulness of consideration which 
 an enlightened and reflecting people have a right to demand. It 
 
DOMESTIC INDUSTRY. 137 
 
 has been our study to adhere to the utmost accuracy in our 
 statement of facts, and to exercise the most perfect candor in 
 our arguments. We therefore invite the strictest scrutiny to 
 what u thus submit ; while we are sensible that, with the ad 
 vantage of more time than the session of the convention has 
 afforded, it might have been presented in a more finished 
 form. Deeply impressed with the gravity of the subject and 
 the momentous aspect of our national concerns, we trust that 
 our language has never departed from that tone of conciliation 
 which becomes citizens of the same country differing from 
 their brethren upon great questions of national policy. 
 
 But let us bear constantly in mind that the union, the hap 
 piness, the peace and the power of our beloved country depend 
 on its domestic industry, without which these United States 
 would cease to be an independent nation. 
 
 Let those who acknowledge this great bond of union never 
 forget that " united we stand and divided we fall ;" that sugar, 
 and iron, hemp and lead, wool and cotton, and the other pro 
 ductions of our diversified soil, elaborated by our own indefat 
 igable industry, and protected by our own free government, 
 are, in effect, the government that holds us together, and make 
 us one people ; that the home market is the palladium of home 
 itself in all its most endearing and ennobling political and 
 social relations, without which we have no common country, 
 but should be reduced to the condition of dismembered and 
 defenceless provinces. Let it therefore be the instinct of all 
 who acknowledge its cause as their own, to stand together, 
 like the fathers of the revolution ; with no local jealousy, no 
 impolitic preference of one part of our system to another, but 
 maintaining a united and inflexible adherence to the whole. 
 
 Spontaneous conventions, like the present, originated our 
 glorious revolution and our admirable Constitution. May the 
 Almighty Power that presided over their deliberations, and 
 that has never yet failed to guard these United States, shed 
 the gracious influence of his protection upon our labors. 
 
138 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 STRICTURES 
 
 ON THE LETTER OF CHARLES J. INGERSOLL, ESQ., TOUCHING 
 THE RIGHT OF A LEGISLATURE TO REPEAL A CHARTER. 
 WITH AN APPENDIX, CONTAINING THE LETTERS OF MR. 
 INGERSOLL, OF MR. DALLAS, OF MR. FORWARD, AND OF 
 MR. BIDDLE, IN ILLUSTRATION OF THE SUBJECT DISCUSSED. 
 
 " I aver that at this moment there is as sacred a regard for prop 
 erty, as inviolable a security to all the rights of individuals, lower 
 taxes, fewer grievances, less to deplore, and more to admire, in the 
 Constitution of America, than that of any other country under 
 heaven." Erskine s Speech on Paine s Trial. 
 
 To the General Assembly of Maryland, the Convention of Pennsylvania, and 
 the Legislatures of the several States of this Union, these strictures are respect 
 fully inscribed by the author. DEDICATION. 
 
 SIR : You have been elected a delegate to the Convention 
 of Pennsylvania, to " propose amendments to the Consti 
 tution" of that State ; and from a desire to obtain, in advance, 
 an exposition of " your views on the general powers of the 
 Convention, and particularly with reference to the United 
 States Bank, and the question of vested rights," you have been 
 publicly invited, by certain members of your legislature, to 
 communicate your opinions to the world. 
 
 Obedient to this call, you have furnished a full, and I have 
 no doubt, a candid statement of the principles by which you 
 are to be guided in the performance of the momentous duty, 
 committed to you by your constituents, as a member of the 
 Convention. 
 
 The doctrines you have attempted to ma ntain in this let 
 ter, are interesting to every State in the Union, and to every 
 
REPLY TO IXGERSOLL. 139 
 
 citizen of the States. They concern the integrity of American 
 institutions, and have an important relation to the most solemn 
 obligations of national faith. For I do not scruple to say, if 
 these doctrines are adopted and sustained in the great com 
 monwealth of Pennsylvania, the credit of every State in the 
 Union will be more or less shaken and disparaged in the judg 
 ment of all other nations. That sure reliance upon the plight 
 ed faith of the American republics, which has heretofore 
 been cherished as a sentiment of honor which it would be in 
 sult to question, will be abandoned as a deceitful illusion, and 
 our States and citizens will be subjected to the same humiliat 
 ing suspicions in their dealings with foreign communities, the 
 same precautions against fraud and treachery, which mark the 
 negotiations of the many petty powers whose tricks of policy 
 have rendered them the objects of universal distrust and con 
 tempt. 
 
 Still, although convinced that even so important an issue 
 as this has been presented by you to the consideration of 
 American citizens, I should not have deemed that a sufficient 
 motive for troubling the public with my reflections in answer 
 to your letter. I should have confided the task of disabusing 
 the public mind on these topics, to the many judicious thinkers 
 and enlightened patriots which your own State and city supply ; 
 and with yet more content I should have confided it to the 
 wholesome sense of justice which I feel assured will predomi 
 nate in the Convention itself, to rescue the fame of Pennsyl 
 vania from the blot which you would rashly fix upon it. But 
 I have another motive, more domestic in its nature, for no 
 ticing your letter. I cannot be blind to the fact, that your 
 opinions on this great question are not the opinions of an iso 
 lated individual : they are not the vagaries of one eccentric 
 mind, nor engendered in the fantasy of a lonely visionary : no, 
 nor are they destined to flash with a sudden glare, and then 
 become extinct without communicating their fire to any sur 
 rounding object. They were, before you announced them, 
 already set down as the principles of a party, the tenets of a 
 
140 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 sect ; and they are likely henceforth to be professed by an 
 obsequious troop of disciples. I do not know to what apostle 
 the honor of this new creed is to be ascribed, in what name it 
 is to be glorified, whether of Matthias or Mormon, of Joanna 
 Southcote or the prophet of unknown tongues, but I do 
 know that it has its sectaries, its Koran and its priests in 
 Maryland ; and that is my apology to the public for this com 
 ment upon your letter. 
 
 That letter is dated the 24th of November. It followed 
 one of similar import, though less startling in its assumptions, 
 written by a leader of authority, in your city, and published 
 in July last. In the interval between these two, a revolution 
 was attempted in Maryland, founded on the assertion of con 
 genial doctrines. That revolution has been merely ridiculous. 
 Its authors have worn their cap and bells for a brief space, 
 have played through their shallow harlequinade, and have 
 been summarily consigned, at length, by the mercy of their 
 fellow-citizens, to the moderate punishment of total insignifi 
 cance. They differ from you in the circumstance that they 
 had not the talent to do harm. In the last stage of this farce, 
 a mock, convention was held on the i6th of November, in the 
 city of Baltimore, and here, for the first time, the revolutionists 
 of Maryland caught at the great doctrine for which you are 
 contending. Among their resolves, they insist upon the ab 
 rogation of the old, and the establishment of a new constitu 
 tion of Maryland, which, they assert, a mere numerical majority 
 is competent to achieve ; and as one of the predominating 
 features in the new constitution, they require " a limitation and 
 restraint on the powers of the legislature in the future grant 
 of charters." 
 
 This Convention, it is true, did not define what the limita 
 tion and restraint on charters were to be ; but the public of 
 Maryland wanted no clue to their determinations on that point, 
 after the publication of Mr. Dallas s letter, which was received 
 with abundant tokens of gratulation by the reformers and the 
 organ of their opinions in this State. 
 
REPLY TO INGERSOLL. 14:1 
 
 I have no difficulty in assuring you that, with some laudable 
 exceptions in the persons of a few well-informed gentlemen, 
 you and Mr. Dallas have many very loud, if not very intelligent 
 followers among the new-fashioned and exclusive reformers 
 of Maryland, and that these men will do their best, if they are 
 ever furnished a theatre for such an exploit, to saddle this State 
 with every enormity of radicalism which has been broached, 
 either by yourself or your co-laborer in the field. Therefore, 
 it is that I write. 
 
 As I propose to examine the leading doctrines of your 
 argument, and am anxious to do you full justice by attributing 
 to you no more than you have said or designed to infer in 
 your letter, I shall endeavor to avoid mistake on this score by 
 quoting your words, as far as that may be practicable, without 
 too large a drain upon the patience of my readers. 
 
 Your proposition or theme is that bank charters, and above 
 all, that the charter of the Bank of the United States, granted 
 last year by the State of Pennsylvania, " may be repealed by 
 act of assembly;" "and such act will not be contrary to the 
 Constitution of the United States." 
 
 This doctrine has, at least, the merit of being new. I ven 
 ture to affirm, that not a reflecting man in the United States 
 has read this proposition without being conscious of some 
 emotion of surprise. To many men, in the present unhappy 
 influence of party, this surprise has been a compound of 
 pleasant feelings, derived, in part, from the satisfaction of a 
 dawning hope that Pennsylvania will yet succeed in strangling 
 " the monster " and, in part, from seeing your name at the 
 foot of the letter which announces it ; for they will remember 
 indeed they will see it in some of the recent daily papers, 
 that on the 24th of February, 1831, you offered, in the legis 
 lature of Pennsylvania, the first resolution, I believe, in this 
 nation, for the renewal of the charter of the late Bank of the 
 United States, in which you declared " that half a century s 
 experience sanctions a bank of the United States as necessary 
 and proper to regulate the value of money, and prevent paper 
 
M2 POLITICAL PAPEE3. 
 
 currency of unequal and depreciated value ;" and they will, at 
 such a crisis as the present, rejoice at your revolt, and the 
 good fortune which has brought you into the Convention, with 
 your now avowed sentiments. Many men, and among these 
 will be found some of your old friends and associates, will 
 experience a still greater surprise, but it will be mingled with 
 regret at the defection from the principles which have rendered 
 our country prosperous, of one from whom they were accus 
 tomed to expect better things. 
 
 The argument you have offered to sustain your proposition 
 may be analytically stated, as resting upon the truth of the 
 following dogmas, which, with a view to reference, and perspi 
 cacity, I have numbered according to the succession in which 
 you have presented them. 
 
 1. "That the legislature is empowered to resume a bank 
 charter without judicial proceeding or interposition, or any 
 charge of misconduct in the bank, whenever the public good re 
 quires it" 
 
 2. That by such resumption "no property is disturbed, no 
 vested interest divested." 
 
 3. That a bank charter is merely " a privilege conferred 
 on a few individuals, in derogation of common right" and 
 " may and should be revoked whenever its public inconvenience 
 is acknowledged." 
 
 4. That this right to repeal a charter of a banking cor 
 poration, is not restrained or forbidden by that clause of the 
 Federal Constitution which prohibits a State from passing any 
 law impairing the obligation of contracts. 
 
 5. That " a bank charter is a grant of privilege and not 
 property" 
 
 6. That a grant of privilege, being in derogation of com 
 mon right, may be resumed without impairing any right of 
 contract. 
 
 7. That " it is giving at least force enough to the constitu 
 tional interdict when it is construed to prevent laws impairing 
 the obligation of contracts, not only between individuals, but 
 
REPLY TO INGERSOLL. 143 
 
 also some laws deemed contracts between States and individuals 
 such as direct grants of lands" 
 
 8. " That personal rights, the rights of individual property, 
 and laws concerning them are those alone contemplated by 
 the Constitution." 
 
 9. That "there is no obligation on a State not to resume a 
 privilege granted in derogation of common right." 
 
 10. " That the Constitution was not made for privileges, 
 and, in the sense of the Constitution, there is no contract or ob 
 ligation when the object is privilege. 1 
 
 11. That " when a bonus is paid, it is the price of privi 
 lege, and therefore, perhaps, restoration of the bonus must 
 accompany resumption of the charter. But it does not follow 
 that even if there is a species of contract so far as respects the 
 bonus, that the State is incapacitated from resuming the privi 
 lege, on refunding the bonus." 
 
 12. That "if it should not refund the bonus, the law of 
 revocation would only so far impair the obligation of the 
 contract." 
 
 13. That although in the case of the Providence Bank, C. 
 J. Marshall seemingly treats a bank charter as a contract, 
 yet that the decision in that case, which establishes the right 
 of a State to tax a bank, demonstrates that a bank charter is 
 not a contract, inasmuch as it is against reason that a State 
 may destroy such a charter, indirectly through the taxing power, 
 while it is forbidden to repeal the charter by its direct action 
 through a law to that end. And that, in fact, the practical 
 exercise of the power to regulate banks by suppressing small 
 notes, as it is universally adopted throughout the United 
 States, is inconsistent with a denial of the right of total sup 
 pression. 
 
 14. That the adjudications of the Supreme Court, in the 
 New Jersey, the Virginia, and Dartmouth College cases, 
 (the prominent and leading decisions on the clause of the Con 
 stitution in question) related to grants of lands, and therefore 
 do not touch the case of bank charters. And that these de- 
 
POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 cisions, were, moreover, imperfect, being but partially con 
 sidered, little argued, and unadvisedly made. 
 
 15. That the construction of this clause of the Constitu 
 tion by Luther Martin and Mr. Madison, repels the interpre 
 tation put upon it by the Supreme Court, and confines its 
 operation to contracts relating to "personal security and 
 private rights" and " obviously excludes from it all incorporated 
 privileges and special immunity" And this being "contempo 
 raneous commentary or historical recollection, is of more re 
 liance than literal interpretation." 
 
 1 6. That without reference to the constitutional prohibition 
 " against laws impairing the obligation of contracts, and look 
 ing to the reason of things, the United States Bank does not 
 hold its charter by contract in the sense of that clause." 
 
 17. That the late Bank of the United States was a public 
 corporation and has been so determined by the Supreme 
 Court in the Maryland case, and in the case of the taxing law 
 of Ohio and, being a public corporation, its charter was, con 
 sistently with the distinction taken in the Dartmouth College 
 case, at all times liable to the action of the Federal legislature. 
 
 1 8. That the present Bank of the United States incor 
 porated by Pennsylvania, is equally a public corporation, and, 
 therefore, is in the same degree obnoxious to the action of the 
 State legislature. 
 
 19. That "if the Federal judiciary may bind the State ir 
 revocably and immutably to such a contract, Pennsylvania is no 
 longer a State. All the attributes of sovereignty are gone. 
 The laws of the State are subject to the by-laws of the Bank ; 
 and whether a canal boat shall ply, or a child be educated 
 depends not on the resources or laws of the State, but on the 
 income or dividends of the bank" the State of Pennsylvania 
 having devoted a part of the bonus to these objects. 
 
 20. Finally, you insinuate some doubts, which you call 
 " reasons of a more abstract character," whether any legisla 
 ture has power " to devolve upon twenty private assignees, for 
 thirty years, the great public trusts annually recurring of sup- 
 
REPLY TO INGERSOLL. 145 
 
 plying the income, supporting the schools and furthering the 
 internal improvements of the State :" and also 
 
 " Whether any legislatures are under the obligations of 
 contracts, but such as make them. 
 
 You charge upon the banks of the country a whole Iliad 
 of evils, denominating them " the outlaw barons of the day, 
 with numerous united, well-informed and unscrupulous re 
 tainers :" and with all their mischievous propensities and 
 iniquitous doings, of which your catalogue is not scant, you 
 attribute to them privileges and special immunities which you 
 describe as "levers that move the world." You argue that 
 " to extinguish such privileges cannot divest vested rights, or 
 right of any kind," and that to secure " property from such 
 depredations on it," should not " be regarded otherwise than 
 with satisfaction by all those who are anxious for the security 
 of property." 
 
 I think, upon a careful revision of this summar}* of your 
 argument, you will confess that I have represented it with 
 fidelity, and given it all the advantages which a repetition of 
 your own words, and your own method of collocation of its 
 predominant points can confer upon it : that I have been fair, 
 full, and even literal in this marshalling of your opinions. 
 
 In. looking back upon these twenty propositions, dogmas, 
 postulates, principles, or whatever else you may choose to call 
 them in quo no?nine gaudent I can lay my hand upon my 
 heart, and with as upright a conviction as has ever broken 
 out in word or feeling against any heresy in conflict with the 
 radical truths of the faith religious, political or moral, in which 
 I was born, educated or have* lived, I can say that I do not 
 assent to any one proposition in the whole list but hold them, 
 all and singular, altogether insufficient. I repudiate them as 
 unsound from head to foot ; as contrary to the simplest prin 
 ciples of policy, good faith and public morals, by which this 
 nation is to win the esteem of the wise and the virtuous ; as 
 repugnant to the earliest inculcations and latest experience by 
 which my judgment has been guided in estimating the value 
 7 
 
POLITICAL TAPERS. 
 
 of republican institutions, or by which my heart has been 
 strengthened in the love of my country. That is a broad re 
 nunciation. I wish it were otherwise. I should rejoice to 
 find in this inventory of opinions some few some one that 
 might give you the benefit of even an islet of orthodoxy to 
 stand upon in this waste of heresy and schism. I should 
 then congratulate you upon that small green spot, where sun 
 shine might fall upon your mind and let in the light of heaven. 
 
 To sustain the first, second and third of the above propo 
 sitions, you have begun by presenting us with an outline of the 
 debate in the legislature of Pennsylvania, on the bill for the 
 renewal of the charter of The Bank of North America, in the 
 year 1786. The views of the opponents of the bank, as you 
 have exhibited them, you describe as " resting on principles 
 of right and illustrated by arguments, a departure from which 
 since, has been the source of great evil to the commonwealth :" 
 and you remark of them further, that it is impossible to read 
 them " without being struck by the wisdom and foresight of 
 the forefathers of republicanism." 
 
 I think your eulogy upon these " views" is greatly dispro- 
 portioned to their deserts. If you have represented them 
 faithfully, they strike me as singularly deficient in the chief 
 qualities which should entitle any opinions to respect. They 
 assert, in nearly the same terms that you have asserted it, that 
 " charters of public corporations (by which they obviously re 
 fer to the bank charter), when not found agreeable to the welfare 
 of the people, may be taken away by the legislature :" that there 
 was already precedent for such acts in Pennsylvania : that 
 governments, being instituted for the public good, necessarily 
 possess the power of repealing every law inimical to the public 
 safety : that the Government of Pennsylvania being a Democ 
 racy, the bank is inconsistent with the bill of rights thereof, 
 which says that government is not instituted for the emolu 
 ment of any man, family or set of men : that "the repeal of a 
 charter takes away none of the property of the corporators : 
 that " as charters are gra?iied by the assembly, they can be revoked 
 
KEPLY TO LNGERSOLL. 14:7 
 
 in no other way than by the assembly : they camiot be taken away 
 by the courts of justice, as they are given by the legislature" 
 That, in fact, the legislature has no power " to give monopolies 
 of legal privilege to bestow unequal portions of our inheritance 
 on favorites." 
 
 These gentlemen admitted what, in your text, you do not 
 admit, " that charters are sacred or otherwise, not because they 
 are granted by legislative or sovereign power, but according to 
 the objects for which they are granted ; that if a charter is given 
 for a monopoly whereby the natural and legal rights of mankind 
 are invaded, it would be dangerous to hold that it cannot be 
 annulled." This admission concedes more than your argu 
 ment, by seeming to leave some charters inviolate, although the 
 value of the admission is greatly abated by the declaration 
 that a bank charter is necessarily a monopoly. The same gen 
 tlemen are more liberal than you in another point: they infer- 
 entially yield the question that a bank charter is a contract, 
 when they contend, in reference to the repeal they were de 
 bating, that "if charters cannot be repealed because they are 
 contracts, it affords a great invitation to fraud." We are at lib 
 erty to presume, from your repetition of some of these argu 
 ments, and from the approbation with which you quote the 
 whole of them, that you now adopt them us your own. 
 
 There is an allowance to be made for the legislators of 1786 
 which cannot be extended to you. They had a young nation 
 to deal with, and many lessons to learn. The theory of gov 
 ernment arid the determination of the limits of State power, 
 have been much discussed and wisely considered since that 
 era. It is no reproach to the men of that day, nor compliment 
 to those of the present, to say that the constitutional landmarks 
 of sovereignty are better defined and understood by our gen 
 eration than by its forefathers. And it may excite no special won 
 der that in the infancy of our republics much confusion and 
 uncertainty should exist on these intricate and perplexing 
 questions. But, above all, it is due to the legislature whose 
 opinions you have cited, to remember that when the charter of 
 
14:8 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 the Bank of North America was in debate, there was no Con 
 stitution of the United States to warn them of the limit of their 
 authority touching a contemplated act " to impair the obliga 
 tion of a contract." Indeed they do not seem to have dwelt 
 with any marked emphasis upon that great fundamental prin 
 ciple which lies at the bottom of the whole controversy how 
 far, namely, the solemn pledge of the faith of the State is bind 
 ing upon the party by whom it is given. 
 
 I cannot but observe that in this debate, as in your argu 
 ment, much use is made of that mysterious claptrap of the 
 demagogue, THE PUBLIC GOOD that retreating point which 
 every quacksalver in politics has fallen back upon ever since the 
 days of Jack Cade. It is a word of might : an incantation 
 sometimes, which summons up the "black spirits and white, 
 the blue spirits and gray," and surrounds the necromancer with 
 his appropriate household troops. But sometimes it is a mere 
 word "a spell o erspent." What is the public good? Is it a 
 boon which is gained by pandering to the passions of the day, 
 and by pulling down, on the instant, what an artificially-excited 
 popular indignation may doom to the sacrifice ; by uprooting 
 old institutions, and desecrating the customs of the sober and 
 peaceful portions of the community ? Does it consist in vio 
 lating the promise of yesterday, because the folly of to-day is 
 displeased with it ? Is it to be found in the crusade against 
 the rights of property, and the accumulations of industry ; in 
 the overthrow of the weak by the tempest of numbers ; the 
 rallying of bands under the watch-word of party, to humble, de 
 grade, and trample in the dust those who have provoked the 
 envy and incurred the hate of eager innovators ? Is it, without 
 deliberation, judgment and forecast, without gentleness of 
 action and well weighing of the conclusion, to drive out from 
 the breasts of men, the opinions, usages, the very instincts of 
 preservation and prosperity, the elemental endoctrinations, the 
 primary morals, in which they have been nurtured, and by 
 which they are bound in society ? 
 
 Or is it not the opposite of these ? Does it not rest more 
 
REPLY TO INGERSOLL. 149 
 
 safely in teaching the people to hold their individual and col 
 lective honor as a pearl above all price ; to carry into the con 
 cerns of society the morality which dignifies the man ; to suffer 
 patiently the privations of the present, that they may reap the 
 blessings of the future ; to build up their renown upon the 
 scrupulous redemption of every pledge, without equivocation, 
 quibble or mental reserve ; to value the good opinion of man 
 kind at home and abroad, as a treasure surpassing all passion 
 indulged, all gain or emolument ? Is it not achieved by decid 
 ing, in doubtful cases, in favor of faith, forbearance and toler 
 ation, rather than tempting the rash experiment of ambiguous 
 right with its destructive results ? I feel assured that your 
 " forefathers of republicanism," long before they departed from 
 this sphere, if they do not yet survive, were sufficiently con 
 vinced that the public good of Pennsylvania, as they fancied it 
 in 86, had but little concern with the licentious victory which 
 they accomplished on that occasion. The prosperity of the 
 glorious commonwealth in which you inhabit, and its miracu 
 lous growth in the plentitude of art and power, tell how falsely 
 these early champions of violated faith have pictured the public 
 good. But one year rolled by, before the instinctive wisdom of 
 the State repaired the wreck of this heady onslaught, and gave 
 back to your city the Bank of North America, whose monu 
 ment yet proudly lives to admonish and instruct you, in your 
 daily walks, that ft\z public good and ^& public honor axe, twin 
 sisters, inseparably united in that harmony " where either they 
 must live, or bear no life." The lapse of an equal space here 
 after, will condemn your theory of the public good to the same 
 censure, and the next generation will witness still prouder, no 
 bler, and more enduring monuments of the wisdom and intel 
 ligence of Pennsylvania, as manifested in the act which has 
 now secured to her the Bank of the United States. 
 
 I refuse to dwell in this place upon the arguments of your 
 early legislature, in support of the right to resume the charter, 
 because I shall have occasion to meet them in what I have to 
 say in reply to your views upon the same subject. I will, for 
 
150 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 the present, therefore, dismiss them with a few words. They 
 deal in inapplicable generalities, when they assert the right of 
 the legislature to repeal laws " inimical to the public safety ;" 
 equally so, when they affirm that " Pennsylvania is a Democra 
 cy," and that " the bank is inconsistent with the bill of rights" 
 which denies that government is instituted " for the emolument 
 of any man, family or set of men." They beg the question, 
 when they allege that the repeal of a charter takes away none of 
 the property of the corporators. They are greatly in error when 
 they call a bank charter necessarily a monopoly. And they 
 strangely contradict the universal, approved, undisputed, ear 
 liest and latest judgment of all England from whom we have 
 derived our laws, and of all America, where these laws are re 
 ceived or imitated, when they pretend that " as charters are 
 granted by the assembly they can be revoked in no other way 
 than by the assembly," and that " they cannot be taken away 
 by the courts of justice." To my mind, the uttering of such 
 immature and inconsiderate assertions, deprive these authori 
 ties of any respectable claim to serious argument. I leave them 
 to the refutation which they must surely find in the judgment 
 of every intelligent reader, and to the charitable extenuation 
 due to the period at which they were pronounced. 
 
 Your next resource, in the way of authority, is singularly 
 unfortunate. With more research than discretion, you have 
 referred to the debate in the British parliament on the cele 
 brated India bill of Mr. Fox. The coincidence is somewhat 
 remarkable, that you should have pointed to an event and 
 cited the arguments which were concerned with the most 
 honorable impulse of indignant humanity, the most elevated 
 and generous anger of offended justice that ever warmed the 
 bosoms of a great nation, and turned all hearts to the duties 
 of benevolence, and that you should have made use of this 
 splendid precedent, to aid you in an attempt to accomplish 
 what the world will call, but which, from the respect I 
 bear you, I will not a design of unexampled perfidy. The 
 two cases have no resemblance in any point, except in the 
 
REPLY TO INGERSOLL. 151 
 
 magnitude of the object. They stand as alpha and omega, 
 wide apart as " from China to Peru ;" they are antipodes, 
 zenith and nadir ; the one was the honor of Britain, the other, 
 in my judgment, would be the disgrace of America. 
 
 I would remind you, that you have cited this debate to 
 prove your proposition that " a legislature may resume a bank 
 charter, without judicial proceeding or interposition, or any 
 charge of misconduct in the bank, whenever the public good 
 requires it." And your purpose is to infer from the language 
 of Mr. Fox and Mr. Burke, that such was the doctrine 
 approved by the wisest statesmen of England, in 1784. To 
 make good this inference, you have extracted liberally from 
 the speeches of these gentlemen, to whom you pay no less a 
 tribute of praise than they deserve ; and, in conclusion (hav 
 ing, of course, reference to your desired repeal of the bank 
 charter), you exclaim with the fervor of conviction and triumph 
 which their eloquence seems to have inspired, " we republicans 
 should be degenerate offspring of the English whigs, if we 
 refrain from dealing radically (an ominous word !) with such 
 vested rights." 
 
 Now, let me state the case of the British India Bill, and 
 we shall be enabled to decide how far it may serve as a pre 
 cedent for the Pennsylvania Convention. In your extracts 
 from the speeches of Fox and Burke, you have left off where 
 you should have begun ; you have culled propositions, and 
 forestalled conclusions by silence ; you have taken out a brick 
 from the building to lead your reader to believe that the edifice 
 was of brick, when, in truth, it was of marble. I will not say 
 you were disingenuous, because I perceive that your mind was 
 heated witji a foregone zeal for one doctrine, which prevented 
 you from seeing any thing that contradicted it. 
 
 First, let it be remembered that the charter of the India 
 Company was a great political charter. It conferred empire, 
 supreme dominion, absolute political sway, over thirty millions 
 of people. It granted entire monopoly, exclusive and un 
 bounded control over a continent. It was interwoven with the 
 
152 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 political power of England, and was the partner, ally and 
 stipendiary of the domestic government It possessed fleets 
 and armies, made war and peace, and administered justice in 
 the highest matters of life, liberty and property, under the 
 sanction of its tremendous chartered powers. It had flagi 
 tiously and enormously abused these powers. It had violated 
 the contract upon which it came into existence, forfeited its 
 charter by a thousand flagrant misdeeds, and, as Mr. Fox 
 expressed it, had "by mismanagement, connivance and imbe 
 cility, combined with the wickedness of its servants," caused 
 " the very name of an Englishmen" to be " decested, even to 
 a proverb, through all Asia, and the national character" of 
 England to "become degraded and dishonored." An investi 
 gation had been conducted for years, by Parliament, into these 
 abuses ; committees of both parties, whig and tory, had labori 
 ously examined the facts ; the abuses, to the full extent charged, 
 had been admitted on all sides, without palliation or excuse ; 
 and all England burned with a glowing ardor of condemnation 
 against the culprit association. Both parties actively con 
 tended for the glory of furnishing the remedy ; all united in 
 the conviction that Parliament had a right to interfere, as for a 
 violated compact ; and the only differences of opinion con 
 cerned the most efficient plan of remedy. In the midst of 
 this fervor of indignation, it is recorded to the honor of the 
 British people, that they who had the unquestioned power to 
 destroy the whole charter, were still solicitous to exercise that 
 power with as little detriment as possible, to their previous 
 pledge conveyed by the charter, and yet consistently with the 
 correction of the admitted abuse. Public faith, they insisted, 
 was to be observed with the delinquent company,, on every 
 point where such observance did not stand in the way of 
 the removal of the evil. They could perceive, that even in 
 this case of a public corporation, and with their clear and ab 
 solute right to modify, alter or destroy, if need be, the char 
 ter, that the honor of a just government was engaged to pre 
 serve sacred its pledge towards the fragment of charter-con - 
 
REPLY TO INGERSOLL. 153 
 
 tract which might remain after the recission of the offending 
 part. 
 
 Let it be remembered, secondly and you have not forgot 
 ten it, although you seem to have overlooked its consequences 
 that, by the theory of the British constitution, Parliament is 
 omnipotent. It has no written limit of power. It is the grand 
 inquest of the nation, and as such, acts judicially and there 
 in, as a court of justice, it has jurisdiction over cases of for 
 feiture of charter, as well as over trust confided ; jurisdiction 
 more ample than that of any court of law or equity. In the 
 exertion of this omnipotence, it recognizes no confine but 
 what its own conscience and sense of national honor, justice, 
 and right impose upon it as the representative of a magnani 
 mous and upright people. 
 
 These are the two preliminary conditions which are to be 
 noted in comparing the India case of England, and the bank 
 case of Pennsylvania ; and to make the precedent available, 
 it is incumbent on you to show that the bank has been guilty 
 of similar abuse, and that the General Assembly of Pennsyl 
 vania has the same judicial and legislative power. Neither of 
 which you have done ; but, on the contrary, you exclude the 
 " charge of misconduct in the bank" from your proposition, 
 and you admit that the State of Pennsylvania is amenable in 
 its legislation on contracts, to the constitutional interdict of 
 the Federal government, whatever that interdict may legally 
 import. 
 
 Mr. Fox stated the object of his bill to be to annihilate an 
 odious species of tyranny, the scope of which consisted in a 
 claim already put in practice, " that a handful of men, free 
 themselves, should execute the most base and abominable 
 despotism over millions of their fellow-creatures ; that inno 
 cence should be the victim of oppression ; that industry should 
 toil for rapine ; that the harmless laborer should sweat, not for 
 his own benefit, but for the luxury and rapacity of tyrannic 
 depredation ; in a word, that thirty millions of men, gifted by 
 providence with the ordinary endowments of humanity, should 
 7* 
 
154 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 groan under a species of despotism unmatched in all the his 
 tories of the world." " This is the kind of government," he 
 added, " exercised under the East India Company upon the 
 natives of Indostan ; and the subversion of that infamous 
 government is the main object of the bill in question." 
 
 Mr. Burke s course of argument is indicated in the follow 
 ing extracts : " By some gentlemen," he remarked, " this bill 
 is taken up as a point of law, on a question of private prop 
 erty, and corporate franchise." " It is a little painful to me," 
 he afterwards added, " to observe the intrusion into this im 
 portant debate of such company as quo warranto and man 
 damus and certiorari, as if we were on a trial about mayors 
 and aldermen and capital burgesses, or engaged in a suit con 
 cerning the borough of Penryn, or Saltash, or St. Ives, or St. 
 Mawes." " It is not right, it is not worthy of us in this man 
 ner to depreciate the value, to degrade the majesty of this 
 grave deliberation of policy and empire." 
 
 After descanting on the term " the chartered rights of men," 
 in the language you have quoted in your letter, he continued ; 
 "the strong admission I have made of the company s rights 
 I am conscious of it binds me to do a great deal. I do not 
 presume to condemn those who argue a priori against the pro 
 priety of leaving such extensive political powers in the hands 
 of a company of merchants. I know much is and much may 
 be said against such a system. But with my particular ideas 
 and sentiments, I cannot go that way to work. I feel an in 
 superable reluctance in giving my hand to destroy any established 
 institution of government upon a theory, however plausible it 
 may be." 
 
 " To justify us in taking the administration of their affairs 
 out of the hands of the East India Company, on my principles, 
 I must see several conditions, ist. The object affected by 
 the abuse should be great and important. 2cl. The abuse af 
 fecting this great object, ought to be a great abuse. 3d. It 
 ought to be habitual and not accidental. 4th. It ought to be 
 utterly incurable in the body as it now stands constituted. 
 
REPLY TO INGETCSOLL. 155 
 
 All this ought to be made as visible to me as the light of the sun, 
 before I should strike off an atom of their charter" 
 
 When, in an argument of unparalleled force and eloquence, 
 he had demonstrated the existence of every condition upon 
 which he rested the right of parliamentary interposition, he 
 concludes with these observations : " It has been said, if you 
 violate this charter, what security has the charter of the Bank, 
 in which public credit is so deeply concerned, and even the 
 charter of London in which the rights of so many subjects are 
 involved ? I answer, in the like case, they have no security at 
 all no no security at all. If the Bank should, by every 
 species of mismanagement, fall into a state similar to that of 
 the East India Company ; if it should be oppressed with demands 
 it could not answer, engagements which it could not perform, and 
 with bills for wJiich it could not procure payment ; no charter 
 should protect the mismanagement from correction, and such pub 
 lic grievances from redress. If the city of London had the 
 means and will of destroying an empire, and of cruelly op 
 pressing and tyrannizing over millions of men as good as them 
 selves, the charter of the city of London should prove no sanc 
 tion to such tyranny and such oppression. Charters are kept, 
 when their purposes are maintained ; they are violated, when the 
 privilege is supported against its end and its object" 
 
 Nothing can be more explicit than the avowal throughout 
 this debate, that the judgment of Parliament is invoked against 
 this charter upon the sole and exclusive ground of abuse, vi 
 olation, by the Company, of the contract with the government, 
 to a degree that justified a sentence of forfeiture. The princi 
 ple of law contended for was neither more nor less than the 
 familiar principle recognized at this day, both by our Federal 
 and State Governments the right of forfeiture founded on 
 breach of charter. By the organization of our government, this 
 principle of law is administered through a different channel 
 from that which may be chosen in Great Britain. Our States 
 act upon these questions by the arm of the judiciary, not by the 
 judgment of the legislature, except in the case of purely poiit- 
 
150 
 
 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 ical corporations. Violation of the charter contract is a ques 
 tion upon which our judiciaries universally may pronounce 
 sentence of forfeiture. The facts which constitute that viola 
 tion, it is the right of our corporations in most of the States to 
 submit to juries ; the law affecting these subjects, it is their 
 equal right to contest in the courts. The legislature of these 
 States, in the case of corporations not political, can rightfully 
 interfere with neither the law nor the fact. 
 
 As regards purely political corporations, and by this de 
 scription, I refer to the class designated in the decisions of 
 the Supreme Court, which I shall have occasion to notice in 
 the sequel, I admit that the same considerations which might 
 move the Parliament of Great Britain to resume or alter a char 
 ter, may have weight to induce the same action in our Federal 
 and State legislatures. In that regard, these legislatures are 
 under no other restraints than the same honorable obligation 
 to preserve faith in contracts which belongs to every just and 
 intelligent sovereign. The physical power of sovereignty, 
 wherever it resides, has no limit but that which the final impo 
 tence of its nature has imposed upon it : the moral duty of sov 
 ereignty is prescribed by the law of God, and as imperiously 
 restrains the physical power as if written on parchment and 
 supported by armies. No one can doubt that the British Par 
 liament, in the case we have referred to, might, if it had seen 
 fit, upon much weaker grounds than were presented by the 
 facts, have even wantonly broken down the charter in question ; 
 and none could have disputed the legality of the act. That it 
 spurned the exercise of such a power on such grounds, and pre 
 scribed rules to its own action which forbade it ; that it stood 
 upon the lofty assertion of regard for its plighted faith and of 
 scrupulous requirement of every condition of forfeiture which 
 might satisfy a limited law tribunal, may be told to its lasting 
 praise. Such an example is an admonition and a lesson which 
 the States of this Union may study, for the perpetuation of their 
 own renown, and to the permanent advantage of their citizens. 
 Let every legislator in the convention of Pennsylvania, or in 
 
REPLY TO INGERSOLL. 157 
 
 her general assembly, when the bank question shall come be 
 fore him, reflect over the language I have quoted from Mr. 
 Burke, " I feel an insuperable reluctance in giving my hand 
 to destroy any established institution of government, upon a 
 theory, however plausible it may be." I conjure you, Mr. 
 Ingersoll, on the same occasion, when you are about to propose 
 your theory, to reflect on the possible fate that may await it. 
 You may then be taught something useful to yourself by study 
 ing the eventual history of the India bill. The annals of 
 Great Britain will show you, that although the facts of that case 
 were a thousand times more aggravated than any thing you 
 can allege against the Bank, the measure of Mr. Fox was 
 deemed somewhat too harsh, and that its failure consigned 
 him and his party to political insignificance. Even this great 
 light paled before the genius of the stripling minister, when 
 that stripling found an ally in the universal desire of the 
 British nation to stand by the faith they had plighted in a 
 charter. You may remember this with advantage, and re 
 member too that there are many youths in Pennsylvania, and 
 many a pebble in her brooks to strike down every Goliah of 
 radicalism who may go forth from Gath. 
 
 I hasten now to your other propositions. I shall take 
 these up in an order different from that in which you have 
 announced them, for the sake of condensation. 
 
 The fifth and sixth, ninth and tenth, like the second and 
 third, manifest an error in the application and use of the term 
 " privilege," and its adjunct phrase " in derogation of com 
 mon right." 
 
 This is a very material and pervading error in your argu 
 ment. 
 
 An act of incorporation is not necessarily, in the sense in 
 which you use it, " a privilege :" nor is it necessarily " in de 
 rogation of common right." 
 
 Acts of incorporation I speak of those with which we 
 are familiar in our States do sometimes convey " privileges" 
 in the acceptation which your argument requires though not 
 
158 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 often. Still less often indeed very rarely are these grants 
 " in derogation of common right." 
 
 The " forefathers of republicanism" Messrs. Findley, 
 Smilie, Edgar and Whitehill are represented by you to have 
 asserted what strikes me as bordering somewhat on the comic, 
 in reference to this question of " privilege" and derogation 
 of common right. I should have taken it for a jest played 
 off against the credulity of the house, if it had not appeared 
 in a letter much too grave for such a sally. You report, 
 " They asserted that charters as originally granted, in the 
 twelfth and thirteenth centuries, to towns and cities, exempting 
 them from the general vassalage, then prevalent, were sacred 
 instruments (by which they meant, of course, inviolable by 
 legislation), because they secured to the persons on whom they 
 were bestowed, their natural rights and immunities." 
 
 "We have changed all that." These charters to town* 
 and cities are almost the only ones which it is now conceded, 
 since the Dartmouth College case, the legislatures have a right 
 to cut and carve as they please. All are sacred but these. 
 However, that is not what I extracted the sentence for : the 
 legislature of Pennsylvania in 1786, is quite excusable for not 
 understanding the law of the Dartmouth College case. What 
 I wished to remark is this, that the opponents of the Bank 
 of North America have oddly enough, in their argument 
 against that charter, which they attack because it was a mo 
 nopoly, an exclusive privilege, an antagonist party to the State, 
 an enemy to democracy, inimical to the public safety, ad 
 verse to the rights of equal protection, a little aristocracy, 
 inconsistent with the laws, habits and manners of the State, 
 they have oddly enough snatched out from this broad pro 
 scription, the charters granted in the twelfth and thirteenth 
 centuries. 
 
 When I said an act of corporation is not necessarily " a 
 privilege," and " in derogation of common right," my mind 
 was directed to the corporations with which you and I are 
 familiar as citizens of Pennsylvania and Maryland ; and as I 
 
REPLY TO TXGERSOLL. 159 
 
 intended to explain what kind of corporations were clothed 
 with " privileges in derogation of common right," my mind 
 was again, as irresistibly carried to the charters of the middle 
 ages. Judge of my surprise, when I found myself plump in 
 the very faces of your forefathers " avos et proavos, et quag 
 non fecimus ipsi, vix ea nostra voco." 
 
 These charters of the middle ages conveyed, to my appre 
 hension, in every sense of the term, monopolies, " exclusive 
 privileges," "in derogation of the common right" Their 
 general and most ordinary character was to confer some one 
 or more of the following exclusive privileges : 
 
 Exclusive rights to particular branches of trade : 
 
 Exclusive permission to carry on certain manufactures or 
 handicrafts : 
 
 Exclusive rights of navigation of particular rivers or seas ; 
 
 Exemption from certain taxes, or services, required from 
 all the rest of the nation for the support of government : 
 
 Exemption from contribution of personal service in car 
 rying on the wars of the nation : 
 
 Privileges to levy imposts and duties within their own walls 
 for their own benefit: and 
 
 To administer justice according to laws and customs of 
 their own. 
 
 Every power or privilege to which I have alluded in this 
 catalogue, and many more might be added, is exclusive, being 
 denied to the rest of the nation, and therefore constitutes 
 " monopoly :" most of these powers or privileges act as re 
 straints upon the rest of the nation, subject them to duties, 
 increase their burdens, trench upon their common rights, and 
 are therefore, " in derogation of the common right." A privi 
 lege which exempts you from contribution to the common de 
 fence, throws upon me a greater share in that contribution, 
 and is " in derogation of my common right." 
 
 All such charters are odious in their nature, and have 
 been, I may say altogether, repudiated in this country. We 
 have scarcely an example of them. The fundamental dec- 
 
160 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 laration of rights in many of our States denounce monopolies 
 as intolerable, and not to be granted. 
 
 On the other side, what are our customary corporations ? 
 I do not hesitate to reply, in answer to this question, the 
 most signal instruments by which the prosperity of our most 
 prosperous States has been obtained. They are the familiar 
 agencies through which almost every great enterprise has been 
 accomplished. They have given to youthful America all the 
 vigor of a ripe and wealthy nation. They are endeared to us 
 by the richest fruits of our political advancement What our 
 scant individual wealth has been unable to attain, their means 
 of associated wealth have brought us in profusion. They are 
 interwoven into our habits with a household familiarity and 
 constitute our simplest, most obvious and most useful modes 
 of action. Our institutions are studded over with private 
 charters. We have charters for universities, colleges, acade 
 mies and schools : for hospitals, almshouses, infirmaries, and 
 every other species of institution by which feebleness may be 
 protected, and misery relieved. We have charters for churches, 
 vestries, congregations and meeting-houses : for manufactures 
 in all their endless varieties \ for banks ; for insurances against 
 fire, against the seas, against all kinds of casualties : for wa 
 ter companies, for fisheries, and for hunting the forest : for 
 the improvement of agriculture, for draining marshes, for cut 
 ting timber, for digging mines. We have charters for the 
 encouragement of the fine arts, for libraries, for foreign mis 
 sions, and for the establishment of foreign colonies. We have 
 them for turnpikes, bridges, canals, railroads, steam naviga 
 tion, packets, and carriage by sea. In short, there is scarce 
 ly a conceivable object of human industry, or field for specu 
 lation and adventure which does not derive aid from this 
 principle of association. What is the consequence ? Look 
 to your own State. You have a thousand charters on your 
 statute book, and you have a people rejoicing in unmatched 
 vigor and wealth. Whoever thought, until the doctrine h\as 
 been lately broached, that Pennsylvania, in these thousand 
 
REPLY TO INGERSOLL. 161 
 
 charters, has ever surrendered or put in abeyance one jot of her 
 sovereignty ? 
 
 I undertake to say that not ten of all these charters con 
 vey what may be strictly called " a privilege :" that not one is 
 "in derogation of the common right." They are altogether 
 harmless as regards any supposed danger from their powers : 
 they are full of usefulness and good works. 
 
 By " privilege," I mean something which the corporators 
 had not before the grant of the charter. 
 
 Take any one of these charters and examine what it con 
 fers upon the company : and then inquire whether the persons 
 composing the company had not the right to do the same 
 thing before they got the charter. In an insurance company, 
 each and all the stockholders might severally or conjointly 
 have underwritten policies and received premiums and divided 
 the profits, before the grant of the charter, just as they did 
 afterwards : so of the banks ; so of the manufactories, and 
 all the rest. 
 
 Then what has the charter conferred upon them ? It has 
 given to these corporators, and generally for short periods, a 
 joint entity, a collective individuality, successiveness, and, 
 in some cases, perpetuity. Who benefits by this investiture 
 of corporate tangibility ? In part the corporators ; in greater 
 part, the public. A large body of men associated by a private 
 tie, can scarcely be sued at all : the suitor cannot find the 
 partners, and his writ is perpetually suffering abatement, or 
 his debtor gets beyond his reach. // is for the benefit of the 
 public, therefore, that the association is so identified by law, 
 that its name and seal represent in your courts the whole 
 association. The transmission of its property in a course of 
 succession, is equally for the benefit of the public, because 
 there it is to answer its responsibilities. Are these qualities, 
 " privileges" of the association ? I answer no. They are 
 merely qualities. A corporation is a machine invented to do 
 that, more expeditiously and effectually, which the individuals 
 composing the machine might do, if I may so express it, by 
 
102 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 manual labor. It is like a steam engine ; it has its appara 
 tus, and it performs its function according to the law of its 
 nature : and you may with the same propriety call the pecu 
 liar mode by which the steam engine produces its result, the 
 " privilege" of the engine, as to give that name to the correla 
 tive function of a corporation. It would be equally correct, 
 too, to say, that the State has parted with a portion of her 
 sovereignty when she purchases a steam engine, as when she 
 charters a company. 
 
 Are these powers of the corporations monopolies ? Surely 
 not; unless the legislature has forbidden any one else to 
 carry on the same business in competition with them. If 
 these are monopolies, every mercantile partnership is a mo 
 nopoly. For exactly as in the case of a private partnership, 
 a thousand other companies may engage in the same business, 
 and the legislature will not scruple to give them charters. So 
 also may all the world, without charters, embark in the same 
 pursuit, and run the race of rivalry with the company to any 
 extent they choose. What feature of monopoly is there in all 
 this ? 
 
 Is it in derogation of common right ? Certainly not. It 
 is common right itself. No man is hindered, molested, or 
 denied in the prosecution of the same business. There is 
 nothing taken away from the rest of mankind, no additional 
 burden put upon them, no service exacted from them, no 
 diminution of property, right or power, except that which the 
 law always encourages the diminution of personal advantage 
 resulting from the competition of those who are more skilful 
 to supply the public wants. 
 
 In truth, so far from being " in derogation of common 
 right" a charter generally imposes upon the corporators cer 
 tain restraints and disabilities, which, in their natural persons, 
 they would be exempt from. They are generally limited to 
 the possession of a certain quantity of property ; restricted 
 to a certain definite course of business ; required to make 
 public exhibits of their affairs ; to pay certain stipends to the 
 
REPLY TO INGERSOLL. 163 
 
 Government : and frequently is superadded to these restraints 
 and exactions, a personal liability of the corporators, beyond 
 the corporate wealth thus compelling them to become se 
 curities for the engagements of the corporation. Now all 
 these provisions, except the last, and that, to a certain ex 
 tent, may be put in the same class are, in some degree, in 
 derogation of the common right of the corporators, but, in no 
 degree, of that of the public. 
 
 I know one corporation in Maryland that has " an exclu 
 sive privilege in derogation of common right" I can recall 
 no other. It is a bank which is clothed by its charter with 
 summary powers to collect its debts by a less tedious course 
 of trial than other companies or persons in the State. I be 
 lieve it has seldom exerted this power, in deference to a com 
 mon opinion of its doubtful constitutionality. I cannot con 
 sent to denominate the powers of road companies, and others 
 of the same description, to condemn lands, as " exclusive 
 privileges." These are of the class of ordinary powers which 
 are constantly resorted to for the opening of highways and 
 streets, familiar, I presume, to every part of the United 
 States. Neither is the right of toll to be so considered. This 
 is but paying the debt due by the public, to those who have 
 furnished the public with an easement, and is the result of a 
 previous contract ratified by the parties on each side. It is 
 no more an exclusive privilege, or grant in derogation of com-- 
 mon right, than belonged to the builder of the State House 
 at Harrisburg when he claimed from the State the price of 
 the building. 
 
 You will perceive that I have said nothing of the charters 
 granted to cities, towns, counties, or villages. I have refrained 
 from noticing them only because they are purely political cor 
 porations, and do not strictly include the idea of contract. 
 The parties on both sides, in these corporations, are the public, 
 and being erected solely for the better administration of Govern 
 ment, they are at all times subject to modification at the will 
 of the supreme authority. 
 
164 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 Corporations are always created in this country by the 
 legislature. The grant of a corporate franchise implies the 
 deliberate assent of the legislature to the wisdom and sound 
 policy of the grant. A legislature has no right I speak in a 
 moral sense to pass any act but for the benefit of the 
 country. It must be presumed, therefore, in all cases, that 
 sufficient political inducements existed, some clear conviction 
 of public advantage resulting from the act, to determine the 
 legislature to make the grant. The charter contains a pledge 
 to the corporation that if it will perform the contemplated ser 
 vice to the public, by following specifically the forms of ac 
 tion written out in the charter, it shall have the benefit which 
 the charter proposes to it. This is a contract. It is impos 
 sible to state a case of contract more complete in all essen 
 tials. 
 
 There are two distinct contracting parties the public on 
 the one side, and the private citizens who are to constitute 
 the corporation, on the other : 
 
 There is a valuable object to be accomplished, and the de 
 liberate judgment of both parties on the importance and value 
 of that object : 
 
 There is an act undertaken to be done, by the State who 
 desires the proposed advantage : 
 
 There is a duty undertaken to be performed by the compa 
 ny, for the attainment of this proposed advantage and the dis 
 pensation of it to the public : 
 
 There is a performance by the State of its share of the con 
 tract, by public investiture of the corporate franchise in the com 
 pany: 
 
 There is an acceptance of the investiture by the company, 
 and a setting about the work to be performed. 
 
 The contract is absolute in all its conditions. 
 
 I am thus brought to the consideration of the proposi 
 tions in which you dispute that a corporate franchise is the sub 
 ject of a contract, and especially that a bank charter is of this 
 character. 
 
REPLY TO INGERSOLL. 165 
 
 This argument occupies a large portion of your letter, and 
 may be referred to as mainly or incidentally developed in the 
 points enumerated from the sixth to the seventeenth, both in 
 clusive. 
 
 If I understand you correctly, you admit that the legisla 
 ture cannot take away " the property" of a corporation, but you 
 contend that it can take away " the privilege" because privilege is 
 not property. This theory being asserted without limitation 
 as to the nature or object of the corporation I take it for 
 granted, you consider applicable to every kind of corporation, 
 \\hether bank or bridge, canal or college. Indeed, from the 
 nature of the proposition, if it be true, it must apply to all. 
 
 If by " privilege" you mean any exclusive right, the like of 
 which the legislature contracts to grant to no other body, I 
 can almost agree with you so far as to say that the legislature 
 may destroy its exclusiveness, not, however, because the privi 
 lege is not property, but because it is exclusive. I can almost 
 agree to this, from an aversion to exclusive grants, concerning 
 which much may be said to show that some of the States, at least, 
 did not design to allow them. But the only extent to which I 
 would be willing to go in the destruction of an exclusive privi 
 lege, would be by granting, when the occasion required it, 
 another privilege of the same sort to another body. There 
 ends the exclusiveness. I would not even sanction this extent 
 of legislation, but upon cogent motives of policy as well as 
 strong constitutional objections, and a clear conviction brought 
 to my mind, in the case which might arise, that the grant of 
 monopoly was forbidden to the State that had created the ex 
 clusive privilege. 
 
 But if by "privilege" you mean that attribute or quality by 
 which every corporation performs its proper function, and I 
 suppose, in reference to the subject of your letter (the bank), 
 you can mean nothing else, I entirely deny any shadow of 
 right in the legislature to destroy it. It is as much property as 
 the money in the vault. Why not ? Is it not purchased by 
 service service which always supposes large outlay of money? 
 
166 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 Was it not deemed a thing of value when it was made the sub 
 ject of stipulation ? Can it not be enjoyed just as much as 
 houses or lands? Is it not transmissible to successors? 
 Does it not impose duties, often onerous and costly ? Is it the 
 less valuable because it is incorporeal ? What is a right of 
 toll, a right of visitation, a right of voting, a right of pleading 
 in the corporate name, of holding property, of making deeds, 
 contracts and engagements in the same capacity ? Are all 
 these too insignificant to be deemed property in this country, 
 and outlaws from your courts ? If you desire to test the value 
 of these rights and bring them to the gross standard of money, 
 inquire what gold and silver, houses and lands, the possessors 
 of these rights, in your multitude of corporations in Philadel 
 phia, will take in exchange for them. This corporate fran 
 chise, quality or privilege is a right a vested right in the 
 phrase of the " forefathers of republicanism," and, according to 
 the meaning of that phrase, a sacred right. It \?> property, to all 
 intents within the protection of the law. 
 
 I will not discuss farther than I have done whether a char 
 ter is a contract. I think it beyond discussion ; but I will 
 pause to inquire how it comes to pass that you should assume, 
 or doubt, that a bank charter is not a contract. 
 
 I do not know whether you admit the other charters, the 
 turnpike, railroad, canal and the rest, to be contracts or not : 
 there seems to be some confusion in your letter on this point ; 
 but it is evident that your hostility to the bank is immitigable. 
 You are satisfied that no court has yet decided that the bank 
 charters are contracts ; that it is an open question : and you 
 are most clear yourself that they are not contracts. 
 
 Now, I have given you a classification of charter compa 
 nies, of which I have no doubt there are some thousands in the 
 United States. Looking at that list, I say to you, that if 
 among all these colleges, manufactories, hospitals, roads, ca 
 nals, bridges, insurance offices and banks I mean all of all 
 sorts in that aggregate if there was one charter upon which 
 I could be persuaded to doubt whether it was a contract invi- 
 
REPLY TO INGERSOLL. 167 
 
 olable in its nature by the legislature, it would not be the case 
 of a bank charter : or rather if I were called to select one 
 which was peculiarly inviolable, one which, in the language of 
 worldly faith, stood " upon the honor of the exchange," guarded 
 by that stern and unsparing law of rigid obligation which y fur 
 nishes the mercantile test of a man of credit or a man with 
 out I should point to the case of the bank charters. You 
 may doubt upon all the rest, but upon these, it is not lawful 
 to doubt. 
 
 The other corporations had in due order projected their 
 plans, argued their cases before the legislature, demonstrated 
 their usefulness, and got their charters \ some with labor and 
 policy, and long sueing and long suffering ; some easily and 
 at a word. But the banks had a gauntlet to run ; they had not 
 only to sue long and suffer tribulation to demonstrate by 
 proofs " luculent and irrefragable" their value to society ; and 
 withal to submit to a load of restrictions, pains and penalties 
 but they had, besides, to pay down into the lap of their au 
 gust sovereign the ready money grceca fide agere. Your bo 
 nds is the fashion of the day, and nil m si bonum, the current 
 and accepted motto. This bonus is a superadded feature of 
 contract. It is a quietus to all argument on that score. 
 
 The bonus is the bank exception. I do not complain of it. 
 It is a speculation of the State founded on the experience that 
 bank associations make a great deal of money, in their career 
 of managing the business they undertake and which they per 
 form, it is not denied, with advantage to the community. It 
 is a matter of bargain, and the banks being willing to give, 
 and the people to take, no one has a right to find fault with 
 the compact. Our banks in Maryland have made a good 
 turnpike road to Cumberland, they furnish a revenue for nu 
 merous schools besides. Your banks have done full as much 
 for the public treasury. Is it not strange, after weighing these 
 matters, you should say a bank charter was not a contract to 
 be respected ? Is it not still more strange that you should 
 assert the right of the legislature to break up such a charter, 
 
168 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 without charge of misconduct even and add to this assertion 
 that, PERHAPS, in such a proceeding the bonus ought to be re 
 stored. That poor "perhaps" stands there as a wretched casu 
 ist, borne down by the load of sin you have heaped upon his 
 shoulders, and vainly endeavors to look up, with an honest 
 face, upon the crowd of astonished and indignant contemners 
 of his shabby office. 
 
 You call this bonus " the price of privilege." Are you aware 
 what evidence this declaration furnishes of the value of a right 
 which you think too insignificant to be called property, and too 
 unsubstantial to be entitled to the protection of the courts ? 
 It is exactly, in figures, $5,775,000. Perhaps that ought to be 
 restored ! When you calmly revise your letter as I am sure 
 you will do in some moment of wholesome self-examination 
 I predict that you will run your pen through that word "per 
 haps." 
 
 But after all, what says the Supreme Court ? You say 
 that " as far as the direct question of bank charters is con 
 cerned the Supreme Court has never passed upon it ; and we 
 are at liberty to discuss it free from the weight of their author 
 ity." The force of your argument consists in the affirmation 
 that a bank charter creates a public corporation. That its pur 
 poses are public and interesting to the Government : and that 
 as it is not therefore a private corporation it does not come un 
 der the law of contract. Now Mr. Justice Story says, in the 
 Darmouth College case, " Public corporations are generally es 
 teemed such as exist for public politic purposes only, such as 
 towns, cities, parishes and counties ; and in many respects 
 they are so, although they involve some private interests ; but 
 strictly speaking, public corporations are such only as are 
 founded by the Government for public purposes, where the 
 whole interests belong also to the Government. If, therefore, 
 the foundation be private, though under the charter of the Gov 
 ernment, the corporation is private, however extensive the uses 
 may be to which it is devoted, either by the bounty of the 
 founder, or the nature and objects of the institution. For in- 
 
KEPLY TO INGEKSOLL. 169 
 
 stance, a bank created by the Government for its own uses, 
 whose stock is exclusively owned by the Government, is, in the 
 strictest sense, a public corporation. So a hospital created 
 and endowed by the Government for a general charity. But 
 a bank whose stock is owned by private persons, is a PRIVATE cor 
 poration, although it is erected by the Government, and its object 
 and operations partake of a public nature" 
 
 In the case of The Providence Bank, too, the court assume 
 a bank charter to be a contract, not, as you suppose, for argu 
 ment s sake, but as a question too plain for denial. The de 
 cision which followed that a State might tax a bank of its own 
 creation notwithstanding the contract, is not inconsistent 
 with the complete integrity of that contract. The taxing power 
 of the State may, if wantonly or wickedly used, be rendered 
 an instrument of vexation and even destruction to every inter 
 est within its borders. It may tax your house, your lands, 
 "your ox, your ass, and the stranger that is within your gates." 
 until the first are consumed and the latter are fled, and you 
 yourself are grown heart-sick. The bare imaginative possibility 
 of such a mischievous exertion of the taxing power, surely fur 
 nishes no argument that the rights of property are not held 
 sacred in the land : and if it did, every other interest is as 
 much within the compass of such an argument as the corpor 
 ate bodies : there would be no contracts safe, no tenures in 
 violable, no rights beyond the reach of legislative power. 
 
 Nor is the deduction you make from the right to restrain 
 the issue of small notes, less untenable. As a bank charter 
 does not define the specific denomination of notes which it may 
 be lawful to issue, the character of these issues is left open to 
 that general control of the legislature which public policy may 
 render necessary. Whenever that general control is arbitra 
 rily exercised with a view to injure the bank, then it becomes 
 a violation of the public faith. Doubtless, every legislative 
 body possesses means of .annoyance which may be maliciously 
 perverted to the injury of every interest it was intended to pro 
 tect. Our experience, however, has not yet shown us that we 
 8 
 
170 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 may not rely with entire safety upon the fidelity of our legisla 
 tures in the observance both of the letter and the spirit of their 
 contracts. 
 
 But it is not doing justice to your argument, to exhibit the 
 propositions I have been last discussing, in the naked form in 
 which I have just presented them. I am aware that the im 
 port of your reasoning is, 
 
 That privilege is not property, 
 
 And that a bank charter is not a contract, 
 in the sense and understanding of that clause of the Constitution 
 of the United States which forbids a State to pass a law impairing 
 the obligation of contracts. 
 
 I designed to debate the question with you, with a full al 
 lowance of whatever value your argument may derive from its 
 connection with the sense of the Constitution of the United 
 States. But it greatly simplified and elucidated my view of 
 the true interpretation of the Constitution to determine, in ad 
 vance, whether " privilege " intrinsically be "property/ and 
 whether, in like manner, a bank charter intrinsically be a con 
 tract. Because, in answer to your view of the constitutional 
 clause, I wish to show that that clause includes all contracts 
 refers to all rights of property. 
 
 Your notion is, that " the Constitution was not made for 
 privileges, and, in the sense of the Constitution, there is no con 
 tract or obligation when the object is privilege." 
 
 This brings into review all that part of your letter which 
 refers to the argument founded on the constitutional interdict. 
 
 The prohibition against passing a law impairing the obliga 
 tion of a contract, it seems to me, you have entirely misunder 
 stood. You regard it as merely conventional, brought into 
 existence, for the first time, by the Constitution, and subject, 
 therefore, to be controlled by a strict and jealous interpretation 
 of the clause, as a thing in derogation of ordinary sovereign 
 power. This is a fundamental error. The clause is but a 
 declaration of the pre-existing law of morals ; immutable, eter 
 nal in its nature ; of higher authority than constitutions and 
 
REPLY TO IXGERSOLL. 171 
 
 codes ; paramount, and operative universally as the organic 
 law of nature, binding on heathen prince and Christian legisla 
 ture, in all times and in all places wherever men are united in 
 society. It is as obligatory on the Federal Government as on 
 the States : it is not a power delegated to the sovereignty of the 
 Union : it is not a power reserved to the States. It is not 
 malum prohibitum merely it is malum in se. It is therefore 
 to be construed liberally, according to men s consciences, as a 
 rule of moral duty : and it was only brought into the Constitu 
 tion of the United States, because, in the troubles and embar 
 rassments of the revolution, some of the States had forgotten 
 or slighted this precept of duty, and had committed this pecu 
 liar sin. The same considerations which urged this constitu 
 tional declaration would, upon similar facts, have justified the 
 insertion in the Constitution of a declaration against the in 
 fringement of each and every law of the decalogue. 
 
 That is my answer to all you have said about the distinc 
 tion between privilege and property r , and to all you have urged 
 in reference to the sense of the Constitution as it bears upon a 
 bank charter. 
 
 Your distinction between privilege and property was con 
 tended for in the Dartmouth College case. It was weighed 
 by the court and rejected. I refer you to the decision. It 
 will not avail you to seek to escape from the weight of this de 
 cision by urging that the Dartmouth College case was not ful 
 ly argued by counsel, or carefully decided by the court. It is 
 notorious, even if the report of the case did not show it, that 
 no cause in the Supreme Court was ever more ably discussed, 
 and that no decision of that tribunal was ever more carefully 
 made up. Read it again. It is true, there was one dissent 
 ing voice : a silent dissent, against singularly luminous argu 
 ments, pronounced by the greatest judges this country has pro 
 duced. 
 
 The same decision also puts at rest the questions involved 
 in your seventeenth and eighteenth propositions. I have quo 
 ted the passage which shows you the opinion of the court that 
 
172 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 the bank charter in question creates a private corporation, as 
 contradistinguished from a public political one, and therefore 
 lets in upon it the full benefit of the recognized law of contract, 
 with all its attributes of inviolability from legislative action. I 
 do not perceive that this doctrine is impugned in either of the 
 other cases you refer to. Neither do I discover any objection 
 to this interpretation in the opinions of Luther Martin and 
 Mr. Madison, which you rely upon as contemporaneous and 
 historical commentary. Mr. Madison s language in The Fed 
 eralist, points to the transgressions I have already spoken of, 
 as evinced in the early legislation of the State Governments. 
 He describes the clause as designed " to banish speculations 
 on public measures, inspire a general prudence and industry, 
 and give a regular course to the business of society." You 
 cannot imagine how this declaration can apply to the repeal 
 of a bank charter. I ask you, in return, why not? Have 
 there been, or may there be, no speculations upon the repeal of the 
 bank charter of Pennsylvania by the convention: and, if your doc 
 trines be sound, will there not be such speculations ? May not 
 these speculations, within their sphere, repress the "general 
 prudence and industry ;" may they not interrupt the " regular 
 course of the business of society ?" I need not hesitate upon the 
 answer of every dispassionate man to these questions. I can 
 conceive nothing more likely, if your philosophy gain the assent 
 of the convention, than that Pennsylvania may largely expe 
 rience the evils which Mr. Madison attributed to the sudden 
 changes and legislative interferences in cases affecting personal 
 rights," becoming jobs in the hands of enterprising and influen 
 tial speculators, and snares to the more industrious and less 
 informed part of the community. And this is the comprehen 
 sive language in which he assigns the motive for introducing 
 that clause into the Constitution. 
 
 It is vain to contend for the narrow restriction of Mr. 
 Madison s phrase " personal rights," by which you would ex 
 clude the rights under a charter. I cannot perceive the force 
 of the exclusion. The rights of a charter contract are as 
 
REPLY TO INGEKSOLL. 173 
 
 much personal to the possessor of them as your right to vote 
 in an election, or your right to the house you live in. If this 
 be not so, then every charter for every purpose, is, in your 
 view, at the mercy of the Government. 
 
 The nineteenth proposition is but a piece of declamation. 
 And I will, conversely with what you have there said, predict 
 that Pennsylvania will continue to be a State, and a great 
 State, although she religiously performs every contract that 
 she makes. All the attributes of her sovereignty will remain 
 to her, and they will even derive a lustre from her scrupu 
 lous adherence to the integrity of her faith. Canal boats 
 will ply, and children will be taught their alphabets, in spite 
 of Nicholas Biddle and the bank. They will ply the faster, 
 and penetrate farther into your teeming land, and the young 
 urchins of your country school-houses will show many more 
 shining faces (you have room for improvement there), by the 
 very aid of this Polyphemus and his keeper : 
 
 Let Hercules himself, do what lie may, 
 The cat will mew, the dog will have liis day. 
 
 I have nothing to say in reference to what you call " reasons 
 of a more abstract character," the sum of which constitutes 
 the last link in that chain of assertions which makes up the 
 total of your argument. They are mere speculations opposed 
 to the whole current of precept and practice, by which our 
 Governments, State and Federal, have been guided ever since 
 their establishment. And leaving you at liberty to indulge 
 your vein of radical reform in as many fancies of this nature 
 as may satisfy your utmost craving for innovation, I abandon 
 the further consideration of your argument, to indulge in some 
 general remarks which the occasion seems to invite. 
 
 There is a spirit abroad, at this time, which affects me 
 with alarm. Its temper is revolutionary, studious of changes 
 which lead from good to ill. Our ancient institutions, an 
 cient for us, are, in computation of the new philosophy, 
 founded in false views of human right, and in misapprehension 
 
174 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 of the interests of mankind. I will not say that the sagacity 
 of statesmen may find nothing in these institutions worthy of 
 reform, or that the increasing demands of our larger popula 
 tion may not require some amendments. But I confess I like 
 not the hazard of these broad experiments. As a general rule, I 
 would rather see the people accommodate themselves to the old 
 forms of government, than join the endeavor to mould these 
 forms to the perpetually changing fashions of the day. Many 
 wise men have doubted, whether in the last fifty years a State 
 Constitution has come out of the hands of a convention better 
 than it went into them. It seldom happens when once the 
 flood-gates of reform are opened, that they can be shut down 
 at that precise moment when all the contemplated good is ob 
 tained. Nor is it always the well ascertained wants of the 
 people which dictate these movements : they owe their origin 
 as often to the zeal and ambition of leaders and the sinister 
 designs of party. The people are not unfrequently cajoled 
 by specious misrepresentations ; false pretences are held out 
 by flippant aspirants after power ; gross deceits are practised 
 to diffuse an opinion, that the operations of our State Govern 
 ments are hostile to the common interest ; and the less in 
 formed and easier-led portions of our population are per 
 suaded that some vital wrong is done them by a course of leg 
 islation which, if it have any defect, is mainly that which 
 springs out of the incompetency and ignorance of the repre 
 sentatives they have themselves chosen. I may say it without 
 being charged with disrespect to our public bodies, that they 
 are not always composed of the most intelligent citizens, and 
 that the great interests of the community are not invariably as 
 ably represented as so high and grave a function of govern 
 ment requires. But while the fundamental law is preserved 
 we can afford to lose an occasional advantage from its unskil 
 ful administration, being sufficiently secure in the incompar 
 ably greater privilege which that law holds in reserve for our 
 enjoyment. Yet I cannot but feel that if the ordinary legis 
 lation of the day is subject to the hazards of this incompe- 
 
REPLY TO INGEESOLL. 175 
 
 tency, society at large has much reason to dread the infinitely 
 more momentous hazard of the same want of ability when it 
 assumes to break up the long-established and familiar con 
 stitutional maxims, and to substitute in their place the new 
 and crude doctrines which are generally suggested in the zeal 
 of reform. I would rather see amendments gradually glide 
 into the Constitution, under the slow process of experience, 
 than turned in upon it in that flood which is the sure result 
 of bringing together one of those conventions which, in the 
 phrase lately brought into vogue, is said " to resolve society 
 into its elements," and which is called by one of high au 
 thority in the ranks of radicalism, " the provided machinery 
 of peaceful revolution" " the civilized substitute for intestine 
 war." 
 
 These observations have a peculiar application to those 
 States which have provided a specific mode for altering their 
 Constitutions without resorting to a convention : although 
 they are not without weight in reference to all, for even 
 where a convention is the only method through which amend 
 ments are to be procured, such a resort should only be had 
 upon a strong and well-settled conviction of its necessity, 
 fortified by the large concurrence the almost universal appro 
 bation of the citizens. A bare majority of voters in the State 
 should never be allowed to dictate a measure so fraught with 
 the power of doing harm as well as good. If the purpose be 
 wise, my confidence in the good sense of the people assures 
 me that they will speak with almost a single voice in its favor ; 
 they will call for it from every quarter of the State : that they 
 do not so call for it and manifest this unanimity, would be to 
 me an insurmountable objection to its adoption. I am not 
 willing to trust the determination of so vital an interest to a 
 small majority. 
 
 We have cause to be jealous of the hands to which we 
 entrust power. Your letter, upon which I have already com 
 mented, is one among a thousand evidences why we have 
 cause to be jealous. It teaches us that highly educated, ex- 
 
176 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 perienced and accomplished men may be fired with a mis 
 chievous ardor of innovation. I will surrender my birth-right, 
 as a citizen of the State in which I live, to no bare numerical 
 majority of the people, any more than I would surrender it 
 to a crowned king. When the people of my native State 
 with one consent, or with such general voice as leaves me no 
 doubt that the sober and discreet, as well as the rash and 
 reckless, have asked for such a surrender, I will not hesitate 
 to comply, because then I shall know that wisdom will prevail 
 in the counsels of the convention, and that my rights may be 
 safely deposited in the hands of those who are to modify 
 them. 
 
 The claim that has been set up in Maryland falls far short 
 of this requisition. The revolution attempted here had not 
 even a bare majority to sustain it. It began and ended with 
 a few intemperate politicians. There was no sturdy reserve 
 of the people behind the leaders, and the abortive design fell 
 with a dead weight back upon its projectors, and crushed 
 them into the dust. It had no shape, no features, no head. 
 There was not even an ultimate plan devised : nothing was 
 concerted but the mere act of mischief, which consisted in 
 breaking up the present Government by a futile scheme of 
 treachery to a public trust ; all the rest was left to chance ; 
 and whether another Government was to be arranged, whether 
 even these bold reformers themselves could strike out a plan 
 which would not have bred a quarrel in their own ranks, was 
 a doubt, the solution of which was shrouded in the unknown 
 future. Yet such was the course of proceeding which a bare 
 majority is said to have sanctioned. It is but the type of 
 what will be the fate of all endeavors in the States of this 
 Union to assert the right of such a majority to subvert the 
 foundations of the communities in which they live. 
 
 I understand government to be designed as much for the 
 protection of the smaller number of citizens as for the larger : 
 even, if possible, more for their protection, since the majority can 
 always protect itself. The philosophy of the times repudiates 
 
REPLY TO INGERSOLL. 177 
 
 this doctrine as a heresy. It contends for the supreme and 
 absolute power of a majority to change and abrogate the or 
 ganic power at pleasure. It does not admit those inherent, in 
 defeasible and inalienable rights of the individual citizen, of 
 which, at the formation of our Governments, our forefathers 
 were wont to speak. All must give way to the declared will 
 of a marshalled and counted majority of voters. It is not 
 enough that the laws pursuant to the Constitution, and pro 
 posed in the course of its administration, are passed by the 
 agency of a majority of votes ascertained in the popular elec 
 tion ; but the Constitution itself is to be acted on, overthrown 
 and abandoned upon even a less formal process For an or 
 dinary law requires the assent of two deliberative bodies before 
 it goes into operation : the fundamental law in the hands of a 
 convention, depends upon the assent of but one set of repre 
 sentatives of a part of the people. 
 
 The liberty and rights of an American citizen reside under 
 the protection of this fundamental law. He can appeal to it 
 against any act of oppression which may be perpetrated against 
 his person or his property even by the legislature itself. It is 
 his Magna Charta, which is above the assault of any combina 
 tion in the land. 
 
 It is said of the Grecian republics that they differed from 
 ours in one great feature. They were Democracies of the most 
 simple structure. The public will was in all cases the public 
 law, and its characteristic action was to magnify and enlarge 
 the power of the State to the utter disregard of the individual. 
 History teaches us that no despotism of any modern govern 
 ment was ever so absolute as the despotism of these govern 
 ments over the citizen. In the presence of that tremendous 
 power of a majority, the individual was politically motionless. 
 He was obliged to submit to its capricious decrees in humble 
 silence. He had no bill of rights to appeal to ; no friend in 
 the written fundamental law of the State to stay the fierce 
 hand of popular vengeance, which inflicted upon him whatever 
 injury the misguided fury of the moment ordained. If the bill 
 
ITS POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 of rights of the people of these States are to be torn into tat 
 ters at the bidding of a majority merely, how do we differ from 
 the republics to which I have alluded ? And what guaranty 
 have we that the new form of government shall not share the 
 fate of the old, with every alternate victory of party which may 
 present an occasion of discontent against the Constitution 
 which perchance had aided the former success of the van 
 quished. " That government can scarcely be deemed to be 
 free," says the Supreme Court, in the case of Wilkinson and 
 Leland, " where the rights of property are left solely dependent 
 upon the will of a legislative body without any restraint. The 
 fundamental maxims of a free government seem to require 
 that the rights of personal liberty and private property should 
 be held sacred." This remark is strictly applicable to such a 
 Convention as I have been speaking of. Does not an assem 
 blage so created, with the powers assumed to belong to it, an 
 swer to the description of " a legislative body without any re 
 straint ? How does it differ in the character of its origin from 
 any ordinary legislature, except in the very dangerous feature 
 of a looser organization, and less caution in its structure ? It 
 is elected by a mere majority of the voters : it springs from 
 the dictation of a part, a small part, of the constituent body : 
 it is subject to no veto from a co-ordinate authority, or from 
 an executive ; it is under no restraint of a judiciary ; and in 
 these latter features is even less guarded than the common 
 law-making power. It has no constitutional maxims pre 
 scribed for its action, no fundamental law by which to bound 
 its excursions. The very men who constitute the popular 
 branch of a State legislature may be resolved into a Conven 
 tion, by a mere change of name. The American people have 
 heretofore thought that it was not safe to their liberties to 
 clothe a legislative body with unlimited power, and they there 
 fore have declared what they consider their inalienable rights^ 
 and have prohibited the legislature from assailing them. Can 
 it be supposed that they would submit to the pernicious anom 
 aly of allowing a simple change in the name of the body to 
 
REPLY TO INGERSOLL. 179 
 
 work the miracle of overthrowing all these inestimable rights, 
 upon which their liberties have been founded ? When a Con 
 vention is necessary it must be a Convention of the people, not 
 of the majority of the people. It must be of such a majority 
 as leaves no doubt of that general acquiescence which may be 
 called the common wish, the almost universal demand, of the 
 people. The very idea of a Convention of the people excludes 
 that of a small majority. When a Government is found abso 
 lutely inadequate to the promotion of the happiness of the 
 State, and when the ordinary appointed modes of amendment 
 have failed to cure the defect, doubtless the people may re 
 sume their sovereignty. But it must be the people, and not 
 merely a part of the people. And knowing as we do the sensi 
 tiveness of the citizens of these republics to all such vital in 
 terests, we may be certain that whenever such a condition of 
 things exists as may render this resumption of sovereignty ne 
 cessary in any State, the people will not move towards the ac 
 complishment of their object in small numbers, nor evince 
 their will by a bare majority. It will be by general acclaim. 
 
 We have in Maryland a white population which may be 
 estimated at 400,000 inhabitants ; of these about one eighth, 
 or 50,000, are entitled to vote. Not more than 40,000 ever 
 go to the polls, perhaps not so many. 21,000 votes would, 
 on this supposition, give a majority of one thousand. Can it 
 be pretended that these 2 1,000 votes are entitled, through the 
 instrumentality of a convention, to control and abrogate the 
 fundamental law of the State ? to enact, at their pleasure, a 
 code " as bloody as that of Draco ?" to deprive a citizen of 
 his right of trial by jury ? to strip him of the privilege of wor 
 shipping his God according to the dictates of his conscience ? 
 to break down and utterly annihilate the tenures of property ? 
 to abolish the privilege of the habeas corpus ? to disqualify 
 and limit, at their sovereign will, my right to vote for public 
 servants ? to usurp all the powers, faculties and privileges of 
 the people and, in short, to declare themselves to be exclusively 
 the people? 
 
POLITICAL TAPERS. 
 
 Take one thousand of these votes away from them, and 
 give them to the other side, and they are no longer this omnip 
 otent body. Their whole power depends upon this thousan^ 
 votes. It is unfortunately true of every community that there 
 are men among them who have no capacity to judge of the 
 value of public measures ; who are swayed by the influence of 
 others ; whose habits of life are adverse to reflection and tem 
 perate judgment ; who follow the lead of party without stop 
 ping to inquire into the merits of the proceeding they are ex 
 pected to sanction : men who have the least possible stake at 
 issue upon the question of good government, and who think 
 little and care less what may be the consequences of their 
 vote. These are the very men who may determine the ques 
 tion of a majority. They may be the " thousand" upon whose 
 vote rests the assumption of that unlimited power by which a 
 convention is to pronounce the fundamental law naught. 
 
 These 21,000 make up, in the case supposed, the whole 
 constituent body. They assume to speak for themselves, and 
 for the remaining 379,000 inhabitants. How shall we know 
 that they speak truly and authentically for this mass of the 
 population who are all to be affected by their decrees? They 
 are but little more than one-twentieth of the whole in point of 
 numbers : they may not represent the one-hundredth part of 
 the property of the community, which is to be subject to their 
 laws ; and they may not possess a tithe of the intelligence and 
 wisdom of the State. They may be but a mere party seeking 
 a party end. 
 
 Then again, as these are the constituent body, there ema 
 nates from them a body of representatives to compose the 
 convention ; and these representatives, by virtue of their del 
 egated power, in their turn, assume to be THE STATE the 
 fountain of the sovereign pleasure. The have perhaps agitated 
 ten questions before the people ; and, on pretence of adjust 
 ing details, they act upon a hundred which the people have 
 never heard of. Some of this handful of men are ambitious 
 of distinction, busy politicians who have practised the usual 
 
REPLY TO INGERSOLL. 181 
 
 arts of popularity for their own aggrandizement ; and having 
 attained their end of getting into the convention, they fall into 
 all the little intrigues of the day to secure their own pre- emi- 
 nence ; foment prejudices against valuable institutions and 
 individuals ; mature and strengthen the schemes of their party, 
 and play off, in matters of the highest concern to human 
 liberty, the miserable tricks which often disgrace the common 
 legislation of the day. Even this body of representatives, re 
 mote as they are from the great bulk of the population, from 
 that mass of inhabitants who are disqualified from a share in 
 public concerns by age or sex, or who have voted against the 
 convention, constituting an aggregate of nineteen-twentieths 
 of the State, in the case I have supposed, even these repre 
 sentatives are not, in their integral number, the depository of 
 the fearful power which is to break down and build up the 
 fundamental law at its pleasure ; a simple majority of their own 
 number is absolute the sole and uncontrollable sovereign. 
 And thus it may be, that the representatives of a fraction, 
 little exceeding the fortieth part of the whole body politic, 
 sway the destiny of all. 
 
 Let me not be told of the after-concurrence of the people, 
 when the proceedings of the convention are submitted to their 
 ratification and adoption. The theory is equally omnipotent 
 there. The same twenty-one thousand votes are all-sufficient 
 for the process of ratification. 
 
 Was it ever designed by the fathers of our polity that the 
 sacred rights of free communities were to be made the sport 
 of such combinations ? 
 
 There are some of the States, and Pennsylvania, I believe, 
 is one, which have made no provision for amendments of the 
 Constitution but through a convention. In such cases, the 
 convention is a recognized instrument under the Constitution ; 
 it is a part of the written compact of government provided 
 for in advance, and adopted from choice. But such a conven 
 tion, I apprehend, must emanate from the legislation of the 
 State, and be subject, in its organization, to the law of its crea- 
 
182 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 tion. With this restriction it has, at least, a chance of being 
 duly matured, of having its expediency discussed, and the limit 
 of its action prescribed precautions which go far to disarm it 
 of a power to do mischief, and to erect it upon a broader basis 
 than a mere majority. 
 
 When I began these strictures upon your letter, I told you 
 that I was induced to take up my pen from considerations of 
 a domestic nature. The topics I have brought into view are, 
 at this moment, eminently interesting to the people of Maryland. 
 I have that apology to plead for their introduction here ; and 
 I trust they will not be deemed out of place, even in their 
 reference to the great movement for a convention in Pennsyl 
 vania. It is not to defend the banks, that I have written. 
 The policy of multiplying or suppressing these institutions I 
 leave to those in every State who are charged with the duty of 
 taking care of the public interest. The legislation of late 
 years may have been improvident on these subjects although, 
 I confess, I am not one of those who unite in the common com 
 plaints against them. I think they have done much good and 
 may do much more. In a nation so essentially gifted with the 
 means of extensive credit as the United States, I can see no 
 reason for denying to our citizens every facility which may 
 make that credit a source of wealth. To my mind, it appears 
 the mainspring of that bountiful prosperity which adorns our 
 land. It is emphatically the poor man s friend and the labor 
 er s refuge. It sets in motion that infinite industry which 
 brings content and joy into the workman s cottage, and lifts 
 him up to competency and comfort. Neither do I look with 
 an unfriendly eye upon the large accumulations of capital 
 which are the source of the enterprise, influence and luxury 
 of our more fortunate and wealthy citizens. They are centres of 
 reinforcement to the mechanics thrift : reservoirs from which 
 every class of citizens may find the means of providing against 
 v/ant and gathering independence. By the agency of these 
 accumulations all ranks are linked together in mutual affinities, 
 which, but for the incessant revilings and falsehoods of selfish 
 
REPLY TO INGERSOLL. 183 
 
 candidates for popular favor, would engender mutual harmony 
 and good will. Above all, I cannot adopt what I consider the 
 cant of the day, against the danger of corporate bodies. I 
 have said before that I held them to be not only harmless 
 creations, but the instruments of great and permanent good 
 to the country. I think it time that this false and undeserved 
 vituperation should be brought to public discussion, and that 
 the country should be invited to a more impartial and calm sur 
 vey of the question than, in the hurry of our busy legislation, it 
 has yet obtained. 
 
 I believe, moreover, steadfastly and unfalteringly believe, 
 in the integrity of the great body of the American people ; in 
 their attachment to the true principles of rational liberty ; in 
 their .intelligence and wisdom : and, therefore, amidst all the 
 feaiful signs of the present day, the rage s of innovation, the 
 censure of fundamental law, the invective against established 
 custom ; amidst all the pranks of low ambition, the wiles of 
 demagogues, the allurements of radicalism and the misrepre 
 sentations of party, I still trust that, no less than in 1792, we 
 shall continue to deserve the panegyric pronounced by Erskine, 
 and which I have prefixed as the motto of this imperfect essay. 
 
 " I aver that at this moment, there is as sacred a regard for 
 property, as inviolable a security to all the rights of individuals, 
 lower taxes, fewer grievances, less to deplore, and more to ad 
 mire, in the Constitution of America, than that of any other 
 country under heaven. " 
 
 A CITIZEN OF MARYLAND. 
 
 December 24, 1836. 
 
184: POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 SPEECH 
 
 DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, ON THE 22D 
 AND 23D JUNE, 1838, IN THE DEBATE ON THE SUB- 
 TREASURY BILL. 
 
 MR. CHAIRMAN : I did not believe, until within a few 
 days past, that the gentlemen who have taken charge 
 of this bill, would have again pressed its consideration on the 
 House. I thought, sir, that under the admonition of public 
 sentiment which has recently, through so many channels, been 
 conveyed to the ear of the administration, this Sub-Treasury 
 Scheme would be regarded as a doomed and foregone expe 
 dient, stamped in advance with the reprobation of the country, 
 and no longer to be entertained in discussion here. Never, 
 in the history of this Government, has there been presented a 
 public measure, in reference to which the wishes of the constit 
 uent body have been more explicitly communicated to the 
 representative ; it has been canvassed by the people with a 
 scrupulous deliberation ; it has been investigated by them 
 with all that care which a painful sense of present evil could 
 suggest, and they have expressed their disapprobation of it in 
 every form in which they were able to find a voice. I did not 
 suppose that with the principles by which the friends of the 
 administration in this body affect to be governed, they could 
 have brought themselves so far to resist that voice as again to 
 propose the bill. I thought indeed, sir, that the late action 
 of Congress, in the almost unanimous and even eager repeal 
 of the Treasury order of July, 1836, would be construed as a 
 decisive sentence against this measure. I cannot understand 
 
THE SUB-TREASURY. 185 
 
 how that repeal and this bill may consist with each other, and 
 I should be glad to hear some intelligible reconcilement of the 
 two. It is true that the joint resolution to which I refer does 
 not in express terms repeal the Treasury circular ; but it ac 
 complishes the same end, quite as effectually, by forbidding 
 the secretary to discriminate in the moneys he receives for 
 public dues ; and as he has kindly volunteered to say that he 
 will not refuse good bank paper for the customs, he is no 
 longer at liberty to refuse it for public lands, and so we have 
 in fact repealed that noxious treasury order which has so long 
 annoyed the country. 
 
 That order being out of the way, I would ask to what ele 
 ments may all this machinery of the Sub-Treasury apply ? Is 
 it necessary to build vaults, and construct safes, and create all 
 the agencies designated in this bill to guard a few rolls of 
 bank paper ? The apparatus of this scheme essentially be 
 longs to the gold and silver reign, it deals only in coin, and 
 has its existence and daily continuance in the phantasmagoria 
 of the hard-money system. The moment you abandon the 
 absolute coined metal, your Treasury System becomes a sys 
 tem of credit in account, impalpable to the guardianship of 
 stone and iron, unamenable to lock and key ; it rests upon 
 the personal fidelity and integrity of your agents. How shall 
 the details of this bill apply to it ? 
 
 Mr. Chairman, I especially regret that this bill has been 
 brought forward at this time, because I know that a most 
 happy conviction began to gain ground with the public, that it 
 was now the purpose of the administration to bring itself 
 within the range of the business and wants of the community, 
 to take a position in which it might sympathize with the peo 
 ple, and if not actually extend its aid, at least abandon its 
 indifference to their distresses ; that it meant now to give up its 
 war against the currency \ to cast aside its experiments, de 
 vices and jejune expedients, and to address itself honestly, 
 with the. lights of past experience, to the actual need of the 
 nation. This hope was vivified by the late repeal of the cir- 
 
POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 cular, it had gained gradual strength by the long slumber of 
 this Sub-Treasury bill, it was corroborated by the unwonted 
 tone of toleration in which many of the friends of the admin 
 istration, in both Houses of Congress, have lately spoken of 
 the banks, and by the awakening good sense with which they 
 have derided and renounced the singular folly of the hard- 
 money imposture. The people had therefore begun to turn 
 their faces towards the dawn of happier times, and to promise 
 themselves a speedy restoration of that prosperity which had 
 been denied them only by the unwise action of their own gov 
 ernment The very agitation of this measure, in the midst 
 of these joyfal hopes, has struck despondency deep into the 
 bosom of the trading classes, and the people now watch your 
 proceedings here with renewed alarm and anxious suspense : 
 they daily ask in a tone of wonder, can it be true that you 
 design to perpetrate the enormity of putting this odious sys 
 tem upon the country ? 
 
 The zeal with which the bill is urged leaves no room to 
 doubt the sincere desire of its projectors to carry it into effect, 
 and I have heard that its friends entertain hopes of its pas 
 sage. Such a result may possibly demonstrate the power of a 
 majority on this floor, and show that here, at least, notwith 
 standing the general revolt of the nation, the banner of the 
 administration, torn as it has been in recent conflicts, is still 
 upheld by men bold enough to defy the almost universal pop 
 ular voice. That struggle will yield but a worthless triumph 
 whose greatest success can have no better end than to con 
 tinue, for a brief space, the oppressions of a pover against 
 which public judgment is accumulating its censure, with fresh 
 and still fresher indignation, and which is surely doomed to 
 be prostrated by those overwhelming bursts of indignation of 
 which the administration have already had a foretaste. 
 
 Mr. Chairman, this bill assumes to be remedial in its 
 character. It arises out of the suggestion of the President, 
 made at a time when he had called Congress together, to de 
 liberate upon a great national convulsion which had brought 
 
THE SUB-TREASURY. 1ST 
 
 disaster into every class of society. It may be said to have 
 been the only topic of consideration at that moment : it was 
 the only relief proposed. Although the afflictions of that day 
 are passing away, still they are yet severely felt, and this 
 measure is again presented, as at first it was, as a measure 
 of relief. In that view I mean to discuss it, and to test its 
 adequacy to its proposed object, by calling the attention of the 
 committee to the origin and nature of the evils which it is de 
 signed to remedy. 
 
 Sir, I was somewhat curious to know upon what grounds it 
 would be advocated here, as a measure of relief, and I have 
 therefore listened to the debate with eager attention. On one 
 side of the house I have found the Chairman of the Committee 
 of Ways and Means, the foster-parent of the bill, a thorough-go 
 ing State-bank advocate even carrying his predictions for 
 banking to what I should call a point of ultraism. But a few 
 weeks ago, when the Treasury-note bill was under discussion, 
 he opened that debate with congratulations upon the returning 
 prosperity of the country, and with the declaration that the 
 great license of free banking, which had just been granted by 
 the legislature of New York, marked an era in the history of 
 our country from which we were to derive a permanent and sol 
 id restoration of health and strength. This new free banking 
 with its expected millions even fifty or a hundred was now 
 to be superadded to the present banking system of New York 
 and the country, in his opinion, was to thrive under that im 
 pulse beyond all former example. Such, sir, was the tone of 
 feeling with which the gentleman from the city of New York 
 entered upon the discussion of this Sub-Treasury bill. He is 
 a bank man, sir, an ultra State-bank advocate. He is emphat 
 ically for the paper system, even greatly enlarged beyond its 
 present amount. He sees in this system the maintenance of 
 the superiority of New York and the great aid of commerce. 
 Indeed, from his remarks upon this bill, he has persuaded 
 himself, oddly enough I think, that its tendency and purpose 
 are, in fact, to aid and sustain the banks. He defends and 
 
188 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 supports it with that view, and as powerfully conducive to ad 
 vance the interest of his own city. 
 
 On the other hand, the gentleman from South Carolina 
 (Mr. Pickens), is altogether in the opposite key. This gentle 
 man is profoundly indoctrinated with the dogmas of the hard- 
 money school : he is persuaded that all our sufferings, and all 
 our weakness have come from the banking system. That sys 
 tem, in his judgment, has not only held this nation in thrall to 
 Great Britain, but it has rendered the Southern States the 
 " colonial vassals" of their Northern brethren. He views the 
 over-towering elevation of New York with an unfriendly eye ; 
 sees in it the fruit of systematic oppressions, exercised by the 
 general Government, against the South ; and his whole desire 
 is to break up that commercial connection which he deems so 
 unnatural and so hurtful ; to give to the South a circle of trade 
 circumcised to its own limits, and thus render it independent 
 of the North. In this bill he persuades himself he finds the 
 means of accomplishing his purpose. It is the only measure 
 which, in his judgment, will break down the banking system, 
 and pluck from New York the fortunate honors of her present 
 ascendency. 
 
 Sir, the bill has another class of supporters. They may be 
 said to be represented by the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. 
 Hunter). The tenets of this class may be described in brief, 
 as professing to inculcate that bank credits have permanently 
 crippled the commerce and industry of this country : that upon 
 the hard-money system the pure metallic currency we should 
 have advanced by more rapid strides to wealth and power } and 
 that we should now have exhibited a mercantile community 
 free from all apprehension of those disturbances and dangers, 
 to which experience has proved our currency to be subject. 
 In the opinion of the honorable gentleman, the age has at last 
 received the true light, and is now about to discard paper mon 
 ey forever as unworthy the improved philosophy of our day ; and 
 he is especially anxious that the United States should take time 
 by the forelock and be the first to step into this glorious ref- 
 
THE SUB-TREASURY. 189 
 
 ormation. That step he believes will be made by passing this 
 bill. 
 
 There is yet another class, of whom the gentleman from 
 Virginia who spoke before his colleague on that side (Mr. 
 Dromgoole), may be deemed the interpreter. They are the 
 mere naked divorce men. Without professing to see any thing 
 mischievous in banking, or any thing good in it, they stand on 
 the simple ground of the Constitution, and affirm, whether it 
 be expedient or not, that the Government has no power to re 
 ceive a bank note in payment of any thing : that the whole 
 usage of the people of the United States, from the beginning 
 down to the present day, has been vicious, unconstitutional 
 and naught. That uniform and unvarying precedent is noth 
 ing ; that acquiescence for half a century is nothing ; that the 
 judgment of courts, the expositions of contemporaries, the en 
 actments of legislatures and the opinions of cabinets uncontra- 
 dicted and unreversed from generation to generation, are noth 
 ing ; and that whatever of constitutional power was a matter 
 of doubt on the first day of the Government, will, in spite of 
 all decisions and all conformity, be a matter of doubt and de 
 bate a thousand years hence. For these reasons this class also 
 sustains this measure. 
 
 In the midst of this contrariety of opinion, I could not but 
 remark how exceedingly difficult it was for one in my situation, 
 being new to this house, and to the respective claims of gen 
 tlemen here to be ranked as leaders to make a sober and just 
 estimate of the grounds upon which the administration hopes 
 10 sustain this bill before the country. Surely one or the oth 
 er of these motley-opinioned defenders of the scheme, can 
 have but little claim to be considered as exponents of the exec 
 utive mind ! If the bill be what the member from New fork 
 represents it, I would advise the gentlemen from the South to 
 pause and look about them, lest they make a fatal mistake in 
 their method of pulling down the city of New York, and build 
 ing up Charleston. And to say the truth, I think there is rea 
 son to fear that the honorable Chairman of the Committee of 
 
190 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 Ways and Means, is not altogether wrong in his expectations. 
 With that unscrupulous favoritism by which this and the last 
 administration have been accustomed to execute the laws, New 
 York, provided she demean herself less contumacious than she 
 has lately done, may turn her political acquiescence to some 
 account under this proposed system. There is power in it, as 
 I shall hereafter show, for the conferring of any amount of fa 
 vor. But it is very clear that the gentlemen of the South do 
 not in any one point agree in the conclusions or give credit to 
 the wisdom of the honorable chairman. 
 
 If the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Pickens) be 
 right in his estimate of the character and tendency of this 
 bill, then I warn the representatives of the North to look to it. 
 They are not hard-money men ; they do not wish to strangle 
 the banking system ; above all, I presume, they do not wish 
 to check the commerce or restrain the industry of their own 
 region. If they do, let them follow the lead of the member 
 from South Carolina ; and when they go home to their con 
 stituents, let them say that they have been converted to a 
 conviction of the soundness of his views, and therefore voted 
 for the bill. 
 
 Mr. Chairman, I am not unfriendly to the prosperity of 
 South Carolina. No man on this floor wishes her well more 
 heartily than I do ; and I look with a profound gratification 
 to that noble and wise spirit of enterprise which has lately 
 prompted her to scale the Alleghany with her great road. 
 God speed her, in that glorious rivalry by which she has en 
 deavored to place herself on a commanding eminence among 
 the States ! There lies her path to wealth, power and happi 
 ness ; let her pursue it steadily, and she will reap her reward. 
 None will exult in it more than myself. But when she aims 
 at breaking up the commercial union of the North and South, 
 and especially when she teaches her people that this Govern 
 ment has been unkind to the South, she gives a dangerous 
 direction to their thoughts. A fancy of discontent is quite as 
 stimulating as a real cause, and may teach the weaker-gifted 
 
THE SUB-TREASURY. 191 
 
 in the gifts of head and heart, the mischievous habit of calcu 
 lating the value of our Union. Whether designed or not, these 
 preachings of discontent tend towards that horrible catastrophe 
 of disunion, with the contemplation of which I would not have 
 our people familiar. It is in the very bounty of the Almighty 
 that our North and South are united in those beautiful bonds 
 of brotherhood which their mutual commerce with each other 
 have created : it will be the regret of this whole continent, 
 when independent circles of trade shall be formed, which shall 
 leave the different geographical sections of the country no lon 
 ger useful to each other in their dealings. Sir, it will lead 
 irresistibly to separation. 
 
 I would hope, sir, that these thoughts, or any thought 
 kindred to them, never entered the mind of the gentleman 
 from South Carolina in his support of this bill, and that, after 
 all, he has been harmlessly dealing in the dogmas of that new 
 philosophy which has of late become so peculiarly the product 
 of his own State. South Carolina has, for a time, gone in pur 
 suit of strange gods she has fallen into the spiritual sins of 
 false doctrine, heresy and schism ; she has become mischiev 
 ously sophisticated, bewildered with political metaphysics ; I 
 trust she will soon return to that rectitude of opinion which is 
 more compatible with the moral rectitude and lofty patriotic 
 bearing that distinguish her sons. 
 
 I said, sir, that I wished to test this measure as a measure 
 of remedy, and with that view would endeavor to trace our 
 present disasters up to their origin. I shall do it as briefly 
 as the nature of the inquiry and my respect for the patience 
 of this committee, already tried to its utmost verge, will permit. 
 
 There was an opinion sedulously inculcated during the lat 
 ter part of the last administration, that the specie basis of the 
 country was insufficient to sustain the paper circulation, and 
 the people were taught to believe that it would be a whole 
 some exercise of the power of the Government, and, in fact, was 
 its duty, to take measures for the importation of the precious 
 metals. Everybody remembers when this opinion began to 
 
192 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 predominate. It was about midway in that career of patchwork 
 expedients to give us a " better currency," which constituted 
 first the dream, and finally the monomania of Jacksonism. 
 Gouge had just published his book of bank horrors, in which, 
 somewhat after the manner of an anti-masonic pamphlet, or one 
 of parson Weems s tracts, " God s revenge against drunken 
 ness," he had arrayed in melancholy juxtaposition all the vices, 
 sins and misdemeanors which could be traced to his subject, or 
 be brought to its illustration. This book suggested the hard- 
 money scheme. It fell in the way of the President just about 
 that time when he was beginning to doubt the efficacy of the 
 great and famous EXPERIMENT. It furnished him a happy 
 thought, when it pointed out to him how he might retreat from 
 the odium of the possible and even then probable failure of 
 that scheme. From that moment he was taken with the hard- 
 money madness, and straightway the whole tribe of depend 
 ants, following his lead, took the same frenzy, and soon be 
 came even more rabid than their chief. 
 
 - This was not the least mischievous of the errors which 
 characterized that extraordinary era of popular delusion. The 
 notion that the specie basis was inadequate to the currency, 
 and that it was the province of the Government to enlarge it 
 by forced importations, was the principal cause that brought 
 about the catastrophe of the suspension. To those who have 
 not fully studied the subject, it may sound like a paradox, but 
 it is nevertheless true, that the suspension of specie payments 
 was induced by the importation of the precious metals ; and 
 the resumption is to be accomplished in fact has already 
 been prepared, and we may say, consummated by the expor 
 tation of them. 
 
 I shall, before I conclude, have occasion to notice this im 
 portation of specie with more particularity ; for the present I 
 design to inquire into the soundness of the position assumed 
 whether the coin was insufficient to sustain the currency, 
 and whether good was likely to result from the interference of 
 the Government. To the presumptuous, unskillful and ignor- 
 
THE SUB-TJJEASURY. 193 
 
 ant intermeddling of the Government with this subject, the 
 common opinion has already assigned the common distress. 
 I wish to inquire if there be not cause for this imputation. 
 
 The ratio which specie may safely bear to the paper circu 
 lation of the banks, is altogether incapable of fixed and deter 
 minate regulation. It necessarily must change with respect to 
 time, place and circumstance defying all attempt at invaria 
 ble adjustment. It is subject to the ordinary mercantile rela 
 tions of supply and demand, and will be governed by the prin 
 ciples applicable to those relations. The fundamental law of 
 our country requires that all paper should be convertible into 
 gold and silver ; it has not indulged the absurdity of con 
 templating the possibility that all would be converted. It is 
 the creditor s right to require his debtor to pay in coin. The 
 purport of this provision is to furnish a standard of value ; it 
 refers every object of traffic to the value of the precious metals, 
 but does not require that these metals shall be the actual com 
 mutation in every transaction of trade. The convenience of 
 society has uniformly made the equivalent of coin, in the great 
 affairs of trade, more acceptable than the coin itself, and coin 
 now is no longer necessary as a commutation for bank paper, 
 than as its presence is requisite to preserve the standard of 
 value in the paper. What is the ratio of coin necessary for 
 this purpose, is a problem trfat will ever be varying in its terms. 
 It is very obvious that if every holder of bank paper insist upon 
 having the coin at any given moment, the richest bank may 
 be compelled to abandon business : if the public be content 
 not to demand it, it is equally clear that a very small portion 
 of coin need be kept on hand. We must not confound ultimate 
 solvency, with this question of convertibility. Banks, no more 
 than private individuals, are effected in their actual solvency 
 by not having coin at hand ; although the effects of not pay 
 ing in coin when required, are very different in the two cases ; 
 the bank would be discredited for want of punctuality ; the in 
 dividual would escape almost without comment. It is there 
 fore the peculiar duty of banks to keep a portion of their funds 
 9 
 
194 
 
 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 in hard money, sufficient to redeem so much of their circulation 
 as may be demanded. If they kept an amount equal to their 
 circulation, they would lose the legitimate profit of their busi 
 ness ; if they kept less than might be demanded of them, they 
 run the risk of losing their credit. They must ascertain the 
 safe medium between these two extremes. What is that me 
 dium can never be so accurately determined by any authority 
 as by the banks themselves It is a question which will depend 
 upon the state of public confidence, and that confidence must, 
 from its nature, be affected by the circumstances or events of 
 the day. No degree of prudence, nor no amount of wealth 
 would suffice to save a bank from being drained of its coin if 
 the whole community were determined to set upon it with a 
 demand for coin. Even if the specie in its possession exceed 
 the circulation, the bank may still be exhausted, provided it be 
 determined to continue its business and to maintain that cir 
 culation at a fixed amount. A hundred-dollar note paid out 
 on discount to-day may be returned with a demand for specie 
 to-morrow : if it be re-issued in another discount, in pursuance 
 of the purpose to keep up the circulation, it may again return 
 to draw its amount in specie, and through a continuation of 
 this process the same note may take out of the vault ten times 
 its own amount of coin. 
 
 Again, sir, this relation will be effected by the condition of 
 the community in which it exists. An active thriving busi 
 ness, driven in a densely peopled region, promotes rapidity of 
 circulation. The bank note passes from hand to hand with 
 such celerity as to give it renewed confidence in its progress. In 
 such a state of things a given amount of paper performs double, 
 treble, perhaps tenfold work in the way of exchanges ; while 
 in a sluggish community, or among a widely scattered popula 
 tion, the circulation, from the mere slowness of its movement, 
 requires a broader basis of specie. 
 
 I refer, Mr. Chairman, very cursorily to these considera 
 tions, to show how futile must be the endeavor to regulate the 
 relation of specie to paper by any fixed and unvarying law ; 
 
THE SUB-TREASURY. 195 
 
 how still more absurd it must be to make this a subject of Gov 
 ernment action. 
 
 I have taken some pains, sir, to ascertain what has, in fact, 
 been this relation in our own country for several years past. 
 That inquiry has afforded me the following results. From the 
 year 1830, the returns to the Government, upon this subject, 
 have been full and I believe accurate. They will show that 
 from that period down to the present year, 1838, the aggregate 
 specie in all the banks has averaged a ratio of between one- 
 third and one-fourth of the circulation: in 1830 the circulation 
 was a fraction less than three of paper to one of specie in the 
 banks ; in 1837, less than four to one. 
 
 Dividing the States into sections, with reference to the na 
 ture of their trade and population, we shall find by the official 
 returns, that on the first of January 1837 a period, let it be 
 remarked, two months anterior to that at which General Jack 
 son boasted of the prosperity and happiness of the country, 
 and of the success of his humble efforts to restore a sound 
 currency in the six New England States, the circulation was 
 rather above five dollars of paper for one of specie in the banks 
 of that region ; that in the five Middle States, including this 
 District of Columbia, the paper was rather less than three to 
 one ; that in the four Southern States, including Florida, it 
 was under four to one ; and in the six principal Western States, 
 it. was but a fraction above two to one. In the State of Massa 
 chusetts, a thickly-peopled and busy State, the bank circulation 
 from 1830 to 1837, vibrated between five to one, and eight to 
 one never more than a small fraction below five, nor above 
 eight. Connecticut presents about the same relation. New 
 York, in 1834, exhibited about six of paper to one of specie ; 
 since that period it has shown about three to one. The gen 
 eral aggregate of the United States, as I before remarked, va 
 ries slightly between three and four to one, during the last 
 eight years ; the commencement of that period being one 
 in which the currency of this country was confessedly the best 
 in the world ; the termination of it, certainty presenting the 
 
196 POLITICAL FAPEKS. 
 
 worst of which we have any knowledge in any mercantile na 
 tion. And yet, sir, in 1830 we had not, it is supposed, above 
 forty millions of specie in the country, while now it is pro 
 claimed, as one of the fruits of our wise statesmanship, that we 
 have accumulated near one hundred millions. The truth is, our 
 currency has been gradually growing worse, notwithstanding 
 all our efforts to increase the specie ; it has lost its excellence 
 in proportion as it has become the care of the Government. 
 
 Turning to Great Britain we shall find nearly the same re 
 sults. From the year 1780 down to 1830, a computation of 
 the circulation of the Bank of England will afford an annual 
 average of about four pounds sterling in paper, to one of 
 bullion. In August, 1797, a few months after the suspension 
 of specie payments, the circulation of the bank was about 
 eleven millions sterling to four of bullion ; in 1798, it was 
 12,180,610 sterling to 6,546,100 of bullion, less than two 
 to one. In 1799 it was about as 13 to 7 ; and in 1800 and 
 1 80 1, nearly the same : showing that, for nearly five years 
 after the suspension, the ratio of specie to circulation was 
 larger than, with some few exceptions, it had ever been before 
 or afterwards. In 1783, more than thirteen years before the 
 suspension, the circulation was six and a third millions to 
 little more than half a million of bullion. In 1825, four years 
 after the resumption, the circulation was 19,398,840 sterling 
 to 3,634,370; somewhat above five to one. 
 
 The Bank of France suspended specie payments in 1806, 
 for about four months ; yet France has upwards of six hundred 
 millions of dollars in her specie currency. The bank issues 
 no note of less denomination than five hundred francs, equal 
 to one hundred dollars, and has always sustained a very high 
 credit. 
 
 I have brought these facts into view, Mr. Chairman, still 
 further to demonstrate the natural, the insuperable difficulty 
 of a fixed ratio, and also to show how little the solvency of a 
 bank depends upon the amount of specie which it may have 
 on hand. It belongs to the credit system, in whatever manner 
 
THE SUB-TREASURY. 197 
 
 that system may be constructed, to be subject to occasional varia 
 tions in its relation to the metallic basis of the country ; and no 
 care of the Government can possibly remove the causes which 
 may affect that relation. The true principle by which it is con 
 trolled is that which is suggested by the demands of trade 
 and the amount of foreign debt in other words by the state 
 of foreign exchange. A demand for specie abroad will ne 
 cessarily influence this relation at home. The precious metals 
 will perform their office in the liquidation of that demand, in 
 spite of all the care of Government ; and while they are so 
 employed, the only safeguard which the domestic currency 
 can resort to, is the prudent economy in the concerns of trade 
 which the private judgment of every man suggests to him in 
 his individual concerns when his affairs have been deranged 
 by a too prodigal expenditure of his means. 
 
 Ours, sir, is essentially a credit system, gaged by gold 
 and silver. To whatever disorders it may be incident, it is 
 still that to which we owe our rapid advance to national pros 
 perity, and we will never part with it for any promise of good 
 from the hard-money scheme. We have been educated in the 
 perception of its value ; it is domesticated in our homes ; 
 furnishes our ordinary implements in the thrift of life, and has 
 become constitutionally parcel of ourselves. Whatever may 
 be its defects we take it with them in preference to any sub 
 stitute. If it has its fluctuations, so has the pure metallic cur 
 rency, not less hurtful than those of paper. The accumula 
 tion of a foreign debt would with that currency, as with any 
 other, carry away the precious metals, and thus raise the value 
 of all that were left behind. If a merchant import gold when 
 the country is in want of hardware or cloth, gold will grow to 
 be redundant and cheap, while hardware and cloth will be 
 come dear. A failure of a crop may stint the supply of credits 
 abroad ; a foreign subsidy may take away a portion of your 
 coin ; every cause which operates in this form will change 
 prices relatively to the precious metals, as they change them in 
 reference to good paper. It is commerce and industry and enter- 
 
198 
 
 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 prise that produce these fluctuations ; a very small share of the 
 evil is ordinarily to be ascribed to the nature of the currency. 
 In reference to this question of the ratio, it is proper to 
 inquire a little more into the nature of what is termed the cur 
 rency. It has been often contended here that the Constitu 
 tion allows no currency but gold and silver. Sir, the Constitu 
 tion makes no reference to currency at all. It supplies, as I 
 have said before, the standard for all values, and that is all 
 that it professes to do. It was manifestly so understood by its 
 founders when Gen. Hamilton, in the first year of Gen. 
 Washington s administration, issued his Treasury order to re 
 ceive bank paper, and when, in one year afterwards, 1791, 
 Congress ratified that order by positive legislation. The cur 
 rency of the country, in the aspect of it which I propose to 
 present, includes that whole mass of paper credits which are 
 used in commercial dealings for the discharge or transfer of 
 debt. It embraces promissory notes, bills of exchange, 
 draughts, checks and other evidences of indebtedness. All of 
 these, sir, by the theory of our Constitution, are as much pay 
 able in coin as the notes of a bank. They all profess to be 
 convertible or redeemable paper ; yet no individual ever 
 thinks it his duty to keep gold or silver at hand to meet such 
 engagements. If coin be demanded, his resource is the 
 bank ; so that through this process the banks may be said to 
 be under an obligation to provide for the convertibility of all 
 this amount of paper. Compare the specie retained by the 
 banks with the sum of all these engagements, and it will be 
 seen that the ratio is not one-tenth perhaps not a twentieth ; 
 and yet it is amply sufficient. In England, since the passage of 
 the law making the notes of the bank a legal tender everywhere 
 but at the bank itself, the directors have endeavored to estab 
 lish the rule of keeping one-third of the amount of their cir 
 culation and deposits in bullion. They have not been very 
 successful in this endeavor. That bank now virtually supplies 
 the coin of the three kingdoms, and upon a basis of about 
 ten millions sterling of bullion, sustains a bank circulation 
 
THE SUB-TREASURY. 199 
 
 including all the country banks as well as those of Scotland 
 and Ireland not much short of sixty millions. 
 
 Sir, I would not have troubled the Committee with this un 
 inviting detail of money statistics, if I was not aware that upon 
 this subject many errors of opinion have obtained credit with 
 the country during the last eight years ; errors which I think 
 may be distinctly traced to the sedulous efforts made by the 
 last administration to persuade the people that an increased 
 supply of the precious metals was essential to the safety of our 
 currency, and that the Government itself, without respect to 
 the laws of trade, nay even in direct counteraction of them, 
 might compel their importation from foreign countries. This 
 opinion, enforced with all the official authority of the executive, 
 has engendered a brood of false doctrines, and the people have 
 consequently turned to counting the coin as the only test of 
 the prosperity of the country. 
 
 While such has been the course of the late administration, 
 it is worthy of remark that the " follower in his footsteps be 
 gan his career with the declaration of the Constitutional disa 
 bility of the Government to interfere with this department of 
 our social economy, even so far as to correct the evils which 
 the ill judged and incessant interference of his predecessor had 
 inflicted upon the country. Holding this doctrine of the pres 
 ent executive altogether indefensible, either in the reason of 
 the case or in the face of established and invariable precedent, 
 I think the people have a right to demand from the Govern 
 ment that the remedy proposed shall be broad enough to meet 
 the whole extent of the disease. 
 
 I proceed now, Mr. Chairman, to trace out the further ac 
 tion of the Government upon this subject, and, in the course 
 of this inquiry, to show in what measures of the late adminis 
 tration the mischievous opinions, to which I have just referred, 
 were embodied as active principles. 
 
 From the earliest period of this Government the people 
 have been accustomed to contemplate the banking system as a 
 system, to a certain extent, under Federal control. Their expe- 
 
200 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 rience of its beneficence, which has not been small, has invari 
 ably presented it to them as a system, partly within the man 
 agement of the States, and partly directed by the power and 
 interests of the Union. Twice only, since the year 1791, has 
 this Federal superintendence been suspended, and at each of 
 these epochs the consequences have been the same an exces 
 sive increase of local banking, a total derangement of the cur 
 rency, a succession of ruinous bankruptcies, and a suspension 
 of specie payments. While the Federal control existed, these 
 evils were unknown ; and as soon as that control was restored, 
 they rapidly disappeared. 
 
 The banking system of every mercantile country, sir, pre 
 sents, in greater or less development, two conspicuous princi 
 ples of commanding influence in their respective spheres the 
 principle of alliance or centralization, and the principle of 
 competition. These are more especially remarkable in the 
 United States, where our political and commercial relations 
 tend to give them great importance. The principle of central 
 ization, notwithstanding the unfriendly comments by which it 
 has been assailed of late, with a view to render it odious, is of 
 singular value to our system. I am convinced that without it 
 no system of banking could be devised which would be toler 
 ated by the country that with it our system becomes all that 
 the public convenience or welfare demands. This country, sir, 
 is divided, in reference to trade, into two great sections : the 
 first, embracing the whole North, may be denominated the com 
 mercial section ; the second, comprising the South, the pro 
 ducing section. The Middle and West are tributary to both. 
 Nothing can be more happy for our social welfare than this 
 natural division of our interests. In the beneficence of provi 
 dence it seems to have been ordered as the great instrument 
 of harmonious union to the millions who now inhabit and who 
 shall hereafter dwell upon this immense extent of territory. 
 The imports of the North are paid for by the purchase of for 
 eign credits from the South. The great crop of the South, 
 which is annually exported to England and France, produces 
 
THE SUB-TREASURY. 201 
 
 the fund upon which the importer cuaws for the liquidation of 
 his foreign debt : the manufacturer, too, of the North pur 
 chases his raw material in the South. Thus is created a yearly 
 demand, at an appointed season, for funds in the South. The 
 importations of the North, being distributed far and wide over 
 the whole country, in their turn, also, and at an appointed sea 
 son, create a similar demand for funds at the point of import. 
 The tide flows and ebbs with exact regularity or, rather, this 
 tendency of money-demand, like the monsoon, steadily drives 
 for six months in one direction, and six months in its oppo 
 site, with a precision which enables every one to count upon 
 its motion. At one season, some forty or fifty millions are 
 needed in the South ; but a few months roll around, when the 
 same amount is needed in the North. It is impossible to con 
 ceive a state of trade to which that feature of the banking sys 
 tem I have characterized as the principle of centralization, is 
 more indispensable than this. 
 
 A banking system under the control of one mind, diffusing 
 itself to the extremities of the Union by a number of banks all 
 in alliance, subject to the same government, and never acting 
 in conflict with each other, but ever uniting to produce a com 
 mon result would seem to be the only machinery by which 
 such a circle of trade could be advantageously sustained. 
 The head of this system holds a position from which he has a 
 view of the whole field of commercial action. He perceives 
 at what point succors may be needed, and where the force is 
 redundant. He has power to substract from the one for the 
 relief of the other. When funds are necessary in New 
 Orleans, and are no longer required at New York, the transfer 
 is but a simple act of his will. When they have performed 
 their office in the South, it is as easy to re-transfer them to 
 their former position. Thus, sir, have the demands of that 
 great internal trade been regulated with a simplicity and an 
 effect wholly without a parallel in any other country on the 
 globe. The power to accomplish this is the result of the prin- 
 9* 
 
202 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 ciple of centralization. Without such a principle all would soon 
 degenerate into confusion. 
 
 We have, sir, six - and - twenty independent governments, 
 sovereign as respects this question of banking, all capable of 
 prescribing laws for its management, with the single restraint 
 that they shall make nothing else than gold and silver a ten 
 der for the payment of debt This restraint, weak as it is, is 
 the only point of common obligation. They have no other 
 compulsion towards concert nor other perceptible common 
 duty to produce alliance or similarity of structure among them. 
 Their policy in regard to this subject, is as various as the 
 habits, manners and modes of thinking of the different States. 
 One State, with a small population, but great capability, Mis 
 sissippi for example, authorizes the creation of banking capital 
 to the amount of fifty millions, and applies herself eagerly to 
 the task of giving expansion to her industry in every shape in 
 which she can employ it. Another State, Virginia, with treble 
 the population of the former, and perhaps with resources 
 equally abundant, erects a banking system which scarcely em 
 ploys seven millions. It may be the wisdom or the caprice, 
 the false reckoning or sober estimate of each of these States 
 which have persuaded them to adopt a policy so widely differ 
 ent from each other. Mississippi may have overshot her mark, 
 or Virginia may have too timidly kept herself below her power, 
 still each has acted upon her own perception of her interest, and, 
 it is obvious, without the slightest reference to the other. And 
 so it is, sir, throughout the Union. A survey of the whole 
 will show you the banking system of the States erected and 
 sustained altogether upon local considerations, presenting every 
 conceivable inequality in its operation. In one portion, dis 
 trust, caution and doubt fettering the industry of the State ; in 
 another, emulation, adventure and hope tinging its enterprise 
 with sanguine hues and leading, it may be sometimes, to ex 
 travagant excess. These several jurisdictions are no more 
 capable of producing uniformity in banking, even if they were 
 inclined to do so, than in any other matter of general concern 
 
THE SUB-TREASURY. 203 
 
 to the Union. As well might you expect the States, sir, by 
 their fortuitous concurrence, to produce a uniform law of nat 
 uralization, the uniform organization of the militia, or an 
 equal and properly apportioned representation in this hall, as 
 to expect of them harmony and concert in their regulation of 
 the affairs of trade through the agency of their banks. Let 
 capital abound in one region, and the demand for it be ever 
 so urgent in another, what State bank would be found trans 
 ferring its funds to meet a temporary emergency growing out 
 of such a cause ? The States will necessarily be influenced 
 only by the considerations which arise at home and have 
 reference to their domestic interests. The want of uniformity 
 might be harmless, if there was not also incident to this system, 
 when left to follow its own impulses unchecked, not only a 
 want of co-operation with other States, but often actual inter 
 ference with them and counter action in their several concerns. 
 Instead of moving under the constraints of a general system, 
 their main impulse will be found in the principle of competi 
 tion. This competition will be manifest in the legislation of 
 State against State ; it will extend itself and predominate in 
 the contest between city and city, and still more actively, on 
 the narrower theatre at home, in the rivalry between bank and 
 bank. The great instinct of this principle of competition is a 
 hurtful one ; its tendency is towards excess. Two banks in 
 the same village will run the race against each other. Each 
 will strive to supply the neighborhood with greater facilities, 
 to lend upon more attainable securities, to embrace a larger 
 class of dealers, to lure adventure, as means abound, by still 
 greater enticements. If a large circulation may be absorbed 
 to-day, a still larger one, in the reckoning of these rivals in the 
 race, may be absorbed to-morrow, the larger the circulation, 
 the greater the profit. The feverish cupidity of avarice will 
 perceive in such a course the road to large gains, and, while 
 the banks pursue it, the last thought which will occur to the 
 authors of these efforts, will be the consequences of this ex 
 cited action upon the general welfare of the nation. Such, 
 
201 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 sir, are the tendencies of the uncontrolled principles of com 
 petition in banking. 
 
 The action of a central power restrains and corrects these 
 tendencies. A National Bank, under an efficient organization, 
 has, if not an absolute, certainly a most decisive control over 
 the value and amount of the local currencies supplied by the 
 State banks. To say nothing of that most important action 
 of a national bank upon the exchanges by far the most use 
 ful of its functions such an institution regulates the local 
 currency through another influence of great value to the stability 
 of the banking system. A bank sustained by the credit of the 
 Government and strengthened by the deposits of the public 
 moneys, cannot but enjoy the universal confidence of the na 
 tion. Its paper will necessarily be esteemed as of the best, 
 and will be current in every avenue of business. Such a 
 paper, sir, becomes a gage by which to measure the value of 
 all other paper for which it may be exchanged. It that respect 
 it holds towards other paper somewhat of the relation which 
 the precious metals hold to itself. I know, sir, that it is a 
 received and familiar proposition that a better currency will 
 not circulate in the presence of an inferior one. This is true 
 of coin it is not true of paper. Coin will not circulate in the 
 presence of a depreciated paper, because it may immediately 
 betake itself to foreign countries, where it will command its 
 value, or it may retire into private hoards, to be kept until a 
 better state of things shall draw it forth into circulation. But 
 when a bank is able to put forth an unquestionable paper, all 
 of inferior value will disappear before it. The public will pre 
 fer that paper which enjoys the highest credit, and they will 
 refuse all other while that is attainable. It is the interest and 
 business of such a bank to render its paper at all times attain 
 able ; its profit consists in supplying the public with a circu 
 lation which can neither be hoarded nor sent abroad. This 
 paper, in fact, circulates upon its superior credit, and thus en 
 grosses to itself, as far as its own volume will permit, the bus 
 iness of the community. It is, sir, by the influence of this 
 
THE SITE-TREASURY. 205 
 
 principle, that the paper of a national bank, fortified by the 
 credit and resources of the Government, becomes a regulator 
 of the value of all other currency in the nation ; it furnishes 
 the gage or standard to which all local paper, in its own dis 
 trict or appropriate range, must conform. In this aspect, the 
 central banking power may be said to constitute a great con 
 servative element in the adjustment and preservation of a 
 sound currency. 
 
 It is, Mr. Chairman, in the just balance of these two prin 
 ciples of centralization and competition, that the greatest 
 efficiency and safety are given to our system. The central 
 power alone might not be sufficiently observant and regardful 
 of local wants ; in the greater profits of the more important 
 operations of exchange, it might lose sight of sectional con 
 venience, and of the wants of the lesser circles of trade ; the 
 local banks will ply within these limits greatly to the advan 
 tage of themselves and of the public. On the other hand, the 
 local banks alone, for the reasons I have given, would be found 
 utterly incapable of fulfilling the broader functions assigned to 
 the central power. 
 
 The necessity for this division results, in part, from the 
 nature of our confederacy. The Federal power is essential to 
 the control of all interests which expand beyond the limits of 
 a single State, while the State power is well entrusted to the 
 municipal regulations necessary to its own well being. The 
 institution of banking, having a great and predominating in 
 fluence over the currency of the country, rises in consideration 
 far above a mere municipal concern, into one of the broadest 
 national importance, and nothing has been found more authen 
 tically established in the experience of this Government, than 
 the absolute necessity of imparting to the management of the 
 banks a certain share of Federal supervision. 
 
 Mr. Chairman, I charge it upon the late administration, as 
 one step taken by them towards the embarrassment of this 
 nation, that they rashly and most unwisely deprived the country 
 of the benefit of this Federal supervision over the currency, by 
 
200 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 the destruction of the late Bank of the United States. Sir, 
 that administration did not very maturely reflect upon the con 
 sequences of the destruction of the bank. They sinned against 
 light, for it is evident that they recognized, to the fullest extent, 
 the value and the indispensable necessity of this principle of 
 centralization upon which I have remarked. Their whole 
 course, in the early stages of that pernicious movement which 
 has brought upon us our present disasters, attests their ac 
 knowledgment of the necessity of the Federal control through 
 a central power in banking. When General Jackson first re 
 solved upon the downfall of the bank, it was not to destroy the 
 machinery of a national institution, it was only to build up an 
 other, as he believed, of a more efficient structure. His first 
 messages reiterate again and again the necessity, the great 
 utility and importance of a National Bank. The war against 
 the bank was a war of individual hate ; its object was individ 
 ual punishment. The pretext was an objection to the form 
 of organization only ; a question of detail to be corrected in a 
 new establishment. The Executive at that time, so far from 
 repelling the necessity of the principle of this bank, engaged 
 in the struggle to give that principle more scope and effect. 
 And even afterwards, sir, when this strife between Leviathan 
 and Behemoth ceased to be a contention of argument, and be 
 came one of passion, and when the victorious chief had turned 
 all his malice to its direst account, and struck down his ad 
 versary, even then, sir, the principle was still avowed and pro 
 mulgated that without a central power the currency could 
 not be sustained. That central power was attempted to be 
 fashioned on a new model, but out of old materials. It was 
 the chief and most conspicuous design, in the celebrated ex 
 periment, to manufacture a great central or national control 
 over the currency, out of some thirty or forty State banks, 
 which were to be affiliated by a government contract, and 
 clothed with all the Federal powers heretofore conferred upon 
 the Bank of the United States. In fact it was designed, by this 
 form of association, to erect a Bank of the United States, with all 
 
THE SUB-TREASURY. 207 
 
 the function of alliance and centralization of which the associa 
 tion was capable. And, sir, it was proclaimed to be capable 
 of this function to as beneficial an extent as the bank whose 
 term was just drawing. to a close. It is not my purpose, Mr. 
 Chairman, to occupy the time of the committee with a discus 
 sion of the value of this scheme of General Jackson and his 
 cabinet, but I refer to it to show that, even up to the moment 
 of the failure of the great experiment, embracing much the 
 longer portion of the existence of that administration, the party 
 in the ascendant were as fully imbued as I am at this moment, 
 with the conviction of the importance of this central banking 
 power, which it is now, in certain quarters, the habit of some 
 of the same party and of the same men to portray in so many 
 shapes of abhorrence and disgust. 
 
 It was the duty of the President, before he ventured upon 
 the rash enterprise of pulling down the Bank of the United 
 States, to be well assured that he could supply other machin 
 ery capable of performing the functions and rendering the 
 services which the destruction of that institution might sus 
 pend. It was his boast that this new contrivance of the as 
 sociated State banks would amply fill the space, and even 
 more faithfully discharge the duties of the retiring bank than 
 that bank itself had ever done. I need not recall the glowing 
 promises of success which the administration poured forth 
 with such lavish exultation upon the birth of their experiment ; 
 nor, sir, is it necessary to dwell for a moment upon the signal 
 failure of that famous abortion the first are written in every line 
 of official communication which the self-complacent spirit of the 
 President addressed, in a thousand forms, to the country upon 
 the auspicious event the last has been baptized in the tears of 
 the nation. Sir, I have a right, therefore, to charge the last ad 
 ministration and its present followers with all the consequences 
 which have flowed from this misjudged and ill-fated measure. 
 
 In following up the train of events that sprang from this 
 movement of the cabinet of General Jackson, the next step 
 was, if possible, even more mischievous than the first. It will 
 
POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 be seen, sir, in the course adopted in the employment of the 
 State banks. One would have supposed, Mr. Chairman, that 
 a statesman entering upon so fearful and momentous an ex 
 periment as that of 1833, would proceed, at least, warily and 
 with some cautious reserve in the untried and perilous career 
 before him ; that he would reflect upon the novelty of his po 
 sition ; weigh its dangers, and, in shaping his course, rather 
 incur the risk of being chid for too much discretion than taxed 
 for his boldness. Far other than this was the characteristic 
 of the advance of the late President to the difficulties of the 
 crisis. When the public moneys were removed into the keep 
 ing of the chosen banks,, instead of admonitions of prudence 
 in the use of the public funds, instead of restriction or con 
 straint, the administration made haste to order that these 
 treasures should be scattered far and wide with a profuse in 
 dulgence. The depositories were enjoined to take care that 
 no facilities be denied to commerce, but that the moneys on 
 deposit be distributed as broadly and as liberally as the pub 
 lic convenience, the demands of trade, might require. In 
 stead, sir, of advising the banks that, now the great regulating 
 and controlling power being withdrawn, it became more ur 
 gently their duty to guard against that licentious issue which 
 the uncurbed principle of competition must engender ; they 
 were exhorted and commanded to let loose the fullest play of 
 that rivalry and drive their headlong course as swiftly as their 
 appetite for gain might prompt. The President, sir, was not 
 left unadmonished of the inevitable end of this mistaken policy. 
 Here in this hall, and in the Senate, he was tolcl to what result 
 this madness must impel the nation. From all quarters the 
 same prophetic warning was poured into his ear : and all 
 thinking men, everywhere but in the executive mansion, fore 
 saw the certain disaster that awaited the experiment. 
 
 Sir, at this time another element concurred to render the 
 experiment more mischievous. The President s veto had 
 announced to the nation the entire hopelessness of obtaining 
 a renewal of the charter of the National Bank. Upon that 
 
THE SUE-TREASURY. 209 
 
 subject he was peremptory and emphatic ; and the States, 
 being thus assured that the bank was to expire, were invited 
 to increase their banking capital. At once, as by a com 
 mon impulse, every State in the Union set about enlarg 
 ing its means of banking. The pretext was the necessity 
 of supplying the vacuum of capital to be occasioned by the 
 extinction of the National Bank. Under this pretext, nearly 
 four hundred banks and one hundred and ten millions of capital 
 were created between 1834 and 1838, while, at the same 
 time, that bank whose extinction furnished the plea for this 
 increase, was not withdrawn, nor was its activity in business 
 even diminished, but on the contrary yet lives and thrives in 
 the full possession of all its capital, and is likely long to live 
 and thrive. The activity imparted by these measures to the 
 banking system of the country soon began to be felt in western 
 speculations in the public lands, and it became apparent, at 
 an early day, that the public treasure would be greatly aug 
 mented through this channel. Sir, in view of such a result, 
 and with a learned forecast of the disturbance the event was 
 likely to produce, the wisest man among the counsellors of 
 this nation, the most effective and trusty of her statesmen, 
 brought before Congress that great measure, the bill for regu 
 lating the distribution of the public lands. By a fatality 
 which signalized the career of the late administration and 
 invariably impelled it whenever there was a choice between 
 right and wrong into the wrong path, the President thought 
 proper to put his veto on this measure, and thus convert the 
 whole proceeds of the sale of the public domain, which prop 
 erly belonged to the capital of the nation, into the ordinary 
 revenues of the Government, eventually producing some forty 
 millions of surplus which in its course of production, was fed 
 by, and contributed to feed, the local banks and to turn all the 
 currents of ordinary commerce away. Instead of restraining 
 the accumulation of revenue, which prudence would have sug 
 gested as essential under the new system of deposit, the 
 President took every step in his power to augment it, and to 
 
210 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 distribute it in the most unwholesome manner his opportunity 
 allowed : it was accomplishing the worst possible purpose, in 
 the worst possible way, and extracting the greatest amount 
 of mischief out of the most mischievous thing he could devise. 
 I, therefore, again lay it to the account of that administration, 
 as in part the cause of the present embarrassments, that it 
 built up that disproportion and ungoverned system of State 
 banking which has been found so injurious, and nurtured tint 
 system by the unhealthy and unnatural stimulus of excessive 
 treasure unwisely accumulated in the manner I have described. 
 
 Mr. Chairman, it is easy to understand how prompt and 
 expansive must have been the effect of this artificial animation 
 of the money-action upon the general concerns of trade. It 
 quickened business in every department of life and greatly 
 increased consumption. The consequence of this was to in 
 crease importation not by over-trading, but by increasing the 
 demand. And then, sir, prices naturally rose. Every thing 
 that was bought was sure to sell at an advance ; you might 
 scarcely go wrong in a speculation. Trade, traffic and adven 
 ture spurned their old and sober channels. They fell into 
 the hands of new men, and dealt in new commodities. The 
 farmer turned from his plough, and the mechanic from his 
 tools to become lords of boundless acres and the founders of 
 towns and cities. People became extravagant in their habits 
 of expense and rioted in the imagination of riches infinite. 
 France was not more mad in the wild frenzy of Law s great 
 scheme, than were our people in this revel of fancied wealth. 
 
 At this epoch another movement was made the most ex 
 traordinary of all the blunders of that eccentric and wrong- 
 headed administration. I scarcely know in what language to 
 characterize the pre-eminent folly of the measure with which 
 General Jackson attempted to check the evil inclinations of 
 this period. I have before said, Mr. Chairman, that about 
 midway in the career of the experiment, the President fell 
 upon the hard-money scheme. Towards the end of the year 
 1835, there were few men around him who did not perceive 
 
THE SUB-TREASURY. 211 
 
 that the ultimate failure of the experiment was not altogether 
 so impossible an event, as the first boastings of its author 
 might have warranted them in believing. The President him 
 self, it is very clear, began to believe it probable. It was the 
 thought of the moment, the instinct of cunning, which prompted 
 him to take shelter against the disgrace of failure, in that new 
 device of bringing the nation to the constitutional currency, 
 the pure metallic system. We all remember how suddenly 
 this change came over the land ; and we can never forget the 
 efforts of General Jackson to discredit the paper system which 
 he had just matured, nor his strenuous exertions to introduce 
 coin into the country. Sir, his success in these endeavors 
 has been the chief topic of his glorification. The frequent 
 plaudits of his flatterers are still ringing in our ears with the 
 boast of the treasures he had amassed ; and even now, they 
 have not ceased to render tribute to his renown in this achieve 
 ment. This Sub-Treasury bill itself is but another act of 
 mean homage offered up to him in that same shallow glorifica 
 tion it is part and parcel of the trickery by which a name has 
 been sought to be canonized, and a party enabled to sustain its 
 dynasty of imposture. I beg, sir, to call the attention of the com 
 mittee to these measures for increasing the supply of the pre 
 cious metals, and for retaining them in the country. 
 
 First, it was promulgated, after Mr. Gouge, and almost in 
 the terms of his book, that it was essential the specie basis 
 should be widened by excluding from circulation all bank 
 notes under the denomination of one hundred dollars, or at 
 least of fifty. This notion was embodied in the treasury con 
 tracts with the banks, and finally in the currency bill of 1836 ; 
 it was to be carried out by degrees, beginning with the ex 
 clusion of fives, then of tens, and so onward to the ultimate 
 term. I will not stop, Mr. Chairman, to inquire into the policy 
 of this measure. It has proved itself to be impracticable, and 
 is therefore merely nugatory ; but I may say, in a word, that 
 if the object in view were to render the bank circulation more 
 stable, by fortifying it with a strong deposit of the precious 
 
212 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 metals, it would seem to be, at least, a very doubtful mode of 
 accomplishing that object, by compelling the community to 
 abstract these metals from the banks as the only medium of 
 payment under the amount to which paper, according to the 
 scheme, was to be confined. My purpose is with this next, 
 the great feature in this hard-money movement. 
 
 We were creating debt abroad. The activity of speculation, 
 to which I have already alluded, had enlarged the demand of 
 the country for commodities of foreign production as well as 
 of domestic. Prices were on the increase. Such, in brief, 
 sir, was the state of things at home. A prudent government 
 would have feared a foreign debt and taken some cautions 
 against its increase. Not so, Mr. Chairman, with ours. It 
 was proclaimed as the great ambition of the President, his 
 paramount wish, that the precious metals should be made to 
 abound. New mints were provided for. In the language of 
 a conspicuous Senator, famous in the annals of this movement, 
 it was prophecied that " gold was to swim up the Mississippi 
 in a never failing stream." The agent of the deposit banks, 
 as a certain semi-official functionary (Reuben M. Whitney) 
 was then called, had orders to communicate to the whole 
 circle of depositories within his charge, that it would be 
 agreeable to the President to learn they concurred with him 
 in the propriety and importance of making large importations 
 of specie from abroad. The hint, sir, was not lost. It was 
 not the temper of the deposit banks to frustrate even the 
 whim of the President in those days and so they all set 
 about the work of importation. In the mean time, the Presi 
 dent himself turned importer of specie, and the indemnities 
 were ordered home, at great sacrifice, in gold. Individual 
 merchants were prompted, through the same influences, to 
 engage in the same operation. It is a little remarkable, in 
 the change of times, that those who now quarrel with a State 
 bank for purchasing cotton to pay a foreign debt, should then 
 have seen no harm in forty banks or more turning merchants 
 and importing gold and silver to creafesuch a debt. The amount 
 
THE SUB-TREASURY. 213 
 
 brought into the country from Europe, in the year 1835-6 has 
 been estimated above forty millions of dollars more than 
 thirty of which came from England. How much was imported 
 from South America and other foreign countries we have no 
 means of knowing ; undoubtedly the amount was considerable. 
 Sir, with the exception of the indemnities, nearly the whole 
 of this vast amount of coin was brought into this country at 
 the expense of a debt, to the same amount, to the people from 
 whom it was obtained. It swelled the already accumulating 
 balance against us. It was brought here in forced counter 
 action of the laws of trade against the principle which regu 
 lates supply and demand in absolute hostility to the interests 
 of our commerce. At the very time that it came here, we 
 should have been retrenching expenditure and lessening the 
 foreign debt instead of increasing it. Our currency did not 
 require this aid ; we had in the country even more specie than, 
 in past times, had been found necessary to the safest condition 
 of our paper issues. As the balance of trade, or the state of 
 foreign indebtedness which would have required remittances 
 to England was against us, so also, sir, as between the Atlan 
 tic States and the West, the balance was, in like manner, 
 against the West, and the course of trade required remittances 
 of specie from the West to the Atlantic. In fact, the whole 
 tendency of exchanges, from the remotest western border, 
 was eastward even until they crossed the ocean. In this 
 juncture, the President was not only so absurd as to direct the 
 importations I have spoken of, but to go a step farther and, 
 by the only means in his power, means which an accident 
 had put at his disposal, and which in a thousand years he 
 might not have had again, to check and countervail the current 
 of domestic exchange between the West and the East. This he 
 accomplished by an act similar in character to the importation 
 of coin from abroad ; it was done by the instrumentality of 
 the Treasury Circular. The rage of speculation in the public 
 lands had already carried eastern credits to the West, and 
 brought that region largely in debt to the eastward ; and at 
 
214: POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 the very time when the people of the East were looking anxi 
 ously to the settlement, the circular was interposed, professedly 
 with a view to carry specie to the West and keep it there, lest 
 it might obey the laws of trade and go where it was wanted, 
 and where it could have afforded relief to the unnatural pres 
 sure which this most unnatural course of Government inter 
 ference had produced. 
 
 Mr. Chairman, in all these measures the first instincts of 
 the people and of their representatives were true to the sug 
 gestions of good sense and the national interest. The preva 
 lence of these instincts was only suppressed by the dictatorial 
 authority and mischievous popularity of the Executive. The 
 bank was rechartered by Congress ; the removal of the depos 
 its was forbidden by Congress ; the Land Bill was passed by 
 Congress, and the Treasury Circular rejected by it. Yet in 
 each of these four cardinal measures the fountains of all the 
 ills the country has lately suffered the Executive will has 
 outweighed and despised the Legislative judgment; and by 
 that will alone, defying all other authority in this land, have 
 these measures been enforced. 
 
 Well, sir, the day of reckoning came. As money poured into 
 this country from abroad, it increased our banking basis, and 
 therefore increased also the paper circulation. The abund 
 ance of money raised prices to a correspondent height. For 
 ty millions added to our specie circulation could not do other 
 wise than augment our prices. If our trade were confined to 
 a domestic circle, if we had no concerns with foreign nations, 
 such an increase of price, being gradual, would cause no very 
 signal distress. But we have a great Southern staple which 
 seeks its chief market in a nation from which we import large 
 amounts of goods, and which goods, being generally ordered 
 in advance of the export, are designed to be paid for with 
 funds arising from that export. As nearly as it may be counted 
 on, our importation from England is graduated by the expect 
 ed value of the cotton export. By the operation of our money- 
 system the cotton had arisen to its highest price. The factors 
 
THE SUB-TKEASL KY. 215 
 
 of the Atlantic had purchased the crop at these high prices 
 before it was gathered even, in some instances, as I have 
 understood, before it was grown. It was paid for chiefly, I 
 presume, by a small advance in money, and in notes at long 
 dates. The planter had used these funds in purchases of land 
 and negroes, at correspondingly high prices, and had stipula 
 ted to pay, as his factor was to pay him, partly in money and 
 partly in notes. And so the series of engagements went on 
 ward into other classes of society. 
 
 In England, sir, the very reverse operation was now about 
 to take place. That country had become disturbed with our 
 apparent prosperity. The fame of rich investments in Ameri 
 ca and heavy rates of interest, and of the harvest of specula 
 tion in our public lands, had lured hither large amounts of 
 British capital, a great deal of which also came in the precious 
 metals. This drain of funds from England began to produce 
 alarm, as soon as it was seen that our Government had inter 
 posed itself to prevent the adjustment of the mercantile bal 
 ance. Apprehensions were even expressed there, that the 
 Bank of England might be driven, by these demands upon the 
 national coin, to another suspension of cash payments. It was 
 a measure on the part of that bank and of the English nation, 
 not only of retaliation, but of absolute self-protection, to bring 
 values to the standard of the actual state of her currency, that 
 currency reduced to its proper relation with the precious metals. 
 In other words, while prices in the United States were rising to 
 the standard of our large paper issue, they were falling in 
 England to the standard indicated by the state of her dimin 
 ished coin. To accomplish this reduction in England, the 
 bank raised the rate of discount one per cent, in June and July 
 1836, and thus produced that curtailment which immediately 
 brought down the prices to the desired rate. The effect of the 
 operation was to throw a loss upon the shippers of American 
 cotton of some five or, even perhaps, eight cents a pound. 
 The factor in New Orleans was the first to be struck down, 
 and after him, in rapid succession, all his dependencies on- 
 
216 POLITICAL JPAPEItS. 
 
 ward to the planter, the land speculator and the thousand 
 others standing in this connection, came to the ground with a 
 general crash. The importing merchant was now made aware 
 that where he looked for foreign credits there were none to 
 be had. The cotton crop, instead of producing eighty millions 
 in England, did not produce over fifty, and all who had count 
 ed on this source for foreign funds were, of course, disappoint 
 ed. The embarrassments of the importer turned him back to 
 the country dealer for funds ; the rise of exchange compelled 
 him to seek coin for remittance, and, at every step in his search 
 for coin, he was met by the Government, a busy intermeddler, 
 shutting up the avenues of trade and obstructing the only chan 
 nels of relief. 
 
 The Government had for some time been crying out against 
 the banks, as the sources of these approaching evils, and the 
 people, especially the more uninformed part of them, looking 
 only at the confusion which they saw in the currency, joined 
 in the cry against the banks, and commenced that run upon 
 them which in the end resulted as everybody except the 
 Executive had foreseen this whole movement must have result 
 ed in the suspension of specie payments. 
 
 That suspension, I think I have shown, Mr. Chairman, 
 originated in the pernicious measures of the administration. 
 It was brought about by the unskilful and unwise policy of im 
 porting the precious metals at a time when the interests and 
 demands of trade set in an opposite direction. It more im 
 mediately came from the extravagant speculations of a class 
 of persons not connected with the regular operations of trade 
 and commerce. In such a convulsion, the prudent and the 
 wise suffer their share of affliction as well as the thriftless and 
 the unwary. Wealth, industry and circumspection are no safe 
 guards against such a calamity when the calamity has once 
 found footing in the nation. I do not believe, sir, that in the 
 ordinary channels of regular commerce, there has been any 
 over-trading or over-banking I have seen no evidence to in 
 duce such a conclusion. On the contrary, our merchants and 
 
THE SUB-TKKASUEY. 217 
 
 our mercantile banks have conducted themselves through the 
 difficulties of this alarming crisis with prudence, moderation 
 and wisdom worthy of all praise. The attempt of the present 
 Executive to throw the blame of these disasters upon the mer 
 chants, is an act of such gross injustice and wickedness as to 
 entitle it to the scorn of all honorable men. It is a base ef- . 
 fort to screen the authors of our calamities from that indignant 
 censure which their misdeeds have long deserved. The admi 
 rable patience, fortitude and fidelity with which the merchants 
 of the United States addressed themselves, in these late trials, 
 to the task of sustaining the national credit and good faith, 
 have not only won for them the applause of their countrymen, 
 but have drawn forth the spontaneous and cheerful tribute of 
 panegyric from all nations with whom they hold intercourse. 
 It has been uttered in the British Parliament from the lips of 
 impartial statesmen, in language which has found a response 
 throughout that kingdom ; and it will not be. forgotten here, 
 sir, as long as America shall take pride in the integrity and 
 honorable bearing of that intelligent and patriotic class of 
 her citizens. The charge was made in a spirit which does no 
 honor to its author, and will be ever regarded as the subter 
 fuge of a baffled politician, seeking to find a scapegoat for his 
 own offences and selecting that body for his purpose whose 
 numbers may be supposed to render them the least available 
 of all others in the State, in the electioneering contests for 
 power. The truth is, sir, that the late administration and its 
 successor have waged a war against the banks and the mer 
 chants, which has resulted not only in their overthrow, but in 
 deep and lasting injury to the greatest interests in the nation, 
 without producing a modicum of good, unless it be in the 
 lesson it has taught us to avoid such follies in time to come. 
 It has of late become the fashion to deny these hostile senti 
 ments of the administration against the banks. I am glad to 
 see it, sir ; it is an indication of an approaching change of 
 policy it is a sign of contrition for past offences. It is 
 nevertheless true that such a war has been waged, and that a 
 10 
 
218 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 bitter hostility has been evinced by the Executive against 
 these institutions, and even now, sir, is secretly felt, although 
 not openly avowed. Gentlemen on this floor have asked for 
 the proofs of this hostility. To say nothing of that Trojan 
 war between the bank and the late administration, with all its 
 artillery of denunciation, they may find the proofs in the com 
 mon cant of the day against what is termed monopoly, in the 
 incessant assaults which, of late years, have been directed 
 against all corporate bodies and chartered rights, and in the 
 debates of every State Legislature, where the administration 
 party have had a voice. They may find the proofs in the daily 
 diatribes of the Globe and of the thousand slave presses 
 whose feculent sheets are employed to scatter far and wide 
 this Globe poison. They may discover evidences of it in the 
 proceedings of the Pennsylvania convention : sir, it was pre 
 dicted, foredoomed and instigated in the famous letters of 
 Dallas and Ingersoll ; it was not less conspicuously exhibited 
 in the letter of last July, from the Hermitage, upon the occa 
 sion of the suspension ; we had some inklings of it even in 
 that abortive farce of a revolution attempted in Maryland ; 
 and latest of all, sir, we have seen evidences of it here on 
 this floor, on a very recent occasion, in the almost frenzied 
 gesticulation with which a gentleman conspicuous in the ranks 
 of the administration (Mr. Rhett) denounced woe to all those 
 who deal in banks or sustain their cause woe to come in 
 threatened popular vengeance, even to the down-pulling of the 
 public edifices, the ovei throw of social order and the peril 
 of the domestic hearth. These, sir, are some of the proofs 
 of that war of the administration against the banks : let gen 
 tlemen point me to any evidence of hostility from the banks 
 against the Government of which so much has been said in 
 this debate. 
 
 Mr. Chairman, I have presented to the committee what I 
 conceive to be the leading events in that train of government 
 policy, to which the nation is indebted for all it has suffered. 
 I will beg to say a few words upon the nature of the remedy 
 
THE SUB-TREASUIiY. 2 1 !.) 
 
 which, in my judgment, this retrospect suggests as the only one 
 appropriate to the case. 
 
 In the first place, I wish to see a solid and permanent re 
 sumption of specie payments as speedily as that can be accom 
 plished ; and I am fully convinced that this bill would not 
 only retard the resumption, but render its continuance even a 
 matter of great uncertainty. 
 
 In the next place, I wish to see the creation of a National 
 Bank, believing that to be the only possible device or instru 
 ment by which we may hope to establish and maintain a good 
 currency in the country. Sir, I am persuaded that the greater 
 part of the people of the United States now entertain this con 
 viction, and that, day by day, as we grow older in experience, 
 that conviction will be extended. Nothing can be more arti 
 ficial than the public sentiment which has been conjured up 
 against such an institution. That sentiment was fabricated 
 here, at Washington, and circulated under the auspices, and by 
 the force of party dictation, without even the semblance of con 
 sultation with the people. I cannot for a moment doubt that 
 if the deliberate opinion of the country upon this question 
 were polled, after every man had made himself acquainted with 
 the real nature and value of the proposition, nine-tenths would 
 give their suffrage in favor of a National Bank. I speak not, 
 sir, of the late Bank of the United States although I know 
 nothing to the disparagement of that institution but of such 
 a bank as may be matured by the wisdom of Congress, guarded 
 by such provisions as past experience may have demonstrated 
 to be necessary, and clothed with all the powers requisite to the 
 discharge of that great national function which I have attempt 
 ed, in the course of my remarks to explain. Such a bank, sir, I 
 repeat, would meet, if I do not greatly mistake the judgment 
 of our day, the approbation of by far the larger portion of the 
 citizens of the Union. There are many, sir, I know, who en 
 tertain constitutional scruples on this question. They belong 
 to a hopeless race of men who must live out their day, and s 
 leave the settlement of their doubts to another generation. I 
 
POLITICAL 1 Al EliS. 
 
 will not argue with them. To the gentlemen from Virginia, es 
 pecially, I say, that I will not consent to moot constitutional 
 points with them ; it is encouraging them in a vicious habit 
 which has already sufficiently retarded the growth and power 
 of that venerable Mother of States. Let Virginia give up her 
 dialectics, renounce her spirit of dissertation and debate, and 
 betake herself to commerce and manufactures : let her do 
 this and thrive ; let her still neglect it, and it may be her 
 fate (here Mr. Wise added to die of an abstraction) I 
 adopt the gentleman s expression, though I hope a better des 
 tiny awaits her " to die of an abstraction." 
 
 Sir, the efficacy of a bank in the regulation of a currency 
 has been conceded on all sides. The late administration, in 
 all its zeal to destroy, was obliged to concede it. The history 
 of the war against that bank is full of acknowledgment of its 
 usefulness to the currency. When Gen. Jackson first assailed 
 it, he endeavored to sustain his opposition to it on the plea that 
 it had failed to perform this function of regulating the curren 
 cy to the satisfaction of the country. He was signally defeat- 
 in this position by his own friends. The charge was referred 
 to the investigation of both Houses of Congress. In both, com 
 mittees were raised of the ablest men in the nation, strong, 
 devoted friends of the President : their reports are among 
 your records they give the most explicit and unqualified con 
 tradiction of the President s allegations against the usefulness 
 of the institution. No one will suspect the late Governor of 
 South Carolina, Mr. McDuffie, nor the present Mayor of Bal 
 timore, Gen. Smith (the respective chairmen of the committees 
 of the House and of the Senate on this inquiry), of a disposi 
 tion, at that time, either causelessly to discredit the Presi 
 dent s opinion, or to misrepresent the value of the bank and 
 yet their reports were full and conclusive on the question. 
 Ever since that time the ground of attack has been changed, 
 and now, instead of affirming the incompetency of a bank to 
 perform the duties assigned to it with advantage to the nation, 
 the whole stock of party vituperation and all the oratorical 
 
THE SUB-TREASURY. 221 
 
 pruriency of party declaimers, are exhausted in painting the 
 danger of such an institution to public liberty, and in fearful 
 summonings of the terrors of the money-power. 
 
 It is odd enough, Mr. Chairman, to hear these appeals to 
 the frighted imagination of the country against this phantom 
 of the money-power, urged, if not by the gentleman himself, 
 at least by the friends and coadjutors of the gentleman from 
 New York (Mr. Cambreleng), who has lavished such encomi 
 ums upon the new Free Banking of his own State ; that system 
 of banking which is not to supercede the old, but which is to 
 reinforce it with additional means, a cumulative, auxiliary 
 system of banking without stint or limit 
 
 " giving its sum of more 
 To that which had too much," 
 
 and intended to increase the money-power of New York far 
 beyond the utmost limit heretofore assigned to a National Bank. 
 What is this formidable money-power that has so disturbed 
 the fancies of gentlemen here, and the equanimity of the nation ? 
 Our laws recognize no distinctions of rank or class among 
 our citizens. We have secured the rights of property as car 
 dinal in our social constitution. It is well appointed that labor, 
 diligence and skill shall have their reward, and that reward be 
 preserved inviolate from aggression. Under this protection, 
 this whole nation of working people has grown up into a mar 
 vellous power of combined wealth, intelligence and comfort un 
 exampled. It is of the nature of wealth to attain social power 
 and influence : it is a valuable feature in our system that it 
 should do so ; but every one must remark how small is its 
 tendency, how inadequate its efforts to obtain political power. 
 The jealousy of wealth, the watchfulness of its assumptions, the 
 common suspicions entertained against it, almost amount to a 
 popular proscription of its hopes, for political elevation, and 
 even strip it of the influence to which it is justly entitled. 
 " Whoso" says a nervous English writer " has sixpence, is 
 sovereign (to the length of sixpence) over the whole world. 
 
222 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 He commands cooks to feed him, philosophers to teach him, 
 and kings to mount guard over him to the length of sixpence." 
 This, sir, is an epitome of the money-power. It accumulates 
 social comfort and social strength : it makes men and states 
 more happy, prosperous and impregnable from without. Would 
 you seek the external manifestation of that power, you shall 
 see it, sir, in the subdued wilderness of our frontier ; in our 
 great rivers cleft by the keels of a thousand steamboats ; in 
 our plains and valleys as they yield their tribute to the labor 
 of husbandry. You shall witness it in the smoking forges of 
 the West, and in the swift shuttles of the East ; in the cities, 
 towns and villages which adorn and enliven the land ; in our 
 churches, hospitals, colleges and schools. You shall note it in 
 the quiet and substantial homesteads of our people, and in the 
 happy faces that gather around those firesides, such as the like 
 may nowhere else be found. You shall hear it in the carol 
 of the ploughman as he traces his furrow, and in the blithe song 
 of the sailor-boy, at the masthead, when he plies his voyage 
 to the remote shores of Europe or Asia ; in the heavy-creak 
 ing wagon, the flying steam-car and the rattling stage-coach ; 
 in short, sir, you may hear and see it in all the avenues where 
 trade and industry ply their busy and profitable thrift. It is 
 the secret, the miracle of the might of this Anglo-American 
 man ! What is there to dread in it ? 
 
 Mr. Chairman, I turn from these considerations to a review 
 of the bill before us. The friends of this measure affect to be 
 lieve that our long-established system of banking was princi 
 pally objectionable from the instability of the currency which 
 it created, and from its power of producing panic and pressure 
 upon the country ; they declare themselves unwilling to entrust 
 the public treasure to the keeping of any such agency, holding 
 it to be insecure ; and they present us this bill as the correct 
 ive of each of these defects. They speak, sir, of the patron 
 age and influence of the banking system with a disinterested 
 horror, and boast that, by this new contrivance of a Sub- 
 Treasury, they clip the wings of patronage and reduce it to in- 
 
THE SUE-TREASURY. 223 
 
 significance. Let us examine this bill to ascertain how far it 
 realizes these promises. 
 
 I think it may be assumed, from the fact of this question 
 being pressed upon the House after the repeal of the Treasury 
 Circular, that it is the purpose of the administration to revive 
 that circular with even a broader scope than it had before. 
 Indeed, sir, this bill itself provides for a gradual substitution 
 of gold and silver for paper in the payment of all public debts, 
 and designs ultimately to reject all paper. I take it for grant 
 ed, notwithstanding this specie clause was struck out of the 
 Senate bill, it is not to be struck out here, and that we are 
 eventually to have the policy of the specie circular renewed 
 and extended. In that view, I beg leave to invite the atten 
 tion of the committee to the eventual operation of this meas 
 ure. Your revenue may be rated at some thirty millions. 
 These are to be paid in gold and silver, and placed in the 
 custody of the receivers or other officers of the treasury. How 
 are they to be distributed ? The Government will have disburse 
 ments to make to the full amount, perhaps, of the revenue ; 
 but the coin, sir, will be but partially used in these disburse 
 ments. The Treasury will draw warrants, drafts, or orders on 
 the fund, which may be put forth to any amount, of any denom 
 ination, and in any form, that the Secretary may choose. They 
 will be printed on bank paper and engraved with all the exte 
 rior symbols of a bank note, and may be adapted to circulation, 
 as money, to any extent that the head of the treasury shall 
 direct. These drafts will constitute a circulating medium, and 
 the Government will so far become a bank of circulation. That 
 this paper will be safe, no one will deny : the objection to the 
 system does not lie against the stability of the paper, but it does 
 lie most cogently against the power which this faculty of mak 
 ing paper shall give to the Executive. Such a paper kept in 
 circulation may ultimately represent the whole revenue of the 
 nation, while the coin upon which it is issued, or a great part 
 of it, will be locked up in the Government custody. The Gov 
 ernment refusing to receive any thing but coin for public dues, 
 
224 POLITICAL PAPKKS. 
 
 will render coin at all times a subject of mercantile demand, 
 and will thus establish a current of business, the effect of which 
 will constantly be to act upon the banks of the country and to 
 keep them stinted in their supply of the precious metals, or, at 
 least, ever in apprehension of this drain upon their money-re 
 sources. The city of New York, sir, collects about ten millions 
 of the revenue. This amount, according to the system, is to be 
 entrusted to the hands of one man. It is not at all impossible to 
 administer this proposed law in such a manner as to collect 
 the whole ten millions in specie, and retain that sum in the 
 city of New York. The amount of gold and silver employed 
 to sustain the bank circulation of that city is usually, I believe, 
 but little above three millions. That coin would be drawn 
 into the hands of the receiver, leaving the banks either under a 
 compulsion to import specie from abroad, or to become suppli 
 cants for its restoration by the Government. The nth and 
 1 2th sections of the bill give the Secretary power to transfer 
 these funds from any one point to any other, at his own discre 
 tion. In the execution of this power he may, in a clay, drain 
 the city of New York or Philadelphia, Boston or Baltimore of 
 the Government deposit of specie, or equally, at his pleasure, 
 accumulate the whole at either of these points, producing 
 scarcity or abundance, exactly as it may gratify his purpose of 
 reward or punishment, his political favoritism or displeasure. 
 
 The Government has now, sir, some five millions to pay in 
 Florida. Suppose the same obligation in existence with this 
 bill the law of the land. The five millions would be drawn in 
 warrants payable in New York. These warrants would be sent 
 to the South just as exchange was valuable on the North, and 
 every warrant would be a bill of exchange, salable at a pre 
 mium. The Government is thus converted into an exchange 
 merchant, making its profit according to the rates of the day. 
 Even when there is nothing to be paid for public disburse 
 ments in the South, still may the Secretary, under this bill, 
 draw his warrants on northern funds, and throw them into the 
 southern market, to take advantage of these operations of ex. 
 
THE SUB-TREASURY. 225 
 
 change. Every one must see, Mr. Chairman, that the powers 
 conferred by this bill, and the absolute control of the dispo 
 sition of the Government revenues, are neither more nor less 
 than the machinery which shall constitute the Executive a 
 great national banking power, with faculty to furnish circula 
 tion and deal in exchange, to the full amount of the fund at 
 its disposal. It is an easy step, sir, to get the privilege, on 
 any casual pretext, of issuing, as we .have lately done, Treasury 
 notes to some large extent, and you have, in the result, the 
 banking power carried out to its utmost scope. 
 
 Is there no field here, for party favor ? What shall be the 
 rates of exchange ? Shall not the Government sell below par 
 to one man, at par to another, and above to a third ? Who 
 shall prevent it ? We may easily imagine the inducements 
 which might persuade a Government agent to gratify a political 
 friend, or disappoint a political adversary in these dealings. 
 Yes, sir, and we may imagine, too, the motives that may arise 
 to punish a whole city obnoxious to Executive displeasure, by 
 removing the deposits -or withholding exchange, and to re 
 ward another more complaisant in its feelings and respect 
 for the higher powers. The enginery is here which may serve 
 this turn to any extent. This power of transfer contained in 
 the nth and i2th sections of the bill, is an admirable machine 
 to produce obedience and submission, and I will undertake to 
 prophecy that if this bill be passed, the Government will have 
 no cause to complain of the refractory demeanor of the fiscal 
 agent at Portsmouth. J am still, sir, so unreformed by modern 
 schooling as to think that, in the concerns which relate to trade 
 and currency, it is much safer to confide in the integrity, the 
 habits of business, the intelligence and interests of a board 
 of merchant directors, than incur the hazard of the selfish 
 and obsequious spirit, the alien temper and unskilfulness of a 
 mere political functionary. 
 
 Mr. Chairman, if the revenue is not to be collected in gold 
 and silver, but, adopting the policy of the new Treasury order, 
 it is to be received in bank paper, the power conferred by this 
 
226 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 bill is still more mischievous. Suppose, sir, the ten millions 
 of New York to be received in the notes of specie-paying 
 banks, what will be the result ? You will have a Governmen< 
 agent in that city continually clothed with the power of visit 
 ing the banks, according to the caprice of Government dicta 
 tion, with the demand for coin ; one hundred thousand dollars 
 exacted to-day from one bank, another hundred to-morrow from 
 another ; indulgence and forbearance extended to one and 
 denied to another. The price of this favor we may be at no 
 loss to conjecture obedience, implicit obedience to the pleas 
 ure of the Executive. What would be the effect of such de 
 mands ? Why, sir, immediate action on the whole circle of 
 customers of the bank. A sudden call for a large amount of 
 coin requires curtailment of discount and pressure upon the 
 debtors of the bank. Can you conceive, sir, a more potent en 
 gine of panic and commercial distress than this power of de 
 manding coin ? And yet, sir, it is not only conferred by this 
 bill, but it is essential to the system that it should be exercised. 
 Nothing can be more absurd than to -suppose all this appara 
 tus of the Sub-Treasury erected to preserve bank paper the 
 very foundation of the system, as I remarked at the outset, is 
 the collection in coin, or the conversion of the deposits into 
 coin. 
 
 The power of combining against a bank to draw its specie, 
 even in ordinary circumstances, is one which excites alarm. 
 The difficulty of such combination, as well as the disinclination 
 of the public to abstract the coin, is the great protection of the 
 banks. But here, sir, we have ready made to our hand an 
 agent, with all this power of combination in his single self and 
 in its worst shape j an agent, too, holding no interest in com 
 mon with the community, unsympathizing, cold-blooded and 
 heartless as regards their wants or wishes whom it is his 
 prerogative and office fo disturb and distress as often as his 
 own or his master s fancy shall impel him. I put no trust in 
 such functionaries. I do not even, sir, like the name which 
 this bill gives them these Receivers-General. I remember an 
 
THE SUB-TREASURY. 227 
 
 anecdote of Voltaire which somewhat prejudices me against 
 the tribe. A circle of the friends of the philosopher were pass 
 ing a winter evening at Ferney. It was proposed to beguile 
 the time by telling robber-stories. Everybody had invented 
 his tale ; Rousseau had told one of thrilling horror. When 
 Voltaire was called on, he began as follows : " There was once 
 upon a time a receiver-general my friends, I have forgot 
 ten the rest." It was unanimously voted that this was the 
 greatest robber-story of all. I fear, sir, these Receivers. 
 
 I think, Mr. Chairman, it is very obvious to calm reflec 
 tion, that this Sub-Treasury scheme will entirely fail in the ac 
 complishment of any promise which its friends hold out : that 
 it will weaken and render more unstable the currency of the 
 banks ; that it will rather furnish means and occasion for pan 
 ic and pressure, than remove them ; that its patronage and in 
 fluence are infinitely more formidable than those of the bank ; 
 and that its pledge of greater security to the public treasure is 
 altogether illusory ; that, in short, it proposes a new system 
 for regulating the public moneys, clumsy and awkward in its 
 detail, highly inconvenient to the commerce of the country, 
 dangerous in the powers it confers upon the Executive, and 
 most mischievously hostile to the safety and usefulness of our 
 banking system. 
 
 In addition, sir, to these objections, which are suggested 
 by the views the friends of the bill have taken of its character, 
 and upon which I have forborne to dwell with more than a 
 passing notice, I have a still deeper aversion to it founded on 
 the general principles, in regard to the currency, which it was 
 my principal object to illustrate in this speech. It fails to 
 erect, in any safe or useful form, that central power of Federal 
 control which I think essential to a permanent and sound cur 
 rency ; it also furnishes an artificial necessity for occasional 
 Government influence or direction in the importation of the pre 
 cious metals an influence altogether pernicious in its charac 
 ter. For these reasons, sir, I utterly abhor and reject this bill. 
 
228 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 SPEECH 
 
 ON THE BILL MAKING APPROPRIATIONS FOR THE CIVIL AND 
 DIPLOMATIC SERVICE FOR THE YEAR 1839. DELIVER 
 ED IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, FEBRUARY 19, 
 1839. 
 
 THE bill making appropriations for the civil and diplo 
 matic service for the year 1839 being under considera 
 tion, in Committee of the Whole on the state of the Union ; 
 and the question being on the amendment to strike out the 
 appropriation for the pay of the Commissioners of the Navy 
 Mr. Kennedy addressed the Chair as follows : 
 Mr. Chairman : When I obtained the floor at the close of 
 the last sitting of the committee, it was not my purpose to ad 
 dress my remarks particularly to the amendment under con 
 sideration. I wished to carry the debate into a wider field, 
 and to look at the general condition of affairs under the pres 
 ent administration. 
 
 It seemed to me that both the time and the mode of 
 abolishing the Navy Board, which was the design of this 
 amendment, were singularly inopportune. The House had 
 neither the information proper to its action in this matter, nor 
 the leisure, so near the end of the session, to give the subject 
 the consideration it deserved. The debate itself has disclosed 
 the want of accurate knowledge essential to the just determi 
 nation of the question, and has demonstrated, I think, the 
 impropriety of acting upon it at the present time. It is true, 
 great complaints are abroad against the efficiency of the 
 Board, and opinions unfavorable to its continuance are enter- 
 
DIPLOMATIC APPROPRIATIONS. 229 
 
 tained by many judicious persons. I am not insensible to the 
 weight of these opinions, and incline, in advance of all inquiry, 
 to think that the duties assigned to the Board might be more 
 advantageously discharged under individual supervision. As 
 a practical rule, I would rather intrust to a single head those 
 functions which require much energy and judgment for their 
 performance, than to any board, no matter how intelligent. 
 Still, sir, this is a question of experience ; and I should be 
 loath, on the instant, to assail an organization which has been 
 in existence for twenty years, without the amplest investiga 
 tion and advice. I am glad to see that the House has fallen 
 into this opinion. The resolution submitted by the gentleman 
 from Virginia (Mr. Mallory), this morning, and adopted by 
 the House, referring this question to the Secretary for a formal 
 report at the next session, indicates a design to act only upon 
 full information, and, for the present, must dispose of the 
 amendment. 
 
 I concur, Mr. Chairman, in the remark which fell from the 
 venerable gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Adams), that 
 much of the complaint which has been raised against the 
 Commissioners of the Navy, would perhaps, upon examina 
 tion, be found to lie more justly at the door of the head of the 
 Navy Department even, perchance, of the President himself. 
 It seldom happens in a well-ordered Government that the sub 
 ordinates fail to perform their duty when they have an efficient 
 head. The navy has been sadly in want of direction for the 
 last four or five years. No branch of the administration has 
 been so much left to chance, or to the guidance of a feeble 
 hand ; and it is, therefore, not to be wondered that complaints 
 should be rife against the management of this Department of 
 the service throughout all its branches. Something, sir, of the 
 common discontent which is said to exist against the Board is 
 due to this cause. 
 
 I still more cordially agree with the remark of the same 
 honorable gentleman to whom I have just alluded, that a 
 thorough examination of each and all the Departments of the 
 
230 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 Government would lead to results eminently beneficial to the 
 public welfare. Never was there an administration, in this 
 country at least, or perhaps in any other, more likely to reward 
 the toil of those who should devote themselves to an investiga 
 tion of its doings. From the glimpses of abuse with which we 
 have occasionally been favored, we may infer a great amount 
 of concealed malversation. 
 
 Sir, we know nothing of the real condition of the Depart 
 ments, but from these glimpses. The people are permitted to 
 learn only by accident the state of the administration con 
 cerns. Now and then some pampered favorite of " the party," 
 some conspicuous and much -trusted friend of the ruling 
 power, perpetrates a larceny and flies and the fact, too no 
 torious for concealment, bursts on the public view : now and 
 then a defaulting sub-treasurer grows contumacious to the re 
 iterated supplications and prayers of the Secretary, and pre 
 fers exposure with its profits to settlement and the smiles of 
 the chief and thus again the people are indulged with a de 
 velopment : now and then, upon the calls of this House, in fla 
 grant cases, which not even party hardihood can brave, some 
 reluctant confession, beyond the art of stratagem to evade, is 
 vouchsafed to the nation and we again get glimpses of the 
 truth. 
 
 It seems indeed, sir, to be a premeditated plan of " the 
 party" in this House to resist, upon various pretexts, these 
 calls for information touching the conduct of the Departments 
 in matters where abuse may be supposed to exist. It is now 
 six weeks since I myself having reason to believe that some 
 irregularity at least some extravagance perhaps or some 
 favoritism existed in the manner in which the supplies of arti 
 cles, not enumerated or reported in the yearly published contracts, 
 were furnished to the different navy yards submitted a reso 
 lution to call on the Secretary for information as to the prices 
 at which these articles had been procured during the past year. 
 It did not enter into my thoughts, when I submitted that 
 resolution, to charge any officer of the Government with inten- 
 
DIPLOMATIC APPROPRIATIONS. 231 
 
 tional abuse : I knew nothing calculated to awaken suspicion, 
 except that very extravagant prices were alleged to have been 
 paid ; and I did not doubt that the House, respecting the ob 
 vious motive of the call, and acknowledging its propriety, 
 would have treated it as an ordinary movement of sound and 
 wholesome legislation that the calJ would have been granted, 
 sir, as a matter of course. Yet, it was refused, not by a direct 
 vote, but by a refusal to suspend the rules ; as if the House 
 could not afford the time from other business for this light 
 matter. I renewed my motion day after day, praying the 
 House to grant me this favor. Other resolutions were taken 
 up and passed, by the suspension of the rules, almost every 
 morning of the session ; mine was always refused, and refused 
 at every trial by mere party votes. I found very early that 
 the proposition excited uneasiness among some prominent 
 friends of the administration. I was even informed that, by a 
 private application to the Secretary, I might procure the in 
 formation I wished ; while those who suggested this, either 
 voted against my resolution or refused to vote at all. Such an 
 opposition to an ordinary inquiry, as I deemed it, could not 
 but excite suspicions against the integrity of the management 
 of that branch of service to which it referred. During the 
 pendency of this question, I have received letters from differ 
 ent quarters, which assure me that great and flagrant abuse 
 will be found in the distribution of these unpublished con 
 tracts, whenever the administration shall be disposed to favor 
 the people with a knowledge of its own proceedings. 
 
 An honorable gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Underwood), 
 has fared no better than myself. He offered, some days ago, 
 a resolution for inquiry into the mode in which supplies are 
 furnished to the army in Florida. He too has been denied 
 that information by a party vote. The absurd rule that re 
 quires two-thirds of the House to agree to take up such reso 
 lutions for consideration, has, in both of these cases, enabled 
 the administration party on this floor, although in a minority, 
 to frustrate our endeavors to learn something of the transac- 
 
232 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 tions of the Government in the matters to which they referred. 
 It is apparent that we may indulge but little hope, during the 
 present organization of this. House, to penetrate into the se 
 crets of the administration ; but the time, I would fain believe, 
 is not very remote when a searching inspection of the hidden 
 machinery may no longer be parried by the tactics of party. 
 Another year, and this duty will fall into the hands of those 
 who, whatever may be their imputed want of qualification in 
 other respects, will not be charged, even by their enemies, 
 with a suspected favor or affection for the delinquents. The 
 fruits of such an examination cannot be otherwise than whole 
 some. 
 
 From this investigation, Mr. Chairman, whenever it shall 
 be undertaken, I am not unprepared to expect the disclosure 
 of flagrant errors and misdeeds in the management of the 
 public concerns. The calm, impartial judgment of the country 
 rests with a deep and melancholy consciousness upon such an 
 expectation ; nay, sir, even the friends of the predominant 
 power itself are alarmed by it, and writhe under it. The errors 
 of this administration are the necessary products of that state 
 of things which brought it into power. Its misdoing is not 
 less its misfortune than its fault attributable in as large a 
 degree to its want of sagacity as to its evil inclinations : it is 
 the natural offspring of INCAPACITY. 
 
 It is now just ten years since the elevation to the Presiden 
 tial chair of the most remarkable man of our times ; remark 
 able as much for the intrinsic properties of his character, as 
 for the singular good fortune that attended him through life. 
 The era of his election to the Presidency was once called 
 the ERA OF REFORM. Some still affect to call it by that name. 
 To my mind, it is chiefly memorable as the commencement of 
 a great delusion an imposture conducted with no ordinary 
 ability, and propagating its principles by troops of political 
 Islamites as fervent, as obsequious, and as numerous as the 
 faithful who swarmed beneath the grotesque banner of the 
 Eastern prophet. Ten years have gone by since that eventful 
 
DIPLOMATIC APPROPRIATIONS. 233 
 
 epoch, ten long years of various fortune, in which, if the hap 
 piness of the American people has not been increased, we may 
 confidently affirm that large and valuable additions have been 
 made to their experience. The occasion afforded by the dis 
 cussions of this committee is appropriate to a survey of this 
 field of experience ; and I propose, sir, chiefly to direct my 
 remarks to that end. 
 
 No one can forget how peculiarly felicitous to his own 
 fame, and how eminently favorable to the hopes of the country, 
 were the circumstances under which General Jackson was first 
 presented to this nation as a candidate for the Presidency. 
 The men of the Revolution were gone ; the field was crowded 
 with aspirants, and the capital had become the seat of num 
 berless intrigues, or what was practically the same thing 
 was suspected to be so. In the perplexity of the public mind, 
 and its misgivings lest the popular will should have less to do 
 with the adjustment of this question than the secret manage 
 ment of leaders, there was a sudden uprising of the great mass 
 of the nation to take the selection of the Chief Magistrate out 
 of the hands of the politicians, and preserve it in their own. 
 They chose their candidate in the great military favorite of 
 the day, even while he himself (it was at that time believed) 
 was innocent of all thought of such an honor. General Jack 
 son s imputed moderation of political sentiment ; his freedom 
 from party trammels, so signally proclaimed in that famous 
 correspondence with Mr. Monroe ; his extreme lenity and kind 
 ness towards the old Federal party ; his unbounded personal 
 popularity, founded on meritorious military service ; his al 
 leged honesty and directness of character, and his boasted 
 knowledge of men, all contributed to give him a position of 
 irresistible command, and to more than compensate for that 
 want of statesmanship and political science which even his 
 nearest friends admitted. With these ascribed qualities of 
 character, he rallied around him not only the largest support 
 of the people, but the aid of the most powerful talents in the 
 nation. It was said and no doubt it was true that, in the 
 
234: POLITICAL TAPERS. 
 
 event of his election, he might have called to the public ser 
 vice a combination of the greatest ability and influence which 
 the country afforded. 
 
 At that time (I speak of the canvass of 1828-4) we heard 
 nothing of REFORM. The country asked no reform ; it needed 
 none. The administration of Mr. Monroe had given universal 
 satisfaction, and the people did not doubt the integrity of their 
 public functionaries. 
 
 At the first moment of the defeat of General Jackson s 
 election in the House of Representatives, opposition was de 
 clared against the administration that was to succeed fierce, 
 unsparing, relentless opposition. It was not directed against 
 measures, nor even against men ; but it was a premeditated, 
 foreavowed hostility to each and every adherent of that ad 
 ministration, and to each and every measure it should propose. 
 Its basis was the vindication of the alleged violation of the 
 popular will in the choice that had been made ; and the new 
 incumbent, it was profanely declared in this Capitol, should 
 be assailed in his administration, even though that adminis 
 tration should " be pure as the angels at the right hand of 
 God." The opposition, therefore, to Mr. Adams, looked to 
 no reform. Indeed, sir, in point of principle and of policy, the 
 administration of the venerable gentleman who now sits before 
 me, was identical with that of his predecessor. It adopted 
 the same measures ; rested on the same general doctrines ; 
 was, like it, economical, cautious, and conciliatory ; and was 
 sustained, and even administered, by almost the same men. 
 What was there in it to provoke a zeal for reform ? 
 
 Sir, if the nation had desired a reform, it would not have 
 selected General Jackson. Whatever great qualities it was 
 usual to ascribe to him, all would have conceded that he had 
 neither the coolness of temper, the knowledge, nor the expe 
 rience essential to the composition of that character. Still, 
 however, as the second canvass approached, it fell in with the 
 views of the party leaders, that an impression should be made 
 of something rotten in the state, and through this opinion to 
 
DIPLOMATIC APPROPRIATIONS. 235 
 
 enlist an opposition on the basis of reform. With this design, 
 committees were raised in both Houses of Congress to inquire 
 into abuses. They made their reports with ominous denun 
 ciations, and I think, sir, in view of what has transpired 
 since, we may now say with a ludicrous exaggeration of 
 sundry very pitiful complaints. The search after abuse, not 
 withstanding all that was made of it at the time, we may fairly 
 admit, was a distinguished failure. The scheme, however, 
 served its turn, and General Jackson was all at once meta 
 morphosed, or rather magnified, into the Great Reformer. 
 
 This movement accomplished a double purpose. It spread 
 abroad a false opinion of great corruption in the existing Gov 
 ernment, and offered an acceptable flattery to the chief. It 
 gave him a position of peculiar veneration with the people. 
 His election was heralded as a coming glory a mission of 
 political regeneration and he was looked upon, in some sort, 
 as a predestined instrument of national blessing. He was 
 proclaimed "the Reformer," /0r excellence; and in the very 
 novel and classical phrase of the stump-orators from Maine 
 to Missouri came, as a second Hercules, to sweep out the 
 great Augean stable of the Government. It was then, sir, a 
 favorite theme to declaim against the abuse of patronage and 
 the servility of the press : we often heard of the extravagance 
 of the administration, and of the loose supervision of the 
 Treasury. The party evolutions of that date, the Congres 
 sional reports and speeches, the newspaper dissertations, all 
 bear evidence to the flood of patriotic and virtuous horror 
 which burst forth from the bosoms of the reformers at the prof 
 ligacy of the Government, in adding sixty or eighty thousand 
 dollars to the national expenditure, and allowing nineteen 
 hundred to Mr. Pleasants for his expenses as bearer of des 
 patches to Rio ! 
 
 In the same tone of feeling, and in accordance with the de 
 sign of the authors of the movement, General Jackson lost no 
 time, after his election, to communicate the great purport of 
 his newly-conceived mission with every solemnity which official 
 
236 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 authority could throw around it. The portentous words were 
 spoken in the inaugural, from the portico of this Capitol 
 
 " The recent demonstration of public sentiment inscribes 
 on the list of Executive duties, in characters too legible- to be 
 overlooked, THE TASK OF REFORM ; which will require particu 
 larly the correction of those abuses which have brought the 
 patronage of the General Government in conflict with the 
 freedom of elections, and the counteraction of those causes 
 which have disturbed the rightful course of appointment, and 
 have placed or continued power in unfaithful or incompetent 
 hands." 
 
 Soon after this oracular, and, to the great body of the 
 country, startling announcement, we were made acquainted 
 with the specific abuses to which this pruning-knife of reform 
 was to be chiefly and most industriously applied. The regular 
 annual message, at the opening of the first Congress under 
 the new administration, is full of the grand design. This 
 paper was matured in an interval of leisure ; it was skilfully 
 and carefully composed, and may be deemed the authoritative 
 rescript of reform. It professes to emit the light wherein the 
 administration was to walk, and to lay down the map of its 
 great working plan. In that document you shall find the 
 President s mind occupied with four prominent reforms, which 
 are treated as cardinal in the creed of freedom indispensa 
 ble to the existence of pure government, not less than vital 
 to the cause of republicanism. I will not stop, sir, to read 
 more than a few passages from this message ; but I invite 
 members, at their leisure, to give the whole of it a careful 
 perusal. Its meditated reforms are 
 
 ist. In the mode of electing the President and his re-eligi 
 bility to office the plan recommended being to " remove all 
 intermediate agency (of the Electoral College and House of 
 Representatives) in the election of the President and Vice- 
 President," and, " in connection with such an amendment, to 
 limit the service of the Chief Magistrate to a single term of 
 either four or six years. 
 
 2cl. In the disqualification of members of Congress for office, 
 
DIPLOMATIC APPKOI RIATIONS. 20 
 
 at the appointment of the President in whose election they 
 may have been officially concerned. 
 
 3d. In the principle of appointing to office, in the language 
 of the message, " solely for the benefit of the people," and, "by 
 a general extension of the law which limits appointments to 
 four years," to lessen the liability of encumbering the Govern 
 ment with men who cannot, "for any length of time, enjoy 
 office and power without being more or less under the influ 
 ence of feelings unfavorable to the faithful discharge of their 
 public duties ;" and 
 
 4th. To establish a strict accountability in the public ser 
 vants, and a rigid supervision of the Treasury ; in reference 
 to which, the attention of Congress was invited to the in 
 quiry as to " what offices might be dispensed with, what ex 
 penses retrenched, and what improvements might be made in 
 the organization of its various parts, to secure the proper re 
 sponsibility of public agents, and promote efficiency and jus 
 tice in all its operations." 
 
 Now, sir, there is the Chart of Reform. Good and whole 
 some reforms, Mr. Chairman, each and all of them ! I sup 
 ported them then : I would support them now. The whole 
 nation I mean the whole body of the governed, as distin 
 guished from those who govern would have sustained these 
 improvements or changes at that day, as I have no doubt they 
 would at this, if the proposition were submitted to them. 
 
 Well, sir, what became of all these amendments in our 
 domestic polity ? Ten years have passed over, and during all 
 that time the reformers have had unlimited control of the Gov 
 ernment. Is there a man on this floor will say that General 
 Jackson could not have carried any measure that he deemed 
 essential to the honor and glory of his administration, or to 
 the welfare of the nation? Did he want power to achieve his 
 plans of administration ? Was he not backed by his friends 
 ay, and by the large majorities of the country in whatever 
 scheme he indulged for the public good ? Was not his honor, 
 his faith, his reputation, pledged to these reforms ? Was he 
 
23S POLITICAL PAPEKS. 
 
 not glorified by all his banded presses when he proposed them? 
 Turn to the newspapers of December, 1829. and read how, 
 from city to city, village to village, to every hamlet and cabin, 
 the tide of gratulation and panegyric rolled forward, to the 
 magnifying of the Great Reformer. Now, sir, of these four 
 conspicuous, cardinal reformations, which was achieved ? Not 
 one not one ! 
 
 Achieved ! not only were they not achieved, but the whole 
 current of the President s power, all his practice, his precept, 
 his policy, from alpha to omega, set directly, and of delibera 
 tion aforethought, against this whole scheme of reform. He 
 was not merely indifferent to it, careless in enforcing it, slug- 
 glish or pre-occupied with other matter ; but he grew to be, in 
 a very brief space of time, distinctly and actively hostile to 
 it. He wrought no change in the mode of electing the Presi 
 dent; and so far from limiting his service to a single term 
 (which he might have done as efficiently by example as by 
 law), he actually electioneered through the country for a sec 
 ond choice ; and if report be true, as I believe it is, franked 
 with his own hand the letter of his own secretary soliciting his 
 renomination to the Presidency from the Legislature of Penn 
 sylvania. 
 
 Holding executive favor, as he did, to be so unfriendly to 
 the free and faithful discharge of the duty of the representative, 
 he might, at least, have been sparing in the selection of mem 
 bers of Congress for office. And yet, sir, upon an enumeration 
 of his appointments, it will be found that no President had 
 ever dealt so largely in this stock of corruption. Nay, sir, I 
 think I am warranted in saying (I have not cast it up arith 
 metically), that General Jackson raised more members of Con 
 gress to office than all the Presidents before him together had 
 done since the adoption of the Constitution. 
 
 Then, as to his pretended reform of the principle of ap 
 pointment, and his doctrine that office was to be filled solely 
 for the common good : public employment became, under his 
 auspices, notoriously the mere prize of party service. Never, 
 
DIPLOMATIC APPROPRIATIONS. 231) 
 
 until General Jackson s day, did partisan effrontery rise into 
 such matchless contempt of the decencies of public observance 
 as to make open proclamation that office was the spoil of vic 
 tory, and belonged of right to the conquerors. Never, until 
 his day, was the Post Office, with its countless servitors, seized 
 upon as the instrument of political success. Yet he did it with 
 out a blush, and has turned its whole artillery back upon the 
 people, to batter down their independence. He would have 
 done the same with the Bank, but that he found that citadel 
 too strong to be assailed, and too firm to be seduced : to which 
 fact may be traced thai malignant and absurd war which 
 constitutes both the chief exploit and deepest disgrace of his 
 administration. 
 
 His greater accountability of the public servants, his guard 
 ianship of the public treasure what are they ? A jest. The 
 Treasury has been almost emptied by the larcenies of the chief 
 ministers of the law : and at this day the friends of the men in 
 power are heaping upon our tables piles of bills to guard them 
 against the felonies of their political brethren, vainly attempt 
 ing to cast upon the law the irregularities that have grown out 
 of their neglect or their incapacity to administer it. 
 
 Thus ends this farce of Reform ! It lias sunk into insignif 
 icance ; it has left no memory behind it but that of a hypo 
 critical and wicked fraud a trick of imposture a thing to 
 juggle with. As a scheme of amendment, it was a ridiculous 
 abortion ; as a device of party tactics, it was below contempt. 
 The august patron of pure government, the conservator of the 
 public morals, the predestined and foreannounced Reformer 
 of a backsliding generation, has been overmatched by the se 
 ductions of Satan, and has fallen into communion with the un 
 clean thing. He has even trafficked in the great and the small 
 iniquities which he came to denounce. 
 
 Mr. Chairman, while from this view of the movement to 
 which I have referred, it is evident that General Jackson has 
 been singularly unlucky as a Reformer, I will not deny to him 
 a reputation quite as prominent, and infinitely more mischiev- 
 
240 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 ous that of an INNOVATOR ; for innovator he was in the broad 
 est and worst sense. 
 
 His administration was one of ceaseless change : change, 
 sometimes stealing along in noiseless advance, sometimes 
 bursting forth, in bold, open-day achievement ; one while 
 sweeping with the breath of spring, at another with the rage 
 and havoc of the tornado. We had ever change of men, 
 change of measures, change of principles. The pervading 
 characteristic of that most anomalous and extraordinary admin 
 istration was mutation uncertainty experiment. It lived in 
 perpetual motion, defying all hope of repose ; it rejoiced in tur 
 moil, and revelled in paradox. Those who followed it were 
 forever ignorant of their whereabout : they knew no rest for 
 the soles of their feet they travelled over quicksands. The 
 idea of political consistency never entered into the President s 
 head he had no perception of the meaning of the term. His 
 idol was his popularity, and whatever sustained that, consti 
 tuted the theory of his conduct. It was his boast, his glory, 
 his perpetual aim. His dream was popularity, his motive was 
 popularity, his defence was popularity. Not that popularity 
 which submissively trails after the public will, and humbly es 
 says to do the public bidding ; nor that nobler motive which 
 studies the country s good, and, by an assiduous devotion to 
 the duties of station, seeks the applause of its own conscience 
 and the approbation of virtuous men ; but a domineering, way 
 ward, arrogant popularity an impatient, hectoring assumption 
 of the right to lead, which repudiates all law, despises all ob 
 servance, and maintains its supremacy by personal and party 
 force. 
 
 In General Jackson, his popularity was the means by which 
 he increased his power ; and his power was used, in turn, to 
 enlarge his popularity. With consummate skill (for I do not 
 deny to him great foresight and management) he turned all 
 the resources of his position to the strengthening of this his 
 most cherished attribute. The very boldness of his designs 
 seemed to fascinate the public admiration : he dazzled the pep- 
 
DIPLOMATIC APPROPRIATIONS. 1 
 
 ular mind by that fearlessness which we were, for a time, accus 
 tomed to interpret as a proof of his honesty and uprightness 
 of purpose. Least of all men was he suspected of dissimula 
 tion : and yet I am persuaded a more skilful dissembler never 
 occupied high station in our country. He flattered the people 
 with the address of a practised courtier, startled and amused 
 them by the thunder-claps of his policy, identified his success 
 with the gratification of their favorite passions, grappled him 
 self with wonderful adroitness to the predominant sentiments, 
 wishes, and prejudices of the great and massive majority and 
 became a monarch, an autocrat, by the sheer concentration of 
 republican suffrage. 
 
 This power he wielded with a stern and inexorable temper 
 of proscription against all who did not bow down to his au 
 thority, and worship him as the embodiment, the incarnation 
 of the Popular Sovereignty. He was the fountain of honor, 
 the arbiter of disgrace, holding the political fortunes and hopes 
 of his followers at his own capricious disposal. The most in 
 dulgent of friends, the most ruthless of enemies, there was no 
 delinquency of the one that he could not overlook ; there was 
 no offence in the other so trivial, that, when occasion offered, 
 he would not visit it with vindictive punishment. He who 
 could not only tolerate, but sustain, protect, and reward the 
 troops of greedy parasites, the defaulters, the public plunder 
 ers, that thronged his hall in the guise of friends men, some 
 of whom were notorious for the derangement of their official 
 accounts could, nevertheless, pursue, with unprecedented ani 
 mosity, an unwary trespasser upon the Government treasure 
 a small defaulter of some three thousand dollars and, for 
 years, delight himself with the sufferings of his victim. He 
 could continue to heap upon this man fresh indignity, disgrace 
 and pain, even beyond a rigorous judicial sentence, until the 
 humanity of the nation at last revolted, and cried out " For 
 shame !" This could he do, because, the unfortunate subject 
 of his wrath had, in an evil hour, ventured to exercise the priv 
 ilege of a free citizen, and express, in a public journal, his dis- 
 ii 
 
242 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 approbation of the measures, and his doubts of the political in 
 tegrity of the Imperial Republican Chief. 
 
 With such a temper, and such power in the Executive, what 
 considerate citizen of this land had not motive to pause, and 
 look with distrust and fear to the future ? Sir, the events that 
 have taken place under that rule have fully justified the worst 
 forebodings of those who watched its progress. A great and 
 vicious revolution was accomplished in the character of this 
 Government one which shall render the name of its author 
 forever famous in our annals. 
 
 General Jackson s first term was occupied in the practice 
 of those arts by which his popularity was extended and con 
 firmed. It was a period of preparation and marshalling of 
 forces. No one who reads the history of that period, in the Ex 
 ecutive communications and in the official press commentaries 
 of the day, will fail to be struck with the extreme profession of 
 reverence for the popular will which everywhere speaks in the 
 language, or breathes in the spirit of these emanations from 
 the Chief Magistrate. Some such declarations as the follow 
 ing ever meet the eye in the perusal of these papers : 
 
 " I regard an appeal to the source of power, in all cases 
 of real doubt, and when its exercise is deemed indispensable 
 to the general welfare, as among the most sacred of all obliga 
 tions." Message 0/1829 
 
 " I know no tribunal to which a public man in this country, 
 in a case of doubt and difficulty, can appeal with greater ad 
 vantage or more propriety, than the judgment of the people"- 
 Message #/" 1830. 
 
 The frequent reiteration of such sentiments could not but 
 inspire confidence and trust in the Executive among all 
 those, especially, whose preconceived opinion of the Presi 
 dent s uprightness prepared them to indulge the kindest feel 
 ings towards his success. This constant recurrence to the 
 source of power was a gentle flattery, well contrived to put the 
 people off their guard. It has ever been the trick of ambition, 
 from the days of Caesar to our own. With all this display of 
 respect for the popular will, no man ever held that will in 
 
DIPLOMATIC APPROPRIATIONS. 243 
 
 greater contempt, when it came in conflict with his own, than 
 the late President. Sir, if you desire the proof of it, you shall 
 find it not only in the heady current of his life, but in the 
 whole course of that battle with the Legislative power which 
 marked his career ; his perpetual veto of the representative 
 action in the internal improvement bills, the bank bills, the 
 land bill all forbidden in the face of large majorities of the 
 direct representatives of the people notoriously in the face of 
 the popular judgment and wish of the day. You shall see it in 
 the famous removal of the deposits ; in the refusal to restore 
 them ; in that high-handed measure of holding back the land 
 bill when it was known that two-thirds of both Houses would 
 have passed it in spite of the veto ; and, above all other acts 
 of contumacy to public opinion and popular will the cap-sheaf 
 of his waywardness his pocketing (as it has been signifi 
 cantly termed) of the bill for the repeal of the Treasury cir 
 cular. 
 
 Sir, it was this hostility to popular control that led Gener 
 al Jackson to that systematic assault upon the structure of this 
 Government, which I have termed a revolution, and which end 
 ed only in the subversion of some of the most important prin 
 ciples of the Constitution. His scheme was to enlarge the Ex 
 ecutive power and to depress the Legislative. In the Execu 
 tive power he saw and felt the source of unlimited popularity ; 
 in the Legislative he was aware of a constant, jealous guard 
 ianship against encroachment, that restricted his footsteps to 
 a path in which he had no patience to walk. The one was the 
 parent of patronage, reward, and partisan alliance ; the other 
 a surly warder of popular rights, whose appropriate duty lay 
 in curbing the excursive spirit of an ambitious chief. 
 
 I have said, sir, that General Jackson s first term was em 
 ployed in marshalling his forces. His second is distinguished 
 by the developments of his skill in using them. Immediate 
 ly after his re-election, a principle of vast import and signifi 
 cance was announced to the country, with all the authority 
 which an Executive communication could confer upon it. The 
 
POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 scope of this principle was to set Congress at defiance by assum 
 ing for the Executive, not only an independence of the Legisla 
 ture, but even a superiority over it. It was declared that 
 
 The President was the representative of the American peo 
 ple co-equal with the Legislative power, accountable to the 
 people and not to Congress for its acts : 
 
 And a corollary was deduced from this 
 
 That the elections, being appeals to the people, were to be 
 interpreted as expositions of the public judgment in favor of 
 the great Representative Chief, and were to be taken as con 
 firmations of all his acts, principles, and opinions. 
 
 " It will be for those in whose behalf we all act, says the 
 President, in his nrst message after his re-election, when giv 
 ing his reasons for setting aside the decision of the House of 
 Representatives in favor of retaining the deposits in the bank, 
 " to decide whether the Executive department of the Govern 
 ment, in the steps which it has taken on this subject, has been 
 found in the line of its duty." 
 
 In that appeal to the people against Congress is the first 
 dawn of this new theory of Executive power. It was more 
 fully announced afterwards in the famous " Protest" of April 
 following. 
 
 " The President," it is there declared, " is the direct rep 
 resentative of the American people." 
 
 And again : 
 
 " The Legislative power, subject to the qualified negative 
 of the President, is vested in the Congress of the United States, 
 composed of the Senate and House of Representatives. The 
 Executive power is vested exclusively in the President, except 
 that, in the conclusion of treaties and in certain appointments 
 to office, he is to act with the advice and consent of the Senate. 
 The Judicial power is vested exclusively in the Supreme and 
 other courts of the United States, except in cases of impeach 
 ment, for which purpose the accusatory power is vested in the 
 House of Representatives, and that of hearing and determin 
 ing in the Senate. But, although for the special purposes 
 which have been mentioned, there is an occasional intermixture 
 of the powers of the different departments, yet with these excep 
 tions each of the three great departments is independent of the 
 
DIPLOMATIC APPROPRIATIONS. 245 
 
 others in its sphere of action : and when, it deviates from that 
 sphere is not responsible to the others further than it is expressly 
 made so by the Constitution. In every other respect each of 
 them as the co-equal of the other two, and are all servants of the 
 American people, without power or right to control or censure 
 each other in the service of their common superior, save only in 
 the manner and to the degree which that superior has prescri 
 bed." /><?//, April 1834. 
 
 The President having thus assumed a position which ena 
 bled him to defy the inspection or control of the Legislature ; 
 having thus exempted himself from all accountability except 
 in the impracticable form of impeachment to the representa 
 tives of the nation, and invested himself with an undefined and 
 hitherto unheard-of pretention to the character of a direct Su 
 preme National Representative, his next step was to strength 
 en his vantage-ground by defences that should with no less ef 
 ficacy, exempt the subordinate functionaries, through whom his 
 measures were carried into effect, from their supposed account 
 ability to the Legislative power. It was very evident that the 
 Executive had gained but half a conquest while its agents 
 were exposed to that supervision of the Legislature which 
 might frighten them from their party allegiance to their chief. 
 To protect them against this supervision required a still broad 
 er pretension than the last, and thence arose that famous doc 
 trine of Executive Unity and Responsibility, which figures so con 
 spicuously in the promulgation of the new creed of the second 
 term. In this creed the Executive is a unit, and in the Presi 
 dent alone rests all the responsibility : the officers of Govern 
 ment are but the creations of his will ; the agents for the 
 performance of his duty ; accountable to him, and to no 
 one else. 
 
 " By the Constitution," I read, sir, again from the Protest 
 " the Executive power is vested in the President of the 
 United States. Among the duties imposed upon him, and 
 which he is sworn to perform, is that of taking care that the 
 laws be faithfully executed. Being thus made responsible for 
 the etitire action of the Executive department, it was but rea 
 sonable that the power of appointing, overseeing and controlling 
 
216 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 those who execute the laws a power in its nature executive 
 should remain in his hands." 
 
 And once more, in the same paper : 
 
 " The whole Executive power being vested in the President, 
 who is responsible for its exercise, it is a necessary consequence 
 that he should have a right to employ agents of his own choice to 
 aid him in the performance of his duties, and to discharge them 
 when he is no longer willing to be responsible for their acts" 
 
 True to this theory of Executive duty and power, and very 
 distinctly, sir, to my mind, denoting its parentage, we have 
 seen, on a late occasion, the Postmaster-General favoring the 
 country with a practical commentary upon its meaning. I 
 will beg to read a passage from his answer to the application 
 for a mandamus in the case of Stockton and Stokes. 
 
 " The Executive," says Mr. Kendall, u is a unity. The 
 framers of the Constitution had studied history too well to im 
 pose on the country a divided Executive. The executive power 
 was vested in a President. The executive officers are his agents, 
 for whom he is held responsible by the people, whose agent he is. 
 The acts of the executive officers are the acts of the President. Con 
 stitutionally he is as responsible for them as if they were done 
 by himself, though not morally." 
 
 Now, sir, it is evident that this accountability of the subor 
 dinate officers of this Government to the President is alto 
 gether incompatible with their responsibility to the National 
 Legislature, or even with their liability to be inspected or exam 
 ined by that Legislature. All responsibility is converged upon 
 the President, and he being, according to the theory, the rep 
 resentative of the people, is accountable only to them, and not 
 to his mere co-equal or, more properly speaking, in the spirit 
 of these assumptions, his inferior the Legislative body, com 
 posed as it is, of but fragment representations of that same 
 people. 
 
 When we add, Mr. Chairman, to all these pretensions that 
 kindred claim with which this nation was so familiar in the 
 palmy days of Jacksonism the claim to interpret the laws as 
 the President understood them, without respect to judicial author- 
 
DIPLOMATIC APPROPRIATIONS. 247 
 
 ity, legislative exposition, or prescriptive usage, but solely as 
 the Chief Magistrate s green or ripe judgment, his passion or 
 his intellect might suggest when we add this pretension to 
 the rest, we have a scheme of power so comprehensive for 
 every purpose of misrule and corruption as to leave the most 
 absolute cravings of despot ambition nothing to desire in the 
 construction of the frame-work of a Government that might 
 crush every principle of freedom in our Constitution worth con 
 tending for. The wit of man could not devise a plan of en 
 croachment upon regulated liberty more insidious, progressive, 
 and, finally, more sure to end in absolutism than this I have 
 so cursorily brought into review. Based upon an imperious 
 popularity (for no President but one so armed with the peo 
 ple s devotion could have advanced a step in this perilous 
 career), it assumes for the Executive, successively first, a 
 representative character, co-equal with, and independent of the 
 Legislature ; then, a right to regard the result of the elections 
 as a popular ratification of Executive conduct ; then a con 
 structive and exclusive responsibility for all subordinate offi 
 cers ; and finally the independent interpretation of the laws. 
 The result of all is, to give to this republican nation a Chief 
 Magistrate of more power and less real responsibility, of broad 
 er range for mischievous ambition, and greater capacity for 
 harm, than may be found in any constitutional monarch of 
 modern times. Sir, these doctrines have sprung out of the 
 very insolence of power : they are the landmarks which trace 
 the victory of a proud chief over the rights and laws of a sub 
 dued country. 
 
 Till conquest unresisted cease to please 
 And rights submitted left him none to seize. 
 
 These assumptions, Mr. Chairman, were not mere political 
 abstractions. They were active elements in all the workings 
 of the late administration. They constituted the machinery 
 by which the grossest abuses in this Government were engen 
 dered and screened from the observation of the public eye. 
 
248 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 To them may be traced that abundant fruit of corruption which 
 is now just beginning to show its hideous rottenness. Let any 
 one turn back to the history of " The Investigation," as it is 
 called u The Concealment" would be its better name of 
 1837. There let him read the President s refusal to answer 
 interrogatories as to the condition of the departments, and 
 his claim to be exempted from question unless specific charges 
 were exhibited. Let him reflect upon the President s arro 
 gant arraignment of members of this House for their freedom 
 of speech in the debate that preceded the appointment of the 
 committee ; the order to the cabinet officers to disregard the 
 mandate of the committee, and their consequent refusal to 
 answer ; the claim to protection from this examination set up 
 by the President and his cabinet, upon the plea of privilege 
 against self - inculpation ; the personal immunity asserted by 
 them against search for papers ; and, finally, the impudent 
 defiance of the committee by the Postmaster-General. Let 
 any man turn to these proceedings, so recent, so vivid in the 
 recollection of the nation, and he will at once be able to trace 
 out the impression of this new political philosophy on every 
 feature of that remarkable incident. 
 
 It will be remembered, too, sir, that these doctrines are 
 altogether of recent date the coinage of the last administra 
 tion. Never before, in the history of this Govern ment, have 
 they been asserted in theory or developed in practice. They 
 are utterly without precedent or color of former example. As 
 I have said, sir, they owed their origin to the necessities of 
 General Jackson s scheme of administration a scheme whose 
 fatal aim was the prostration of every department of this Gov 
 ernment before the Executive. It is curious to note, in the 
 progress of this revolution, with what confidence its great 
 author trusted to the force of profession when it was necessary 
 to blind the people against the perception of his real designs, 
 and how little trouble he gave himself to reconcile this profes 
 sion with his practice. There was no sentiment which was 
 paraded more ostentatiously before the public eye by the Pres- 
 
DIPLOMATIC APPROPRIATIONS. 24:9 
 
 ident than the declaration of his extreme scruple against the 
 exercise of doubtful powers. There is scarcely a State paper 
 of his day that does not repeat the admonition against this easy 
 sin of questionable power, as the first and gravest to be depre 
 cated. As if the President were conscious that his temper, and 
 the habits of his past life, might lay him open to .the suspicion 
 of this sin, he is careful to desecrate it with a peculiar abhor 
 rence. Now, sir, it will be found that there has been scarce 
 a power under our Constitution, which in the course of fifty 
 years administration has been held doubtful, that General 
 Jackson has not either exercised, or assumed the right to ex 
 ercise without hesitation. He expressed his willingness to 
 charter a National Bank ; and would have done so, as he de 
 clared, if the plan had been conformable to certain views 
 which he disclosed : he signed bills for internal improvements : 
 he constantly used the veto on mere questions of expediency, 
 where no constitutional objection was pretended : he has held 
 back a bill from Congress when two-thirds of each House 
 would have voted for it : in the case of the specie circular, he 
 refused to return the bill altogether : he has appointed to 
 office after his nominee has been rejected by the Senate : he 
 removed the deposits upon a plea of constitutional respon 
 sibility, when the officer to whom the law specially intrusted 
 them had refused : he has denied to Congress the right to in 
 spect the departments unless that inspection were directed to 
 previously specified charges of abuse. I do not pretend to 
 say, Mr. Chairman, that some of the powers to which these 
 acts refer may not be lawfully and beneficially exercised by 
 the Executive I believe they may, sir but every one will 
 admit that they may be all ranked among that class of doubt 
 ful powers upon which great contrariety of opinion has ex 
 isted in this country ; and I allude to the action of the late 
 President in reference to them, only by way of contrast be 
 tween his profession and his practice, and to show how little 
 scrupulous he was as to constitutional restraints, when it suited 
 his purpose to transcend them, 
 n* 
 
250 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 The adoption, Mr. Chairman, of such principles as I have 
 described, and the administration of the Government in accord* 
 ance with them, are altogether sufficient to explain any amoun 
 of official delinquency which has been, or may hereafter be, dis 
 closed. Such a system, by converting the powers of the Gov 
 ernment intqa party engine, could not fail to breed up an army 
 of partisan-zealots, such as we have seen rude, rapacious and 
 selfish. It could not fail to lower the estimate of public virtue, 
 to debauch public morals, and to fill the land with greedy 
 hunters after " the spoils." It could not fail to engender hosts 
 of demagogues, of every order and degree from the fustian 
 ranter of a tippling shop, up to the all-sufficient oracle of Jaco 
 bin philosophy in the Senate or to the more shrewd and cun 
 ning fomenter of base prejudices and passions in the cabinet. 
 Yes, sir, even higher still to the popularity-engrossing chief 
 himself. It has already done all this, and more. The favor of 
 Government has become a prize to be won by adulation and 
 compliance, and, as a necessary consequence, the meanest man 
 ever bears away the reward. Public office is to be obtained 
 only by that subserviency which no honorable man can con 
 descend to yield, it therefore inevitably falls into the hands of 
 the worst. Good men fly from the association of the Execu 
 tive. Sir, it is remarkable that General Jackson s adminis 
 tration could never retain about it men of pre-eminent ability : 
 it was not their sphere. They fled from it in squadrons. Even 
 the ties of friendly association in the cabinet could not be pre 
 served beyond a year at a time. President Jackson made as 
 many ghosts as Richard : 
 
 " Where is Clarence ? 
 
 Where is the gentle Rivers, Vaughan, Grey ? 
 Where the kind Hastings ?" 
 
 I may ask : Where is Berrien, Branch, Ingham ? Where 
 Duane, McLane, and other early friends of the chief? Gone, 
 sir, immolated by that spirit which endured no free opinion. 
 Not only from the presence of the chief himself did they fly, 
 
DIPLOMATIC APPROPRIATIONS. 251 
 
 but in every department of the service the talent of the nation 
 deserted him. From the earliest era of that rule, down to the 
 present day, every election has successively lowered the scale 
 of ability by which the reigning power is sustained ; until, at 
 last, it is apparent that the party in possession of the Govern 
 ment is soon likely to be without that modicum of talent, which, 
 even at this moment, so scantily suffices for the small vindica 
 tion, on this floor, of its own small merits. 
 
 Sir, the baleful influence of the last administration was not 
 confined to the character of the public men with which it was 
 surrounded it might be traced through almost every depart 
 ment of society. We lived in the midst of convulsions. The 
 public taste was vitiated and fed by the stimulus of constantly 
 recurring political eruptions ; it delighted in strange conjunc 
 tures the heavings and spasms of that capricious power which 
 displayed itself in such fantastic action at the capital. A spirit 
 of insubordination, of misrule and riot became diffused through 
 the community. Wild and visionary theories of political duty- 
 were disseminated abroad and showed themselves in the most 
 mischievous forms, in the proceedings of the State Legislatures. 
 The most abstruse and difficult problems of political economy 
 questions of currency, finance, constitutional power were 
 summarily but most authoritatively disposed of by the shal 
 lowest pretenders to statesmanship ; and the oldest and best 
 institutions of the country attacked and beaten down by po 
 litical charlatans. Knowledge, deliberation, experience, all 
 were obliged to give way to this newly-inspired intuition ; and 
 the greatest pains were taken by party leaders and demagogues 
 to deceive the people into the belief that the profoundest ques 
 tions of Government might be consigned to the decision of 
 men of the lowest scale of qualification in political science. 
 A broad and odious line of distinction was drawn between the 
 rich and the poor ; and where mutual dependence and interest 
 should have engendered kind feelings, harmony and brother 
 hood, the seeds of ill-will and hatred were deeply sown. 
 
 In obedience to the same influence, the Government press 
 
IJOZ POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 became a mere engine of slander the fabricator of palpable 
 and gross falsehood. Every thing that transpired in the Gov 
 ernment was distorted by its light. What, in its vocabulary, 
 \vas called public opinion, was but the reverberation of its 
 own false clamor. The people were systematically abused, 
 cheated, and betrayed by its monstrous counterfeits juggled 
 and duped by the Type Fiend. The coherence of " the party" 
 required an organized plan of misrepresentation : the existence 
 of the administration required it. It had risen by it, and was 
 maintained by it. It could not have subsisted a month if the 
 people could have heard the truth. It would have withered 
 in the light, and crumbled into dust. The whole atmosphere 
 in which it breathed was false : the element upon which it 
 lived was deception : its popularity, its power, its duration, 
 depended on the essential condition of blinding the people. 
 It lived, and moved, and had its being in the Universal, Inex 
 tinguishable, Everlasting LIE. 
 
 While this was the action of that administration upon the 
 morals of the nation, its measures were no less physically 
 hurtful to the public interest. They were hurtful from the 
 same causes that rendered its principles vicious. They were 
 ever dictated by selfish passion, and characterized by that 
 domineering temper which I hav e before described as the dis 
 tinctive impulse of the administration. 
 
 The President s vanity and thirst for applause rendered him 
 eagerly and rashly precipitate to pay off the public debt. All 
 other interests were compelled to give place to the achieve 
 ment of the glory of wiping away that debt during the term 
 of his political supremacy : 
 
 His hatred, or rather his defiance and impatience of the 
 fame of one man (Mr. Biddle), caused him to make war upo* 
 the Bank : 
 
 His personal animosity to another distinguished individual 
 (Mr. Clay) induced him to veto the Land Bill. 
 
 To these three measures, proceeding from the egotism and 
 vain-gloriousness of the President, may be traced the chief 
 
DIPLOMATIC APPROPKIATIONS. 253 
 
 maladies of the times. To them may be traced, in succession, 
 the overthrow of internal improvements, the accumulation 
 of the surplus, the distribution, the paper system, the 
 hard-money experiment, the suspension, the wide-spread 
 bankruptcy, and, finally, the enormous and unexampled pec 
 ulation upon the public treasure. 
 
 I do not stop, sir, to expatiate upon the sequence of these 
 events, nor to indicate more minutely their connection with 
 each other and with the leading measures to which I have 
 referred them. I am sure, now that we may calmly look back 
 to the whole train of our past disasters, the impartial judgment 
 of the country will be at no loss to assign them to the causes 
 I have enumerated. They will be ever accounted, sir, by the 
 reflecting portion of our citizens, the bitter fruits of Jacksonism. 
 
 When General Jackson came into power, he found every 
 interest in the country prosperous : when he departed, he left 
 every interest at its lowest ebb. In the first era, our systems 
 of policy had been matured, and were in wholesome exercise : 
 agriculture, commerce, and manufactures were all thriving ; 
 the currency was of unexampled soundness and value ; the 
 revenues were gradually increasing ; the debt was provided 
 for ; the improvements in the surface of the country were ad 
 vancing at a steady and wholesome pace ; the Government 
 was economical, and its foreign relations upon the most se 
 cure and honorable footing. I will not attempt to contrast 
 that state of the nation with the present I will only say that 
 General Jackson, reversing the boast of the Roman Emperor, 
 might have exclaimed, at his departure from the capital, " I 
 found Rome marble, and I have left it brick." 
 
 Still, sir, I desire to do the late President justice in one 
 particular in which I might be misapprehended. In the man 
 agement of the foreign affairs of this Government, I am pre 
 pared to pay a tribute of praise to his energy. In that branch 
 of the public concerns, he is entitled to all the applause he has 
 ever received. The very qualities of character which rendered 
 him dangerous at home, furnished him the means of success 
 
254 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 in the disposal of our affairs abroad. That imperious temper 
 which depsised the limits of republican rule, admirably fitted 
 him to CQpe with monarchs, and transfused into his foreign ne 
 gotiations the vigor that crowned them with success. 
 
 In the hasty glance, Mr. Chairman, which I have taken of 
 the principles and policy of the last Presidency, my aim has 
 been to bring to the contemplation of the committee the singu 
 larly unhappy auspices under which the existing Chief Magis 
 trate came into power. It was the great misfortune of Mr. 
 Van Buren to succeed to a dilapidated inheritance ; and that 
 misfortune was most fatally aggravated by the extraordinary 
 illusion of national prosperity which, at the moment of the de 
 parture of his predecessor, and of his own accession, haunted 
 and bewildered the imagination of both. Sir, I have seldom 
 read in history of such remarkable self-deception, such won 
 derful blindness to the signs of approaching disaster, as at that 
 moment characterized the two illustrious individuals to whom 
 I have alluded. Permit me, sir, to read the parting words of 
 General Jackson, on the 3d of March, 1837, and the greeting 
 declaration of Mr. Van Buren on the following day : 
 
 "My life," says the retiring President, "has been a long 
 one, and I cannot hope that it has, at all times, been free of 
 errors. But I have the consolation of knowing, that, if mis 
 takes have been committed, they have not seriously injured the 
 country I so anxiously endeavored to serve ; and, at the moment 
 when I surrender my last public trust, I leave this great people 
 prosperous and happy." \Farewell Address. ] 
 
 On the 4th of March the successor spoke in this strain : 
 
 " Abroad we enjoy the respect, and, with scarcely an excep 
 tion, the friendship of every nation. At home, while our Gov 
 ernment quietly but efficiently performs the sole legitimate end of 
 political institutions, in doing the greatest good to the greatest num 
 ber, we present an aggregate of human prosperity surely not else 
 where to be found." \Inaugural of Mr. Van Buren^\ 
 
 Sir, at the very moment when these self-gratulating gentle 
 men were vaunting, in such proud phrase, of the nation s hap 
 piness, the deep thunder of the coming earthquake was al 
 ready muttering beneath their feet. The retiring chief had 
 
DIPLOMATIC APPROPRIATIONS. 255 
 
 scarcely reached the Hermitage the complacent successor 
 had scarcely been domesticated under the roof of the palace 
 before the great doom broke over the land, and scattered dis 
 may from our remotest confine to the centre. The President 
 saw every vestige of the illusion vanish in an instant ; and that 
 couch of roses, upon which he had so confidently hoped to lie 
 down, became a bed of thorns. Amidst the crash of the cur 
 rency, the insolvency of the Government, and the general dis 
 tress and wailing of the people, almost his first act of author 
 ity was to summon Congress to his aid. They came here, sir, 
 but to bear testimony to the wide-spread havoc of the storm. 
 The President met them in humbleness of heart, in grief and 
 dismay ; he implored a hand to help ; he sought consolation 
 where there was none to be found upon the bosom of his 
 party : the party had lost its power. 
 
 Fresh difficulties have thickened around him at every stage 
 of his progress since that day. In the South, the Indian war 
 has been but a series of disasters. We have been baffled, ex 
 hausted, beaten, by a handful of savages. On the Northern 
 frontier our weakness has become a by-word of contempt. 
 This great Republic, in the hands of its present rulers, is not 
 even able to preserve its neutrality in the domestic rebellion 
 of a Power with whom we profess \o hold the most friendly 
 relations ; and we are obliged to confess our inability to re 
 strain the armaments of our own citizens, which are directed 
 against a neighbor s peace : yes, sir, even to submit to the 
 humiliation of having our own territory visited, our vessels 
 seized, and our citizens slaughtered in our own harbor, by 
 that neighbor Power, on the plea of weakness to enforce our 
 laws. 
 
 In the embarrassments which have been brought upon our 
 fiscal affairs, in the prostration of the agricultural, the mercan 
 tile, and the manufacturing prosperity of the country, the ad 
 ministration has been able to suggest no adequate relief. We 
 struggle along upon expedients. The vis insita of the nation, 
 its intrinsic vigor, which not even misgovernment has been 
 
256 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 able totally to crush, has, by slow degrees, begun to revive the 
 prosperity of the land ; but the Government has done nothing. 
 Whatever might be expected from the patriotism, the virtue, 
 the intelligence of the people, they have nobly realized ; what 
 ever has been left to the Government, has languished and 
 faded in its hands. The guardians of the Treasury have fallen 
 asleep ; felonies, unmatched in enormity, have been detected 
 in the innermost shrine of the temple : the very priests have 
 robbed the altar. The nation has but extricated itself from 
 one debt to create another ; the finances are in confusion ; the 
 revenue inadequate to the expenditure ; our hard-money Gov 
 ernment has fallen into a paper-manufacturing Government. 
 Our rulers are at their wit s end ; all around are the signs of 
 their doom, the warnings of their downfall. The truth stands 
 confessed it is felt in every department of the public affairs 
 that the President and his friends are incompete?it to the crisis : 
 
 THEY WANT ABILITY. 
 
 Turn, sir, to the Executive mansion, and inquire what they 
 are who at this moment guide the fortunes of this land. An 
 easy, indolent, luxurious chief presides over a cabinet, of 
 which it would be flattery to say that it was a mere persona 
 tion of feebleness. To the members of that cabinet, per 
 sonally, sir, so far as a very limited acquaintance may warrant, 
 I am willing to accord all consideration and respect. I speak 
 of them here as a public body. A more diversified compound 
 of dulness, inaptitude, and ignorance of official duty ; a 
 greater lack of energy ; a more sorely perplexed, bewildered, 
 and dismayed association of state counsellors, were never, 
 perhaps, exhibited around a council-table than may, at this 
 present juncture, be seen in the daily anxious conferences of 
 this precious cabinet. Since the days of the Merry Monarch 
 of England, and his hair-brained crony Rochester, never were 
 the destinies of a great nation intrusted to more incompetent 
 hands. 
 
 I might except from this censure, and do except, one who 
 has the reputation of being a regular attendant at these coun- 
 
DIPLOMATIC APPROPRIATIONS. 257 
 
 cil meetings I doubt not, the first to come and the last to 
 depart a personage more notorious than distinguished, and 
 yet, sir, boasting no small claim to distinction. I mean that 
 man-of-all-work, whose marvellous exaltation from the kitchen 
 up to the chamber nearest to the King, is one of the most 
 striking moral significations of the times. This, sir, is his ad- 
 administration. Whatever remainder of efficacy it has, is his ; 
 whatever of shrewdness, of cohesion, of malice, or of mischief 
 it has, belongs to him. By his sufferance does every member 
 of that cabinet hold his place or did, sir, for I trust his influ 
 ence is drawing to an end. Yea, even the placid and pliant 
 chief himself has found his account in the good will of this 
 Mephistophiles. He is the link between the past administra 
 tion and the present ; the conduit-pipe by which the surplus 
 popularity of the one is transfused into the waning circulation 
 of the other ; the ligament that still unites the small fortunes 
 of the polished and pleasure-loving tenant of the palace, to 
 the more robust destiny of the grim and fearful lion that has 
 his lair at the Hermitage. 
 
 But for this one informing spirit, yonder whole cabinet 
 array of impracticable, skilless, temporizing, expedient-mon- 
 gering statesmen would, long before this, have floundered to 
 the bottom of that pool of turbid party-waters in which they 
 now struggle for respiration. The day, sir, is not remote when 
 they and their guardian genius shall sink together in this oozy 
 tide, and be remembered no more. 
 
 Mr. Chairman, I take some consolation in this melancholy 
 view of the public affairs, from the conviction that the nation 
 has been already driven by headstrong counsel, by weakness 
 and by passion, to that extreme from which it cannot but hap 
 pen that the tide of government, shall flow back into a safer 
 channel. Out of the very incompetency of our present rulers 
 do I gather food for hope. There are already, sir, manifold 
 signs of restoration. We cannot mistake them. We are on 
 the backward march from Jacksonism. The footsteps were 
 abandoned at the first stride. rp he Great Reaction has com- 
 
2CO POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 Sir, the unity of the Executive has dissipated into thin air. 
 Instead of being a unit it is multiform a polygon a many- 
 headed monster and of more heads than arms ; not Bria- 
 reus but Hydra. In this matter of the defalcations, Mr. Van 
 Buren is no man for responsibility ; neither is any one of his 
 cabinet ready to maintain that ancient dogma of Jacksonism. 
 Sauve qui pent ! is the motto of the day. 
 
 The President is no longer the Representative of the people. 
 He now supplicates Congress to take the responsibility for the 
 future ; entreats them to appoint committees to watch the 
 Treasury rogues ; he prays the Legislature to inspect the Exec 
 utive ! He implores the representatives of the nation to help 
 him a weak and humble minister of their laws. Hear him : 
 
 " I submit to your consideration whether a committee of Con 
 gress might not be profitably employed in inspecting, at such 
 intervals as might be deemed proper, the affairs and accounts 
 of officers intrusted with the custody of the public moneys. 
 The frequent performance of this duty might be made obliga 
 tory on the committee, in respect to those officers who have 
 large sums in their possession, and left discretionary in respect 
 to others. They might report to the Executive such defalca 
 tions as were found to exist, with a view to prompt removal 
 from office, unless the default was satisfactorily accounted for." 
 Message of December, 1838. 
 
 Then, sir, we have no more lecturing on the hard-money 
 dogma. We have come back to the toleration of paper ; nay, 
 sir, we have become ultra in this paper-mongering. The Pres 
 ident is the patron of free banking. His confidential friend 
 on this floor, the chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means 
 (Mr. Cambreleng), at the last session gave us a panegyric on 
 the conservative property of that great system. The Govern 
 ment is in close alliance with the monster. The lion and the 
 lamb have lain down together, and the Treasury is now the 
 chief fountain of the despised rag-money. Even the much 
 talked-of Increase of the Specie Basis has fallen into oblivion. 
 Not a word in its favor has been uttered at the present session. 
 The message, upon it, is dumb. 
 
DIPLOMATIC APPROPRIATIONS. 261 
 
 These are all changes of high import : they are the visible 
 and conspicuous signs of Reaction. Sir, in the name of the 
 country, I thank Mr. Van Buren for these tokens of repent 
 ance for even this late surrender of Jacksonism ! Phaeton 
 has thrown up the reins ! 
 
 Mr. Chairman, it will be observed, that as the administra 
 tion deserts its former test-principles and measures, it is busy 
 to frame new devices for party association. Political man 
 agement has, very recently, entered a fresh field. We have 
 most suddenly conjured up Abolition for the Whigs, and the 
 Defence of Slavery for " The Party." The Whigs, sir, have 
 been sagaciously attempted to be identified, by the administra 
 tion press, with that unhappy Northern excitement against 
 slavery, which, until the commencement of the present session, 
 no man was so blind as not to perceive had pursued its career 
 without the slightest connection with parties ; which, until then, 
 too, sir, no man was so unprincipled as to assert had sought 
 the aid of a special political alliance with friend or foe* of the 
 administration. Sir, it is curious to note the slippery equivo 
 cation, the distortion, the desperate legerdemain of deception, 
 of the official organ " The Globe," on this subject. 
 
 Not even the ponderous momentum of falsehood, which 
 long use and munificent government support have given to 
 that party machine ; not even its practised and subtle spirit of 
 misrepresentation, is competent to cast an air of plausibility 
 over this shallow trick. It is the flimsiest, the baldest inven 
 tion that ever came from the cudgelled brains of " your scurvy 
 politician." What honest man can look at the elections which 
 have recently taken place in the North and West, and acquaint 
 himself with the sentiments of the several candidates on this 
 abolition question, and then say, as the Globe has said, that no 
 Democrat (as that truthful paper styles its friends) is found an 
 abolitionist ? How tolerant is " the organ" and its patrons of 
 the eccentricities of " the Democrats" on this subject ! How 
 kindly does it digest the ultra anti-slavery indignation of Messrs. 
 Morton and Rantoul, and Alexander, Everett and Bancroft, in 
 
2(32 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 the North, of Messrs. Morris and Tappan, and the member 
 from Cincinnati, in the West ! 
 
 Sir, it needs no ghost to make us acquainted with the pa 
 ternity and drift of this plot. In the Sub-Treasury bill of this 
 session if the party should have courage to take it up it is 
 well understood that no specie clause may hope for the favor of 
 the House : that, sir, is to be abandoned per force. The ad 
 ministration cannot limp along with such a burden on the bill. 
 Now, sir, a certain great oracle has declared that this Sub- 
 Treasury scheme, without the specie clause, is a mere farce. Upon 
 the faith of that clause alone, rested, until now, the fealty of a 
 suddenly-converted State to the administration. Strike it out, 
 sir, and what holds South Carolina to the worship of her strange 
 gods ? What but this pretext of the alliance of the Whigs with 
 the Abolitionists ? For the nonce, it was found expedient that 
 the Northern man should be imbued with Southern principles ; 
 the institutions of the South were to be declared in danger 
 from trie Whigs ; great apprehensions were to be awakened 
 among the Southern people. All this, sir, was the shabby in 
 vention in which was to be found motive for the fabrication of 
 a new bond of union between the disappointed Specie-clause- 
 sub-treasuryites and the administration. Then, another North 
 ern man, with Southern principles, was to be manufactured out 
 of a New Hampshire Representative ; and he and his comrades 
 were to sacrifice their Abolitionism on the altar of their party, 
 and come to the rescue. There, sir, is the whole plot ! It has 
 been acted out exactly as it was set down. The resolutions 
 against the slavery petitions have been offered by the North, 
 and South Carolina is bound in eternal gratitude to this admin 
 istration ! The farce was gravely and discreetly rehearsed, 
 and is hereafter, to be played again before the nation. I com 
 mend to the actors in this entertainment Nic Bottom s advice: 
 " Masters, you ought to consider with yourselves. To bring 
 in (God shield us !) a lion among ladies is a most dreadful 
 thing ; for, there is not a more fearful wild-fowl than your lion 
 living, and we ought to look to it." There is but one expedi 
 
DIPLOMATIC APPROPRIATIONS. 263 
 
 ent, sir, left to us Whigs in the sad dilemma which the alarms 
 of our Southern friends may bring us into when this lion 
 comes upon the stage, we shall follow the honest weaver s 
 counsel, and " name his name, and say, plainly, he is no lion, 
 but Snug, the Joiner." 
 
 It was another trick of party, Mr. Chairman, when the co 
 hesion of the friends of the administration began to give way, 
 to seek for some new name by which the forces might be ral 
 lied. The characteristic principles and measures of the party 
 having become distasteful to the nation, it was in the emergen 
 cy of self-preservation that it looked around for some appella 
 tive which might be substituted in the place of a meritorious 
 but uattainable distinction. Until the moment of General Jack 
 son s retirement, the party was his party. It followed him 
 through all his fancies, liked what he liked, opposed what he 
 opposed. It was personal to him, and derived its strength 
 from his popularity. When he withdrew, it, of necessity, was 
 destined soon to lose its character as a Jackson party although 
 that name, even yet, has magic in it to rally its myrmidons : 
 many a vote is yet given for no better reason than that the 
 hickory-tree is engraved upon the ballot. Still, sir, with the 
 departure of General Jackson to private life, the Jackson party 
 was destined to decay. There could be no Van-Buren party. 
 That never was a name to conjure with. It was, therefore, 
 deemed a lucky thought when some central conclave of politi 
 cal managers resolved to change the badge from Jackson to 
 " the Democracy." I will not dispute their right to the name : 
 all the world knows how little signification, as indicative of 
 principles, it carries with it. No man can be deceived out of 
 the knowledge that those who profess now to be the "exclusive 
 Democrats" have veered round the whole compass of opinion, 
 and alternately vindicated and vilified every prominent meas 
 ure of policy which the last ten years have brought into view. 
 No man can be blind to the fact that the standard tenet of this 
 new-hatched Democracy is to go for the greatest share of spoil 
 to the greatest number of persons, and to render fealty to the par- 
 
26-i POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 ty for a consideration. No man can affect to believe that con 
 scientious opinion, as to the country s good, forms any element 
 in the organization of the array. I advert to it, sir, only to ex 
 press my conviction that the name has been chosen with a sin 
 gular disregard to the feelings of some of its principal leaders. 
 I can point out individuals in those ranks, who, but a few 
 years gone by, would not have more promptly resented any in 
 sult than to be called " a Democrat." And I can show too, 
 sir (in my own State especially), a phalanx of ardent friends 
 of the ruling power prime, accredited leaders of the faithful 
 who, even yet, have not overcome an involuntary habit of 
 wincing at the name. And although such friends may, in time* 
 perhaps, be able to avow their new distinction without a blush, 
 I think they may scarcely be brought, by the force of discip 
 line, to do that necessary service, which the name exacts, of 
 proscribing and denouncing an opponent as " a Federalist." 
 
 Mr. Chairman, I care not for these new tactics of the adver 
 sary. I think, sir, the public affairs have fallen into that condi 
 tion in which no stratagem can have power to avert the reckon 
 ing which the people will exact from their governors. The peo 
 ple, however much they may have been imposed on and betray 
 ed, can have no sentiments hostile to the good of the country. 
 They are neither office-holders nor office-seekers. Their in 
 terests all look to the establishment of order, security, and hon 
 est administration. Their aim is the honor and happiness of 
 the nation ; and if their exertions do not promote these ends, 
 it is only because they are not permitted to know the truth re 
 garding the past conduct or future designs of their servants. 
 I feel assured that, let the men in power assume what name 
 they may, the virtue, good sense, and keen sight of the na 
 tion will not be imposed upon by these motley creeds of the 
 clay, even though those who profess them assume a title once 
 honored in the public affections. Charlatanry is fast flying be 
 fore the public rebuke, and is dropping its garments, one by 
 one in its flight. Sound opinion, rendered more vigorous from 
 its long sleep, and more eager to do its duty from a conscious- 
 
DIPLOMATIC APPROPRIATIONS. 265 
 
 ness of having been imposed on, is rousing up to its appropriate 
 office. It is going forth to gather the people for the holy war 
 fare, devoted to the purification of the national halls, and the 
 restitution of our ancient honor. In the tide of that warfare, 
 " like reeds before the tempest s frown," we shall see this host 
 of spurious statesmen, and abject followers, and spoil-seeking 
 patriots, laid low. When that consummation is won, the na 
 tion will rejoice with an exceeding joy. The oldest man among 
 us, sir, may yet live to take his part in that jubilee. 
 
 In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, I will say but a few words. 
 Whether the late administration existed for good or for evil, 
 is a problem that is soon to be determined. Never has popu 
 lar government been subjected to a severer test. We have gone 
 through the proof ordeal : it may not recur again in a century 
 perhaps forever. We may rejoice, sir, that the nation sur 
 vives that shock not only survives, but that a healthful reac 
 tion is in progress, which must ultimately establish, on the se 
 curest foundation, the liberty derived from the forms of our so 
 cial alliance. 
 
 In the last ten years, we have seen the republican principle 
 driven into the confines of actual despotism ; the aggregate 
 power of the people has been made subservient to the accom 
 plishment of individual will : the Constitution, under plausible 
 pretexts, has been superseded by a law more congenial to the 
 purposes of party arrangement its landmarks have been tran 
 scended, its precepts disobeyed, for the sake of achieving the 
 purposes of the day. Many of our institutions have been 
 assailed ; some of the most valuable battered down, and all 
 disparaged in the popular esteem. Yet still the tempest has 
 passed over ; and, in the revival of the shattered prosperity of 
 the land, the nation hastens back to its primitive republican 
 doctrines, with an earnestness and a zeal that assure us we 
 shall, at last, turn our chastisement to a righteous use. The 
 cause of free government has gained strength by the aberrations 
 into which it has been betrayed. Contrition is the parent of 
 amendments and past suffering the source of future security. 
 
 12 
 
2(36 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 To my view, the return to sound principles, the reaction of the 
 integrity of the nation, is certain in its march, and presents a 
 most grateful exhibition of the innate strength of our people. 
 May it go on, sir, until it restore all that we have lost in our 
 late conflicts of power, and place this nation upon that emi 
 nence where all may see her, the first and best assured among 
 the free communities of the world. 
 
THE PROTECTIVE SYSTEM. 267 
 
 LETTEK 
 
 TO HIS CONSTITUENTS, CITIZENS OF THE FOURTH CONGRES 
 SIONAL DISTRICT IN THE STATE OF MARYLAND, ON THE 
 PRINCIPLES AND VALUE OF THE PROTECTIVE SYSTEM. 
 
 I AM confident no apology is necessary to my constituents 
 for this letter. The tariff question is one in which they 
 have manifested a much more than ordinary concern: and as 
 we have many indications that it is not yet settled, notwith 
 standing the recent action of Congress, I have thought it my 
 duty, in the relation I hold to the public, to contribute what I 
 can to the general understanding of the subject. 
 
 I should have followed the custom of writing out and pub 
 lishing " my speech" upon this question, if it were not that the 
 country has become somewhat surfeited with Congressional 
 speeches, and that I have found reason to prefer a form of com 
 munication which allows me to omit such topics as have now lost 
 their interest, and to produce others which could not have been 
 properly treated within the limits of that salutary rule which 
 confined each speaker to an hour. 
 
 It might have been remarked, at the last session of Con 
 gress, that, distinguished as it was by conflicts of party opinion 
 upon almost every other question, a great unanimity prevailed 
 as to the financial distress of the Government. All admitted that 
 it was as bad as it could be. A lively proof of this distress was 
 furnished at frequent intervals during the session, in the impor 
 tunate calls of the Executive for aid calls which never failed to 
 be accompanied with the announcement that the Government 
 paper was under protest. In truth, for four years previous, the 
 
2(38 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 fiscal affairs of the nation had been administered on a misera 
 ble plan of expedients ; the Government had regularly expend 
 ed some seven or eight millions annually beyond its income. 
 Like a trader, tottering towards bankruptcy, it had been living 
 upon accommodation, issuing paper for its debts, and paying 
 that off at maturity by issuing more spunging upon the pub 
 lic by means of a false credit. At last, even that wretched re 
 source failed, and Congress was obliged to look these difficul 
 ties in the face. 
 
 It was very evident that the common sentiment of the 
 country demanded a change in this course of administration. 
 The people would no longer endure it. It seemed to be a 
 duty especially assigned to that Congress to put the Govern 
 ment in possession of its proper resources ; to break up this 
 system of borrowing, in anticipation of means not provided, 
 and to regulate the expenditures by the actual state of the 
 Treasury. Both Houses accordingly addressed themselves to 
 this task ; and, notwithstanding the systematic efforts made by 
 the Executive and its press, during the whole session, and ever 
 since, to disparage the labors and calumniate the character of 
 that session, every thing was done which an assiduous and in 
 telligent devotion to the welfare of the country could accom 
 plish, against the perverse counteraction of the President aided 
 by a minority in Congress, whose highest delight was found in 
 promoting confusion wherever it was found most likely to be 
 mischievous, and in abetting the designs of the Chief Magis 
 trate to bring the majority into disgrace. 
 
 One of the most valuable measures which was carried un 
 der these difficulties was the tariff act. That act is now threat 
 ened with a repeal by a party whom there is no reason to doubt 
 will be a majority in the next Congress, and with whom there 
 is as little, that the President, if they will permit the fraternity, 
 will co-operate to any extent of exasperated hostility in assailing 
 each and every favorite measure of those to whom he owes all 
 the power he possesses, and all the good-fortune that ought to 
 have made him an object of respect with his countrymen. The 
 
THE PROTECTIVE SYSTEM. 2G9 
 
 friends of a tariff, therefore, have the most serious cause for 
 alarm. 
 
 The tariff, in its first aspect presents a question very impor 
 tant to the revenue. 
 
 It is estimated that the expenditures of the Government, 
 for some years to come, will require twenty-seven millions. 
 How is this amount to be procured ? 
 
 A very audible voice has arisen, recommending DIRECT TAX 
 ATION. That voice was first heard from the South, and it has 
 been echoed by more than one representative of the North 
 among those who are most ambitious to be thought the pecu 
 liar democracy of the land. We are given to understand, that 
 as the South holds all duties to be an abomination, the only 
 legitimate mode of raising revenue for the support of the Gov 
 ernment is by a direct tax. 
 
 The South, perhaps, has less reason to advocate this mode 
 of raising money than any other section of the Confederacy. 
 As that section consumes less of duty-paying commodities, in 
 proportion to its entire population, than any other, so it contrib 
 utes less to the revenues, as they are now levied. It is diffi 
 cult, therefore, to conceive any interest which it could feel in 
 the substitution of taxation for duties, but the desire (and that 
 is scarcely to be supposed) to conciliate the good-will of its 
 foreign customers by a tribute to those principles of American 
 free trade which are known to be so agreeable to the rigid re 
 striction ists of England and France. 
 
 There are objections to a direct tax, of which we in Mary 
 land may speak feelingly. They who have not tried it are ac 
 customed to represent it as the most equal and fair mode of 
 raising money. It is even pronounced to be the only true dem 
 ocratic mode. I think all who have been so unhappy as to 
 possess our experience on the subject will be prepared to admit 
 that it is exceedingly unequal. Many pay much beyond their 
 just proportion, many much below it ; some, with abundant 
 means evade it altogether. It is the willing horse that takes the 
 greatest burden. Nothing is so difficult as to assess even real 
 
208 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 fiscal affairs of the nation had been administered on a misera 
 ble plan of expedients ; the Government had regularly expend 
 ed some seven or eight millions annually beyond its income. 
 Like a trader, tottering towards bankruptcy, it had been living 
 upon accommodation, issuing paper for its debts, and paying 
 that off at maturity by issuing more spunging upon the pub 
 lic by means of a false credit. At last, even that wretched re 
 source failed, and Congress was obliged to look these difficul 
 ties in the face. 
 
 It was very evident that the common sentiment of the 
 country demanded a change in this course of administration. 
 The people would no longer endure it. It seemed to be a 
 duty especially assigned to that Congress to put the Govern 
 ment in possession of its proper resources ; to break up this 
 system of borrowing, in anticipation of means not provided, 
 and to regulate the expenditures by the actual state of the 
 Treasury. Both Houses accordingly addressed themselves to 
 this task ; and, notwithstanding the systematic efforts made by 
 the Executive and its press, during the whole session, and ever 
 since, to disparage the labors and calumniate the character of 
 that session, every thing was done which an assiduous and in 
 telligent devotion to the welfare of the country could accom 
 plish, against the perverse counteraction of the President aided 
 by a minority in Congress, whose highest delight was found in 
 promoting confusion wherever it was found most likely to be 
 mischievous, and in abetting the designs of the Chief Magis 
 trate to bring the majority into disgrace. 
 
 One of the most valuable measures which was carried un 
 der these difficulties was the tariff act. That act is now threat 
 ened with a repeal by a party whom there is no reason to doubt 
 will be a majority in the next Congress, and with whom there 
 is as little, that the President, if they will permit the fraternity, 
 will co-operate to any extent of exasperated hostility in assailing 
 each and every favorite measure of those to whom he owes all 
 the power he possesses, and all the good-fortune that ought to 
 have made him an object of respect with his countrymen. The 
 
THE PROTECTIVE SYSTEM. 269 
 
 friends of a tariff, therefore, have the most serious cause for 
 alarm. 
 
 The tariff, in its first aspect presents a question very impor 
 tant to the revenue. 
 
 It is estimated that the expenditures of the Government, 
 for some years to come, will require twenty -seven millions. 
 How is this amount to be procured ? 
 
 A very audible voice has arisen, recommending DIRECT TAX 
 ATION. That voice was first heard from the South, and it has 
 been echoed by more than one representative of the North, 
 among those who are most ambitious to be thought the pecu 
 liar democracy of the land. We are given to understand, that 
 as the South holds all duties to be an abomination, the only 
 legitimate mode of raising revenue for the support of the Gov 
 ernment is by a direct tax. 
 
 The South, perhaps, has less reason to advocate this mode 
 of raising money than any other section of the Confederacy. 
 As that section consumes less of duty-paying commodities, in 
 proportion to its entire population, than any other, so it contrib 
 utes less to the revenues, as they are now levied. It is diffi 
 cult, therefore, to conceive any interest which it could feel in 
 the substitution of taxation for duties, but the desire (and that 
 is scarcely to be supposed) to conciliate the good-will of its 
 foreign customers by a tribute to those principles of American 
 free trade which are known to be so agreeable to the rigid re- 
 strictionists of England and France. 
 
 There are objections to a direct tax, of which we in Mary 
 land may speak feelingly. They who have not tried it are ac 
 customed to represent it as the most equal and fair mode of 
 raising money. It is even pronounced to be the only true dem 
 ocratic mode. I think all who have been so unhappy as to 
 possess our experience on the subject will be prepared to admit 
 that it is exceedingly unequal. Many pay much beyond their 
 just proportion, many much below it ; some, with abundant 
 means evade it altogether. It is the willing horse that takes the 
 greatest burden. Nothing is so difficult as to assess even real 
 
270 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 property, much more the movable, by an equal rule of valua 
 tion in different districts ; to make the proper abatements for en 
 cumbrances, ground rents, mortgages, and other liens. Heavy 
 complaints are always rife against the unfairness with which 
 these interests are assessed. 
 
 But the greater objection is, that direct taxation involves a 
 most odious inquisition into private affairs. The citizen has a 
 fretful aversion to it. He cannot be content, however quietly 
 he may submit, under the prying visit of the assessor and the im 
 portunity of his follower, the collector not so much that he is 
 unwilling to pay his money but that he is reluctant to be cate 
 chised upon the state of his affairs ; and he is still more vexed to 
 be dunned before he has forgotten his first annoyance, by the 
 most unwelcome of all vis tors, the tax-gatherer. He is accus 
 tomed to look upon the whole proceeding as an invasion of 
 his household gods, and an assault upon the privacy of the do 
 mestic hearth, which with reluctant consent, he barely tolerates. 
 It is an old feeling, derived from our Saxon ancestry, which 
 takes umbrage at these domiciliary visits of the Government. 
 That " every man s house is his castle" is a maxim of our law, 
 and, more than a mere maxim, is one of the most cherished 
 evidences of personal independence. " When I speak of a 
 castle," said Lord Chatham, " I speak not of a mansion, the 
 abode of some potentate or baron, surrounded with fortifica 
 tions and towers and garrisoned with soldiers ; but I speak of a 
 tattered and wretched hovel, the dwelling of some laborer or 
 peasant, which the wind and rain can enter, but which the king 
 cannot enter." The humblest of our citizens will cheerfully see 
 the wind and the rain driving into their unchincked and un- 
 daubed tenements, but they never look without distrust, at least, 
 upon the Government officer who may claim admission there. 
 They do not choose to have their castles invaded, even by the 
 Government. 
 
 The system of raising revenue by duties is not only free 
 from this annoyance, but it is a VOLUNTARY mode of taxation. 
 Every man has an alternative, to pay or not to pay, at his 
 
THE PROTECTIVE SYSTEM. 
 
 pleasure, or to pay just so much as may suit his ability. It is 
 but to exercise a little self-denial, and to abstain from the use 
 of imported commodities to confine one s necessities to that 
 field of domestic supply which, in the country, is broad enough 
 for a thousand comforts, and we may escape the tax altogeth 
 er. It falls, too, where chiefly it ought to fall, upon the rich 
 and the luxurious laying them under contribution, while, for 
 the most part, it passes over the poor man s head. 
 
 He who would study the blessings of direct taxation need 
 but visit Maryland. Here he will see them exemplified in all 
 their imagined perfections. We require for the interest of 
 our debt full six hundred thousand dollars a year. The Gov 
 ernment of the Union has stripped us of this much-abhorred 
 power of laying duties on imports. All that is left to us is the 
 enviable privilege of levying direct taxes. Notwithstanding the 
 encomiums which have been lavished upon this only democratic 
 mode of raising money, not often have we found the represen 
 tatives of our State, in her Legislature; willing to do the peo 
 ple this favor. It has been a quickset hedge, which has hith 
 erto overthrown every party that has ridden at it. But it has 
 now become a question of honor in Maryland to redeem her 
 plighted faith ; and I am proud to proclaim that, cost what it 
 may, that honor will be preserved by a faithful performance, to 
 the uttermost of her ability, of every engagement she has made. 
 IT is NOW ONLY A QUESTION OF TIME. Upon this point of 
 good faith, political parties can no longer divide or differ. 
 Each will strive, with a noble emulation, to maintain the sanc 
 tity of our promise, as the common obligation which no man 
 dare repel. Such, I am convinced, is the sentiment of our 
 people, who, upon this question, are even in advance of their 
 representatives. 
 
 If our contribution to the national revenue were required 
 to be furnished by a direct tax instead of duties, our propor 
 tion of the twenty-seven millions demanded would amount to 
 upwards of eight hundred thousand dollars ; this in addition 
 to our State tax. Ask any of our citizens what is his opinion 
 
272 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 of the practicability of an annual levy of eight hundred thou 
 sand dollars, in addition to the present six hundred thousand. 
 Ask him if he would deem such a levy more just or more tol 
 erable than the collection of an equal amount by duties on im 
 ported merchandise. He would answer, with a look of alarm, 
 that it was altogether impossible to levy the amount by taxa 
 tion, and he would answer truly. Direct taxation is no ad 
 equate resource for large revenues, in the present state of the 
 population and wealth of this country, especially in the present 
 state of political warfare, which has become the characteristic 
 of our times. When the authors of the Constitution disabled 
 the States from raising money by duties, they left their work 
 but half done. They should have also prohibited the States 
 from creating large debts without the consent of the Union ; 
 for the experience of this day shows us that State debts are 
 national concerns ; that they effect the national credit, and re 
 quire national aid. Without the duty power, a State is with 
 out its most effective fiscal power. 
 
 We had a resource which would have been to us, in our 
 present need, all-sufficient, but it has been sacrificed to the 
 vindictive folly of party. I mean our interest in the public 
 lands. Never has party wrought its ends, in Maryland, with 
 such deplorable madness as in the sacrifice of this resource. 
 Twenty-two years ago the Maryland Legislature first brought 
 the question of our right to the public lands to the notice of 
 the Union. Year after year the claim of the States was every 
 where acknowledged. Here, in Maryland, no son of hers was 
 found to deny the right. All parties admitted it, took a pride 
 in advocating it pressing it upon Congress. The Govern 
 ment of the Union, with the concurrence of both parties, agreed 
 that these lands ought not to be brought into the Federal 
 revenues. President Jackson himself proclaimed the same 
 opinion. A bill was passed by large majorities of Congress 
 for distributing the proceeds among the States. This bill, un 
 fortunately, came from a source which brought down upon it 
 a keen Executive denunciation ; and from that day the distri 
 
THE PROTECTIVE SYSTEM. 273 
 
 bution has been converted into a party question. Then, for 
 the first time, after the earnest and unanimous advocacy of our 
 right, by both parties in this State, for nearly twenty years, a 
 Governor of Maryland was found pliant enough officially to 
 renounce our claim, and even to render it the subject of a 
 sharp and labored condemnation. The result of all this action 
 has been, that we have been spoiled of a fair and goodly inher 
 itance an inheritance won by the blood of the Revolution, 
 and ample to have swept away, in progress of time, that debt 
 which now crushes the spirit of our State. 
 
 There is a refinement of cruelty in this proceeding. Many 
 States were lured into a system of expensive public improve 
 ments by the direct recommendation and encouragement of 
 the General Government. This was notoriously true as re 
 gards that work which has occasioned all our embarrassments 
 the Chesapeake and Ohio canal. Every one knows that 
 that work attracted a peculiar degree of favor from the Fed 
 eral authorities ; that it was specially presented to the atten 
 tion of Congress by Presidents Monroe and Adams ; and that it 
 was enlarged in its dimensions, and of course greatly increased 
 in its cost, in deference to the wishes of the Government. In 
 truth, the chief public works of Maryland are almost exclusive 
 ly national in their character, and are felt to be worth all that 
 they have cost much more to the nation than to the State 
 which has borne the charge of their construction. We had 
 therefore an additional right to expect that our reliance upon 
 the public lands would not be disappointed Congress at last 
 recognized our long-deferred claim, by appropriating the pro 
 ceeds to the States. This act was, however, coupled with a 
 condition which the adverse party still bent on defeating the 
 claims of the States were able to dictate. They united the 
 question of the lands with the tariff, by the famous proviso, 
 which was incorporated by the Senate in the land bill, and the 
 friends of the grant acquiesced only because they had no al 
 ternative, but with a proclamation, on their part, of a deter 
 mination to sever this connection whenever they should have 
 12* 
 
274 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 it in their power. They were not wrong in supposing that, 
 at another session, they would be able to accomplish this sev 
 erance, at least as far as the vote of Congress was necessary. 
 The act of severance was accordingly carried in one of the 
 sections of the tariff bill at the late session. But a new and 
 an unexpected enemy had then arisen, in the person of the 
 President. That President who originally recommended the 
 distribution who declared, in the message of the extra ses 
 sion, that this appropriation of the proceeds might produce a 
 a saving to the Government of an equal amount of annual 
 expenditure who even suggested that these proceeds should 
 be constituted the capital of a National Bank, and thus, of 
 course, be locked up from the future resumption of Congress* 
 showing how fully he desired their appropriation to be free 
 
 * The following passages occur, on this subject, in the message 
 of the extra session : 
 
 " The compacts between the proprietor States and this Govern 
 ment expressly guaranty to the States all the benefits which may 
 arise from the sales. The mode by which this is to be effected ad 
 dresses itself to the discretion of Congress, as the trustee for the 
 States ; and its exercise, after the most beneficial manner, is restrained 
 by nothing in the grants or the Constitution, so long as Congress shall 
 consult that equality in the distribution which the compacts require. 
 In the present condition of some of the States, the question of dis 
 tribution may be regarded as substantially a question between direct 
 and indirect taxation. * * * The happy effects of such a 
 
 measure upon all the States would immediately be manifested. With 
 the debtor States it would effect the relief to a great extent of the 
 citizens from a heavy burden of direct taxation which presses with 
 severity on the laboring classes, and eminently assist in restoring the 
 general prosperity. An immediate advance would take place in the 
 price of the State securities, and the attitude of the States would be 
 come once more, as it should ever be, lofty and erect. With States la 
 boring under no extreme pressure from debt, the fund which they 
 would derive from this source would enable them to improve their con 
 dition in an eminent degree. So far as this Government is concerned, 
 appropriations to domestic objects, approaching in amount the revenue 
 derived from the land sales, might be abandoned, and thus a system of 
 unequal and therefore unjust legislation would be substituted by one 
 dispensing equality to all the members of this Confederacy. Whether 
 such distribution should be made directly to the States in the pro 
 ceeds of the pales, or in the form of profits by virtue of the opera 
 tions of any fiscal agency having these proceeds as its basis, should 
 such measure be contemplated by Congress, would well deserve its 
 consideration." 
 
THE PROTECTIVE SYSTEM. 275 
 
 from any condition of restoration in case of insufficient reve 
 nue that President so committed to the measure, so glorying 
 in it, partaking, as every one supposed, in the mortification 
 experienced by the friends of distribution at its compulsory 
 union with the tariff turned his back upon his own recom 
 mendation, and, affecting to consider the connection of the two 
 subjects a solemn, irrepealable contract, interposed the mis 
 chievous power of the veto against the severance, and thus in 
 flicted the deepest wrong that hatred could devise upon all 
 those interests in the country whose hopes he had originally 
 flattered. He has endeavored to justify this act by an addi 
 tional plea, that the credit of the United States stood in need 
 of this land fund, as a security for the Government faith. He 
 is, perhaps, by this time convinced that the most effectual re 
 storative of the Government credit is to be found in the res 
 toration of the credit of the States, and that that would be 
 best sustained by the public lands. 
 
 It was in the v^ery wantonness of a spirit that delights in 
 pain that this disappointment was inflicted upon the indebted 
 States. In the moment of our utmost need, when the fruits 
 of this beneficent measure were just ripening to our hand, when 
 every other source of supply had been drained, our people 
 borne down by grievous burdens, our credit gone, and every 
 thing in our condition furnishing strong motive to stir the gen 
 erosity as well as the justice of the Government, that Govern 
 ment, yielding to the ruthless suggestions of party hostility, 
 not only stood aloof, but seemed to take pleasure in aggrava 
 ting our misfortunes by a violation of its own faith a violation 
 the more wanton, because it brought scarcely less injury upon 
 the Union than it did upon us. The Government now disa 
 vows a compact which, in the gravest forms of legislation, it 
 had heretofore acknowledged ; it repudiates a principle of ad 
 ministration, in regard to the public lands, which it had but a 
 short time ago proclaimed as of the highest concern ; and it 
 denies to the States the principal fund upon the expectation 
 of which they had, in many instances, contracted their debts 
 
276 POLITICAL TAPERS. 
 
 And upon what pretext ? The temporary wants of the Treas 
 ury ! As if the casual deficiencies of the Treasury the off 
 spring only of careless administration could excuse an act 
 of flagrant injustice ! But they tell us, as if that were some 
 unusual misfortune, that if they distribute the proceeds of the 
 lands, the amount must be reimbursed by duties ! We may tell 
 them, .that when they refuse to give us what belongs to us, they 
 compel us to supply the amount, not by duties (that privilege 
 we have not), but only by taxes by taxation added to taxation, 
 already heaped up to the full measure of our strength. Four 
 millions of annual proceeds from the lands and this is below 
 the average of ten years past would give to Maryland nearly 
 one hundred and twenty thousand dollars a year. This sum, 
 applied on the principle of a sinking fund, would alone extin 
 guish two-thirds of our debt in twenty-five years ; aided, as we 
 might hope it would be, by the avails of our public works, we 
 should soon begin to feel that our credit and resources were 
 adequate to every demand. This is a small matter to the 
 Union ; it is a great matter to the States. We may again 
 express our surprise that there is a man in Maryland so infat 
 uated by his party, so servile to its commands, so false to his 
 State as to encourage, by his vote or voice, the Government 
 in this vindictive wrong of withholding from us our share in the 
 lands. 
 
 I have dwelt longer on this topic than I intended. I re 
 turn to the more direct question of the tariff. 
 
 I think we may take it for granted however agreeable 
 this theory of direct taxation may be to that part of the nation 
 which, somewhat whimsically, sets up to be the only democracy 
 the Government is not yet prepared finally to renounce the 
 duty system. The only question, then, is, what kind of a 
 tariff shall be permanently established ? Shall it be protective, 
 or, on the other hand, shall it be what some leading politicians 
 have denominated a horizontal tariff? That is, shall the 
 duties be laid at various rates, having regard to the occupa 
 tions of our citizens, and intended to protect them ; or shall 
 
THE PROTECTIVE SYSTEM. 277 
 
 they be brought, as nearly as the mere interests of revenue 
 may suggest, to a uniform and equal standard upon the several 
 imports ? 
 
 This is a great question, and has greatly agitated the coun 
 try. It has been often discussed, but never under the same 
 embarrassments as at the present period. I regard it as no 
 less than vital to the great majority of the interests of the peo 
 ple. Widespread ruin may be the consequence of a mistake 
 ruin, in my apprehension, equally upon the North and South. 
 
 After the adoption of the compromise, in 1833, most per 
 sons thought that the question of the constitutional power of 
 Congress to pass a tariff of protection was put at rest. That 
 celebrated bill, sustained as it was by the Southern vote, dis 
 tinctly recognized the power to discriminate in duties for pur 
 poses of protection. In proof of ;his, it contained a clause ex 
 empting certain raw materials, dye-stuffs and others, from du 
 ties altogether its object being to furnish that degree of en 
 couragement and protection to domestic industry. Now, this 
 exemption of one article from duty creates a necessity to in 
 crease the duties on all other articles, when it is requisite to 
 raise a given amount of revenue. This discrimination was re 
 garded at the time as a concession of a power of protection. 
 
 The South, however, and some of their new allies in the 
 North, have again started the constitutional question. I hold 
 that any disputant who can at this day treat this as an open 
 question ought to be considered as hopelessly beyond the 
 reach of conviction ; for if this point be not settled, then noth 
 ing is settled in our frame of Government. Protection may 
 be said to be the eldest born of the Constitution. It once be 
 longed to the States. They surrendered it to the Union not 
 to be abrogated, but to be clothed with fresh vigor ; and it was 
 among the first and most important of the powers regenerated 
 in the Constitution. It has-been exercised from the first year 
 of the present Government continually down to this, the last. 
 It has been advocated, in turn, by every State in the Union, as 
 often as any fancied present interest has brought it into view ; 
 
278 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 it has never been opposed by any State, except under the 
 prompting of some such fancied present interest ; and it has at 
 all times been maintained by Congress, the supreme Judiciary, 
 and by a large majority of the States and people. A principle 
 resting upon such a basis may surely be affirmed to be estab 
 lished. 
 
 Without designing, therefore, to argue this settled point, I 
 think it worth while to advert to the various and contradictory 
 positions which the enemies of a protective tariff have assumed 
 in relation to this power. 
 
 The opponents are ranged in three classes. 
 
 The first class appear to me to be the only really consist 
 ent logicians among them. They constitute that inveterate 
 and uncompromising school of disputants who go against pro 
 tection because it is protection. They affirm that, as Congress 
 can only lay duties for revenue, it cannot contrive them to suit 
 any other purpose, and therefore cannot adapt them to protec 
 tion. They even say that Congress is bound to discriminate in 
 a revenue bill, so as to avoid protection. A highly respectable 
 gentleman (Mr. Rhett) of this school, from South Carolina, 
 acting manfully up to his professions, offered, at the late ses 
 sion of Congress, when the question was upon the reference of 
 a part of the President s message to the Committee on Manu 
 factures, the following instructions to the committee, as an 
 amendment to the original resolution : " That should it be, in 
 their opinion, expedient to lay additional duties, they shall be 
 so laid as not to discriminate in favor of any particular class of 
 industry in the United States" I cite this proceeding because 
 it presents a very striking fact. It illustrates the ultraism of 
 the school ; is an exemplification of their doctrine ; is alto 
 gether new ; for it was not so even in the palmy days of Nul 
 lification. The author of these instructions was a distinguished 
 Nullifier in those days, partook of the quarrel, wrote State pa 
 pers upon these matters, but did not go so far then as now. 
 
 To lay duties which shall not discriminate " in favor of any 
 particular class of industry in the United States" would require 
 
THE PROTECTIVE SYSTEM. 279 
 
 great skill in a committee, because it could hardly fall out but 
 that most duties would accidentally protect some branch of in 
 dustry. Perhaps such an unhappy catastrophe might be 
 averted by confining the duties to every thing we did not man 
 ufacture at home, especially to all raw materials necessary to 
 our arts, and by making every thing free which we did manu 
 facture. Even this plan would protect something a duty on 
 silks, for instance, would protect the cotton manufacture to 
 some extent but still it would be an approximation, and 
 would furnish a tolerably good summary rule by which, in prac 
 tice, we might, in some degree (all human contrivances are im 
 perfect), avoid the evil consequences of favoring " any partic 
 ular class of industry in the United States." It would cer 
 tainly promote, with very decided effect, the alternative which 
 constitutes a significant object in the anti-tariff policy that 
 of protecting the industry which does not belong to the United 
 States. 
 
 The next class of opponents are much more formidable 
 than the first, because they may be said to lie in ambush, and 
 make their assaults upon the protective system sometimes in 
 the guise of friends. They profess an equally fixed aversion 
 to protection as a primary purpose, but are willing to tolerate 
 it if it should result accidentally from duties laid for revenue ; 
 as the phrase is, they are willing to admit incidental protection. 
 
 Now, what protection is incidental, is, from its indefinite 
 nature, the most uncertain of problems. It means any thing 
 or nothing. It is a convenient term of mystification. Like 
 " the judicious tariff" of old times, it comprehends every com 
 plexion of opinion. Mr. Calhoun is, or at least was, an inci- 
 dentalist ; so is Mr. Buchanan ; so is every politician who has 
 a motive to keep on a good footing with both ends of the 
 Union. To this school every man may belong who finds his 
 account in voting for a tariff to-day, and against it to-morrow. 
 There is nothing to prevent one of these gentlemen, who rep 
 resents a manufacturing district in New York, from going into 
 a Congressional caucus with the most fall-blooded anti-tariff 
 
280 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 man of Mississippi. The leading doctrine of the strict con- 
 structionist is, that Congress can impose no duties except for 
 revenue. The incidentalist assents to this, but affirms that, in 
 laying the duty for revenue, Congress may make it a little 
 higher for protection. How much higher is a matter of doubt, 
 and upon this point every incidentalist fixes his own standard 
 the Pennsylvanian a hundred per cent , the Georgian not 
 above twenty ; one up to prohibition, the other not even up to 
 the lowest mark of protection. It would seem to be but a ra 
 tional deduction, indeed a mere truism, to say that, if duties 
 can only be laid for revenue, they cannot, in any wise, be laid 
 for protection. As a groundwork for a practical constitutional 
 distinction, this incidental doctrine sounds very much like an 
 imposition on the good nature of the public ; it is an absurd 
 ity. For fourteen years past ready-made clothing has had a 
 duty of fifty per cent. ; certain descriptions of shoes and boots 
 have had more. These were not revenue duties ; they were, 
 in reference to most cases, prohibitions. What do the inci- 
 dentalists say to ready-made clothing and shoes? Are these 
 duties unconstitutional ? I want to know if the tailors and 
 shoemakers of the United States are willing to stand on this 
 narrow platform of incidental protection, and rest the success 
 of their business upon their being able to prove that the duties 
 in their favor are bonafide the best for revenue. 
 
 Then, it may be also remarked, the incidental theory 
 allows some articles to be made free ; it adjusts the duties, some 
 at lower rates, some at higher one class being made high, in 
 order to compensate in revenue for those that are made low. 
 It is a device to circumvent constitutional .scruples by a trick 
 of averages upon this article, nothing ; upon that, ten per 
 cent. ; upon the next, by way of making up the deficiency, 
 forty per cent. ; and then the constitutional doubters are all 
 consoled and satisfied, by showing that the average is within 
 some assumed revenue standard. What is this but an ingeni 
 ous method of stretching the blanket of a political faith to 
 cover many bed-fellows ? One corner shields the protectionist 
 
THE PROTECTIVE SYSTEM. 281 
 
 of New York, whose party ostensibly goes against the Tariff ; 
 the other shelters the rank free trader of Alabama, Shall the 
 cause of American industry be intrusted to the shallow 
 casuistry of a profession so full of inconsistency and variable 
 ness as this ? 
 
 The third class are those who, denying the general power to 
 enact a tariff for protection to manufactures, claim for the 
 Government a right to lay duties to retaliate against the 
 hostile commercial policy of foreign nations ; in other words, 
 to enact a tariff for the protection of commerce. These find 
 their support for the retaliatory duty in the opinion of Mr. 
 Jefferson. It would seem to be a nice refinement in constitu 
 tional doctrine which can discriminate between a po^ver to 
 counterveil the policy of foreign states in the outward affairs 
 of commerce, and a power to countervail the policy of the 
 same states in reference to the still more delicate and valuable 
 concerns of our domestic industry. Yet as it is dangerous, in 
 these days of questionable democracy, to differ from that 
 great authority whose opinions are held up as the test of the 
 true faith, many of the most obdurate disciples of free trade 
 are obliged to admit the retaliatory power. A somewhat 
 closer search would convince the* same inquirers, if they had 
 the heart to make it, that Mr. Jefferson was a very good friend 
 of the protective policy.* His advocacy of this policy, how 
 
 *Mr. Jefferson s opinions on this subject are altogether unequivo 
 cal. In a letter to Benjamin Austin, dated the 9th of January, 1816, 
 after stating the grounds upon which he had formerly entertained 
 other opinions, and referring to the altered circumstances of this 
 country, lie says : " Compare this state of things with that of" 1785, 
 and say whether an opinion founded in the circumstances of that day 
 can be fairly applied to those of the present. We have experienced 
 what we did not then believe, that there exist both profligacy and 
 power enough to exclude us from the field of interchange with other 
 nations. That, to be independent for the comforts of life, we must 
 fabricate them ourselves. We must now place the manufacturer by 
 the side of the agriculturist. The grand inquiry now is, Shall wo 
 make our own comforts or go without them, at the will of a foreign 
 
282 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 ever, not being so publicly recorded as on the question just 
 alluded to, seems to be consigned to the oblivion which is now 
 coveted for other opinions of some of our most distinguished 
 oracles. So little mixture is there of honest judgment in the 
 array of selfish passion, party organization, and blind zeal, 
 which have been pressed into the enterprise of breaking down 
 the prosperity and the hopes of the laboring population of the 
 United States ! 
 
 These three modifications of the constitutional doctrine 
 may be said to represent all the varieties of opinion which 
 characterize the several portions of the anti-tariff party. 
 Among these, the advocates of incidental protection are 
 much the most numerous ; and, in certain sections of the 
 Union, much the most liberal. Here, in our own State, for 
 example, we may observe many who, but a short time ago, 
 were loudest in their denunciations of a protective tariff, but 
 who now, having taken a useful hint from the manifest current 
 of public opinion in their neighborhood, and perhaps also 
 alarmed lest Congress might take them at their word and give 
 them free trade in earnest, have become quite exemplary pro 
 tective tariff men, under the mystical virtue of this doctrine 
 of incidentalism. From their present zeal we might predict 
 that it will not be long before these same persons will claim 
 the merit to themselves and their political friends of having 
 been the steadfast defenders of protection from the beginning ; 
 and that they will even charge upon us, who have battled in 
 the cause on many a field against them, the crime of attempt 
 ing to usurp from them the honors of a championship exclu 
 sively their own. I think there are indications already point 
 ing that way. 
 
 nation ? He, therefore, who is now against domestic manufacture, 
 must be for reducing us either to dependence on that foreign nation, 
 or to be clothed in skins, and to live like wild beasts, in dens and 
 caverns. I am not one of these. Experience has taught me that 
 manufactures are now as necessary to our independence as to our 
 comfort." (See vol. iv., Jefferson s Writings, p. 282.) 
 
THE PROTECTIVE SYSTEM. 283 
 
 That I may not be misunderstood, I will give my creed 
 upon this doctrine of protection. I am the friend of the 
 system in its broadest latitude. I hold not only to the right 
 of Congress, under the Constitution, to pass laws for the direct 
 purpose of encouraging and fostering the pursuits of our own 
 citizens in any branch of industry, but I go further, and main 
 tain that it is the first and highest duty of the Government to 
 the people to afford their pursuits that protection and support. 
 I hold the questions of revenue and protection to be altogether 
 distinct ; that duties may be laid expressly for protection, as 
 well as expressly for revenue ; that there is no necessary de 
 pendence between the two. It is true that we usually blend 
 revenue and protection because usually, when considering a 
 revenue bill, that has been an appropriate occasion to consider 
 protection. But I deny that, in the structure of any tariff of 
 this Government, the principle has ever been assumed that 
 there was no power to lay a duty except for revenue. Every 
 tariff, from that of 1789 down to the last, has presented some 
 examples of direct protective duties ; and one of the most 
 conspicuous of these duties, which has run through every 
 tariff, is that of three cents a pound on cotton, which has 
 always been maintained by Congress, and, I believe, without 
 a dissenting vote from any anti-tariff member of either House ; 
 that this duty never was intended for revenue ; that it never 
 produced revenue beyond the most inconsiderable amount ; 
 and that it was designed only for protection. 
 
 In estimating the comparative value of revenue and pro 
 tection, I differ from many persons, when I rank protection 
 first, and revenue as subordinate. Revenue is but a necessary 
 evil ; protection a positive good. With this devil money we 
 conjure away worse devils, and therefore we pursue it ; but 
 with this charitable and beneficent spirit, protection, we en 
 gender a thousand blessings, and spread universal content and 
 joy through all the walks of healthful toil. 
 
 Although it may be said, in reference to some of the de 
 tails of a tariff law, that revenue and protection are incom- 
 
284 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 patible, and that where one begins the other ends, yet this is 
 not always true not even true in the greater number of cases. 
 The fact is full of varieties. A high duty may be laid upon 
 some luxuries, which, being freely used by the rich, will afford 
 a large revenue, and yet, at the same time, will substantially 
 protect valuable portions of the domestic labor of the country. 
 This is true of silks, of linens, and of worsted goods. The 
 increased price is cheerfully paid by the rich, while it at the 
 same time encourages the manufacture of those cheaper 
 printed and plain goods of cotton which supply the same uses. 
 The course of trade, in such cases, gradually tends towards a 
 division, which restrains the foreign importation to the finer 
 goods of silk, linen, and worsted, the quantity of which is in 
 creased ; and employs the home manufacturer in the exten 
 sion and improvement of the cotton fabrics. Then, again, 
 there are commodities which having neither a likeness nor a 
 substitute among our own productions, the duty upon them is 
 merely one of revenue. Of these, tea and coffee, tropical 
 fruit and spices, certain dye-stuffs and drugs, are examples. 
 Then, there are articles upon which revenue declines exactly 
 in proportion as protection advances ; and these contending 
 principles divide the advantage between them. Such are 
 cotton and woollen goods, iron and glass ware, and some 
 others ; in reference to which, the antagonism between the 
 duty for revenue and the duty for protection generally settles 
 the matter, by yielding up the manufacture of the coarser 
 quality to our domestic workmen, and delivering the finer to 
 the foreign trade. Besides these, there are duties which 
 are neither more nor less than virtual prohibition. These 
 may be found including many chemical substances and 
 the products of many handicrafts such as certain kinds of 
 clothing, hats, and shoes, and also many articles of coarse 
 texture, the product of machinery. 
 
 Among all these varieties of subjects soliciting the attention 
 and care of the Government, the great and interesting problem 
 is how to arrange the duties so as to secure the revenue we 
 
THE PROTECTIVE SYSTEM. 285 
 
 want, compatibly with the protection we want. This under 
 taking has difficulties enough of its own, without persuading us 
 to superadd those absurd refinements of constitutional sophis 
 try by which protection and revenue may be blended in the 
 fanciful relations of incident and principal. The simplest, the 
 most direct, and most effective, and therefore the most sensible 
 mode of disposing of this task, is to consider the questions of 
 revenue and protection each on their own appropriate grounds, 
 and to adapt our legislation to the plainest mode of evolving 
 each. 
 
 We once had a revenue of upwards of twenty-five millions 
 from the sales of the public lands. If that had been a perma 
 nent income, and the Government were thus provided with 
 the means of defraying its annual expenditure, without the aid 
 of any impost whatever, the obligation to lay duties for the pro 
 tection of our commerce and our domestic industry would, in 
 my view of it, be no less urgent than it is now. The working 
 classes of the nation would then, as imperiously as now, demand 
 of the Government the restraint of foreign importation, where it 
 interfered with their pursuits at home, by such impediments, in 
 the nature of duties and prohibitions, as might be sufficient for 
 that end. This is a necessary power, belonging to all Govern 
 ments, without which they cannot exist in any condition of perma 
 nent prosperity ; and I think I may challenge the opponents of 
 this doctrine to produce, by a research through the whole histo 
 ry of human society, a single example of a Government that has 
 existed without such a power. Under our own Constitution we 
 have never been at a loss to find power, when policy required 
 its exercise, to establish very broad and sweeping prohibi 
 tions upon imports from foreign States. We have sometimes 
 added to all other duties two dollars a ton upon merchandise 
 imported in the vessels of particular nations ; sometimes we 
 have laid an embargo a flat prohibition upon all importations 
 from a foreign state; sometimes, as in 1818 and 1820, we 
 have forbidden all imports from certain colonial dependencies ; 
 and even in the late tariff act there is a direct prohibition 
 
286 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 against the importation of obscene prints. Who questions the 
 constitutionality of this kind of legislation ? It is justified by 
 that clause which authorizes Congress to regulate commerce 
 a wise, effective, and just exercise of power ; but let any one 
 explain how more wise, effective, or just, or more within the 
 scope of a general power to regulate commerce, than the ad 
 justment by law of the terms and conditions upon which for 
 eign fabrics may be permitted to be imported, when the design 
 of restraining them is either to give a special scope to our own 
 foreign commerce, or a broader expansion to our domestic, by 
 encouraging the enterprise of our citizens in a field where we 
 know that it will promote both national and individual wealth. 
 
 I have heard it said, by the advocates of one side of this 
 question, that every duty laid upon a foreign product is a tax 
 upon the consumer of that product to the amount of the duty. 
 I have heard it contended, on- the other side, that when a for 
 eign product is shut out from our market, or diminished in 
 quantity, by the increase of duty upon it, the similar product 
 in our country, being protected by this legislation, becomes 
 the subject of a vigorous domestic competition, which has the 
 effect to diminish the price, even, in some cases, below the 
 former cost of the imported article. There is something to be 
 said in favor of both of these propositions. In particular cir 
 cumstances, they are perhaps both true ; and, in the great 
 majority of cases, I have no doubt that both of these effects 
 are partially developed and combined ; that is, that the duty 
 somewhat increases the price, and that the domestic competi 
 tion somewhat lessens it ; the result being a medium, produced 
 by these opposite forces. 
 
 But I do not advocate the protective policy primarily be 
 cause domestic competition reduces the price. I desire to lay 
 no great stress on this advantage, although, undoubtedly, it is 
 one worthy of high consideration. Incomparably above it is 
 that sentiment of national independence which the protective 
 system nurses in the bosoms of the people, by the conviction 
 the influence of which is almost inappreciable that it se- 
 
THE PROTECTIVE SYSTEM. 287 
 
 cures to them, through all vicissitudes of national fortune, the 
 possession of their own home market. It teaches every Amer 
 ican citizen that the supply of his own country, with whatever 
 commodity his skill or industry is capable of producing, is his 
 peculium, as long as he is able to gratify the demand. I am 
 not given to underrate the value of foreign commerce. No 
 one can be disposed to cherish that interest more than my 
 self; but I think it of the highest importance that the nation 
 should be duly sensible of the vastly more engrossing value 
 of our home trade. I have no space to go into detail upon 
 this question. You may examine for yourselves. I would in 
 vite you to inquire into the aggregate of annual production, 
 amounting to some twelve hundred millions ; follow the dis 
 tribution of that among seventeen millions of people ; contem 
 plate the capital employed in this production ; the roads, ca 
 nals, steam power, shipping, and machinery, constructed to 
 circulate it over and around our territory, by land, by lake and 
 river, and by sea ; the number of persons actively engaged in 
 these various occupations of creating, of factorage, exchange, 
 and transport ; and then compare the results of these investiga 
 tions with all the similar material and equipage, the persons, 
 the capital, and the occupations which compose the elements 
 and the business of foreign trade. 
 
 I am sure that such a comparison, fairly made, will con 
 vince every man that the domestic commerce of our country 
 is tenfold more valuable than our foreign tenfold at this 
 day ; and the time will, come, if we be true to ourselves, when 
 it must be enlarged greatly beyond that proportion. In the 
 present state of the world, the domestic commerce of nations 
 is tending towards increase, the foreign towards decline. Now, 
 for the first time, perhaps, in the history of our species, is man 
 kind witnessing the great competition of highly civilized commu 
 nities in the arts of peace. War has been banished, for more than 
 a quarter of a century, from the master states of the globe states 
 possessing similar climates, equal facilities of production, equal 
 arts, and equal wants. Human skill has been trained to its 
 
288 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 utmost perfection among these rival communities, to produce 
 a supply of the same commodities. Where is there a founda 
 tion for commerce between them ? What commerce can sub 
 sist between two nations which each cultivate the same prod 
 ucts, fabricate the same manufactures, and have the same ne 
 cessities ? France, Prussia, Austria and the rest of the Ger 
 man States, Belgium, Russia England all cultivate grain, 
 weave cloth, manufacture iron. How shall they exchange with 
 each other during this long peace, when the productive power 
 of each is strained to its utmost capacity their grain, their 
 cloth, or their iron ? We also enter into this competition. Like 
 them, we cultivate grain, weave cloth, and work iron. We 
 have some products, however, which they have not chiefly 
 cotton and tobacco. In every thing but these we are rival pro 
 ducers with themselves ; and even in regard to these, the depen 
 dencies of some of these Powers may be soon brought to be our 
 competitors. What have we, then, for mutual commerce with 
 those countries ? Certainly not grain, nor cloth, nor iron ; but 
 only cotton and tobacco. I do not take into the account some 
 minor staples of trade of small amount and precarious demand ; 
 nor do I reckon that existing, and I may call it accidental, 
 state of things which is now stimulating a trade, on our part, 
 in breadstuffs and provisions, with Great Britain and her de 
 pendencies, through her North American possessions. I speak 
 in reference only to certain and permanent sources of trade. 
 Commerce cannot increase between us and these European 
 nations, nor between these nations themselves, while this uni 
 versal peace whets the desire and quickens the skill to produce 
 the necessaries and luxuries which each demands at home. So 
 far as some sixty or seventy millions of dollars worth of cotton 
 and tobacco continue to be demanded from the United States 
 and how long that demand may continue, every one must 
 acknowledge to be, at least, an anxious problem to our plant 
 ers \ve may count upon an established commerce with Europe ; 
 but beyond that all is uncertain, fluctuating, and dependent 
 upon the accidents of the day. If grain and provisions, if coal 
 
THE PROTECTIVE SYSTEM. 280 
 
 and iron, if timber, if wool, if flax or hemp, if metals of any 
 kind, were in demand by Europe, we have three Western States 
 alone to say nothing of a dozen others that have capacity 
 to feed and clothe, to shelter and supply half the population of 
 that quarter of the world. With some few and unimportant ex 
 ceptions, all these commodities are shut out from our com 
 merce by the careful policy of those nations who have not yet 
 been able to see the advantage of taking from us what their own 
 dominions and people are capable of producing. This is their 
 policy, notwithstanding that general consent of all enlightened 
 societies, of which we have often heard, to discard the errors of 
 protection, and adopt the wisdom of free trade. 
 
 Upon what, then, is commerce hereafter to subsist ? I an 
 swer, chiefly on the intercourse between nations of dissimilar 
 products and widely varying climes. They who are born to 
 temperate skies and fertile lands, with all this marvellous power 
 of machinery, may find a range for their enterprise in the trop 
 ics, and among those nations of the New World and of the 
 Old, and of those Southern and Pacific seas, whose awakening 
 perception to European and American luxuries, and appetite 
 to possess them, may render our trade an object of desire. It 
 must eventually come to that ; the skilful nations will seek their 
 commerce with the unskilful ; art will exchange its products 
 for the rarer bounties of nature. 
 
 It is worth inquiring what, in traversing this field, are our 
 chances ? We shall find in every sea, and under every sun, the 
 vast colonial domain of England at this time occupying, in greater 
 extent than any other nation, the choicest spots upon the map of 
 the globe a domain carefully locked against us and every com 
 petitor. That sagacious Power foreseeing that commerce could 
 not long subsist between equal nations, has, in time past, laid 
 the foundations of her marvellous dominion and established her 
 inviolable system of trade, by which come what may, she has 
 secured a perpetuity of commercial monopoly for her own peo 
 ple. Even now actively pursuing that grand thought, she is 
 busily stripping us of every portion of our commerce that she 
 13 
 
290 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 can bring within reach of her policy. By establishing entre 
 pots around us, wherever her colonial possessions will allow 
 her, and rigidly maintaining the restrictions and prohibitions 
 of her navigation act, she is quietly and peaceably withdraw 
 ing our flag from the ocean, and substituting her own, in the 
 carnage of our products. When this system of trade is ma 
 tured, and those colonies of the Indian and Pacific oceans are 
 filled up with inhabitants ; when England, by new treaties with 
 South American and African States, and by conquests in Asia, 
 shall have enlarged and fortified her circle of commerce, where, 
 I ask, are the United States, where Germany, France, Russia, 
 where is any other power of Europe, to find employment for 
 their keels, beyond that modicum which English ambition or 
 English policy may leave to their occupation ? We shall find, 
 as other nations shall (if it is not already discovered), that 
 our prosperity and theirs will be best consulted in adopting 
 those countervailing measures which shall secure to us and to 
 them what, at last, is better than all foreign trade, the undispu 
 ted possession of our home markets. The Zoll Verein or cus 
 toms Union of Germany owes its origin to the due apprecia 
 tion of this truth ; and by establishing large circles of interna 
 tional trade on the continent of Europe, and guarding them 
 against British competition, the German States, France, and 
 Russia, are now enjoying benefits through a policy which the 
 British philosophy of free trade affects to deride, but which 
 there is not a British statesman who does not acknowledge to 
 be wise and patriotic by the very solicitude he shows to have 
 it changed. 
 
 Who can compute at this day what is ultimately to be the 
 value of our home market ? I have said that our home trade 
 is now tenfold more valuable than our foreign. There was a 
 time, in the earlier days of our republic, when our foreign trade 
 was perhaps the most valuable of the two when the universal 
 wars of Europe gave us the commercial harvest of the world. 
 That period has passed by ; and, as we have grown older, our 
 internal traffic has daily advanced towards its present prepon- 
 
THE PROTECTIVE SYSTEM. 291 
 
 derance. That preponderance will continue to increase through 
 centuries. When, instead of seventeen millions of people, this 
 land shall nourish one hundred millions, with all their facul 
 ties and all their wants, what comparative estimate shall we 
 make between the commerce that plies at home and that which 
 seeks its gains abroad ? When our coasting tonnage shall num 
 ber eight and ten millions of tons ; when railroads and canals 
 shall be almost immeasurable ; when cities shall lie as thickly 
 along our three thousand miles of lake and our two thousand 
 miles of sea-coast, as they now stud the shores of Europe ; when 
 the characteristic ingenuity of our countrymen shall have turn 
 ed all their power of water, of steam, and of machinery, to their 
 full account ; when the solitudes of the far West shall be con 
 verted into luxuriant fields, and every valley shall contribute 
 its multitude of consumers, asking for the richest products of 
 art, who will think of measuring the value of this vast home 
 market with all that the rest of the globe can bring into com 
 petition with it ? Look at Europe as it is, with all its refine 
 ment, its wants, and its power of supplying them ; fancy that 
 immense association of inhabitants brought within the domin 
 ion of one government, enjoying equal laws and common priv 
 ileges, exempt from war, and fortified by a common inviolabil 
 ity of property, and you may then form some idea of what the 
 United States may be under a wise and steady adherence to 
 that policy which directs all its vigor to the continual develop 
 ment of our native resources and the persevering protection of 
 our domestic industry. That policy we began with our govern 
 ment : let us not depart from it now. I wish this American 
 field preserved for the American workman, as long as there is 
 one to be found who can supply the country with a necessary 
 or a luxury of life. After he is served, then let in the foreign 
 product ; but to our own artisan be the first fruits. 
 
 I will not ask what is the cost of maintaining this policy. It is 
 not to be measured by the arithmetic of money. I will not con 
 sent that it shall be determined by asking the question whether 
 the foreign workman labors for lower wages than our own. 
 
292 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 The independence and the comfort of the United States shall 
 never be weighed, in ray mind, against the cheap attainment 
 of luxuries. High wages are the peculiar blessing of our 
 country. It is through high wages that we make the laboring 
 man a partner in the gains of the rich. They are the princi 
 pal ingredient of that American system of which the scope 
 and end are to secure the physical comfort of the working 
 man, by affording him a full remuneration for his toil ; yield 
 ing him time for mental and moral improvement, by which he 
 shall be progressively lifted up into a higher scale of social 
 respectability and usefulness ; and identifying him with the 
 prosperity and happiness of the nation, by causing him to feel 
 that in promoting that prosperity he promotes his own. I do 
 not wish to see his gains diluted or adulterated by the cheap 
 labor of Europe. Our system is entirely different from that 
 of the Old World. The working man here belongs to a body 
 which constitutes nine-tenths of the nation it is in fact the 
 nation itself; and our policy, unlike that of the Old World, is 
 to make this interest paramount to all others ; not subordinate 
 to any other class in the State. Thus, our American system 
 becomes the only true and really democratic system of admin 
 istration in the economy of our Government. 
 
 I have heard and read a great deal of argument employed 
 by particular interests here at home, and by the persevering 
 champions of free trade abroad, to persuade us that we should 
 open our ports to the unlimited introduction of foreign prod 
 ucts and this from nations who have studiously excluded, 
 or encumbered with enormous duties, every American com 
 modity but such as they could not obtain from any other re 
 gion of the globe ? The general drift of that argument has 
 been, that Government should not interfere with the pursuits 
 of the people ; that the United States are an agricultural and 
 commercial people, and ought not to think of making that for 
 themselves which other countries can make cheaper ; that 
 every duty upon a foreign commodity is a tax of that amount 
 upon the consumer ; that, for the sake of protecting an Ameri- 
 
THE PROTECTIVE SYSTEM. 293 
 
 can fabric, we levy a tax for the public treasury, and five or 
 six times the amount of the tax for the benefit of the manu 
 facturer ; and, even from the same advocates who have uttered 
 these dogmas, I have heard it said that our manufactures were 
 capable of competing with all the world, without the protec 
 tion of Government a position which, if true, is a full answer 
 to all the others. I deny each and all of these assumptions. 
 So far from it being the duty of Government to abstain from 
 interfering with the avocations of the people, it is obvious 
 that when the policy of other nations bears upon and con 
 strains the pursuits of our citizens, the only mode by which we 
 can give them free choice to pursue that calling for which 
 their talents qualify them is by resisting this pressure from 
 abroad, and leaving the domestic industry an uncontrolled 
 range over the whole expanse of our wants. If the cheap 
 goods of England are to find free admission into our use, 
 what choice of a calling in life do we leave to our working 
 man ? Can he make hats, shoes, garments ? Can he betake 
 himself to the spinning of cotton or wool, the weaving of 
 cloth, the working of brass, or iron, or lead ? None of these, 
 nor of a thousand other pursuits which the protection and care 
 his own Government have now provided for him. What is his 
 resource ? The economists on the other side of the Atlantic 
 tell us he may plant cotton, tobacco and corn, and sow wheat. 
 They would thus advise him to cultivate the opportunity of 
 adding to that product which is already superabundant, and 
 still more reduce the price of such of those commodities as 
 England and France find it necessary to take from us. This 
 is the advice of England to us that England who will not 
 engage to take directly from us a stick of timber, or a barrel 
 of flour, but upon terms which must inevitably ruin every ad 
 venturer in the trade ; that England who tells us that we 
 should content ourselves with cultivating the raw material of 
 manufactures, and leave her the supply of the fabricated 
 product, at the very time that she refuses to receive any thing 
 but our cotton and tobacco, constituting not one-fourth of the 
 
294 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 mass of raw materials which, if she would take, we are able 
 to give. 
 
 It is merely absurd, in the face of our present experience, 
 to assert that we are only an agricultural and commercial 
 people. Our progress in manufactures and the mechanical 
 arts, in the last twenty years, is almost without a parallel in 
 the history of nations. Every one must see that the genius 
 of our country is singularly inclined to mechanical improve 
 ment ; and I venture to assert that an inquiry into the condi 
 tion of the different sections of this country will result in a 
 perfect demonstration that the largest amount of prosperity 
 will be found diffused among the people of those districts 
 which have devoted themselves with the greatest assiduity 
 to mechanical and manufacturing occupations. In truth, no 
 country ever attains to great power or wealth by an exclusive 
 addiction to agriculture. Nations are still less likely to attain 
 to it now, since mechanical science has added such wonder 
 working capacity to machinery. The exclusively agricultural 
 communities have ever been the feeblest and most dependent 
 among the nations of the world the most powerful and com 
 manding are those who have added to the productive capaci 
 ties of their soil the creative results of genius employed in 
 the sphere of the useful arts. 
 
 A word as to this question of the duty being a tax upon 
 the consumer. If it were so, I would ask, who is the con 
 sumer? The assertion is, that the producer gets the benefit 
 of the tax, and that the consumer pays it. Supposing that 
 true, then the proposition is about as broad as it is long. 
 There are very few consumers in this country who are not 
 producers. The fanner, for instance, produces more than he 
 consumes. If, as producer, he gets a better price for his grain 
 as he undoubtedly does, through the influence of the manu 
 facturing system he is upon the whole a gainer by the duty 
 which fosters manufacturing. So also the mechanic is a pro 
 ducer to a greater extent than he consumes, and he profits 
 also. The stockhoMer is also one who has lent his capital to 
 
THE PROTECTIVE SYSTEM. 295 
 
 the producer, and his capital returns him a better interest in 
 proportion as the producer s craft is protected and encour 
 aged by the system. In short, throughout the whole range of 
 business, there is a principle of indemnification at work, 
 which utterly annuls the supposed effect of a tax upon con 
 sumption. 
 
 There is another most important consideration belonging 
 to this subject. The system of domestic manufacture and me 
 chanical employment has a valuable train of accessories attend 
 ant upon it. First, the workman is withdrawn from agricul 
 tural pursuits, and thus lessens the competition against the hus 
 bandman. Instead of being the rival, he and his family are 
 changed into customers of the tiller of the soil, and become 
 the purchasers of his harvest. Second, every mechanical occu 
 pation creates a necessity for another ; it brings into demand 
 the labor of the mason, the carpenter, the tool maker, and the 
 whole roll of craftsmen who furnish the materials of a manu 
 facturing village ; and, lastly, it invites new establishments in 
 the same pursuit ; in the competition of which, additional skill 
 is rapidly acquired ; new masses of population are employed ; 
 products are cheapened ; villages, towns, and cities, are built 
 up ; markets for the fruits of the earth are created where none 
 existed before ; a thousand handicrafts, auxiliary to household 
 and personal wants, are brought into existence; and a new 
 fountain of prosperity turns its current over these large masses 
 of population, diffusing life, activity, and comfort, where before 
 there was only a dull and stagnant repose. These are the ac 
 cessories of manufacturing and mechanical employment, and 
 belong to that employment, in whatever country it is carried 
 on. In weighing, therefore, the merits of this domestic policy, 
 we have to ask the question, shall these accessories be foster 
 ed in a foreign land, and for the benefit of a foreign popula 
 tion, or shall they be preserved and enjoyed by our own ? The 
 only answer the opponents of protection can make to this ques 
 tion is to deny the value of these accessories ; to affirm that 
 the country is better without them, as long as we can ex- 
 
29f> POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 change our agricultural wealth for cheap foreign goods ; and 
 to maintain that only when we cannot so exchange it we 
 should manufacture for ourselves. Is it not plain, supposing 
 (what we have no right to assume) that foreign nations will re 
 ceive our agricultural products, that the immense yield of the 
 country, when every one is tilling the earth, must cheapen our 
 agriculture quite as much as the foreign manufacture is cheap 
 ened ; that we shall be toiling in the midst of superabundant 
 harvests, at the very lowest rate of requital, merely for the pur 
 pose of getting cheap goods from abroad making wheat, for 
 example, at fifty cents a bushel, in order to buy cloth at two dol 
 lars a yard ; and that we shall go on progressively diminishing 
 the the price of food to the foreign operative, that he may be com 
 pelled to work at still lower wages, and to furnish us his fabric 
 at a still lower rate ? 
 
 What do we gain by this process but perpetual poverty and 
 dependence, low wages, small choice of pursuit, a land without 
 a workshop, without villages or towns, an idle population, and a 
 commerce placed at the mercy of foreign Powers, to be over 
 thrown at any moment their caprice or their ill-will may sug 
 gest ? If, at any time, wearied with the monotony or the unprofit 
 ableness of this doom which chains us to the plough, we should 
 think of devoting a portion of our strength to mechanical or man 
 ufacturing pursuits, our enterprise would be checked by a mar 
 ket filled with foreign fabrics at half the price for which we could 
 make them, and we should be conscious of a perpetual inter 
 dict forbidding us to learn the art, or attain the skill of any 
 manufacturing craft. Yet this would be called free trade ! It 
 would be, according to the canons of that school, leaving the 
 industry of the country to seek the pursuits most congenial to 
 it, without interference on the part of the Government. In the 
 contemplation of such a case, I ask if it is not apparent that 
 Government restrictions are, in fact, the only device by which 
 labor is made free to range over the whole field of human em 
 ployment; and if, on the other hand, Government forbearance 
 is not the only source of impediment and constraint upon the 
 
THE PROTECTIVE SYSTEM. 297 
 
 natural capacity and desire of our industry to occupy the 
 ground which God has assigned to it ? 
 
 But it is now the fact, and it will always be so, that foreign 
 nations will not receive our agricultural products, except in 
 very limited quantity far below our capacity to supply them. 
 They are already furnished from resources of their own. 
 What are we, to do? Manufacture, but without protection, is 
 the answer. That is, we are to embark capital in manufac 
 tures, train up a population to these pursuits, disqualify them 
 for all others, at a perpetual sacrifice of means, and even un 
 der a continual actual loss. Nothing is better confirmed by 
 experience than the fact that the low wages of Europe will sup 
 ply the greater amount of manufactures cheaper than we can 
 supply them. He, therefore, who attempts to manufacture here 
 without a protecting duty, insures for himself irretrievable 
 ruin. Is it. an answer to say that foreign manufacturers can 
 not supply us unless we have something to exchange for their 
 fabrics ; and that, as they will not receive our products, we 
 cannot receive theirs, that consequently this impediment upon 
 importation will be sufficient to encourage our enterprise ? If 
 this were true, it is at once an admission of the value of a pro 
 tection, since a protecting duty is but an impediment upon im 
 portation. But it is not true. We give them a very consider 
 able amount of products not a tithe, perhaps, of what we 
 could furnish them, but still a large amount and for these 
 they exchange their manufactures. Now, while the foreign fab 
 ric is in our market, no matter how incommensurate to our 
 wants, it will regulate the price of our similar fabric, especially 
 while it is known that the foreign supply is abundant at the 
 place where it is produced. American iron, for instance, can 
 not be sold for seventy dollars a ton, while English iron of 
 equal quality, is to be had for sixty, notwithstanding the fact 
 that, of the English, the supply is not sufficient to meet a twen 
 tieth part of the demand. The whole will fall towards the Eng 
 lish price, and that price will, under all circumstances, be kept 
 lower than the American, for the sake of readv sale. And thus 
 
298 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 it is, that even the surplus stocks of foreign nations, which 
 may be afforded often at the original cost of production with 
 out a profit, have a control upon the price of our manufac 
 tures ; which control may be, and in truth is, exercised 
 (whenever our duties are relaxed), to the detriment and over 
 throw of the enterprise of our own people. I do not mean to 
 say that this effect is universal in regard to American manu 
 facture. Thanks to the genius of our country, we have some 
 branches that have acquired a strength and a foundation which 
 foreign rivalry cannot impair ! And it is a gratifying convic 
 tion that every year witnesses an increase of those arts in 
 which our workmen may defy the skill of the world. It is not 
 many years since this species of enterprise appealed, in the 
 helplessness of its infancy, to the nurture of the Government. 
 A ready hand and a parental care were freely proffered, in an 
 swer to the appeal. The result is what we see, and ought to 
 inspire us with confidence in the wisdom of protecting those 
 pursuits for which the country has a capacity, but which are 
 yet unable to encounter the foreign assault. 
 
 It is a prevalent error into which both sides have fallen, in 
 treating this question of the protective and anti-protective pol 
 icy, to regard it in the light of a purely theoretical problem, 
 and to maintain it on either side, upon arguments which claim 
 to be universal and unchangeable in their application. In my 
 judgment, it is the most practical of questions, and rests ex 
 clusively upon considerations of present expediency in the cir 
 cumstances of every nation. The wisdom of establishing high 
 or low duties can only be estimated by the condition of the com 
 munity to which they refer. High duties may be conspicuous 
 ly useful to one nation, and as conspicuously hurtful to another. 
 I have shown why I think them indispensable to the United 
 States. 
 
 But we are told that enlightened economists in England 
 condemn our policy. We have proof of this, indeed, in the 
 endless dissertations of the British press in favor of free trade ; 
 and the recent legislation of that country is cited to show how 
 
THE PROTECTIVE SYSTEM. 299 
 
 much the public mind there has awakened to the error of its 
 ancient heresy of protection, and to the absolute virtue of free 
 trade. 
 
 Protesting against the influence which is sought to be de 
 rived from these opinions, and from the supposed scope of the 
 legislation referred to, I desire to make a few remarks in reply. 
 
 The argument drawn from this source is delusive, on two 
 grounds ; 
 
 In the first place, if it were true, it furnishes no guide to 
 us, as I have already shown. 
 
 But, in the second place, it is untrue. Great Britain has 
 never adopted the policy of free trade. On the contrary, there 
 is no nation whose interests, connected with the industry of 
 her people, are hedged around with a more impregnable de 
 fence of restrictions than hers. Her navigation is fortified by 
 a thousand bulwarks, which render it the most effective and ex 
 clusive national monopoly of which the world has ever had an 
 example. Her colonial possessions are guarded for her own 
 trade, by all the power of parchment and the sword by law, 
 by treaty, and by armament. Her domestic industry is en 
 trenched behind a mountain of barriers, which the industry of 
 no other nation can overleap. Shall we be deceived, while 
 contemplating this elaborate and time-honored structure of ac 
 cumulated defences equally the manifestation of her jealousy 
 of rivals and of her foresight by such relaxations in the rigor 
 of her ancient system as the maturity of her power and the per 
 fection of her skill have rendered not only harmless, but even 
 more operative, as the means of protection ? 
 
 An endeavor is made to promote the belief that Sir Robert 
 Peel s late bill has sprung out of a conviction of the necessity 
 of abandoning the protective system, and that it is the first 
 measure which is destined to signalize a new era of free trade. 
 The same language was used in reference to Mr. Huskisson s 
 hill, in 1825. An inspection of the late act of the British Par 
 liament will convince us, that whatever changes may have been 
 made in the rates of duty, none have been made in the ftmda- 
 
POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 mental principles of the ancient British policy in the support 
 of manufactures. On the question of breadstuffs and provis 
 ions, I admit that the remonstrances of a famished population 
 have had their weight to produce what, as far as it goes, may 
 be regarded as a most salutary and beneficent change. Yet, 
 even in this field, the principle of protection is maintained 
 upon what, here in the United States, we should call a very high 
 duty. The general scope of these modifications has been to 
 reduce the duty on provisions only a few degrees below actual 
 prohibition, and to incorporate into the new law a very decided 
 encouragement to the industry of the colonial possessions.* 
 In fact, this measure of reducing duties upon food is a most 
 significant auxiliary to the protection of manufactures. 
 
 But when we look at the manner in which the late act has 
 disposed of the question of protection to the great staple 
 manufactures of the kingdom, we shall better understand 
 the scope and value of these supposed reforms. 
 
 Let it be remembered, that England supplies with her fab- 
 
 * Bacon, for instance, formerly paid a duty of six cents a pound. 
 The new bill reduces it to three cents when imported from a foreign 
 country, and seven and one half mills only per pound when brought 
 from a British Colony. 
 
 The former wheat and flour duties were regulated by a scale which, 
 when wheat stood in the market at $1.60 per bushel, fixed the duty 
 on the grain at seventy-two cents a bushel, and on the barrel of flour 
 at $5.90. These were the highest rates, and the duties declined, as 
 the price of wheat rose, through a regular series, until they reached 
 their lowest point when wheat arrived at $2.20 per bushel ; at that 
 point, the duty was two cents and eight mills per bushel on wheat, 
 and $3.95 on the barrel of flour. Sir Robert Peel s bill lessened the 
 rates of duty by beginning with the highest, to wit : 60 cents a bushel 
 on wheat, and $2.89 on the barrel of flour, when wheat is $1.53 per 
 bushel, and falls through a regular scale to three cents a bushel, and 
 fourteen cents on the barrel of flour, when the price of wheat rises to 
 $2.19 per bushel. This applied to imports from foreign countries. 
 But as regards imports from the colonies, the scale is much lower, and 
 varies from fifteen cents to three cents on the bushel of wheat, and 
 from seventy -two cents to fourteen and one half on the barrel of 
 Hour. 
 
THE PROTECTIVE SYSTEM. 301 
 
 rics every foreign market to which her trade can find admission. 
 The more prominent and notable among these products of her 
 skill are woollens, cottons, and linens. There are many others 
 which it is not necessary to mention. In the facility of creat 
 ing the large mass of these productions, she is unrivalled. 
 There are other fabrics, such as silks, fine lawns and laces, not 
 to enumerate others, in which she finds herself under a vigor 
 ous and somewhat oppressive competition, from France, Ger 
 many, and other countries. In that department of her indus 
 try in which she excels other nations, and for which she can, 
 therefore, gain a preference in foreign markets, it is obvious 
 she needs no protecting duty to secure to her own artisans 
 the home supply. We can imagine no inducement for high 
 duties to protect the products within this department. Im 
 porting none of them, any duty in her tariff must be but nom 
 inal. 
 
 Keeping this idea in mind, let us inquire into the policy of 
 the new bill in its connection with these points. 
 
 The annual amount of woollens manufactured in Great 
 Britain has been estimated in value at ^"22,000,000 about 
 $ 1 10,000,000; her annual export of these at ,7,000,000, or $35,- 
 000,000 ; the difference is absorbed by her home consumption. 
 Her imports of woollen goods, according to recent returns, yield 
 about $100,000 of duty, which would indicate their total value 
 to be less than $250,000. The duty upon woollens was here 
 tofore forty per cent. ; the late bill reduces it to fifteen and 
 twenty per cent. 
 
 Of manufactured cottons, Mr. McCulloh, in 1835, esti 
 mated the entire product at about $170,000,000, and the ex 
 port at about $100,000,000. The importation of cotton goods 
 into England seldom reaches half a million of dollars. The 
 duties have heretofore been ten and twenty per cent., and the 
 new bill has left them untouched. 
 
 The linen manufacture has been computed, by the same 
 author, at $37,000,000 per annum ; the export about one-third 
 of that amount. The import is very small. The bill reduces 
 
302 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 the duties, which heretofore ranged between 40 and 20 per 
 cent., down to 20 and 15. 
 
 Here we have three branches of British manufacture, pro 
 ducing annually about $317,000,000, supplying the various 
 channels of British trade, with an export of near $150,000,000, 
 and subject to a competition in the home market to an amount 
 less than $1,000,000. And it is deemed to be a surrender of 
 domestic protection to reduce the duties on these three 
 branches of manufacture to a standard of fifteen and twenty 
 per cent. This surrender is presented to us as an example, 
 and we are called upon, in imitation of it, to bring down our 
 duties to the same standard. Is it not obvious, that a nation 
 which can export $150,000,000 of her fabrics in a year has al 
 ready secured a position for that branch of her industry, at 
 which all duties are indifferent to her ? Does any one doubt 
 that Sir Robert Peel might have fixed his standard as safely at 
 five per cent, as at twenty ? Has he by this reduction deserted 
 any manufacture, turned any workman back to agriculture, ob 
 literated any capital, shut up any workshop, given the home 
 market of England to any foreigner ? Where is there any pa 
 rallelism in the case, which is to make this act an example for 
 the United States ? 
 
 How does the matter stand in reference to those manufac 
 tures in which England is not so dexterous ? 
 
 Manufactured silk goods, in which France, Germany, Italy, 
 and the East Indies, are known to excel, stood in the former 
 tariff at varying rates of duty, according to their quality, from 
 $2.64 a pound up to $6.60 a pound, which duties Sir Robert 
 Peel has found it altogether inexpedient to change.* It is true, 
 
 * These silk duties are carefully graduated according to the danger 
 of interference with the home market, from the want of perfection in 
 the British manufacture. Thus : 
 
 Plain silk and satin is admitted at . . $2.64 por pound. 
 
 Figured silk and satin . , . . 3.60 
 
 <J;ni/<>, plain . -. . " . . 4.08 
 
 <r:iii/c, figured . . . . 6.60 
 
THE PROTECTIVE SYSTEM. 303 
 
 he has reduced the duties on some preparations of raw silk 
 a measure evidently dictated by a desire to afford further pro 
 tection and encouragement to the manufactured article. 
 
 Upon French lawns the duty was $1.44 the piece, of 8 
 yards in length ; this is reduced to $1.20 
 
 Upon bordered lawn handkerchiefs the duty was $1.20 the 
 piece, at which it remains. 
 
 Upon other lawns than French, containing not more than 
 60 threads to the inch (an article upon which the duties col 
 lected in 1840 amounted to $24), the duty was 18 cents the 
 square yard, and is retained at that unchanged. 
 
 On sugar (not refined) imported from any quarter but a 
 British possession (from such a possession it is much less), the 
 duty was 13 cents a pound ; 
 
 On refined sugar, 35 cents a pound ; 
 
 On brown candy, 24 cents a pound ; and 
 
 On white candy, 35 cents. 
 
 All these duties are retained in the new bill, without alter 
 ation. 
 
 ypon tobacco the duty remains as before ; that is, at 72 
 cents a pound for the unmanufactured, and $2.16 a pound for 
 the manufactured. 
 
 These are a few items taken from the tariff of Great Britain. 
 I have noticed the course of legislation which has been adopted 
 in regard to them, with a view to justify my remark that that 
 nation has, as yet, afforded us no evidence of her purpose to 
 abandon the protection of her manufacturers ; that she has, in 
 fact, made no approach to such a design. If the provisions I 
 
 Crape, plain ... . ... .... -.- 3.84 per pound. 
 
 Crape, figured _,. . ._. . if) . ^ .. 4.32 
 
 Velvet, plain , , . , - . 5.28 " 
 
 Velvet, figured . . . . . 6.60 " 
 
 Uibbons . ; . " . . . . 4.08 " 
 
 Silk net -. - . . . . . 5.76 
 
 The duty on silks in our tariff, as passed at the last session, does 
 not exceed $2.50 per pound. 
 
30-A POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 have reviewed were, what certain politicians of this country 
 represent them, concessions to the spirit of free trade, why 
 have we this variety of duty ? this sliding scale on wheat from 
 the point of prohibition downward ; those enormous duties on 
 silk, graduated to the hazard of competition ; this twenty per 
 cent, on woollens, this fifteen on linens, this ten on cottons ; 
 this two and three hundred on sugar ; this thousand per cent, 
 on tobacco ? These discriminations have an object. Is that 
 object revenue ? Upon many of these commodities no reve 
 nue is collected none whatever. Is it free trade ? If so, why 
 build the gates of such unequal heights ? Or is it protection ? 
 Go and inquire of the whole history of English industry, for 
 two hundred years past, and you will have no difficulty in the 
 answer. It is quite edifying to observe how liberal has be 
 come the policy of British statesmen in the toleration of a low 
 duty on such manufactures as their artisans make better than 
 all the world ; and how that toleration hardens into cautious re 
 serve, when the question concerns those unperfected occupa 
 tions in which British supremacy is acknowledged to be a mat 
 ter of doubt. 
 
 The protective system, all over Christendom, has grown to 
 be a question with England. It is no small homage to the 
 genius of that nation, that her arts have asserted such a do 
 minion over the interests of the civilized world. I should be 
 almost content, England being out of the way, to try free trade 
 with all the rest of Europe. I believe that in a few years we 
 might gain as much as we should lose. But I am not wil 
 ling to encounter the resource and faculty of England ; and it 
 would seem that she is as little inclined to encounter ours. 
 I hold it to be a question distinctly with her. 
 
 Even as regards those manufactures in which we excel, as 
 we do in many of the coarser kinds, the competition of Eng 
 land has a crushing weight. Those surplus products of hers 
 are, every now and then, turned loose in inundations upon us. 
 In that circle of nations for whose supply she is perpetually 
 busy, it is peculiarly her fortune to meet with interruptions to 
 
THE PROTECTIVE SYSTEM. 305 
 
 her commerce. Scarcely a war, a pestilence, an overteeming 
 harvest, a new alliance of trade, occurs in any region of the 
 globe, to turn the ordinary currents of commerce awry, that 
 the pulse of England does not show the change in some depart 
 ment of her industry. Some vent is shut up ; some portion 
 of her stock is thrown back into her lap. Then it is that the 
 United States are doomed to be the recipient of fresh supplies 
 of cheap merchandise beyond our healthful wants, and all the 
 fibers of our own industry are made to feel this unwelcome 
 boon. No skill of production can secure us against such a 
 disaster scarcely are duties, short of prohibition, a defence. 
 
 All Europe has suffered from the same cause, and, with 
 hardly a single exception, every nation of that quarter of the 
 world has settled down upon a system of protection. So far is 
 it from being true, as is frequently asserted, that the enlight 
 ened nations are exploding restrictions and taking up free trade. 
 
 It is in no spirit of vituperation or hostility to England that 
 we indulge these opinions, but in the friendly rivalry of nations 
 pursuing their own ends, according to their own views of their 
 interest. I have a cherished respect for that nation, as the 
 great nurse of history, of philosophy and art. I commend her 
 wisdom, I admire her policy, I honor her patriotism ; but I 
 will not take her manufactures at low duties, as long as an 
 American mechanic can supply me with the same commodity. 
 I more especially would refuse to take the full supply of her 
 manufactures, while she burdens our tobacco, our grain, our 
 lumber, our provisions, with onerous and even prohibitory 
 charges ; I would refuse to give her free admission while she 
 shuts us out from her colonies, by this ingenious system of 
 circuitous trade which transfers to her own vessels the carriage 
 of our products. And, even if all these impediments were re 
 moved, I will not say that I would relax that countervailing 
 policy by which alone her stupendous power is to be resisted, 
 and the American citizen be allowed to feel himself, while 
 standing upon his own soil, that free man he prides himself 
 in being. The time may come, perhaps, when we, like England, 
 
306 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 may afford to be generous ; when, like her, we may have an in 
 terest to beguile the world with illusory concessions to free 
 trade. Then we may relax our system ; but until then, we 
 shall reverence the lesson she has taught us, to preserve with 
 inviolable watchfulness the first and best fruits of the home 
 market to the home workman. 
 
 A great deal of misconception prevails as to the proper 
 end and character of protection. 
 
 If I were asked, what is the chief object of Government and 
 what its first duty, I would answer, protection. I do not mean 
 the protection of manufactures and mechanical industry only ; 
 I mean the protection of every interest in the State. It is 
 essential to agriculture ; to the useful arts and sciences, and 
 the occupations connected with them ; to commerce and navi 
 gation ; to mining and fisheries ; to currency and credit. I 
 say nothing as to that more familiar idea of protection to prop 
 erty, to personal liberty, to life. All these concerns require 
 and receive the protection of every well organized Government. 
 There is no shallower cant than this cry of "let us alone," as 
 applied to the administration of the polity of States. 
 
 If we inquire into the history of our legislation, we shall 
 find that agriculture has been protected by duties, by grants 
 of land and expensive experiments, b; treaties securing favor 
 able conditions of trade, by countervailing regulations, and by 
 the creation of markets for it both at home and abroad. 
 Without dwelling on particulars, I may refer for examples in 
 these several kinds to the duties on cotton, on indigo, on hemp, 
 and on tobacco ; to the grants which have been made to the 
 cultivators of the vine, of the agave plant, and other produc 
 tions which it has been thought useful to naturalize in our cli 
 mate ; to our commercial treaties generally, which furnish 
 abundant proofs of the solicitude of the Government to open 
 every accessible market to the produce of our soil. Indeed it 
 has always been a principal source of the favor which the 
 agriculturists of this country at least that large portion of 
 them who are concerned in the production of food have man- 
 
THE PEOTECTIVE SYSTEM. 307 
 
 ifested for the tariff policy, that it has contributed so effectively 
 to furnishing them a market for their crops. When the tariffs of 
 1824 and 1828 were under consideration, the desks of Congress 
 were loaded with petitions from the agricultural interests, in 
 behalf of the passage of the bills : and these interests, through 
 out the grain-growing States, have been the steady, consistent 
 friends of the policy, from the earliest period at which it attract 
 ed public attention. It was quite a remarkable fact that the 
 leading advocates of the tariff of 1816 were from the South, 
 and that they supported it as a measure of protection to 
 Southern agriculture. Their argument was drawn from the 
 duty of Government to foster the cultivation of cotton, by re 
 straining the consumption and finally abandoning the use of 
 the East India cotton, which at that time was general over the 
 country. It was remonstrated against this tariff, that the break 
 ing up of the East India trade would expel a large number of 
 seamen from employment. But that was considered a small 
 evil against the great preponderance of good which was to re 
 sult from the protection of the cotton culture.* 
 
 To understand how extensively and at what cost of legisla 
 tion, of diplomacy, and taxation, commerce is protected, it is 
 only necessary to examine our numerous navigation laws, our 
 tonnage duties, our treaty stipulations for particular privileges, 
 and the expense at which we have reciprocated them with oth 
 er nations : to investigate the outlay and the duties of our dip- 
 
 * Mr. Calhoun, on that occasion, used the following language : 
 " It has been objected to this bill that it will injure our marine, and 
 consequently impair our naval strength. How far it is fairly liable 
 to this charge he was not prepared to say. He hoped and believed 
 it would not, at least to any alarming extent, have that effect immedi 
 ately ; and he firmly believed that its lasting operation would be highly 
 beneficial to our commerce. The trade to the East Indies would cer 
 tainly be much affected ; but it was stated in debate that the whole 
 of that trade employed but six hundred sailors. But, whatever might 
 be the loss in this and other branches of our foreign commerce, he 
 trusted it would be amply compensated in our coasting trade a 
 branch of navigation wholly in our own hands." Extract from Mr. 
 Calhoun s speech on the Minimum Valuation, from report in the Na 
 tional Intelligencer of April 11,1816. 
 
308 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 lomatic service and consular representation ; to learn what 
 squadrons we keep afloat, and the nature of the tasks we as 
 sign them ? what special indemnities we have insisted on, and 
 at what cost ; what wars we have waged, and what we contin 
 ually threaten, in support of it. 
 
 Upon what ground, then, can we refuse protection to the 
 third great interest of the nation, the Manufactures and Me 
 chanical arts. It seems that all other protection is acquiesced 
 in but this. The dispute only arises when the Government 
 turns its thought to the guardianship of this branch of its in 
 dustry ; and many persons, hearing no other protection talked 
 of, believe that this is the only interest of the country that seeks 
 it. Hence has sprung that common error that the manufac 
 turers and mechanics are asking favors from the Government 
 which are denied to all other classes of citizens. 
 
 In protecting any interest by a duty, the chief objection 
 taken to it is that the duty is a tax upon the people ; and the 
 question is asked, why should one portion of the people pay 
 for the advancement of the prosperity of another ? 
 
 Suppose a duty does amount to a tax on the country a 
 proposition by no means universally true how does that af 
 fect the argument ? Is it a condition that Government shall 
 afford no protection to the citizen but that which costs noth 
 ing? All protection involves cost ; and the only question is, 
 the value of the investment. If the success of agriculture can 
 be promoted, if commerce can be enriched, if home industry 
 can be rendered more profitable, if the domestic resources can 
 be multiplied, by a tax, what fair argument can be drawn from 
 the expense to the nation, provided that expense is compensated 
 in the resulting good ? 
 
 It ought to be observed, too, that protection may be af 
 forded by other means than duties, which means may be 
 equally expensive to the nation. We may establish by treaty, 
 or adjust by law, such relations with foreign powers as shall 
 exclude nine-tenths of all our products from their ports, for 
 the sake of gaining some special favor in behalf of one of our 
 
THE PROTECTIVE SYSTEM. 309 
 
 products ; or we may quietly submit to regulations of trade 
 which will produce the same effect. This is precisely what 
 we have done in regard to our cotton, in our relations with 
 England. 
 
 We may make a tariff and construct a system of trade 
 which shall admit a large amount of the staples of other na 
 tions free of duty, with a purpose thereby to secure from these 
 nations the consumption of a greater quantity of this staple of 
 ours, to which we have just alluded cotton. The effect of 
 such a system might be to embarrass a large amount of our in 
 dustry at home, by overstocking our market with these free 
 goods ; to overwhelm our currency by creating a heavy foreign 
 debt ; to disturb the business of our regular American mer 
 chant by floods of foreign consignment which should pour in 
 upon us the surplus stocks of foreign manufacturers, at rates 
 which destroy all fair competition. This is, in truth, the his 
 tory of the last ten years, in our intercourse with France, Eng 
 land, and Germany. Our treaties with France, especially, and 
 our tariff, have favored their silks, wines, and worsted goods, 
 for the sake of our cotton. In proof of this, I refer to the 
 treaty of June 24, 1822, and particularly to that of the 4th of 
 July, 1831, in which a specific bargain is made for the admis 
 sion into France of the long staple cottons at the same rate of 
 duty as the short the consideration yielded for this favor be 
 ing the admission of the French wines into our ports. 
 
 These are chiefly the means by which we have protected 
 the cotton interest of this country. In truth, that interest, not 
 withstanding the exasperated tone of those concerned with it 
 against the protective policy, may be said to be almost the only 
 one in the circle of our domestic industry which has received 
 the steady, persevering, and constant protection of the Govern 
 ment. Every other interest, perhaps, has been occasionally 
 exposed to a charge of policy, but this. We have passively 
 and unresistingly seen our other agricultural products our 
 grain, our tobacco, our lumber, hemp, rice, sugar, and provi 
 sions excluded from the markets of those nations which have 
 
310 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 professed to be the most friendly to our trade. We have seen 
 our commerce embarrassed by interdicts, by reciprocal treaties, 
 and colonial restrictions ; our manufactures and mechanical 
 pursuits prostrated ; our currency overwhelmed. All this we 
 have seen and submitted to, in deference to those views of pol 
 icy which have been dictated to the country by the influence 
 of free-trade politicians, the peculiar friends of the cotton in 
 terest. That interest has alone remained in the full possession 
 of all the direct protection it was in the power of the Govern 
 ment to confer upon it. 
 
 I know that this will be regarded as a bold and startling 
 assertion ; but it is true, and the fact deserves to be noticed. 
 It is time that the secret or unseen tendency of our commer 
 cial system, in reference to this subject, should be understood ; 
 not with any view of assault upon that interest, or change of 
 measures affecting it I have no other than the most friendly 
 feeling towards it ; but that justice may be done to the claims 
 of other interests, quite as important (to say the least of them) 
 as the cotton. 
 
 In no hostile spirit, I will enumerate the particular forms 
 in which the protection of Government has been extended, to 
 promote the prosperity of this great Southern staple. 
 
 In the first place, it has been protected by a specific duty, 
 laid expressly to encourage its cultivation. This duty was in 
 troduced into the tariff of 1789, and has been continued ever 
 since. It is a duty which, at this day, amounts to some thirty 
 or forty per cent, and entirely prohibits the introduction of 
 cotton from countries ready and willing to furnish a very con 
 siderable amount for the supply of our markets. This is par 
 ticularly true as regards Texas. 
 
 Second, the tariff of 1816 was constructed with a view to 
 its protection, by breaking up the trade in fabrics made from 
 East India cotton a purpose in which it was eminently suc 
 cessful. 
 
 Third, it has been protected by those regulations of trade 
 to which I have already referred, by which it has been secured 
 
THE PROTECTIVE SYSTEM. 311 
 
 an easy admission into the use of the chief manufacturing na 
 tions of Europe. 
 
 Fourth, our free importation system, adopted in 1833, pro 
 duced a state of foreign exchange which remained steadily fa 
 vorable to the interest of the cotton planter until that system 
 was recently repealed. This state of exchange gave him, dur 
 ing that whole interval of nearly ten years, an advantage which 
 was denied to almost every other producer in the country. 
 He has been, through that term, the holder of funds abroad, 
 always more valuable than at home, and capable of being con 
 verted into the domestic currency at a large profit. He has 
 thus been saved from exposure to those losses which have so 
 grievously distressed other portions of the community, through 
 the disorder and depreciation of the common circulating me 
 dium. 
 
 Fifth, in the comparative exemption of the cotton grower 
 from contributing to the expenses of Government, resulting 
 from the fact that he consumes less of those commodities 
 which pay duties, will be found no inconsiderable item of 
 protection. The slave population of the South, constituting 
 so large a portion of the inhaitants of that region, consume 
 less of imported goods than the white population of the Free 
 States, and the proportionate amount supplied to the Federal 
 Treasury is therefore less in the Slave States than in the Free. 
 
 Lastly, the Constitution and laws of the country have se 
 cured to the cotton planter a cheaper labor than may be found 
 in other pursuits, and so far may be said to have afforded a 
 specific protection to his industry. 
 
 The first three items in this enumeration present the forms 
 in which the Government has extended a direct protection to 
 cotton ; the remaining items indicate the advantages which 
 this product has derived less directly from Government inter 
 ference, though in sufficient degree from that source to justify 
 us in referring them to that political guardianship which we de 
 fine protection. Such are the favors, if they may be so called 
 the aids they certainly are which have been bestowed upon 
 
312 POLITICAL PAPEK8. 
 
 the cultivation of this valuable product of our agriculture. I 
 do not wish to see these favors withdrawn, these aids in any 
 degree diminished beyond what they are at the present time. 
 I am duly sensible of the great value of this branch of our 
 industry, and will always be found among those who claim for 
 it the care of the national councils ; but I cannot fail to re 
 mark upon the spirit with which those States which chiefly 
 cultivate it seek to advance that interest, to the detriment of 
 all others. Not content with what they receive, they unceas 
 ingly ask for more. They would seem to demand a monopoly 
 of public favor ; to require that all other interests in the 
 country should be treated as secondary to theirs even sacri 
 ficed to it, if need be. They insist that mechanical and manu 
 facturing industry shall be abandoned for their profit ; that 
 wheat, tobacco, sugar, and every other cultivation, shall remain 
 on the most unfavorable footing, in order that cotton may 
 thrive. They demand cheap food and cheap clothing, that 
 their gains may be increased ; regardless of the fact that they 
 not only diminish the gains, but actually break up the employ 
 ments, of large portions of our population, as much entitled 
 to consideration as themselves. 
 
 These requisitions strike me as ungracious from the cotton 
 States, towards whom so good a feeling has ever been mani 
 fested in the administration of our national affairs. They are, 
 in fact, ever seeking protection, while ostensibly making war 
 against it. ; 
 
 There is no equality or reciprocity between this interest 
 and others. They insist that we shall maintain the best mar 
 kets in the world for their product, and be content with the 
 worst markets for all other products. They say, let us alone 
 which means, preserve that policy which insures to us Eng 
 land and France as purchasers of cotton, and keeps your 
 wheat and tobacco at home. This is a compendium of their 
 notions of free trade. 
 
 The interest employed in the culture of cotton is the an 
 tagonist of every other domestic interest. If other agricul- 
 
TITE PROTECTIVE SYSTEM. 313 
 
 tural products were received abroad in payment for our im 
 ports, cotton would decline in value, and the cotton grower 
 would then be unfriendly to such products. His present aim 
 is to overthrow the manufacturing industry of the nation. 
 Why ? Because, in proportion as we supply our wants at home, 
 we lessen our demand for the manufactures of England and 
 France ; and, consequently, so far disable the English and 
 French trader to pay for cotton. The effect is a proportionate 
 decline in the price of cotton, and the necessity of cultivating 
 less of it. The same effect would follow a large export of 
 breadstuffs, which, being paid for in foreign manufactures, 
 would take off so much of the fund applicable to the purchase 
 of cotton ; and thus, if the cotton interest should succeed in 
 destroying our domestic manufacture, its next effort would be 
 against the agricultural staples of the grain-growing States, 
 supposing that those staples should ever be received by the 
 manufacturing nations of Europe. 
 
 I do not say it in any terms of reproach, but as a truth 
 which has connection with the argument, that the cotton in 
 terest has a tendency, to some extent, as it is now circum 
 stanced, to become an anti-American interest ; and that it has 
 no other guard against this tendency but the patriotism of 
 which I have no doubt, and in which I freely confide of its 
 cultivators. I speak of it only as a concern of trade, apart 
 from the moral considerations^which will ever induce me to 
 trust in the ardent love of country which I am sure animates 
 the whole population of the South. In this view, I repeat 
 that the cotton interest, in its present relations, has an induce 
 ment to look to the prosperity of its foreign customers, as of 
 more concern to it than the economical welfare of our own 
 country. It has something approaching to a monopoly in 
 European markets, and finds its gains in their advancement ; 
 it connects its wealth with the success of the trade of foreign 
 nations, and therefore turns its desires towards the same ob 
 ject ; it has no direct concern in the promotion of our com 
 merce or navigation ; it is hostile to our manufactures and 
 14 
 
314 POLITICAL PAPEJKS. 
 
 handicrafts, upon a mistaken theory of self-interest ; it readily 
 imbibes and preaches the doctrines of free-trade, as they are 
 taught by those with whom it deals, and in no wise doubts the 
 sincerity of these teachings ; it looks with jealousy at the in 
 creasing prosperity of all other employments in the country : 
 it is insulated from all other pursuits ; it is perpetually rest 
 less, under the apprehension of a change of policy, and would 
 rejoice to have affairs regulated according to the scheme of the 
 act of 1833, as that act contemplated they should be in 1842 
 that is to say, upon a basis that would paralyze almost every 
 other occupation in the country. 
 
 These are its present tendencies and opinions. But let in 
 foreign competition upon it ; let India, for instance, or Brazil, 
 or Texas, deprive it of its preference in the foreign market, and 
 it would immediately become, as in 1816, a sturdy American 
 interest, fraught to the full with American feeling and purpose. 
 
 After all, we may inquire what has the South gained since 
 the Government adopted the policy which she has recom 
 mended ? For almost ten years, we have had the nearest 
 approximation to free trade which has ever been attempted 
 by any nation. One-half of all our imports have been actually 
 free. We have had no tonnage duties ; they were repealed 
 in 1830. We have opened reciprocal freedom of navigation to 
 more than one-half of the nations with which we trade. The 
 duties (upon such commodities as paid any) have been sinking, 
 year after year, towards the lowest revenue standard ; indeed, 
 they had fallen below that standard, and the Government has, 
 for some years past, been without adequate revenue to meet 
 its expenses. What has been the effect of all these improve 
 ments as, in deference to the free-trade theory, we must call 
 them ? I might answer in one word bankruptcy. 
 
 Our system has been intrinsically mischievous unpatriotic, 
 un-American. We have stimulated and encouraged foreign 
 labor to excess ; we have refused to encourage American, lest 
 it might interfere with the foreign. We have used all our art 
 to make a market for European operatives ; we have declined 
 
THE PROTECTIVE SYSTEM. 315 
 
 to do this favor for our own. Our policy seems to have had 
 two leading objects : 
 
 First, the increase of foreign manufactures ; 
 
 Second, the increase of the cultivation of cotton. 
 
 The consequence which has followed our endeavors is, 
 that both are overdone. Our markets have been glutted with 
 foreign merchandise ; our cotton fields have been overstocked. 
 The producers on both sides have been losers. Goods have 
 fallen to an unprecedented point of depression ; cotton has 
 shared the same fate. We suffer in each direction from ex 
 cessive production. Our policy has systematically cramped 
 all other American products. They have but few markets 
 allowed them abroad ; and we have adopted measures to deny 
 them a market at home, by aiming a blow at our manufactures. 
 Thus we have injured both agriculture and mechanical art. 
 Commerce could not but share in these disasters, nor could 
 the currency possibly escape disorder and depreciation. These 
 are the results of our ten years of free-trade ; these the fruits 
 of that political philosophy which has been enforced upon the 
 nation by all the talent, influence and zeal of the South. 
 
 The act of the last session, I trust, is the herald of a better 
 state of things. The influence of that act has not yet begun 
 to be felt. We have been too deeply stricken by the embar 
 rassments of the late system to make a quick recovery. Yet 
 now, before that act has exercised its remedial efficacy, we are 
 threatened with its repeal, and a return to all the infatuations 
 of our former policy. 
 
 When is this war upon Labor to cease ? This is a ques 
 tion to be answered by the working men themselves. The 
 means of terminating it are in their hands ; they have the 
 casting vote. They have permitted themselves to be divided 
 by the arts of politicians ; and a large and active portion of 
 their body have been found, at times, enlisted in support of 
 the policy against which this letter is intended to remonstrate. 
 Surely, the experience we have lately had is sufficient to con 
 vince them of the necessity of a change ! I venture to affirm 
 
316 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 that we shall never see the prosperity of the country put upon 
 a safe foundation, until we adopt a system of measures which 
 shall effectively protect our home industry. We have a WORLD 
 of our own ; let us have a SYSTEM of our own. Upon this 
 question there ought to be no equivocal opinion. Those who 
 are in favor of the protective system and by that I mean a 
 system resting on stronger foundations than the incidental sup 
 port of American industry should take their stand politically 
 upon it. They should be known from their adversaries ; should 
 maintain their cause at the ballot-box maintain it as a great 
 paramount principle, worth struggling for, and not to be ob 
 scured or lost in smaller party divisions. If we take our 
 stand upon this ground, we cannot but prevail. Succeeding 
 in this fundamental measure, we shall proceed with better 
 heart and better hopes to the remaining great questions of 
 currency and credit which await our care. 
 BALTIMORE, October 25, 1842. 
 
A DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 31 
 
 DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 PART I. 
 THE WHIG PARTY I ITS ORIGIN, ITS CONSTANCY, ITS SUCCESS. 
 
 To the Whigs of the Twenty-Seventh Congress, whose fidelity to their trust, 
 diligence in the performance of the most arduous duties, and firmness through a 
 period of unexampled trial and disappointment, have won them the applause of a 
 patriotic people, this defence is inscribed in testimony of the esteem of their com 
 rade October 25, 1843. DEDICATION. 
 
 I. 
 
 WHAT IS PROPOSED? 
 
 IN the struggles of political parties it generally occurs that 
 the purposes of the contestants are misrepresented in im 
 portant particulars or misunderstood. 
 
 The Whig Party, during the last fourteen years reckoning 
 from the 4th of March, 1829 has been misrepresented or mis 
 understood more than usually falls to the lot of parties. My 
 endeavor, in what follows, will be to set this matter right. 
 
 No party ever arose in any country with juster aims or more 
 patriotic effort, then the Whig Party of the United States. It 
 fought the Battle of Freedom in the Revolution : it has never 
 faltered in its duty since. From the beginning of our national 
 existence to this day, by whatever name it has been called, it 
 has been the consistent, faithful assertor of the principles of 
 free government. 
 
 Through twelve years of continued defeats, during which 
 time a power in this nation, unfriendly to popular liberty, was 
 growing every day more formidable, and the Executive, usurp 
 ing the name of the Representative of the democracy, was busi 
 ly assailing the bulwarks which were built up tc guard the rights 
 
318 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 of the people the Whig Party, overpowered by numbers, pro 
 scribed, for the most part, from all share in the administration 
 of affairs, still faithfully maintained its post and fought for Pop 
 ular Privilege, with the same devotion that it fought in the 
 gloomest days of the War of Independence. 
 
 Its constancy and fidelity won it the victory of 1840. 
 
 The fruits of that victory were shown in the zeal with which 
 the Whigs made haste to redeem every pledge they had given. 
 How the full benefit of that redemption of pledges was wrested 
 from the people ; how it has fallen out that the victory has not 
 been of as permanent and extensive good as the country had 
 a right to expect; how it is that power has lapsed again into 
 the hands from which it was rescued, is a problem that may be 
 solved by recurring to the history of every cause that has been 
 betrayed by its leader. Some explanation of this disaster will 
 occupy a portion of the pages which ensue. 
 
 Against open foes the Whigs have no complaint to make. 
 They meet these on the field of contest forewained, forearmed ; 
 prepared for the strife and its incidents. But they have felt a 
 touching grief in the destiny which has admonished them to arm 
 against perfidy in their own camp ; against an enemy nursed in 
 their own bosom. The saying is old, but it has a melancholy 
 appropriateness to their misfortune there is a deeper anguish 
 in the wound when the arrow that inflicts it is feathered from 
 our own wing. 
 
 The Whigs have ever striven for the accomplishment of a 
 great good to the country. It is not true, as their adversaries 
 have attempted to make the world believe, that the hope of 
 office or the chance of favor was the motive to their exertions. 
 So long a war were but a weary road to preferment which 
 might be so cheaply got, at any time, by turning recreant to the 
 cause. Your office-hunter has no great patience in a settled 
 minority. Never was there, in truth, presented a spectacle of 
 greater constancy under defeat, or of victory so little sullied 
 by selfish aims. We had our camp followers, it is true, thick 
 ening somewhat in our ranks as the day of our success drew nigh. 
 
A DEFENCE OF TTTE WHIGS. 319 
 
 These might have been seen importunately stripping the dead. 
 But at the first sign of a reverse they left us, and now compose 
 the main body of that forlorn and anxious troop that call them 
 selves the friends of the Administration. 
 
 It may be accounted an element of strength in the Whig 
 organization, that these have been winnowed from the ranks to 
 which they never brought true hearts, and to whose lofty pur 
 pose they have ever been ungenial. Experience has taught 
 us to beware of all clamorous expectants of place. The lesson 
 will not be lost. 
 
 In the antagonism of honest opinion there is abundant 
 space for the embodiment of parties. Such division as springs 
 from this source is a fair and useful topic for discussion. My 
 aim is partly to comment upon the history of opinions which 
 have grown up in the country regarding the conduct of public 
 affairs. I wish to show that those entertained by the Whigs 
 have been genuine and eminently patriotic. 1 do not deny 
 that the opinions of our adversaries have been, in great part, 
 genuine and patriotic. There are many opinions, however, 
 set forth by our opponents and carried into the administra 
 tion of the Government, which are not entitled to this com 
 mendation : many, besides, that, whether honest or not, are 
 intrinsically wrong and productive of great mischiefs in our 
 Republic : many that have been dictated by selfish schemes 
 and propagated to advance the interests of individuals and 
 classes, to the detriment of the large community of the people. 
 My design is also to point these out. 
 
 II. 
 
 BASIS OF PARTIES. FRIENDS OF THE EXECUTIVE. FRIENDS 
 
 OF THE LEGISLATURE. PREROGATIVE AND PRIVILEGE. 
 
 We may discern in the progress of all Representative Gov 
 ernment professing to be established on the basis of popular 
 freedom, two parties fundamentally distinguished from each oth 
 er by their views as to the nature of delegated power. These 
 
320 POLITICAL PAVERS. 
 
 parties are more or less developed at different epochs, as the 
 events of the day have furnished them excitement. 
 
 In English history they have sometimes been denominated 
 the Court Party and the Country Party, but more generally by 
 the names of Tories and Whigs. 
 
 The Court Party is chiefly distinguished as the friends of 
 the Executive Power. 
 
 The Country Party, without being classed in the category 
 of actual enemies to that Power, are noted for their distrust of it. 
 
 This is a division of parties which naturally grows out of 
 the constitution of the public mind, and is as much native to 
 our Republican Government as to the Monarchy of Great 
 Britain. 
 
 All experience has taught us that the possessor of the author 
 ity and patronage of magistracy may find it convenient to employ 
 these resources for the advancement of himself or his friends. 
 A knowledge of this seduces many to become the champions 
 and apologists of the Executive in every country. There are 
 designing men, there are corrupt men, poor men, or idle men, 
 who hope to find in the good will of the ruling magistrate, the 
 means of promoting their schemes or of adding to their com 
 forts : they become, therefore, his dependents both in opin 
 ion and conduct. 
 
 There are others, quite honest, who conscientiously believe 
 that a strong Executive is absolutely necessary to maintain 
 order in the State. For this reason they also take sides with 
 the Executive. 
 
 These two descriptions of men combine to enlist a large 
 support among the people in favor of the administrative arm 
 of the government. 
 
 Their opponents, fearing this administrative arm, and believ 
 ing that the safety of free institutions is best secured by watch 
 ing and restraining the Executive, disdain to seek its favor by 
 any act of adulation or by any relaxation of their distrust. 
 These naturally put great faith in the National Legislature. 
 They see in the Executive the fountain of political honors, rank, 
 
A DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 321 
 
 emolument, consideration with the world : that it is prone to 
 be selfish, ambitious, crafty : that it has a motive to reward 
 subserviency ; that in dispensing the offices necessary to con 
 duct government, it may so dispense them as to gratify those 
 who defend and applaud it : that it may convert public ser 
 vants into political minions ; that it may work in secret and 
 corrupt enterprises, and gloss them over with pretences of pub 
 lic good. In all these attributes and propensities of Executive 
 power they find strong motive to regard it with jealousy. 
 
 On the other hand, they see in the Legislature none of 
 these attributes. Public liberty is very seldom damaged by 
 the activity of a Representative Legislature ; though it is just 
 to say that history is not without its example of a wicked fren 
 zy in this law-making power. Such example, happily, is rare. 
 In the main, not from the active purpose of Legislative bod 
 ies has liberty sustained hurt : but from their tardiness some 
 times, from their dissensions sometimes, and from their omis 
 sions, mischief has arisen. The imperfection of the Legisla 
 ture is in its occasional failure, whether from ignorance, division, 
 or sloth, to do what the public good requires ; very seldom in 
 corrupt action or deliberate wickedness of object. It has no 
 personal ambition, vanity or selfishness, because, in fact, it has 
 no person, but is an aggregate of many persons, and these of 
 many minds. Neither has it patronage to gratify a love 
 of making dependents. Two or three hundred representa 
 tives may make bad laws, or fail to make good ones, but they 
 have scant motive to natter any man s pride, stimulate any 
 man s usurpation. The usurper always begins by turning the 
 Legislature out of doors, knowing that while they are free he 
 is not. 
 
 Their special duty is to become acquainted with the condi 
 tion of the body politic ; to inquire into what is done in every 
 department : to inspect every public servant : to look into ev 
 ery corner and crevice of public service and learn what is 
 doing there ; and then to report all that they have seen, heard, 
 learned. What they find out of place it is their duty to set in 
 
322 POLITICAL PA PEES. 
 
 place ; what knavery they suspect, to proclaim ; what they dis 
 cover to be weak, to make strong. 
 
 To this end they are called, and are, the Grand Inquest of 
 the nation ; are clothed with all power to inquire and report ; 
 are empowered to make laws to remedy what is defective, 
 repeal what is hurtful, punish what is delinquent. Thus free 
 Legislation is built upon free Inquiry. 
 
 Upon these grounds of favor towards Executive and Legis 
 lative Power have parties divided ever since men have prac 
 tised a representative government. 
 
 The people have taken part sometimes with the one some 
 times with the other generally as their passions have been 
 more or less skilfully excited by the one or the other. 
 
 In the days of Charles the First the great body of the Eng 
 lish people went with the Parliament, and stood up for Privilege 
 against Prerogative. A turn of the wheel of fortune exhibited 
 them, in a few years afterward, applauding Cromwell for 
 silencing the voice of a free representation, and justifying his 
 assumption of prerogatives more dangerous than those for 
 which Charles had suffered. At the Restoration, the Execu 
 tive Power found its chief support in the popular advocacy ; 
 and it was not long after this, that the great champions of 
 Privilege against Prerogative, Russell and Sidney, suffered on 
 the scaffold, almost unwept by the millions of Englishmen 
 whose descendants now turn to that scaffold, as to the very al 
 tar of Liberty. 
 
 Looking, therefore, to the strength which these parties, 
 Court and Country, as I have called them, have gained from 
 time to time, and from their nature are apt to gain, it may be 
 said of them that that strength depends in great measure upon 
 the intelligence, and talent to propagate their doctrines, in the 
 political leaders who give tone to public opinion ; and that 
 they who from supineness or from incapacity, are content to 
 give themselves little trouble with their political sentiments, 
 and to take them at second hand, will still, as heretofore, find 
 themselves ranged on the side of Prerogative or Privilege, 
 
A DEFENCE OF THE WIITGS. 323 
 
 will belong to the Court or Country party, will be Whigs or 
 Tories, according to the accidents of the day, or as they may 
 be practised upon by the craft of those who have an interest 
 in giving a particular ply to the floating public opinion of the 
 time. Let this reflection admonish us, that every citizen of a 
 free government should study public affairs for himself, think 
 and determine for himself. 
 
 The Revolution of 1688, famous in British history for the 
 overthrow of the Stuarts and the introduction of the House 
 of Brunswick to the throne, gave a prominent distinction to 
 this division of parties. The Whigs of the reign of William 
 the Third and of Queen Anne are notable, above all other 
 things, for their jealousy of Executive and their faith in Leg 
 islative Power. They have done more to establish British 
 Liberty, and by deduction from that, more to establish Ameri 
 can Liberty, than any other political organization of modern 
 times. I need not recount their struggles to clip the wings 
 of Prerogative and enlarge the limits of Privilege, which give 
 so much interest to the Parliamentary history of that time. 
 The principle of specific annual appropriation ; the restraint 
 of members of Parliament against holding office, under the 
 crown ; the triennial Parliament and annual meeting ; the 
 regulation of trials for treason ; the protection of the liberty 
 of the Press, among many other improvements of the prac 
 tice and principles of the British Constitution, bear witness to 
 the enlightened estimate of human happiness and due appre 
 ciation of rational freedom made in that day by the Whigs. 
 
 It is not to be supposed that these men reached at once 
 the most perfect arrangement of the sureties for civil liberty. 
 But with great sagacity they announced the fundamental doc 
 trines upon which that liberty has been subsequently built up. 
 They were in a perpetual struggle to wrest from Prerogative 
 what they deemed unsafe appendages to Executive power, and 
 to strengthen Parliament with all the faculties requisite to 
 render it a vigilant and effective guardian of popular rights. 
 The Tories labored on the other side, to impress the nation 
 
324- POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 with the belief that Government could only be healthfully ad 
 ministered by a hand strong enough to overbear and repress 
 what was deemed the licentiousness of the people and their 
 representatives. 
 
 The Whig Party succeeded not in preserving their ascen 
 dency in the councils of the nation but in stamping their 
 principles upon the British Constitution. Through many 
 reverses and mischances they won success. Often baffled and 
 turned back, always misrepresented or misunderstood, fre 
 quently derided and reviled, and but seldom in the actual 
 administration of affairs still the progress of their principles 
 was onward, and they had the satisfaction to see the cause of 
 human liberty gradually intrenching itself behind the bulwarks 
 they had erected : even to witness this consummation at the 
 moments when party rage and the fanaticism of political zeal 
 excluded them from all share in the management of Govern 
 ment a noble homage to the wisdom and fidelity of their 
 labors ! 
 
 Not without hostility from the people, in whose behalf they 
 had so long and faithfully toiled, was this conquest achieved. 
 It is one degree of virtue to pursue, with steady sagacity, good 
 ends, when all the means are at hand and the mass of man 
 kind look on, approve, and assist : it is a still higher degree 
 of virtue to persevere in a good work, when means are scant 
 and they who should be allies and partners in the endeavor, 
 are indifferent spectators : far nobler than this to persevere 
 when the beneficiaries of our toil are open opponents or vin 
 dictive foes. History is full of instruction and admonition to 
 the great community of every nation, how deep is the stake 
 of human happiness dependant upon a just conviction by the 
 people, 
 
 First, OF what is true liberty, and 
 
 Second, Of what are the real aims and personal objects 
 of those who climb to the head of a party. 
 
A DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 325 
 
 III. 
 AMERICAN WHIGS. THE MADISONIAN PLATFORM. 
 
 Our own Revolution of 1776, which a careful student of 
 political history may trace to that of 1688, brought to view 
 the same division of parties. We had our Tories and Whigs, 
 our friends of Prerogative and our friends of Privilege. Again 
 the battle was fought and won by the Whigs. 
 
 The war of the Revolution was waged against the encroach 
 ments of Executive Power. Witness that beadroll of com 
 plaints set forth in the Manifesto of Congress declaring our 
 Independence : 
 
 " He has refused his assent to laws the most wholesome 
 and necessary for the public good. 
 
 "He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of imme 
 diate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their 
 operation until his assent should be obtained ; and when so 
 suspended he has utterly neglected to attend to them. 
 
 "He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation 
 of large districts of people, unless those people would relin 
 quish the right of representation in the Legislature, a right in 
 estimable to them and formidable to tyrants only. 
 
 " He has called together Legislative bodies at places un 
 usual, uncomfortable and distant from the depository of their 
 public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into 
 compliance with his measures. 
 
 " He has dissolved Representative houses repeatedly, for 
 opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of 
 the people. 
 
 " He has refused for a long time after such dissolutions to 
 cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative powers, 
 incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large 
 for their exercise, the state remaining, in the mean time, ex 
 posed to the dangers of invasion from without and convulsions 
 within. 
 
320 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 " He has obstructed the administration of justice by re 
 fusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers. 
 
 " He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither 
 swarms of new officers to harass our people and eat out our 
 substance. 
 
 " He has kept among us in times of peace standing armies 
 without the consent of our Legislatures." 
 
 These, and others of the like character, are the grievances 
 for which the Whigs took up arms. The purpose of that war 
 was to rid the nation of this domineering Executive, and se 
 cure to themselves a free Legislature. 
 
 Before separation or independence entered the thoughts 
 of our people, the contest stood substantially upon the same 
 ground, the Privilege of a Representative Legislature against 
 the Executive Prerogative. It was in fact a revival of the old 
 quarrel of Parliament with the Stuarts on the question of 
 loans, benevolences and ship money. 
 
 Many men of the colonies in that da} 7 , whom we must 
 admit to have been honest and attached to the country, did 
 not concur in this general zeal against Executive Encroach 
 ment. Many, besides, who held office under the crown, or 
 who hoped for office under the crown, saw no danger to public 
 liberty in the restraints put upon domestic legislation. They 
 who hold office and they who expect it, will always be the last 
 in any country to see danger in the Executive power. 
 
 These opponents to the Revolution principles were the To 
 ries of that day. They were vanquished by the Whigs. 
 
 When the war came to an end, it may be said there was 
 but one party in the country. The Whig principle was estab 
 lished and all resistance to it was withdrawn. The next task of 
 those who had conducted the war, was to erect a form of gov 
 ernment which should embody the political doctrines of the 
 Revolution. Every man then desired to see a government so 
 constructed as to secure the faculty of administering to the 
 happiness of the people with the least possible hazard from 
 Executive power. 
 
A DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 327 
 
 The first general conception of a guarantee against oppres 
 sion, and upon which there was no division of opinion, was in 
 a strong Representative Legislature. 
 
 As to the amount of power which might be confided to an 
 Executive upon that point all the old jealousy was awakened. 
 In all the embarrassments growing out of the old Confedera 
 tion, this fear of the Executive ever stood in the way of change. 
 In all the discussions upon the formation of the Constitution 
 of 1787, this fear of the Executive was the chief stumbling- 
 block. I will not stop to indicate the points of these discus 
 sions. They are common history. 
 
 There were enlightened patriots of that epoch upon both 
 sides of the question. No longer divided in opinion as Whig 
 and Tory, they were, nevertheless, as friends of a popular Rep 
 resentative Republic, divided in opinion as to the quantum of 
 power which it was safe to trust even to an Elective Republi 
 can Magistrate. 
 
 It is impossible that men could be more honest or more in 
 earnest than these. Then, there was a question of the conflict 
 between Federal and State power ; a question which is not yet 
 settled, though fast growing to be so. 
 
 Naturally some men s minds incline towards Prerogative, 
 from an idea that the popular impulses require to be checked 
 by a strong hand. A powerful party grew up in the nation 
 upon this opinion. The same habit of thinking which made 
 men friendly to the Federal, as distinguished from the State 
 power, inclined their minds to the fancy of a strong Executive ; 
 and thus it came that the Federalists were, to a certain extent, 
 identified with the supporters of the Executive power. 
 
 Then again, naturally, and by complexion of character, 
 many men run into extremes in regard to the removing of all 
 restraints upon popular action ; and they fall into mischievous 
 conclusions in that direction of opinion. The French Revolu 
 tion, whose fires were discernible, even within this remote hori 
 zon of ours, witnessed some of these extremes and taught them 
 to our citizens. 
 
328 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 Thus a contest arose of ultraisms in our political schools ; 
 and, for years, the harmony of public administration was dis 
 turbed, and sometimes embittered by the strife of parties, which 
 having, in the main, no other than patriotic aims, maintained 
 their antagonist positions without material injury to any in 
 terest in the State. In fact, being nearly balanced in power 
 and equally distinguished in talent, they promoted that degree 
 of watchfulness of each other which, with good reason, has been 
 said to be a surety for the healthful administration of affairs. 
 
 In this strife the active politicians, only, took a deep inter 
 est. The great body of the nation felt secure in the conviction 
 that the public liberty was in good hands. Some flatterers of 
 the administration, some incumbents and many expectants of 
 office were, doubtless, active as such persons always are to 
 give the greatest degree of significancy to the opinions of their 
 party. On the other hand, some demagogues, seeking favor 
 from the great body of electors, and lauding the people in that 
 fulsome phrase which only demagogues will utter, and which is 
 never employed by a man who has a true respect for the good 
 sense of his fellow-citizens on their side strove, by like de 
 vices, to exalt the value of party opinion. Each of these fo 
 mented division ; exaggerated the weight of their political influ 
 ence ; magnified frivolous distinctions ; engendered, no doubt, 
 much useless hatred. 
 
 But in the midst of this strife, looking on, not anxiously 
 caring for the issue, but still watchful of events, was a large 
 mass of substantial citizens, deeply implicated in all that con 
 cerned the prosperity of the country ; men having inheritances 
 of good name to support ; having close alliance with all that 
 constituted the strength, the wealth, the labor, the success, the 
 glory of their country ; the men employed in the business of 
 this nation, and who hoped to hand it over to their children as 
 something to be proud of all these stood by, caring something, 
 perhaps, for the ascendancy of the parties of the day, but car 
 ing more that the generation to which they belonged should in 
 no jot detract from or impair those sacred principles of human 
 
A DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 329 
 
 right and civil liberty which had been won by their ancestors 
 in 1688, and still more securely knit together and confirmed 
 by their ancestors of 1776. 
 
 Thus, in no visible array or manifest organization, but un- 
 embodied and comparatively in repose, the Whigs of this Union 
 remained spectators of events, content to take such various in 
 terest in public measures as the passing questions of the time 
 might excite, yet but little inclined to party agitation as long 
 as the fundamental Whig principle was likely to sustain no det 
 riment in the conduct of those at the head of affairs. 
 
 Such was the state of the nation toward the close of Mr. 
 Madison s administration. There had been turbulent feeling 
 before this, because political opinion had been passing through 
 an exciting transition, from the date of the election of Mr. Jef 
 ferson to the close of the war, and many hot ferments had been 
 engendered. The calm and philosophic temper of Mr. Madi 
 son, the purity of his character, the sincerity of his patriotism, 
 and the sagacity of his intellect had inspired universal trust, 
 except, perhaps, in a few Federalists, in whose minds an an 
 cient grudge yet rankled. With this exception, a balmy peace 
 reigned throughout our political world. The extremes of Fed 
 eralism had been tempered with an infusion of Democratic 
 flavor ; the extremes of Democracy had been melted in an 
 amalgam of Federalism. Both were the better for it. Above 
 all, the Constitution was settled ; its Whig basis strengthened ; 
 and many men thought that, from that day, it was a book in 
 terpreted and certain. Truly, I think that the Constitution of 
 the United States, as expounded and practised by Marshall 
 and Madison, is the very Constitution of our forefathers ! I 
 desire no farther commentary : from that day forth it has been 
 to me an article of faith : my creed therein is written. 
 
 This was the glory of Mr. Madison s administration, that 
 it made peace between parties ; that it established the true im 
 port of our fundamental law ; and that it marked out the ad 
 ministrative policy of this people, both in their outward rela 
 tions and in their domestic affairs. The Maclisonian basis 
 
330 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 of the American Government and policy may be regarded 
 as one established by the almost universal consent of the coun 
 try. It was wise, being the product of careful thought and just 
 consideration of the temper and aims of our people ; it was 
 likely to be permanent, because it grew out of a calm and dis 
 passionate state of public feeling, auspicious to durable set 
 tlements. An experience of twelve years, from 1816 to 1829, 
 has proved it to be eminently calculated to advance the com 
 fort, the prosperity, and the strength of the people. 
 
 First. It settled the construction and practice of the Con 
 stitution on the foundation of the Whig doctrines : this con 
 struction and practice was chiefly manifested in the high re 
 spect and confidence of the nation in the Legislative power, 
 and the scrupulous adherence of the Executive to its orbit. 
 
 Second. It settled the policy of the Government. Wit 
 ness these measures : 
 
 It regulated the Currency by the control of a National Bank, 
 and, through this instrumentality, checked and finally removed 
 the mischief of excessive State Banking. 
 
 It protected the Domestic Industry of our people, by the 
 establishment of a Tariff of Duties specially directed to that 
 object. 
 
 It promoted Internal Improvements in the nation, by giv 
 ing the aid of government to useful enterprises which were be 
 yond the capacity of individual States ; a policy which, if it 
 had not been since abandoned, would have saved the country 
 that load of State debt which has become of late almost equal 
 ly our misfortune and our disgrace. 
 
 It enlarged the sphere of our Commerce and Navigation, 
 by tendering to foreign nations reciprocal privileges of trade 
 restricted within certain limits defined in the legislation of 1815, 
 and in the Convention of London of that year. 
 
 It devised the plan for paying off the public debt. 
 
 It placed the public expenditures upon the footing of a 
 strict economy. 
 
 It discountenanced and subdued all attempts to connect 
 
A DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 331 
 
 office with the means of political influence ; and left the public 
 servant free from that odious inquisition into his opinions 
 which has since made him either the victim or the confederate 
 of spies and informers. 
 
 In short, its whole scheme of administration was national, 
 American, liberal and honorable. It infused that sentiment 
 into the mind of the people, ^ and rendered them, every 
 where, throughout all classes, honorable, high-minded, and pa 
 triotic. 
 
 This was the inheritance to which Mr. Monroe, and, in due 
 succession, Mr. Adams succeeded. They conscientiously ad 
 hered to this truly republican, equal and beneficent system of 
 administration. The consequence was a progressive increase 
 in every element of national happiness. - Under the working 
 of this system the nation gradually arose to a state of unexam 
 pled vigor. The havoc of the war was slowly but surely re 
 paired. The currency, from a state of extraordinary derange 
 ment, was brought into singular purity. Manufactures and 
 the mechanic arts were rapidly trained from a feeble infancy 
 to a robustness almost incredible. Commerce and navigation 
 were increased ; the war debt was paid ; and that series of in 
 ternal improvements begun which, however they may have in 
 volved those who constructed them in debt, are worth more to 
 this Union than ten times the cost expended upon them. They 
 are works from which the National Treasury should never have 
 been withheld : they are works which now belong more to the 
 people of the United States than to the States in whose bor 
 ders they lie, and for which the people of the Union are equit 
 ably and honorably the true debtors : they are works which, 
 by a policy as cruel as it was un statesmanlike were ever 
 committed to the unassisted enterprise of the States. 
 
 This is the outline of the Whig doctrine in reference to the 
 fundamental characteristics of our government, and also of its 
 policy. 
 
 The Whigs stand emphatically upon the Madisonian plat 
 form. 
 
332 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 IV. 
 
 AN ANCIENT GRUDGE. 
 
 But for a very notable intrigue, the political repose which 
 distinguished the era of Mr. Monroe s administration might 
 have continued to this day. 
 
 There were many men who had grown tired of waiting for 
 change through that long sixteen years of Virginia domination 
 personated in the Presidencies of Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Mad 
 ison. There were, besides these, the overthrown Federalists, 
 whose hope deferred, through these same sixteen years, had 
 made them sick at heart. Not the wisdom of such of their 
 leading measures as the democratic administration had adopt 
 ed ; not the patriotic and gallant part many of them had taken 
 in the war ; not their acknowledged abilities and brilliant ser 
 vices in legislative halls, had propitiated the absolute hatred 
 of their name, which, in certain political sections of the coun 
 try, still kept them under the popular ban and excluded them 
 from office. The triumph of the war seemed only to have 
 sealed their fate and given them ever to a rigorous proscrip 
 tion. The nomination of Mr. Monroe to the succession was 
 a token of another eight years prolongation of their penance. 
 Many fell off and joined the other side; many melted away 
 into neutrals ; many stood their ground, watchful as lynxes, 
 and " feeding fat their ancient grudge" with the thoughts of a 
 day of retribution, when the democracy should be coupled like 
 hounds and the leash be held in their hands. Verily, they 
 have watched to some purpose ! 
 
 A rally was proposed, in 1815, to prevent the nomination 
 of Mr. Monroe : a rally of all who were weary of Virginia Pres 
 idents, and of all who were weary of Democratic Presidents. 
 The rally point was to be Andrew Jackson ; the man who sug 
 gested it was Aaron Burr. Hear some words from his let 
 ter to Governor Alston, November 20, 1815 : 
 
 " A certain junto of actual and factitious Virginians having 
 
A DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 333 
 
 had possession of the Government for twenty-four years, con 
 sider the United States as their property." 
 
 " One of their principal arts, and which has been systemat 
 ically taught by Jefferson, is that of promoting State dissen 
 sions not between Republican and Federal that would do 
 them no good but schisms in the Republican party." "Let 
 not this disgraceful domination continue." 
 
 " The moment is extremely auspicious for breaking clown 
 this degrading system. The best citizens of our country ac 
 knowledge the feebleness of our administration." " If then there 
 be a man in the United States of firmness and decision, and 
 having standing enough to afford even a hope of success, it is 
 your duty to hold him up to public view THAT MAN is AN 
 DREW JACKSON. Nothing is wanting but a respectable nom 
 ination, made before the proclamation of the Virginian canvass. 
 and Jackson s success is inevitable." 
 
 " One consideration inclines me to hesitate about the poli 
 cy of a present nomination. It is this that Jackson ought 
 first to be admonished to be passive : for the moment he 
 shall be announced as a candidate he will be assailed by the 
 Virginia junto, with menaces and with assiduous promises of 
 boons and favors. There is danger that Jackson might be 
 wrought upon by such practices. If an open nomination be 
 made an express should be instantly sent to him." 
 
 " If you should have any confidential friend among the 
 members of Congress from your State, charge him to caution 
 Jackson against the perfidious caresses with which he will be 
 overwhelmed at Washington." 
 
 These are disjointed fragments of Aaron Burr s letter of 
 1815. They are at the fountain head of the new order of 
 American politics. 
 
 This was the first movement of the anti-Jeffersonians to 
 find a leader make a new dynasty. 
 
 With the anti-Jeffersonians, the portion of the Federalists 
 who were still militant, combined. General Jackson was ap 
 plied to: a secret negotiation was set on foot. How far he 
 
334 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 acquiesced may be gathered from his subsequent conduct. 
 This is certain, the pear was not ripe in 1815. The Virginia 
 junto triumphed, and Mr. Monroe, odious to the anti-Jefferson- 
 ians and odious to the militant Federalists, obtained the nom 
 ination. And so came eight years more of probation to the 
 expectants. 
 
 General Jackson, from that hour was the candidate of 
 these combined forces. His position was peculiar. He had 
 no conspicuous antagonism to any of the parties. His politi 
 cal opinions were believed to be of a liberal Whig cast. In 
 regard to measures he was, in a great degree, uncommitted. 
 Personally he was known to be firm ; he was undoubtedly 
 patriotic ; and he was reputed to be frank, open, and honest. 
 With Burr, with Mr. Van Buren and the Federalists he had 
 opposed Mr. Madison s second election not for the reasons 
 which governed Burr, Van Buren and the Federalists, but be 
 cause he preferred Mr. Monroe as the better man in the crisis. 
 This opposition was one ground of his favor with the Federal 
 ists. His letter to Mr. Monroe, January 6, 1817, is very note 
 worthy on this point. Read this extract from it : 
 
 " I have once upon a time been denounced as a Federalist. 
 You will smile when I name the cause. When your country 
 put up your name in opposition to Mr. Madison I was one of 
 those who gave you the preference, and for reason that, in the 
 event of war, which was then probable, you would steer the 
 vessel of state with more energy. That Mr. Madison was one 
 of the best of men and a great civilian I always thought ; 
 but I always believed that the mind of a philosopher could 
 not dwell on blood and carnage with any composure ; of course 
 that he was not fitted for a stormy sea." 
 
 General Jackson concurred with Mr. Madison s political 
 views as a civilian. These views were Federal in many im 
 portant points that is to say, on the question of a National 
 Bank, on Internal improvements, on the Protective policy. 
 So far again General Jackson and the Federalists were in har- 
 monv. 
 
A DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 335 
 
 He was a soldier ; at that time greeted with lavish honors 
 by all sections of the country, by all classes of society, by all 
 political parties. He was, therefore, tolerant and full of good 
 feeling to all men ; and especially kind to all those of the Fed 
 eral party who had sustained the war, and who had gone into 
 the ranks. The idea of proscribing a good soldier or a sol 
 dier s friend from the confidence of the administration, because 
 he was a Federalist, was particularly abhorrent to General 
 Jackson. This sentiment is expressed in strong language in 
 the letter to Mr. Monroe quoted above, and the General there, 
 in accordance with this sentiment, advises the President to 
 dismiss party considerations and call a distinguished Federalist 
 of the war into his cabinet. 
 
 This temper formed another bond of amity and relationship 
 with the Federalists. 
 
 Now, with a man so endowed, so circumstanced, it was ob 
 vious that the Federalists might redeem their lost honors and 
 even win the absolute supremacy in affairs, Such of them 
 therefore, as coveted office, entered heartily into the plan, 
 and General Jackson was thus dedicated by them to the con 
 test of 1824. 
 
 It is said that his letter to Mr. Monroe, November i2th, 
 1816, was, in fact, written for him by a distinguished Federalist 
 of that day. By whomsoever written, the sentiment it utters is 
 worthy of a great man, and General Jackson s adoption of it 
 does him honor. 
 
 " Every thing" he says to the President elect, who was then 
 just preparing to open his administration " depends upon the 
 selection of your ministry. In every selection party and party 
 feelings should be avoided. Now is the time to exterminate 
 that monster called party spirit. By selecting characters most 
 conspicuous for their probity, virtue, capacity and firmness, 
 without any regard to party, you will go far to, if not entirely, 
 eradicate those feelings which on former occasions threw so 
 many obstacles in the way of government, and perhaps have 
 the pleasure and honor of uniting a people heretofore politi- 
 
336 TOLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 cally divided. The Chief Magistrate of a great and powerful 
 nation should never indulge in party feelings. His conduct 
 should be liberal and disinterested, always bearing in mind 
 that he acts for the whole and not for a part of the community. 
 By this course you will exalt the national character and acquire 
 for yourself a name imperishable as monumental marble. Con 
 sult no party in your choice ; pursue the dictates of that uner 
 ring judgment which has so long and so often benefited our 
 country and rendered conspicuous its rulers. These are the 
 sentiments of a friend ; they are the feelings, if I know my own 
 heart, of an undissembled patriot." 
 
 This letter shows the state of feeling into which the nego 
 tiation for a Presidential candidate had at that time brought 
 the mind of General Jackson. 
 
 With the exception of the small clique in whom the nomi 
 nation originated and their confidants, this movement was a 
 profound secret, and the name of Jackson, as a candidate, was 
 kept out of hearing until the proper moment to make its an 
 nouncement effective. In due season it was brought out. It 
 had the aid of all the customary machinery by which volunteer 
 nominations are coerced, and impromptu effusions of public 
 feeling are prepared. There was first a biography written by 
 one in the secret, and then those zephyr whispers which pre 
 cede the dawn. Then the gradual dawn itself : a faint streak 
 on the horizon, a flush, a strengthening twilight, a broad and 
 golden aurora, and then the God of Day himself, " rejoicing as 
 a strong man to run a race." 
 
 The other candidates were Adams and Clay, Crawford and 
 Calhoun. 
 
 Neither Adams, Clay, nor Crawford had many hopes to in 
 dulge of support from the Federal party. They had not wooed 
 the Federalists : and " the old grudge," if it alighted upon one 
 head more heavily than upon another, was upon the head of 
 Henry Clay. He, at least, had never courted the Federal par 
 ty : had very seldom spared it. To Calhoun and Jackson 
 that party directed its chief favor. 
 
A DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 337 
 
 Every one remembers the sudden collapse of Mr. Calhoun s 
 pretensions in 1823, and thereupon the amalgamated ticket of 
 Jackson for the Presidency and Calhoun for the Vice-Presi 
 dency. To that standard, straightway, rallied the whole body 
 of that class of Federalists who desired to become political 
 characters and who stood within that category of Jackson s 
 favor of having been friendly to the war. There was another 
 class of Federalists in the country, whose leaders Jackson had 
 declared to Mr. Monroe he would have hung under the 20! 
 section of the articles of war. These, of course did not come 
 under the new banner. 
 
 So much for the political men of that day. There were, 
 besides, a vast multitude of private citizens, Federalists of the 
 old school, who, seeking nothing for themselves, having no 
 eye to public employment, and anxious only to preserve the 
 harmony and prosperity of the country, took sides with the va 
 rious candidates, under the influence of their own personal es 
 timate of the fitness of the men to conduct the affairs of the 
 nation. 
 
 Now, it is worthy of observation in all this stir of the pub 
 lic mind, and it is mainly to present this remark that I have 
 hastily glanced at the character of this presidential contest 
 that, from beginning to end, the movement was one that rested 
 solely upon questions of personal predilection, and in nowise 
 involved any question of constitutional doctrine or system of 
 political measures. All stood, at that day, upon the Madiso- 
 nian Platform ; none more distinctly upon it than General 
 Jackson. 
 
 Whether for Adams or Clay, for Crawford or Jackson, the 
 country hoped to see the measures and the doctrine of Mr. 
 Madison and Mr. Monroe left unchanged ; not only left un 
 changed, but promoted, continued, made permanent by all 
 Legislative and ministerial concurrence. I will not say this de 
 sire was universal, because we had some few abstractions then 
 such as we have many now : there were quips and quillets then, 
 and fancies in some quarters ; but the broad, good, common 
 
338 POLITICAL PAPEKS. 
 
 sense of the nation spoke from the tongue of a huge majority 
 in favor of the Madisonian system. Thus it was that through 
 that contest the Whig spirit of the nation was still unembod- 
 ied : not unexistent, for it lived as vividly then as at any era. 
 But there being no apprehension of assault upon it, no motive 
 to give it an array, no occasion for it to utter its voice, it dwelt 
 in its private homes, and among our household gods, as a 
 guardian genius which was not to become outwardly visible un 
 til the country s invocation should conjure it up to the stern 
 duty of defence. Thus, too, it fell out that multitudes of 
 Whigs gathered to the support of Jackson and Calhoun, con 
 fiding implicitly in the conviction that, in the character of Gen 
 eral Jackson, they had every guarantee that the purity and the 
 predominance of our free institutions would be preserved. 
 
 There were many warnings against this confidence. Those 
 who knew General Jackson best affirmed that there was dan 
 ger in his temper, in his unskilfulness and incapacity for civil 
 station, in his personal partisan habits, in his stern self-will 
 nursed in camps and hardened by the universal spirit of assen 
 tation that filled his atmosphere of command. That his defi 
 ciencies would necessarily render him dependent upon those 
 who had the craft to guide him, and that there was danger, as 
 Burr, who was well acquainted with him, expressed it he 
 "might be wrought upon." 
 
 To all such forewarnings little heed was given. They rath 
 er stirred the friends of Jackson to a greater trust in htm, be 
 cause much calumny was detected and exposed in the revilings 
 of political adversaries. And naturally, thereupon, these warn 
 ings were attributed as in part they were justly so attributed 
 to political malice, or were set down to rivalry. 
 
 General Jackson s defeat in the House of Representatives 
 in 1825, brought a new element to his support. The public 
 ear was filled with stories of intrigues behind the curtain ; and 
 as the truth could not be come at, for truth in such matters is 
 never found until what may be called posthumous history clears 
 it up, the people solved the problem of the defeat by a politi 
 
A DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 339 
 
 cal postulate, which, whether right or wrong, and that is yet a 
 question of debate, was altogether sufficient to elect General 
 Jackson four years afterward, by a large majority. That pos 
 tulate was that the House of Representatives, when put to the 
 decision of the Presidency between three or more candidates, 
 should choose him who had the greatest number of popular 
 votes. In other words, that the choice should fall on the plu 
 rality candidate : which postulate, if it be true, would seem to 
 make the ceremony of a vote in the House of Representatives, 
 a mere ceremony. 
 
 However, so it was, and General Jackson became Presi 
 dent on the 4th of March, 1829. 
 
 V. 
 
 FIRST INSTALMENT. 
 
 I am not so confident as to affirm that if no secret move 
 ment had been made, in 1815, to bring out General Jackson 
 against Mr. Monroe, by the anti-Jefferson ians and the grudge- 
 bearing Federalists, General Jackson would not have been ul 
 timately nominated, and perhaps elected. On that point I am 
 not concerned to speculate. But I do remark that that secret 
 movement brought him within the attraction of influences to 
 which the country is indebted for the larger share of its recent 
 sufferings. 
 
 Burr selected Jackson to break down the Jeffersonian dy 
 nasty. The Federalists selected him partly for that purpose, 
 but chiefly because he was known to possess an ardent wish to 
 see the old party lines destroyed and the Federalists of the 
 War brought into the view of Government. They knew that 
 his popularity, won by great military achievements, might be 
 made a sure card with the majority of the nation. It was a 
 brilliant piece of pyrotechny, which it was only necessary to 
 touch at the right season to produce one of the most dazzling 
 displays that the country had ever beheld. But great judgment 
 was necessary to find that right season. Obviously it was not 
 in 1815, when Monroe, an old soldier of the Revolution, was 
 
340 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 in the field. That was. another piece of pyrotechny, which 
 stood in case to be let off first. The interval of Mr. Monroe s 
 eight years was employed in preparation for the impromptu of 
 1823. In that interval the letters I have heretofore quoted 
 were written, and published in the newspapers : not written by 
 General Jackson, rumor has always said, but written from 
 him. Written by those who enjoyed his confidence, and who 
 felt an interest in presenting his tolerant opinions in party mat 
 ters before the world, and adopted by him as true exponents 
 of his own sentiments, which at that time, doubtless, they were. 
 
 These letters drew especially the Federal eye upon him, 
 and carried, in the end, a large number of the subtlest, the 
 skilfulest, and the most aspiring members of that party into 
 close communion with him. 
 
 Now mark the grouping around General Jackson in the 
 canvass of 1824. On one side of him, sitting close to his ear, 
 an active, astute, keen-sighted, highly educated bevy of politi 
 cians, with a long hatred of the Democratic rule festering at 
 their hearts, with a heavy score of notched revenges filed in 
 their memory, with wrath to plan, and talents to do any amount 
 of mischief on their enemies ; these sitting there favored and 
 confidential advisers of that strenuous man, whose power only 
 .needed skilful direction to render it overwhelming. On the 
 other side of him, a host of young officers and companions in 
 arms, who had shared in his battles, and had become identified 
 with his fortunes : many of them needy, all ambitious, covetous 
 of distinction, subservient to his will, alert, brave, restless, full 
 of capability, and ready by all means, by persuasion, by influ 
 ence, by bustle, and by brawl, to propagate his ascendency 
 wherever it might be questioned. Then all below him, filling 
 a huge space, that mass of men whose numbers cannot be 
 counted, who, in every country, are the flatterers of military re 
 nown, and who cannot conceive any duty to the State, or any 
 contribution of service, as worthy to be compared with military 
 duty and service : that great mass, stirred by patriotic impulse, 
 but evei most apt to fall into the extreme of an excessive ad- 
 
A DEFENCE OP THE WHIGS. 341 
 
 miration of heroical achievement, permitting that sentiment to 
 preclude all doubt of other capability, silence all distrust, re 
 fuse a hearing to all invocation of inquiry. I need only say, 
 Andrew Jackson was, at this time, rampant on more than ten 
 thousand sign-posts. What heraldry affords such a blazon ? 
 What record of a popular apotheosis like this ? What was 
 needed to bring this sentiment, so painted on the sign-post, 
 into mighty and resistless action but a nomination, a canvass, 
 some flowing rhetoric on the stump, some artful shedding of 
 printer s ink? 
 
 These were the surroundings of General Jackson in the 
 canvass of 1824. In addition to these were many quiet, 
 thoughtful citizens a very large number who had great faith 
 in his peculiar honesty of purpose, in his love of country, in 
 his judgment of manly men. 
 
 When the time came this mass was put in motion. That 
 it failed in 1824 was no fatal omen. The pear still was not 
 ripe. The combination, even then, was the strongest that was 
 in the field. The disappointment of 1824 only whetted the 
 edge of appetite. The belligerent Federalist thenceforth be 
 came more belligerent, The gentlemen of the " bilbo and 
 buff" began anew "to stride, swear, and swagger;" and the 
 great multitude raised one loud and long shout of exhortation 
 to another trial. That trial was successful; much to the de 
 light of certain of the old Federal party ; much to the delight 
 of the officers of 1814, now growing gray, and those of the 
 Seminole war, still young ; and much to the delight of all those 
 who look to the sign-posts no very bad standard of judg 
 ment for a true record of public worth. 
 
 General Jackson could not but feel, in 1829, that he owed 
 a great debt of gratitude to the Federalists. They took care 
 that he should not forget it. They crowded round him in the 
 first moments of his success : took possession of his ear ; told 
 him who was who, and what was what ; insinuated themselves 
 into his confidence, and, finally, became inducted in the 
 choicest offices of the government, each according to his qual- 
 
342 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 ity and pretensions, from the chief cabinet station down to 
 the chief tide-waiter in the custom-house new tenants in 
 strange places ! And thus did it come to pass that, after thir 
 ty years, these captives of Babylon were restored to their an 
 cient seats. This was the payment of the first instalment of 
 "the ancient grudge." 
 
 VI. 
 
 SECOND INSTALMENT. UPRISING OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 THE payment of the second instalment was a different thing. 
 The first was the giving of alms a few crusts to a few sturdy 
 beggars. The second was an incubation of curses. Wo worth 
 the day that saw the alighting of that Federal vengeance upon 
 this land ! 
 
 General Jackson had come to the Presidency in masquer 
 ade. The people had known him as a soldier, frank and bold. 
 As a civilian, as a statesman, they did not know much of him, 
 except that he had shown himself in the Senate a friend to the 
 Whig measures, internal improvements, and Tariff, and no en 
 emy to a National Bank. In all other points of qualification 
 they took him upon inference from the capacity he had dis 
 played in war, and from the direct representation made of him 
 self in the sundry letters to Mr. Monroe and others, and such 
 documents as had been put forth under his name ; all which 
 letters and other presentations of himself were, at that time, 
 believed to be genuine. They were not genuine, but, on the 
 contrary, simulated. 
 
 Now, General Jackson, in the beginning of this Presiden 
 tial movement, was truly honest in his estimate of himself, 
 and expressed a natural surprise that he should be thought a 
 suitable man to be made Chief Magistrate ; and truly, this dif 
 fidence of his in that day, is the most genuine proof of his fit 
 ness to be President which may be remarked in the history of 
 the event. If that sentiment had not grown weaker, and in 
 the end come to be entirely obliterated, he might have been 
 
A DEFENCE OF THE WITIGS. 343 
 
 all that the Country had expected of him, an earnest, faithful 
 and wise Magistrate. 
 
 But as the time came round, and improbabilities were 
 changed into probabilities, and every day gave him new proofs 
 that his chances and hopes were strengthening towards cer 
 tainties, he submitted himself more and more to that guidance 
 the policy of which was to conceal and misrepresent him. 
 There was a cordon sanitaire drawn around him, or a cordon tac- 
 iturne rather. He was in quarantine ; and all that came to 
 him, and all that went from him, came and went through an 
 official : as to all true exhibition of himself, he was a man for 
 bid. Others wrote for him, spoke for him, acted for him. It 
 was a candidacy in commission, vicarious, and seeming what 
 it was not. 
 
 General Jackson was not an educated man. He knew lit 
 tle of principles of government, especially of free government. 
 But he was a shrewd man, with strong natural sagacity, of a 
 domineering temper, of restless will, and like Sir Anthony Ab 
 solute, " no one more easily led when he had his own way." 
 His fortune in this Presidential canvass presented him a visi 
 ble profit from dissimulation, and he became the most cunning 
 and effective dissembler of these modern days. 
 
 There sat, all this time, " squat by his ear," that toad of 
 Federal vengeance whispering the payments of its debt in such 
 instalments as time should bring. What leprous distilment of 
 ancient hate was poured into that ear, we shall read in the 
 annals of ten years of such mischief as this land has never be 
 fore felt. 
 
 The Inaugural was a fair and honest paper, modest, patri 
 otic, expressing sound Whig doctrine. 
 
 " I shall keep in view the limitations of Executive power : 
 
 " I shall not confound State powers with those granted to 
 the Confederacy : 
 
 " I shall promote a strict and faithful economy : 
 
 " By a proper selection of the subjects of impost, the interests 
 of agriculture, commerce, and manufactures shall be equally 
 
344 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 favored exception being made for the peculiar encouragement 
 of products that may be found essential to our national inde 
 pendence : 
 
 " I will be friendly to internal improvement and the diffu 
 sion of knowledge, as far as they can be promoted by the con 
 stitutional acts of the Federal Government : 
 
 " I will give heed to the correction of those abuses which 
 have brought the patronage of the Federal Government into 
 conflict with the freedonvof elections." 
 
 There is a summary of the Inaugural. 
 
 Here, in the first utterance of General Jackson s adminis 
 tration, was the old Whig jealousy of Executive power soothed 
 and conciliated. 
 
 Now, read the Message to Congress that followed this pa 
 per 8th of December, 1829. 
 
 See what promises there of curtailing Executive power. 
 First, the proposition to limit the President to a single term : 
 then, the old Place Bill of William and Mary, the Whig meas 
 ure of 1692, brought to view by General Jackson himself, in 
 the recommendation to restrain the President from appointing 
 members of Congress to office. Then, a solemn abjuration of 
 all doubtful powers, and a reference of all doubtful questions 
 to the people. Then, rigid accountability of public officers 
 and punishment of all defaulters, and dispensing with all use 
 less officers. 
 
 So much as to doctrine. 
 
 As for measure, 
 
 First, A Tariff that should place our own manufactures in 
 fair competition with those of other countries. 
 
 Second, The distribution of surplus revenue for " the im 
 provement of inland navigation and the construction of high 
 ways in the several States." 
 
 Third, A National Bank founded on the credit and reve 
 nues of the government. 
 
 These were the first enunciations of the Jackson adminis 
 tration, the published chart of its voyage. Add to this for- 
 
A DEFENCE OF THE WIIIGS. 345 
 
 mula that famous declaration in the message of December, 
 1832 "It seems to me to be our true policy that the public 
 lands shall cease, as soon as practicable, to be a source of reve 
 nue" and what remains behind this sum of doctrine and meas 
 ures to make up the epitome of Whig principles ? 
 
 This was the Whig Jacksonism in the innocent days and 
 youthful prime of that fearful administration. What wonder 
 that, in 1829, the country was quiet and full of joyful antici a- 
 tion ! 
 
 The odor of these promises had scarcely faded from the 
 breath that uttered them, before a most disastrous change came 
 over all things. I doubt if history furnishes a stronger testimony 
 to the instability of human hopes than in this very instance of 
 General Jackson s promises and performance. Never was the 
 faith plighted in wooing more slighted in wedlock ; never was 
 husband more unlike lover than the faith plighted by Jackson 
 seeking office was slighted by Jackson holding office ; than the 
 hero of Orleans firmly seated in the Presidential chair was un 
 like the same hero when clambering to it. 
 
 Straightway we had loud and peremptory assertion of Pre 
 rogative against Privilege : not made with qualification and 
 modest reserve of conditions ; but made in boldest amplitude 
 of claim. 
 
 Straightway we had the kingly Veto hurled, like Jove s 
 thunderbolts, against all contumacious law-makers, represent 
 atives, dissenting people. 
 
 We had unblushing exercise of all doubtful powers that 
 in any time before, or by any political party, had ever been 
 called doubtful. 
 
 We had defiance, vituperation, reproof of the Legislative 
 Power, as an insolent meddler with the royal prerogatives 
 claimed for the President. 
 
 We had contempt for all highest judicial decision on the 
 import of laws, and proclamation that all laws shall henceforth 
 be executed as " I understand them" or not executed, if I 
 shall judge them unconstitutional, at my sovereign pleasure. 
 
 15* 
 
346 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 We had that notorious pretension " I am the Executive 
 all officers are my officers and responsible tome only, and not 
 to you, the Legislature ; I have commanded them not to an 
 swer you, but me." 
 
 We had that very ominous and significant claim, " the 
 President is the direct representative of the American people" 
 and the corollary from it, that the representative of the 
 whole people was not to be molested, inquired after, imperti 
 nently inspected by the representatives of fragments of the 
 people. 
 
 Has any one forgotten Napoleon s interview with the Dep 
 uties when he came from Leipsic in 1813 ? " You are not the 
 representatives of the people, you are only representatives of 
 the Individual Departments. But you seek in your address to 
 draw a distinction between the Sovereign and the People. I, 
 I am the only real Representative of the People." 
 
 We had that old Whig measure of 1692, the Place Bill, 
 as it was called in that day General Jackson himself having 
 revived and recommended it in his message, as we said, we 
 had this measure thrown to the winds, and members of Con 
 gress appointed to office in greater numbers than had ever been 
 practised before by any President : by all former Presidents 
 put together, perhaps. 
 
 We had announcement of the President for a second term, 
 and strenuous effort to obtain it by all manner of bringing of 
 Patronage into conflict with the freedom of election. 
 
 We had organized party action against another old Whig 
 measure, famous in English history, in the struggle of Privilege 
 against Prerogative the bill to disable officeholders from ac 
 tive interference in elections, which was introduced into the 
 Senate by the Whigs, and most diligently opposed by the Ad 
 ministration. 
 
 Then we had pocketing of bills when majorities of two- 
 thirds were ready to pass them in spite of the Veto. 
 
 We had Removals of Deposits when Congress had resolved 
 they should not be removed ; and denial of the right of Con- 
 
A DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 34:7 
 
 gress to take the Treasure from the control of the Executive ; 
 hand that held the sword, claiming to hold the purse. 
 
 We had, consequent on this usurpation, Removals of High 
 Officers of the Treasury and Cabinet, because they would not 
 do what Congress told them they must not do. 
 
 We had blind and infuriated demolition of the Bank, for 
 the sake of a " better currency !" We had the building up of 
 some half thousand paper-breeding, high-pressure, thimble-rig 
 Banks, strown from Passamaquoddy to Opelousas, flinging 
 their windy missiles over the land " thick as autumnal leaves in 
 Vallombrosa :" this too for the sake of a " better currency f 
 These half thousand, with each a President, a Cashier, a 
 dozen or so Directors, a dozen or so Clerks ; every president, 
 cashier, director, and clerk having a cousin at least ; and then 
 a most commendable Seventh Ward Bank spirit of compliance ! 
 with many new mouths to be fed, with many millions of new 
 speculations to be fostered, with many millions of old insolv 
 encies to be patched up ; with the Treasury recommendation 
 besides, in the foreground " accommodate the People with 
 the Public funds :" All this, too, we had for the sake of a 
 "better currency!" Which better currency, of course, it 
 brought us ! ! And, hard upon all this, we had Specie Circu 
 lars and Hard Money. And then came most pathetical wind 
 ing up of all this queer history, in sanctimonious sermons 
 levelled against the wicked Whigs as Rag Barons, and patrons 
 of the abominable abomination of paper money ! 
 
 We had war against the Tariff; war against Internal Im 
 provements by the Federal Government ; and most fatherly 
 advice to the States to spare not in making all manner of im 
 provements themselves ; which advice the States, being most 
 loyal and in good hands for the most part, thankfully received 
 and obeyed to the letter. 
 
 We had war on the scheme to take the Public Lands " as 
 soon as practicable" away from the revenue of the Government 
 and to give them to the States to whom as, in old time, all 
 confessed, they belonged, and for whom, it was a common 
 
34:8 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 opinion which neither party was once bold enough to deny, 
 they were held in trust. On this an active and unsparing war : 
 a vvar to the extent of pocketing usque ad load urn with 
 supererogatory veto besides. 
 
 And then, for Economy and Retrenchment ; for strict ac 
 countability of Officers, and condign punishment of Defaulters 
 what in the vocabulary of the English tongue is the reverse 
 of all this, have we not had ! 
 
 Why should I recall that sad history which furnishes the 
 particulars of this long catalogue of broken promises ? The 
 visible scars of commerce, agriculture and manufactures are 
 yet vivid memorials of these broken promises. 
 
 I have brought these incidents to view for no idle purpose. 
 It is to show that the career of General Jackson s administra 
 tion revived every cause of contest which had ever embodied 
 the Whigs in past times. It exhibited in terrible proportions 
 that old phantom of Prerogative shaking his dart against Privi 
 lege a phantom first and then a Devil against which every 
 Whig antipathy that resided in an American bosom was sworn 
 to do eternal battle. 
 
 Who instigated these wayward freaks of authority ? There 
 were cunning Greeks that had entered the citadel in the 
 Horse s belly, and who taught the people of our Troy to wor 
 ship the Horse-God himself? The Grudge was in the full 
 progress of satisfaction. The second instalment was a paying. 
 
 The year 1830 witnessed the new embodiment of the 
 Whigs. From that day the rally bears date. Thousands and 
 tens of thousands of Whigs hastened from the quiet of their 
 long retirement, to raise again their honored banner to the 
 breeze, and to seek the fellowship of a new war in behalf of Priv 
 ilege against Prerogative. Speedily they grew to be a mighty 
 host. Assuming their ancient name, renouncing all other, they 
 planted themselves in robust opposition to that Executive, 
 which, misadvised by treacherous friends and intoxicated by 
 its almost immeasurable popularity, had dared to revive the 
 old quarrel had dared to set itself above that cherished Leg- 
 
A DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 349 
 
 islative power upon which our Whig forefathers had reposed 
 as the surest defender of Free Government. 
 
 Sudden invasion by a foreign foe could scarcely have given 
 more alacrity to their rising, or stimulated the Whigs into more 
 rapid array, than was witnessed in this glorious impulse of pa 
 triotism. Eternal honor to the men who reared the Whig ban 
 ner of 1830 ! How many standing, until then, on terms of 
 friendship with Jackson nay, of admiration even having 
 chance and opportunity, if such had been their wish, to gather 
 preferment and official emolument from him how many of these 
 parted from him, then, forthwith forever ? Was there ever such 
 falling off of bold and honest men from the train and following 
 of a conqueror before ? In the very midst of his triumphs and 
 palmiest day of his power, they left him : left him, not to in 
 dulge in the inglorious ease of neutrals, but to contend against 
 him and his overwhelming and impetuous partisans on every 
 field. They left him, resolved unceasingly to strive in the un 
 equal conflict, until the obsequious fervor of the times should 
 be sobered into a cooler mood, and the genuine American 
 spirit of jealous Liberty should, as inevitably it would, rise 
 again in the breasts of the nation to sway and direct the pub 
 lic judgment. 
 
 The embodied Whigs of 1830 bided their time, and found 
 it in the memorable contest of 1840. 
 
 VII. 
 
 DEMOCRACY IN FEDERAL LEADING STRINGS. 
 
 The Federalists, as a party, have been charged with lean 
 ing to a too strong organization of the Executive. 
 
 In regard to many Federalists that charge is untrue. In 
 regard to the grudge-bearing Federalists it is almost univer 
 sally true. These men in old time affected fears of the perma 
 nency of our system from the predominance of popular power; 
 in other phrase, from the power of the Legislature. They were, 
 according to our scale of things, friends of Prerogative as against 
 Privilege : were our Tories ; adverse to our Whigs. 
 
350 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 Their long, compelled abstinence from share in Govern 
 ment affairs whetted the edge of these opinions in dislike of 
 Legislative Supremacy : the more so, as the Legislature, for a 
 long period, was under the control of their opponents. 
 
 When General Jackson raised that long embargo which 
 had been laid upon their hopes, and opened the gates to their 
 admission, they rushed tumultuously into his antechamber ; 
 filled his closet, eager and starving men, with hearts in nowise 
 softened by the weary training of their adversity ; with inordi 
 nate craving for power and place ; with inveterate purpose to 
 counsel their patron to High Prerogative Doctrine. 
 
 I will not say that all who came, or were called, to General 
 Jackson in those days, came with these passions or strove to 
 imbue him with these opinions. There were some honorable 
 exceptions : men of conscience, of high order of intellect, of 
 ardent patriotism, of sound Whig views among them. Such men 
 gradually fell off as the imposture of the new era opened upon 
 them. They even expostulated with the Chief, and sought to 
 moderate his excess : fell into personal dissension with him 
 and his more influential advisers. To their discretion, per 
 haps, we may attribute the self-denial and liberal tone of some 
 of the earlier messages of the administration. Finding the 
 President s policy ungenial, they fell off rapidly. Not one re 
 mained to witness the end of his term. The others stayed be 
 hind, faithful to their fixed resolve to take all onice that could 
 be got, and to flatter the Executive into every dangerous ex 
 treme of power which the popularity of the Chief might bear. 
 They were marvellously successful. Their success is a living 
 record of their diligence. 
 
 While they fill the mind of the President with pretensions 
 more than monarchical, they amuse the people with promises 
 more than Democratic. Autocracy in substance was varnished 
 over with a transparent wash of Jacobinism in profession. 
 Ready tools were at hand to mould public opinion into what 
 ever shape best suited their views : dexterous and subservient 
 men who were hired for a price. Whatever came from head- 
 
A DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 351 
 
 quarters came ostentatiously as from the infallible Democratic 
 oracle. Under these influences, the administration of General 
 Jackson, professing to be ultra Democratic, became impercep 
 tibly, but speedily, almost regal in its power taking the ad 
 miring and too confident country at un wares. 
 
 Every militant Federalist by which I mean, especially, 
 those of " The Grudge" straightway got into office. Scarcely 
 one escaped reward. Their name was Legion. They became 
 popular declaimers on the peculiar virtues of Democracy, and 
 took the stump the noisiest and most authentic of Demo 
 crats : lent their aid to the organization of " The Party :" were 
 leaders of County, District, and Town meetings ; chairman 
 of the Committee ; chief paragraphists ; chief movers of reso 
 lutions ; chief contrivers of whatsoever canvass ; and at last 
 after some useless blushings and awkward displays of coyness 
 chief denouncers of all opponents of the General as Feder 
 alists Blue Lights Hartford Conventionists when the 
 smoke of this feu de joie cleared away, the older Democrats 
 rubbed their eyes, and found the best offices everywhere in the 
 hands of these abler Democrats ! 
 
 It was a singular sight to behold. Not less singular was 
 it to see how docile, how passive under their new leaders, be 
 came the good-natured old Democracy such at least as 
 wore the Jackson colors : gentle " an it were any sucking 
 dove." 
 
 I think the elder Adams made some such remark as this 
 at least to this import, for I do not remember his words, and 
 would rather express it in my own : When a Federalist, toward 
 the decline of life, turns Jacobin, for the sake of preferment, 
 we shall have occasion to note two things : First, a more adroit 
 and effective demagogueism than may be developed in any oth 
 er species of demagogue whatever : Second, we shall find a 
 man who is very soon thereafter to have a high place, both in 
 rank and emolument, as a Democrat ; who will jostle many 
 honest and simple Democrats out of the way ; and who will af 
 ford the best conceivable specimen of that natural character 
 
352 POLITICAL PAPI<:RS. 
 
 which is made up by the meeting of both ends an aristocratic 
 Locofoco. This last clause Mr. Adams would undoubtedly 
 have added, if Locofocoism had been invented in his day. But 
 at that time Lucifer had not got so up in the world had not 
 made such matches. 
 
 By such teachers and teachings, General Jackson a most 
 apt and willing scholar became, of all Presidents, the most 
 distinguished as a High Prerogative President : of all Presi 
 dents, the only one who had systematically endeavored to in 
 vade and humble the Legislative department of the Govern 
 ment. 
 
 Is it to be marvelled that when his administration became 
 so imperial in its doctrine ; when the great multitude of his 
 supporters fell into such blind toleration of him and his pre 
 tended Executive rights ; when such trenchant blows were 
 dealt at the old Representative Legislative Privilege the Priv 
 ilege of the People ; when the Journal of the Senate was blot 
 ted at his bidding, and proceedings expunged from the record, 
 by an act scarcely less arbitrary than that of James of England, 
 who tore away the offensive leaf from the Journal of the Com 
 mons with his own hand ; when the odious Veto was conjured 
 up from its dead sleep, or, from an exanimate body, was made 
 a living, mischievous thing ; when numbers of the people had 
 sunk into such pliant partisans as to strike against their own 
 rights ; when, with all our present experience, such wretched 
 cant could be preached and endured, as that the Veto was an 
 invaluable Conservative Principle to save the people against 
 themselves, against their own folly and incapacity, to save them 
 by interposing the will and command of a chief against their, 
 the people s own will and command, as matured and uttered 
 through their own chosen organs, their Representative : Is it 
 to be marvelled, when such things were witnessed, such things 
 heard and vindicated on the public rostrum, in the Senate 
 House, read in the Press, and applauded for political wisdom 
 by supple Legislators and congregated hosts of obsequious 
 worshippers that the sturdy old Whig spirit of 1776 should 
 
A DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 353 
 
 again kindle its fire on every hill and in every valley where a 
 friend of freedom had ever pitched his tent ? 
 
 Grievously has the nation expiated the idolatry which per 
 suaded them to endure these innovations upon the principles 
 in which our Republican government was established : is even 
 yet expiating it. What tribulation and disaster have fallen to 
 our lot ? With God s bounty thrown lavish over our land ; 
 with all needful resource of happiness and strength j with 
 brave, strong men fit for all service with an upright and in 
 telligent yeomanry such, as a better have never been bred on 
 any soil what has been our doom ? Let any man calmly tell 
 it over. Poverty, debt, bankruptcy, official default, faction, dis 
 couragement in all kind of labor, obstruction of the channels 
 of industry, suspected faith, repudiation Dorrism what evil 
 in the magazine of evils is left behind ? All this in the bo 
 som of a frugal, honest, thrifty Christian country ! fatal mis 
 chance of unwise government ! 
 
 Truly has that looked-for day of evil retribution come, when 
 " the Democracy" have been coupled like hounds and the leash 
 held in Federal hands ! day long prayed for, now enjoyed by 
 many. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 DOUBTFULNESS OF THE WHIG PRINCIPLES. 
 
 It was a poor device of the enemy to complain, in 1840, 
 that the Whigs were a party without principles. Their princi 
 ples are written in that long history of which I have made but 
 a brief abstract. Every man in this nation, who had given his 
 mind to public affairs, was aware that the Whig party was re 
 organized in 1830, as in 1776 it was organized, to resist Exec 
 utive encroachment. All men have not fully weighed the im 
 port of those public transactions to which I have alluded, and 
 taken them to heart as the American heritors of Anglo-Saxon 
 liberty should : else there would have been a universal flock 
 ing of all true Republicans to the Whig standard. No candid 
 and sincere lover of rational, repnblican liberty, I affirm, can 
 
354 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 contemplate the encroachments of Executive power, which we 
 have witnessed in the last twelve years, without a resolute re 
 volt in his heart against that whole system of political domina 
 tion by which these encroachments have been compassed. 
 That there was not such universal revolt may be set down to 
 the artful engendering and skilful control of faction whereby 
 men s passions have mastered their judgments. 
 
 It was a shrewd device of the enemy, in 1840, to strive to 
 compel the Whigs to put the issue of that conflict upon this or 
 that single measure of legislation : to drive them off the broad 
 platform of the great fundamental Whig doctrine the asser 
 tion of the Representative Privilege against the Executive Pre 
 rogative and crowd them upon the narrow stage of one ques 
 tion of the day a Bank. 
 
 The Whig party were embodied with two grand aims. 
 
 The first, and immeasurably the greatest, was that which 
 we have presented, namely, the reassertion of the fundamental 
 doctrine of the Revolution of 1776 ; the protection of this na 
 tion and its posterity against the imperious claims and mis 
 chievous precedents made and established by General Jack 
 son and his partisans, to the enlargement of Executive and the 
 diminution of Legislative power. 
 
 To this end, the Whigs contended, 
 
 For the single Presidential term : 
 
 For the Reduction of Patronage : 
 
 For the Separation of the Purse and Sword : 
 
 For the rigid supervision of all Executive officers by Con 
 gress : 
 
 For free Legislative debate and Legislative comment on 
 the conduct of all public officers : 
 
 For the non-interference of Government officers in the elec 
 tions ; and 
 
 For the modifications of the Veto Power. 
 
 These were all pervading, paramount questions. The Whigs 
 of the Union were united upon them to a man . They had battled 
 for them, in and out of Congress, ever since 1830. The whole 
 
A DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 355 
 
 nation understood how these questions were identified with 
 the Whig party. No man wanted a manifesto in 1840 to ap 
 prise him that these were fundamental, essential and absorb 
 ing questions in the Whig movement. They had been pro 
 claimed through every organ of Whig sentiment, in every form 
 of iteration, for ten years. In importance, they were infinitely 
 above every question of mere policy. They were organic, be 
 longing to the structure of the government. They concerned 
 our posterity as well as the present generation. They belong 
 ed to the perpetuation of free Republican government, and the 
 handing down of our institutions to our children as we received 
 them from our fathers. The second aim of the Whig embodi 
 ment was to relieve the country from the evils of bad legisla 
 tion with which it had been afflicted by the party in power. 
 
 This was a purpose involving ordinary measures of legisla 
 tion : a purpose of policy, of expediency, depending, in great de 
 gree, upon the incidents and occasions of the day ; and subject 
 to be influenced in some degree by local and temporary views. 
 
 In this field, although a great and surprising approach to 
 unanimity prevailed among the Whig party. considering the 
 impressions of sectional interest natural to so broad a surface 
 as that covered by the States of the Union yet entire consent 
 of opinion, in reference to all measures of relief, never was ex 
 pected. Nor was it asserted to exist. The leading measures 
 proposed and advocated were, 
 
 A Protective Tariff, 
 
 Distribution of the proceeds of the Public Lands, 
 
 Improvement of the face of the Country by roads and 
 Canals, 
 
 Regulation of the Currency through a National Bank and 
 
 Reduction of the Public Expenses. 
 
 On these measures, it may be affirmed, nine-tenths of the 
 Whig party were unanimous. In regard to some of them, a 
 small number, it is true, were found dissenting. 
 
 It is well known that the prejudices of Southern opinion 
 upon the Tariff question, which equally prevailed among the 
 
356 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 Whigs and their opponents, had enlisted a portion of the South 
 ern Whigs against the Protective System, and, as connected 
 with it, the question of the Distribution. 
 
 A still smaller division of the Whigs have opposed a Na 
 tional Bank. 
 
 It may be a question for metaphysicians to divert them 
 selves with, to what extent are these small dissenting frag 
 ments of the Whig party entitled to be called Whigs but it 
 will never be one of doubt, while those fragments concur in 
 the great and primary object of Whig organization, that their 
 attachment to the Whig party is worthy of the praise of an ex 
 alted patriotism, the more exalted as it consents to waive and 
 forego its wishes in regard to the comparatively minpr ques 
 tions of policy, for the sake of the graver and more enduring 
 principles of free government which it finds in jeopardy. 
 
 These divisions of opinion among the Whigs were never 
 secret, nor destined to be made secret. There can be no 
 better proof of the integrity of a party than such tokens of 
 its independence as are atforded by the frank and open avowal 
 of dissent where unanimity does not exist. Such dissent pre 
 sents no other question than this Is the dissenting point of 
 sufficient preponderance to overweigh other motives to con 
 cur ? If not, the concurrence may be sincere and effective. 
 It has been so in the contest ever since 1830. All through 
 that contest the Whigs have had occasion to feel that, in the 
 brotherhood of their Southern friends, they have derived all 
 the aid and comfort to their cause which a generous gallantry 
 and the purest love of country could bestow. 
 
 Could it be said that the Whig party had no principles be 
 cause it did not choose to cast the issue of its great contest 
 upon these minor questions, wherein some dissent existed, 
 rather than upon those broad doctrines where all were united ? 
 Was it not, as I have said, an ingenious stratagem of the 
 enemy, when he sought to drive us into the narrow fold of 
 these questions of expediency, while we stood already behind 
 the bulwarks of high political rights ? Should we not have 
 
A DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 357 
 
 been laughed at as shallow simpletons if we had crept into 
 such a gull trap ? 
 
 As we did not choose to hearken for advice to the enemy 
 and make him the issue he desired, does not ever}- one re 
 member how assiduously he set about making it for us ? Was 
 there a forum in 1840, a bar-room, a cart tail, a stump rostrum, 
 was there a conventicle of quidnuncs, a street meeting, or 
 a country gathering of our opponents in the whole canvass 
 nay, was there any such in any previous time of the ten years 
 before, that the burden of the charge against the Whigs was 
 not that their great purpose was to establish a Bank, make a 
 protective Tariff and distribute the proceeds of the lands ? 
 Such universal consent of opinion as to the Whig designs, 
 surely furnished no excuse to those who made the accusation, 
 that we had left them in the dark as to our principles or 
 measures. 
 
 For our principles and measures we gave them an open 
 history of ten years active labor. In that history, written on 
 every page of our public journals and proclaimed in the trum 
 pet notes of the most eloquent men of the land, they might 
 read and did read, better than in any manifesto, what we 
 aimed at and what we meant to fight for. It is the sheer hy 
 pocrisy of your scurvy politician to affect not to see what was 
 so easy to be seen : so much intended and contrived to be 
 seen. And miserable cant was it, in that day of 1840, to 
 complain that the Whig army came into the field banneriess 
 and objectless, or having no written motto on their banner and 
 no avowed object in their war. 
 
 Our principles then, as now, were known at every fireside 
 in the Union. 
 
 Is it necessary we should make Proclamation now, of what 
 we fight for in Forty- Four ? 
 
 Does any man want to know what the Whigs are aiming 
 at? 
 
 In earnest ? 
 
 I opine not. 
 
358 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 IX. 
 
 THE CONSERVATIVE ELEMENT. 
 
 The Veto Power has grown, in the last twelve years, to be 
 a most formidable and overtopping branch of the Presidential 
 Prerogative. It is, in the late practice of the Executive, dan 
 gerously disproportioned to the other powers of the Constitu 
 tion. It is what the authors of our Government never de 
 signed it should be : what indeed they fought against and 
 would not tolerate in the British Crown while we were yet 
 colonies. The oppressive exercise of the Veto, as I have 
 heretofore said, was a chief cause of the Revolution. In the 
 latitude claimed for it it is unrepublican, and especially offen 
 sive to the scheme of free Government as understood and 
 maintained by the Whigs. The modification of this power 
 has consequently become a distinguished purpose in the Whig 
 action. 
 
 It is true it was not unadvisedly introduced into our Con 
 stitution. There was reflection and debate upon it. 
 
 Our fathers of the Revolution were not altogether disen 
 thralled from the formulas of the Old World. The marvel is 
 that they were even so free from them. The Veto, copied 
 from the British Constitution, was found in all the Colonial 
 Settlements, as a power reserved to the Crown. The men 
 of the Revolution thought they were making great advances 
 when they were erecting an analogous free government in In 
 dependent America, building it upon a democratic basis and 
 retaining as much of the English form as they held to be 
 compatible with that basis. The English Veto had not been 
 exercised for a hundred years. What had they to fear in 
 trusting it to a Republican President ? Still, there were many 
 sturdy and wise Republicans who feared. 
 
 Let us see what we can gather from the scant record of the 
 debate on this topic : 
 
 It seems Dr. Franklin was opposed to the power altogether. 
 So was George Mason : so Roger Sherman, Pierce Butler and 
 
A DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 359 
 
 Gunning Bedford. James Wilson and Alexander Hamilton 
 were in favor of an absolute Veto. Elbridge Gerry and James 
 Madison were for the Veto with a qualification subject to be 
 overruled by a vote of two-thirds of each House. 
 
 Colonel Hamilton thought " there was no danger of such 
 a power being too much exercised." He said "the King of 
 England had not exerted his negative since the Revolution" 
 (1688). 
 
 " Mr. Sherman was against enabling any one man to stop 
 the will of the whole. No one man could be found so far 
 above all the rest in wisdom." 
 
 " Mr. Madison supposed that if a proper proportion of 
 each branch should be required to overrule the objections 
 of the Executive it would answer the same purpose as an ab 
 solute negative. It would rarely, if ever, happen that the 
 Executive, constituted as ours is proposed to be, would have 
 rirmness enough to resist the Legislature unless backed by a 
 certain part of the body itself. The King of Great Britain, 
 with all his splendid attributes, would not be able to withstand 
 the unanimous and eager wishes of both Houses of Parlia 
 ment. To give such a prerogative would certainly be obnox 
 ious to the temper of this Country its present temper at 
 least." 
 
 These are from Mr. Madison s notes. They are meagre 
 enough. 
 
 Hamilton was an advocate of high Prerogative. He pro 
 fessed to fear the Legislature, and charged it with a tendency 
 to encroach upon the Executive. Now hear him, speaking of 
 the Veto, in that number of The Federalist which is given to 
 this subject. " The superior weight and influence of a legis 
 lative body in a free government, and the hazard of the Exec 
 utive in a trial of strength with that body, afford a satisfactory 
 security that the negative would generally be employed with great 
 caution ; and that in its exercise there would oftener be room 
 for a charge of timidity than rashness." 
 
 " If a magistrate so powerful and so well fortified as a 
 
360 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 British monarch would have scruples about the exercise of the 
 power under consideration, how much greater caution may be 
 reasonably expected in a President of the United States 
 clothed for the short period of four years with the Executive 
 authority of a Government wholly and purely Republican !" 
 
 " It is evident there would be greater danger of his not 
 using his power when necessary, than of his using it too often 
 or too much." 
 
 These were the early views of the Veto Power. Is it not 
 obvious that these original defenders of the power had but an 
 inadequate perception of the uses to which the Veto has come 
 latterly to be applied ? The Revolutionary Presidents the 
 men who were contemporary with the beginning of this Govern 
 ment, understood and used the power as it was intended 
 sparingly and with abundance of caution. How have our 
 latter day Presidents used it ? Not sparingly and with caution, 
 as an extraordinary power : but most frequently, and a familiar 
 and ordinary power. It has been, of late, often applied to 
 bills which were passed upon most mature deliberation : it has 
 been applied to bills which presented no questions of doubtful 
 constitutionality, which threatened no invasion of Executive 
 rights : it has been made a mere instrument of Party Domina 
 tion : " the extreme medicine" of the Constitution to use 
 Mr. Buchanan s phrase has come to be its daily bread. 
 
 I dwell on these matters because the Whig party have been 
 slow to quarrel with the qualified negative of the President. 
 They would not now quarrel with it, if it had been exercised in 
 conformity with the original design of its adoption. 
 
 In theory it was justified as a rare remedy against a rare 
 evil. It was supposed that an occasion might sometimes arise 
 in which a bill improvidently, and too hastily, passed might re 
 quire revision ; that new facts might come to light, or be known 
 to the President, which were not known to the Legislature while 
 the bill was under consideration ; that perchance, even, in the 
 unruliness of some legislative orgasm the manifest rights of the 
 Executive might be assailed ; these and such cases as these, it 
 
A DEFENCE OF THE WIIIUS. 361 
 
 was conceived, might present and justify a necessity in the Pres 
 ident s sending the bill back for reconsideration by a vote of 
 two thirds. Absolute veto was, in nowise, to be endured. The 
 abuse of this rarely-to-be-exerted power, it was believed, was 
 sufficiently guarded against by the right of impeachment. 
 
 Short-sighted views were these, as all men must confess who 
 contemplate what the Veto has grown to be in the late practice 
 of the Executive. 
 
 To judge what it has grown to be in practice, we ask atten 
 tion to two topics : 
 
 First, That this Government has become practically and in 
 evitably a government of political party Ascendency. 
 
 By some law of political gravitation, as yet unexplored, par 
 ties invariably settle into an approximate equilibrium ; so near 
 to an actual equilibrium as to leave but small preponderance 
 on either side of the scale. Such a thing as a fixed, durable 
 majority of two thirds of a House of Representatives and Sen 
 ate, on any party question, may be deemed so improbable as 
 to be cast out of the computation of expected events. Very far 
 short of this is the average majority of any House of Represen 
 tatives and Senate of our time. 
 
 I know no instance of it, except that of the Land Bill and 
 of the Specie Circular, and these, we know, were not, at the 
 time of their passage, party questions, although they grew to 
 be so afterward. Two thirds of both Houses, I may say there 
 fore, in no case of party difference may be expected to concur. 
 Which being true, the Veto of the President under our Consti 
 tution, is, on all such questions, in effect, an Absolute Veto. No 
 submission is it of such measure for reconsideration. It is the 
 ordering back of such measure to an idle ceremony of rejection 
 the same being virtually dead before such idle ceremony is 
 practised. 
 
 Second, That the inducements and instigations to the ex 
 hibition of this Executive Prerogative will be, nine cases out of 
 ten, mere party inducements and instigations. A President 
 and his party having fallen into a minority in Congress, pre- 
 16 
 
362 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 sent the chief category in which the Veto will be exercised. So 
 long, therefore, as the party of the President amounts to more 
 than one third of each House, he and they can use the Veto to 
 carry their measures, or prevent the majority from having what 
 they desire. This is the ordinary case, indeed the only con 
 tingency in which the Veto has been used since 1830, except 
 the case of the Land Bill, and of the Repeal of the Specie Cir 
 cular. 
 
 Now as it requires two thirds of the Senate to maintain an 
 impeachment, or, in other words, as one Senator, above one 
 third of that body, can prevent a successful impeachment, it is 
 quite evident that whatsoever a minority in Congress, scantily 
 numbering more than one third of each House, may counsel in 
 regard to the exercise of the Veto, that they may save the Pres 
 ident harmless in doing if impeachment should follow his of 
 fence. From all which it follows that, in the cases proposed, 
 the Veto is practically absolute, and altogether unchecked by 
 any power of impeachment. 
 
 If there be two hundred members in the House, standing 
 one hundred and ten on one side of a question, and ninty on 
 the other, nay, if they stand any thing less than one hundred 
 and thirty-three on the majority side, or any thing more than 
 sixty-six on the minority side, then the Veto on the bill, the 
 subject matter of debate, is absolute. Reconsideration, in 
 such case, is a barren form : the Minority rules the Majority by 
 mere frustration by faction ; and the will of the people, in 
 this a professing popular, Republican government, is restrain 
 ed and forbidden by a faction having the President at its head. 
 And for this abuse impeachment is but an empty threat. 
 
 The President at the head of a faction, in so far as the 
 Veto is concerned, in so far as legislation is concerned, is king 
 -r-more of a king than the Monarch of England or of France, 
 since neither of these monarchs dare hazard the Veto where our 
 President makes it his daily staff. 
 
 If the Veto be necessary to protect the Executive as some 
 say, against the usurpation of the Legislature, then there is no 
 

 A DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 363 
 
 good reason why it should not be absolute and not qualified. 
 For if the Executive must needs be protected against the Legis 
 lature, there is as good cause to protect it against two-thirds as 
 against one man less than two thirds. If the legislative body 
 be inclined to intrude upon the President, that inclination may 
 be on one side of the House as well as the other, and the ar 
 gument would be that he should be armed against their com 
 bination. 
 
 If it be proper that the President should be the power in 
 this Government to arrest all laws he deems unconstitutional 
 to which I by no means assent, but on the contrary utterly 
 repel then he should have that power against the whole Con 
 gress, and not only against a portion of Congress ; since his 
 wisdom is quite as clear in opposition to one as in opposition 
 to the other. If one hundred and thirty-two, out of the two 
 hundred supposed by us, say a law is constitutional, and the Pres 
 ident says nay then his nay takes effect. If one hundred and 
 thirty-three say so, his nay is nugatory ; the hundred and thirty- 
 three reaffirm and the law stands. If the constitutionality of 
 laws may not rest with the Judiciary, why should it rest with 
 the one hundred and thirty-third man ? If it should rest with 
 the President, why should the one hundred and thirty-third 
 man take it away from him? These are pregnant questions. 
 
 So too of his Prerogative his Executive rights. If there 
 be good reason for the Veto at all to defend these rights, there 
 is no good reason for the qualification. If there be good rea 
 son for the qualification, there is none for the Veto. 
 
 A right in the President to send a measure, for good cause 
 shown, back to the Legislative body for reconsideration, there 
 is nothing to be said against. It is no more than giving the 
 President an opportunity to make a written speech on the sub 
 ject of the bill ; to suggest, perhaps, new facts ; throw out new 
 lights ; to remonstrate, it may be ; at the least, to give the na 
 tion his views on matters of moment to the public good. This 
 is but a respectful deference to the station of the Chief Magis 
 trate, salutary, and, for all purposes of defence of his prerog- 
 
364: POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 ative, of correction of improvident legislation, of announcement 
 of constitutional opinion as effective and remedial as that 
 harsh negative which but provokes unwholesome revolt in the 
 public feeling and leads to discord : more effective and remedi 
 al than this harsh negative, because temperate persuasion from 
 the Chief Magistrate is, in all countries, worth more than com 
 pulsion on the opinions of the people. 
 
 Reconsideration, sought in this way, ought to be ordinary 
 legislative reconsideration ; as in all other cases where bills 
 are deliberated upon a second time, with this addition only, 
 as has been proposed, That when the President sends the 
 bill back it should require a majority of the whole body 
 counting absent members and places vacant to pass it again. 
 The President s should be deemed of sufficient weight to en 
 title it to stand, unless overruled by a majority of Congress. 
 
 So far we may safely go. Farther we may not safely go, 
 as our most modern Congressional history has abundantly 
 shown us. 
 
 Manifestly, such arguments as these later times have af 
 forded us, and which I have unfolded here, did not occur to 
 the authors of the Constitution when they discoursed upon 
 the innocence of the Veto. These did not occur, because in 
 those days it was not imagined that the President of the 
 United States would ever degrade his station by uniting with 
 a faction to overthrow a law. 
 
 Yet such has experience shown the Veto to be. It has 
 been applied by General Jackson to sundry Internal Improve 
 ment bills : it has been applied to the Bank Bill, to the Har 
 bor Bill, the Light House Bill, and to others. Its effect has 
 been anticipated by a Removal of the Deposits, in the face of a 
 resolution of Congress adverse to the removal, and a significant 
 threat to negative any bill for their restoration. It has been 
 superseded and its results produced, in the case of the Land 
 Bill and the Repeal of the famous Specie Circular, by suffering 
 the adjournment to occur without the Presidential signature. 
 
 In these cases of the Veto it was not pretended that the 
 
A DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 365 
 
 legislation was hasty or indeliberate ; that new facts had 
 come to the knowledge of the President ; that any encroach 
 ment was meditated upon the rights of the Executive. They 
 were naked party questions, the President and his party being 
 in the minority in both Houses. They were not sent back to 
 Congress in any honest hope of a reconsideration. It was 
 known they could have no reconsideration and passage by a 
 majority of two-thirds, the President s party being more than 
 one-third. They were sent back simply to be rejected by the 
 minority ; this being the only mode by which a President and 
 the minority could disappoint the adverse majority in their 
 measures. Not even did this avail to the Land Bill and the 
 Repeal of the Specie Circular. For on these, more than two- 
 thirds had voted affirmatively. If the President had truly 
 desired reconsideration of these, as the Constitution presumes, 
 he could have been gratified. But such reconsideration, he 
 knew, would have resulted in the passage of the bills. By 
 no means wishing this, and the Constitution providing no veto 
 which should be effectual, in such case, to defeat the will of 
 the majority, the President had recourse to a new device to 
 that end, and found it in laying up the bills in his desk until 
 after the adjournment that adjournment occurring within the 
 ten days allowed him by the Constitution. In the common 
 phrase, he pocketed these bills which he could not veto, and 
 so triumphed again over the Legislature. 
 
 These acts, perpetrated by a man of less popularity than 
 General Jackson, might, and most probably would, have led 
 to serious consequences. In his case they led to bonfires, 
 new glorifications, fresh acts of worship, fresh excitements of 
 the obsequious spirit of Vassalship throughout the whole host 
 of men who sometimes call themselves Democrats, and, both 
 since and before this memorable piece of servility, have been 
 accustomed to boast of their Republican virtue and their love 
 of Constitutional Liberty. 
 
 Truly, no true Whig was found among these glorifiers ! It 
 would have crimsoned his honest brow and shamed his honest 
 
366 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 heart if, on any accidental impulse, he could have been seen 
 congregating with others around a bonfire kindled to illustrate 
 the glory of any man who had thus desecrated the principles 
 of 1776. 
 
 Rather would such flagrant usurpation call back to his 
 memory the sacred resistance of his ancestors, and admonish 
 him to hasten into the ranks of the friends of free government 
 which were drawing into array everywhere within the circum 
 ference of the Union. 
 
 It is now found out by those who dare not censure aught 
 that Andrew Jackson has ever done, that this perversion of a 
 power which the Constitution, though granting it in the letter, 
 never designed to grant in the spirit in which it has been 
 practiced, is a great Conservative Element in Free Government. 
 
 An intrepid piece of flattery, this ! 
 
 To guard Republican institutions we must create a Party 
 Despot ! To conserve Democracy we must arm a self-willed 
 Autocrat with power to silence the only democratic portion of 
 the Government, the Legislative Power ! To show that the 
 people are capable of self-government, we provide them a 
 master who shall say " This I consent you may do : that, I 
 do not consent !" To show what wisdom there is in popular 
 suffrage, we disallow its organs to speak, unless they have first 
 found out what is palatable to the Chief ! 
 
 Verily, as we have said before, " the Democracy" have 
 been coupled like hounds, and the leash is held in the hands 
 of a master ! 
 
 A Conservative Element ! The Veto leaves the law as it 
 was before, say the flatterers of him who so magisterially used 
 the power. It only prevents change. It conserves the old 
 order of things. 
 
 Truly ! Is it so ? If the yearly appropriation bill is ve 
 toed, what is conserved ? The old order of things ? No. The 
 objects to be preserved by the appropriation perish. The 
 navy crumbles. The army is disbanded. The fortifications 
 fall clown. The Courts are closed. 
 
A DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 367 
 
 A law abolishing a War establishment is Vetoed. In such 
 case, what is conserved ? An army that, perchance, may be 
 ready and willing to help that same Veto to a little more 
 vitality. 
 
 A Tariff law expires by limitation, as happened in 1842 : 
 the bill to revive it is negatived. What does Conservative 
 Element in this strait ? Leaves Industry to perish ; leaves 
 Revenue in decay ; leaves Debt to grow apace ; leaves Com 
 merce, leaves Agriculture, leaves Manufactures in ruins. A 
 rare Conservative Element ! How long shall charlatans and 
 hypocrites abuse the generous ear and confiding heart of our 
 America ! 
 
 This same Veto power, I affirm, has grown to be a great 
 nuisance. To it, we may trace, distinctly enough, some very 
 conspicuous griefs. To the Veto of the Bank, that revelry of 
 State banking which made the promises of paper money thick 
 <; as notes in the sunbeam" " false as dicers oaths :" to the 
 frustration of the Land Bill by laying it by, and by the Veto 
 of it afterward, we trace the surplus revenue, the distribution 
 of that surplus, the gorging of all the channels of trade with 
 plethora of speculation, the universal downfall of credit. 
 
 Somewhat significant these mischiefs on this country of ours ! 
 especially being come of such parentage as that Conservative 
 Element, which certain politicians of these days laud so much. 
 
 This Veto has arisen from one man s Egotism. I hold no 
 man s Egotism to be Conservative in this Government. In the 
 name of rational, Republican Liberty, let us have done with 
 all Egotism of Presidents ! 
 
 The One Man Power has crept forth a bastard changeling 
 from the cradle of the Constitution. Scotch it as a snake. 
 
 How naturally party madness sanctifies error ! This same 
 Veto, being a fiery whip to chastise the Democracy, has grown 
 to be a symbol and a badge of fealty with that same now cra 
 ven, crest-fallen, once proud and indomitable Democracy. 
 No P. P. " clerk of this Parish," accustomed to swell his puny 
 dimensions in presence of his choristers, being, by some 
 
308 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 freak of fortune lifted up into a fussy, frothy Mayor of a Cor 
 poration, but must play off upon his Board of Aldermen his 
 little Veto, aping the Great Veto, and must show up the Con 
 servative Element of his yeasty wisdom, as more orthodox 
 and Dogberryish, more " sensible and desertless," than the 
 United Wisdom of their Worships in conclave. " This Pump 
 at the corner shall not have a new sucker. By virtue of Con 
 servative Element I forbid it. Let the said Pump henceforth 
 be conserved suckerless !" 
 
 Hero of New Orleans, into what dismal depth of sublime 
 inanity hast thou not plunged us ! Our Pump at the corner, 
 out of thy Egotism, goes without a sucker ! Our Mayor, tick 
 led by the fancy of thy Prerogative, will not sign the Bill. Amaz 
 ing Mayor, how cunningly hast thou made the cup of thy pop 
 ularity to overflow ! 
 
 Have the Councils the courage to take this matter in hand, 
 and save us our Pump and Charter? By no means, if they be 
 of the true stripe. Your good Democrat of these days bows to 
 Conservative Element. He affirms that Dogberry was set up 
 to save the people against themselves. A pill to prevent sur 
 feit of Freedom. 
 
 While such whimsies are in the brains of the Democracy, 
 the reform will cost us a struggle. But we will have it. 
 
 X. 
 
 CONTEST OF 1840. 
 
 Whatever may be said about the contest of 1840, no one 
 believes that it was not conducted by the Whigs upon the ad 
 vocacy of great principles, interesting both to the organization 
 and policy of this Government. That man has great hardihood 
 in his contempt for the sentiment of the people, and great con 
 tempt for the people themselves who, after the experiences of 
 1840, affirms that the multitudes of American citizens, whose 
 votes made that famous majority of 1840, were stirred up to this 
 great impulse by no estimate of patriotic duty, but only by the 
 noise and pageantry of music and processions. Republican 
 
A DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 369 
 
 government has a slender guarantee in the minds of the men 
 who think and affirm thus. Popular wisdom is a paltry mat 
 ter in their reckoning ! There are men in this Republic and 
 always have been men in it, who are accustomed so to deride 
 the manifested opinion of the majority to deride it whenever 
 manifested against their own computations of personal or party 
 advantage : but these men are, by no means, Democrats in truth, 
 whatever they may be in profession : by no means friends of free 
 Representative Government They contemn the people and 
 abhor the people s impulses. Yet this was the case of most of 
 the party leaders of that party which was defeated in 1840 ; was 
 the case with many clamorous followers of those leaders. Here 
 in we may see some very visible workings of the leaven which 
 leavened the administration of General Jackson. These re 
 proofs against a majority, and revilings of popular judgment, 
 are but the out-bubbling of that peccant matter wherewith the 
 dominant party of 1828 was inoculated, and with which the 
 remnant of that party is still diseased. 
 
 In the selection of the candidates of 1840 the Whig party 
 have found a great calamity and a great disappointment. A 
 calamity in the death of him they chose for President ; a disap 
 pointment in him they made Vice-President. 
 
 I will not say how these disasters came upon us or how they 
 might have been avoided. It is puerile to complain when the 
 event is without remedy. 
 
 It is a difficult thing in a popular government, the very life 
 of which consists in free thought and many opinions, to give to 
 a great citizen, one who is great for his ability, for his integ 
 rity, and great for his useful service the prominency and sup 
 port to which he is entitled. A long life of public duty makes 
 friends ; it also makes enemies, and men sometimes grow too 
 prominent by their merits. In such cases it is apt to occur that 
 the asperity of opponents becomes unduly sharpened against the 
 man highest in the applause of his friends ; and that asperity 
 turns busily to the labor of detraction so as greatly to influence 
 public ieeling against him. 
 
370 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 This was the estimate which many made, when the ques 
 tion of our candidates for 1840 was in agitation, to the dis 
 advantage of the man whom nine Whigs out of ten desired 
 to see set up for the Presidency. We had a man in those days 
 whose name alone was a proclamation of the whole Whig creed. 
 It is useless to ask why the Convention at Harrisburg did not 
 nominate him. Whether there was an evil eye resting on his 
 greatness ; whether some men feared the too great embitter- 
 ment of the adversary party against him ; whether a candidate 
 of more bland and conciliatory popularity were safest in the 
 emergency, are topics I am not called on to discuss : it is 
 enough, that for reasons, good or bad, he was passed by. 
 Many judicious men, multitudes of warm-hearted Whigs, regret 
 ted it. One man, it is said, in the Convention, shed tears 
 ov^er it. 
 
 General William Henry Harrison was selected. A great 
 and venerable name ! If disappointment could find compensa 
 tion in any alternative, here it was entitled to expect it. The 
 mild virtue and stainless life of the chief ; the grateful service 
 of youth, manhood, prime and old age, in camp and council, 
 lavished for his country ; the benevolence and genial charity 
 of his temper ; his open hand and open heart ; his honest and 
 eager love of his native land ; his prodigal and even thriftless 
 affection for humanity all these made up a sum of compensa 
 tion which speedily wiped away all disappointment and sub 
 dued all regret. None so forward to allay this regret as that 
 man upon whom all early expectation rested : he was the first 
 to express his content in the nomination, and to pledge his 
 faith to the contest. 
 
 And so it fell out that General Harrison was made the 
 Whig candidate of 1840, for the Presidency. 
 
 Why John Tyler was made the candidate for the Vice- Pres 
 idency, let those answer who did it ! 
 
 So far as they were acquainted with him, they have a heavy 
 reckoning to make to the country. So far as total ignorance 
 of the true character of the man, of his capacity, of his faith, 
 
A DEFENCE OF THE \VIIIGS. 
 
 temper, affections, of his political or personal opinions, of any 
 thing genuine belonging to him so far as ignorance of all 
 these may excuse the Whig party in giving him their confi 
 dence, they may be excused : no farther. I acknowledge, for 
 my own part, a grievous delinquency. 
 
 I suppose it may be said, with entire truth, in respect to the 
 mass of the Whigs, that, for the most part, they knew very lit 
 tle of Mr. Tyler and his opinions ; that they cared less, never 
 contemplating the event of his succession : that, as he pro 
 fessed to be the friend of their friend, Mr. Clay ; was anxious 
 for his nomination, they had no doubt that he was a Whig, 
 and would do the duty of a Whig whatever might betide : that 
 as he had been on the Whig ticket for the Vice-Presidency 
 once before, and came to Harrisburg as a member of the Whig 
 Convention, he thereby proclaimed himself to be a Whig, and 
 could, without dishonor, be nothing else : especially that he 
 could not be a secret enemy to the Whigs and harbor an un- 
 clivulged purpose in his mind to betray them, if ever they 
 should trust him. 
 
 I have no better account to give of this selection, deplora 
 ble, disastrous, as it has been. Would to God that all record 
 of it might be forever effaced from our annals ! 
 
 The battle of 1840 was fought and won. The Whig party 
 came into power high in hopes, frank in promise, deeply in 
 earnest to do every thing for the renovation of the decayed 
 prosperity of the country. 
 
 The defeated party, in retiring from power, did every thing 
 they could to embarrass their successors. They had drained 
 the Treasury ; they had created a debt ; they left large 
 amounts due in various branches of service without provision. 
 They had exhausted all reserved funds of government. They 
 saw the duties on the lowest verge of the Compromise of 1833, 
 and made no effort to supply the deficiency this was certain to 
 produce. They had issued large amounts of paper money to be 
 redeemed during the year, these issues being, in fact, but the 
 renewal of old debts and they had created no fund for their 
 
372 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 redemption. Trade was in decay, industry was overthrown, 
 credit was gone. " It seemed" as an eloquent member of 
 the House of Representatives said " matters having become 
 so inextricably bad, as if the party had got itself beaten 
 on purpose" 
 
 Upon this wreck of affairs the Whigs had to begin their 
 great labor. 
 
 General Harrison summoned around him a cabinet distin 
 guished for its ability, distinguished for its possession of the 
 confidence of the Whig party. The Executive, thus organized, 
 called to their aid the Legislature, who were ordered to con 
 vene at the earliest moment. 
 
 One month after the installation, the Whigs were struck mute 
 by the death cf the President : event all unlocked for, unpro 
 vided against ; sorrowful on many accounts, but most calami 
 tous for its first and greatest consequence the exaltation of 
 him whom the accidents of the Harrisburg Convention had 
 brought upon the ticket for the Vice-Presidency. 
 
 In the universal outbreak of the national grief every one 
 seemed to wake up suddenly to the inquiry, Who and what is 
 John Tyler ? 
 
 He made speedy answer for himself. "You have but ex 
 changed one Whig for another." These words were among 
 his first utterances at Washington : even at the funeral of 
 Harrison. 
 
 The only point upon which any anxiety for Mr. Tyler s 
 Whig principles was supposed to have a foundation, was upon 
 the question of the Bank. In the Senate of the United States 
 he had made a mitigated opposition to the Bank : an opposi 
 tion consisting of one part scruple and three parts praise. He 
 had spoken there in terms of warm commendation of the Bank, 
 and especially of the beneficence of its exchanges. " I should 
 as soon complain of the ocean for furnishing facilities of inter 
 communication between distant nations, as to complain of any 
 other agent employed in furnishing similar facilities to the ex 
 changes of the country." A strong figure ! Then again " If 
 
A DEFENCE OF TTIE WHIGS. 373 
 
 the Constitution authorized its creation, no man, with the ex 
 perience of the past, could well doubt the propriety of a well- 
 regulated and well-guarded bank. 
 
 These were opinions spoken in the Senate in 1834. The 
 public were reminded of them in this juncture, when men were 
 so anxious to know what would be the course of Mr. Tyler on 
 this Whig question. 
 
 In the midst of this anxious concern, the Vice-President, 
 now having come to the head of the Government, put forth 
 an address to the people. It is very significant in reference 
 to the prevailing doubts. " The public interest demands that 
 if any war has existed between the Government and the Cur 
 rency it shall cease." " I shall promptly give my sanction to 
 any constitutional measure which, originating in Congress, shall 
 have for its object the restoration of a sound circulating medi 
 um, so essentially necessary to give confidence in all the 
 transactions of life, to secure to industry its just and adequate 
 rewards, and to re-establish the public prosperity. In de 
 ciding upon the adaptation of any such measure to the end 
 proposed, as well as its conformity to the Constitution, I shall 
 resort to the fathers of the Great Republican School for ad 
 vice and instruction, to be drawn from their sage views of our 
 system of Government and the light of their ever-glorious ex 
 ample." 
 
 He had said, in private, to several friends, that his opinion 
 on the constitutionality of a Bank had undergone a change. 
 Indeed, we may infer as much as this from a letter written by 
 him to the Henrico Committee, during the Canvass of 1840. 
 
 " There is not in the Constitution any express grant of pow 
 er for such purpose, and it could never be constitutional to ex 
 ercise that power save in the event the powers granted to Con 
 gress could not be carried into effect without resorting to such 
 an institution." He had before admitted what we have quo 
 ted from his speech in 1834 "no man, with the experience of 
 the past, could well doubt the propriety of a well-regulated and 
 well-guarded bank. 1 It is obvious that in 1840, with these 
 
374 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 opinions, he was very near his conversion to a Bank : three 
 parts out of four, he was for it certainly. 
 
 But what did he mean by referring, in his Inaugural Ad 
 dress, to " the Ever-Glorious Example" of the Fathers of the 
 Republican School ? Mr. Madison was conspicuous among 
 these fathers ; was one of the chief authors of the Constitution : 
 was ever its strongest champion ; had, for a long time, opposed 
 a bank as unconstitutional ; had become convinced, by the 
 experience of a deranged currency, that a bank was " a neces 
 sary and proper" instrument toward the accomplishment of the 
 powers conferred by the Constitution ; acknowledged the con 
 stitutionality to be a question definitively settled by precedent ; 
 upon these convictions had renounced his old objections, and 
 signed a bill for establishing such an institution. 
 
 What did Mr. Tyler mean by referring to this example ? 
 Was it not very pregnant of meaning ? He had already declared 
 that he thought the Bank useful : he had even affirmed that, 
 with our past experience, no one could doubt " the propriety " 
 of a well-regulated bank. He had thus arrived at the conclu 
 sion that it was "proper" at least. His only constitutional 
 doubt rested on " the necessity." He told the Henrico Com 
 mittee that the power to create a bank not being " express" in 
 the Constitution, " it could never be constitutional to exercise 
 that, power, save in the event" etc. Then, it is clear he could 
 conceive a case in which it might be constitutional. Add to 
 these the expressions contained in the Inaugural Address, and 
 it is quite apparent that the mind of Mr. Tyler was in a state 
 of transition at least, on this topic. Nay, that he had absolute 
 ly changed, as he told several. By way of breaking this change 
 to the public and of preparing old acquaintances against sur 
 prise at his advocating a Bank, he made this reference to "the 
 Ever-Glorious Example " If he did not design it to give coun 
 tenance to his change, why did he allude to that example at 
 all ? If he could, by no means, agree to sign a bank bill, why 
 did he not then say so ? The whole Whig press throughout 
 the Union, after that Inaugural Address, proclaimed him as 
 
A DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 375 
 
 " safe" upon the Bank question ; the Madisonian, the Herald 
 his peculiar organs so proclaimed him. Why did he not 
 deny it, and say he was misapprehended ? 
 
 This was the only Whig question upon which any concern 
 was felt in regard to Mr. Tyler s opinions. Upon every thing 
 else his most intimate and confidential friends vouched for 
 him to the world. Mr. Gushing, who may speak in this rela 
 tion for Mr Tyler, said, in a letter at the close of the Extra Ses 
 sion, that " of thirty-one Whig measures" the President disap 
 proved of but one. " In respect to all but one of these meas 
 ures" these are his words "there was perfect concordat ac 
 tion on the part of the two Houses of Congress and the Presi 
 dent. Concerning one of them, he and they differed." 
 
 Indeed, in regard to the strong, characteristic doctrines and 
 ineasmes of the Whig party, Mr. Tyler may be said to have 
 been lavish of profession. 
 
 As to " the single term" of the Presidency, he had written 
 a letter and drunk a toast in which we may find even a savor 
 of self-glorification at being the first to denounce the evil of a 
 second term, on the score of the danger of allowing the incum 
 bent of the Presidency to employ his power and patronage to 
 secure an election. No one was more zealous for the distribu 
 tion of the proceeds of the public lands than Mr. Tyler. No 
 one more kindly disposed to protect the industry of the 
 country. 
 
 Then, as to the honest and moderate use of the Executive 
 Patronage who had ever gone farther ? He even professed 
 to desire that Congress should impose restraints on the power 
 of removal by the President. Mark the wise humility and vir 
 tuous self-denial breathed, on this point, in the Inaugural. 
 " The unrestrained power exerted by a selfishly ambitious man, 
 in order either to perpetuate his authority or to hand it over 
 to some favorite as his successor, may lead to the employment 
 of all the means within his control to accomplish his object. 
 The right to remove from office, while subjected to no just 
 restraint, is inevitably destined to produce a spirit of crouch- 
 
376 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 ing servility with the official corps which, in order to uphold 
 the hand that feeds them, would lead to direct and active in 
 terference in the elections both State and Federal, thereby sub 
 jecting the course of State Legislation to the dictation of the 
 Chief Executive officer, and making the will of that officer ab 
 solute and supreme. I will, at a proper time, invoke the ac 
 tion of Congress upon this subject." 
 
 Then again 
 
 " I will remove no incumbent from office who has faithfully 
 and honestly acquitted himself of the duties of his office, 
 except in such cases where such officer has been guilty of ac 
 tive partisanship, or by secret means, the less manly and there 
 fore the more objectionable, has given his official influence to 
 the purposes of party, thereby bringing the patronage of the 
 Government into conflict with the freedom of elections. Free 
 dom of opinion will be tolerated, the full enjoyment of the right 
 of suffrage will be maintained as the birthright of every Amer 
 ican citizen." 
 
 Breathing such sentiments as these, so full of amiability 
 and assentation so yielding in old opinions, so complaisant in 
 all Whig doctrine, so humble, so gracious and so wreathed in 
 smiles, came John Tyler to the accidental fortune of the Pres 
 idency of the United States. It has been charged against the 
 Whigs that they have not redeemed their promises to the coun 
 try. Why have they not redeemed them ? 
 
 That remains to be told. 
 
A DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 377 
 
 PART II. 
 
 THE WHIG PARTY: ITS DISAPPOINTMENT, ITS RETRIBUTION, 
 
 ITS HOPES. 
 
 I. 
 
 THE EXTRA SESSION. A BANK BILL. A SCRUPLE AND A COM 
 PROMISE. 
 
 WITH a bright sun breaking above the gloom of Harrison s 
 death, and gilding the hopes of all who expected happier days 
 through the efficacy of a Whig Legislature, Congress met, on 
 the last day of May, 1841, in Extra Session. 
 
 Mr. Tyler was, apparently, in the best mood to gratify the 
 anticipations of that great party who had raised him to what 
 he was, and who were sincerely disposed to be his friends. 
 
 Never was there a man brought into an exalted station 
 with so little effort on his part, or with an easier fortune before 
 him. His course lay over a summer sea, with favoring winds 
 to fill his sails : a prosperous voyage was before him, pleasure 
 on its track and fame at the end had he but the wit to see it. 
 
 His message was auspicious : it was full of promise. The 
 Currency, he proposed to regulate by a " Fiscal Agent." 
 " Upon such an agent depends, in an eminent degree, the es 
 tablishment of a currency of uniform value." So far, well. 
 This fiscal agent must not be a Sub-Treasury : it must not be 
 constituted of State Banks : both of these have met " unqualified 
 condemnation" from the people. And as to a National Bank 
 even although one had been chartered by a vote of both 
 Houses, this, " a regard to truth" requires me to say " has also 
 been condemned by the popular voice." What in such case 
 
378 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 is it best to do ? " To you, then, who have come more di 
 rectly from the body of our common constituents, I submit the 
 entire question, as best qualified to give a full exposition of their 
 wishes and opinions. I shall be ready to concur with you in 
 the adoption of such system as you may propose, reserving to 
 myself the ultimate power of rejecting any measure which 
 may, in my view of it, conflict with the Constitution, or other 
 wise jeopard the prosperity of the country a power which I 
 could not part with, even if I would : but which I will not be 
 lieve any act of yours will call into requisition. 1 
 
 Mr. Tyler when he wrote this, knew that a Bank would be 
 one of the most prominent topics in the deliberations of the 
 Whigs at that session : as far as he had control over the sub 
 ject, intended it should be so : recommended deliberation on 
 that point. 
 
 Was it designed that we should gather from these expres 
 sions of the Message that he would agree to no Bank ? or 
 rather on the other hand, a hope and belief that such a Bank 
 would be agreed to, as would not " call into requisition" his 
 Veto ? 
 
 Then came a hint or foreshadowing, of some significance 
 in the interpretation of his wishes. It regards the Distribu 
 tion of the proceeds of the Public Lands : " Whether such 
 distribution should be made, directly to the States, in the pro 
 ceeds of the sales, or in the form of profits by virtue of the op 
 erations of any Fiscal Agency, having these proceeds as its basis, 
 should such measure be contemplated by Congress, would well de 
 serve its consideration" 
 
 What did he propose should be understood by this hypo 
 thetic intimation ? Clearly, I understand it as no less than 
 a suggestion of the possibility the probability of its being 
 found most expedient to constitute a Bank in such manner as to 
 incorporate into the capital " the proceeds of the sales" which 
 suggestion, in fact, was afterward made by the Secretary of 
 the Treasury and advised by him. 
 
 Could we infer that Mr. Tyler would veto a Bank on such 
 

 A DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 379 
 
 a basis ? If not, then we may conclude he deemed such a Bank 
 not unconstitutional. If such not unconstitutional, might not 
 one also be constituted without " the proceeds," which would 
 be held equally free of objection ? It is very evident he was 
 not, at this time, against every kind of a National Bank. 
 
 It would seem as if the Presidential mind had already 
 gone through its transition, and now rested upon " The Ever- 
 Glorious Example." 
 
 But the President, in truth, had a scheme of his own. He 
 was not Qu\y friendly to a Bank, but somewhat covetous of the 
 renown of being the author and founder of one. We have 
 evidence that he had several schemes. He had been studying 
 the matter. What the Abbe Sieyes was said to be in the ar 
 ticle of Constitutions, at the first dawning of the French Rev 
 olution, we have reason to suspect Mr. Tyler was, in the article 
 of Banks that is, a projector in this line, with pigeon holes 
 full of them, ready made. With more or less certainty, we 
 trace to him conceptions of three different kinds : First, a 
 Bank after the old fashion, as regards faculties, with a some 
 what whimsical abstraction concerning the assent of States : 
 Second, a Bank stripped of power of discount and limited to 
 exchange ; and Third, a Bank of indefinite character founded 
 on the Proceeds of the Sales of the Public Lands. 
 
 But very distinctly do we find him, first and in preference 
 to all other plans, friendly to a Bank with every Money power 
 that any Bank of the United States ever possessed : as po 
 tent as any for the peculiar mischief ascribed by politicians to 
 " The Monster ;" and varying from the old models mainly in 
 the practically insignificant feature of the location of Branches 
 with the consent only of the States in which they were placed ; 
 a feature which Mr. Webster describes as a " merely theo 
 retic difficulty attended with no practical disadvantages." 
 
 Very distinctly do we find proof of this, as I propose to 
 show. 
 
 I have hinted before, that the President had two special 
 organs of his opinions. One was the avowed official paper 
 
380 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 of the Administration, the Madisonian. This paper was con 
 ducted by an obsequious friend : it was supported, in great 
 part, by government favor : the editorial matter was altogether 
 responsive to the President s suggestions ; was even inspected 
 and revised before publication, whenever it was thought ne 
 cessary, by the President or some of his family. 
 
 The other was a less official but not a less genuine organ. 
 It was, moreover, personal to the President having little to 
 say for his cabinet much often to say against them : a back- 
 stair confidant, and therefore much more authentic on the 
 topic of the influences that belonged to that region. It 
 told secrets where there was a purpose in having such di 
 vulged. It could be repudiated when a hit failed or did mis 
 chief: acknowledged, when the hit took effect. It was, in 
 short, that kind of organ which history shows us to be both 
 common and useful in the affairs of great men. This organ, 
 was found in the correspondent of the New York Herald, a 
 familiar Scapin about the President s household. He was the 
 collector of gossip, and haberdasher of the wit of the White 
 House ; a regular frequenter of the garden and of the levees, 
 where he made notes for frivolous flatteries, and described 
 the Court Paragons, never forgetting the President himself, 
 in mawkish bombast ; and said ill-natured things of such 
 as fell not within the category of Court favor. He was pur 
 veyor-general to the domestic vanities. It was his vocation 
 to pick up and sift all the current glorifications of Mr. Tyler 
 and his household, which were dropped by the way side, or 
 which were laid in the path of this assiduous functionary, on 
 purpose to be picked up, by those who had some personal mo 
 tive to flatter. The zeal and ability with which he performed 
 these offices, made him a favorite, and, in various by-ways, 
 gave him access to many State secrets ; whereby he had a 
 knack of predicting the President s opinions and meditated 
 acts, with wonderful precision, before they were made known 
 through any other channel. His letter was always an infallible 
 index to the coming message. If any one is anxious to learn 
 
A DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 381 
 
 what was concocted in the White House, during the Extra Ses 
 sion, or desires to know how the President lived, what were 
 his habits, what he thought, said and did, or how he looked 
 let him resort to the correspondence of the Herald. 
 
 These are the two organs whose testimony I find occa 
 sion, in the first place, to employ. I have other witnesses 
 graver but not more authentic. 
 
 Letter-writer Scapin, as early as April 2oth, which was only 
 a fortnight after Mr. Tyler made his Inaugural Address not 
 cjuite a fortnight and full forty days before the Extra Session, 
 blurts out very indiscreetly, we must say now a piece of in 
 telligence regarding the Bank. It would, doubtless, have cost 
 him his place if the President had then foreseen how very deep 
 was the faith of the nation in his known abhorrence of a Bank, 
 and how shockingly ungrateful the Democracy have become in 
 refusing to trust one so distinguished for this aversion. 
 
 I quote this intelligence in Scapin s own words. 
 
 " A letter has been received from Mr. Rives, in which he 
 expresses his decided approbation of the tone and doctrines 
 of President Tyler s address to the people, and pledges him 
 self, unequivocally, to the support of the principles of Mr. Ty 
 ler and his administration. This is regarded as decisive of the 
 charter of a National Bank. Mr. Rives s vote renders such a re 
 sult certain. The Message is to be confined to a full exposi 
 tion of the affairs of the nation, the situation of the Treasury, 
 the state of the currency, foreign relations, and such other top 
 ics as are ordinarily discussed in papers of the kind, without 
 suggesting any specific plan or any measures for the relief of the 
 people. All this is to be left to Congress. THE SECRETARY OF 
 THE TREASURY HAS NEARLY COMPLETED HIS PROJECT FOR 
 A BANK, but its features have not yet transpired." 
 
 There is what was known at Washington six weeks before 
 the meeting of Congress : namely, Mr. Ewing was then pre 
 paring a Bank bill : Mr. Rives s approbation of the Inaugural 
 was held decisive of his vote in favor of the bill in the Senate. 
 
 At the opening of the Extra Session the President s Mes- 
 
^*2 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 sage was accompanied by the Report of the Secretary of the 
 Treasury. This paper earnestly recommended the establish 
 ment of a Bank. It adds " If such an institution can be so 
 conceived in principle and guarded in its details as to remove 
 all scruples touching the question of constitutional power, and 
 thus avoid the objections which have been urged against those 
 heretofore created by Congress, it will, in the opinion of the 
 undersigned, produce the happiest results, and confer lasting 
 and important benefits on the country." 
 
 The Bank was thus brought distinctly to the consideration 
 of Congress both by the President and the Secretary. 
 
 The President was desirous that Congress should call on 
 the Secretary to report a plan for a bank. He expressed- this 
 wish to more than one member immediately upon the opening 
 of the session : in fact, invited the call. Mr. Wise, his confi 
 dential friend, introduced a resolution to this end into the 
 House on the 3d of June. Mr. Clay did the same thing in the 
 Senate on the yth. 
 
 On the 1 2th of June the Secretary, Mr. Evving, made his 
 report, and with it a bill for the incorporation of "The Fiscal 
 Bank of the United States." 
 
 The bill is represented by the Secretary, as creating an in 
 stitution, " in the general plan and frame" of which " he has 
 endeavored to free it from the constitutional objections which 
 have been urged against those heretofore created by Congress." 
 
 This plan, accordingly, differs from the former Banks in 
 two essential characteristics, both of which, it was under 
 stood, were introduced upon Mr. Tyler s suggestion and in def 
 erence to his peculiar views of the Constitution. 
 
 First, It proposes a Bank to be incorporated in the District 
 of Columbia. 
 
 Second, It was to have the power to establish Branches only 
 with the assent of the States. 
 
 Many provisions were made to guard against the abuses 
 which were known or alleged to have crept into the former 
 banks. 
 

 A DEFENCE OF THE WITTGS. 
 
 In all other respects, in amount of capital, in privilege of 
 discount and exchange, of faculty to create paper money, of 
 influence over the commerce and wealth of the country ; in all 
 that concerns that hideous Money-Power which has frightened 
 so many anxious patriots from their propriety ; in all means of 
 doing good and harm incident to a Bank ; of " monopoly of 
 brokerage ;" of making " the rich richer and the poor poorer," 
 so far as such things ever have been in past days ; in brief, 
 as regards all and every slang objection which the political 
 cant of ten years has heaped up in the magazine of anti-Bank 
 missiles, this Bank was, in every essential limb and feature, 
 the same veritable monster which the oracles have said had 
 broken down public liberty and undone the nation ; the iden 
 tical Dragon Redivivus which our blessed St. George of the Her 
 mitage had erewhile made 
 
 " Au example to all Dragons." 
 
 There it was restored ; with the same bristling crest, and hor 
 rid claws and fiery eye. Differing only from its former guise, 
 in that its abode was changed to the District of Columbia, and 
 that it might not set its seductive paw upon a State without 
 that State s consent. As this Dragon was endued with some 
 of the virtues of the siren, all rnen know what feeble defence 
 might be found in the self-denying virtues of a sovereign State. 
 
 Was this Mr. Tyler s Bank ? 
 
 It came from his cabinet minister. It had been on the an 
 vil for more than six weeks. The report accompanying it recog 
 nized his hint touching the Public Lands. It was produced 
 upon a call made at his suggestion. In its two chief charac 
 teristics Incorporation in the District, and Assent of States 
 it was not the scheme of any member of the Cabinet ; cer 
 tainly, not of Mr. Ewing who prepared the bill. 
 
 Was it Mr. Tyler s Bank ? 
 
 If it was, what are we to say of that importunate claim now 
 made for him as the very democrat of democrats uncompro 
 mising strict constructionist, ultra-Defender of the Anti-Bank 
 
384. POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 Faith in this even out-Jeffersoning Jefferson ; predestined 
 and heroic dispenser of the Veto ; whom all men knew from 
 the famous import of his opinions, from the tenor of his whole 
 life and conversation, must crush with his deadliest veto such 
 an enormity as a Bank, at its very birth : was expected to do 
 this was elected to do it could do no other than this and 
 preserve his reputation for fidelity ? For the doing of which 
 deed, eternal and immeasurable democratic gratitude is claim 
 ed as but a small return small, in comparison with this bril 
 liant service, even though it reach to the glorification of him, 
 with another term and instalment as Chief of the peculiar Anti- 
 Bank Democracy postponing Van Buren, Calhoun, Cass, Bu 
 chanan and Johnson as but milk-sops and carpet-knights in 
 the war against the Monster What are we to say of this claim ? 
 
 We ask, then, again, somewhat anxiously 
 
 Was this thing of Mr. Ewing s, the President s Bank ? 
 
 We shall see. 
 
 Tuesday, i5th of June, I fin^l published in the Madisonian, 
 the Secretary s report and bill, concerning which, editorially 
 that paper remarks, " This plan is substantially the same, ex 
 cept in a few particulars, as that shadowed forth in this paper last 
 week. We not only * have no doubt of its having the approbation 
 of a majority of the heads of Departments, as remarked by a 
 city contemporary, but we can confidently state that it has, in its 
 general features received the approbation of the President, which is 
 the more important since his concurrence is absolutely neces 
 sary to its passage." 
 
 Then again on Thursday, 24th of June. 
 
 " The Richmond Enquirer is growing exceedingly impu 
 dent, and on some points recently has shown itself menda 
 cious. In his last paper the editor has scribbled a long edito 
 rial in ridicule of the treasury plan of a Fiscal Agent, affecting 
 at the same time to be the organ, the adviser and the dictator of 
 the President, while he charges a want of veracity and a want of 
 dignity upon his cabinet. He even intimates that the Madison- 
 tan falsifies the views of the President, and undertakes to deny that 
 
A DEFENCE OF THE \V1IIGS. 385 
 
 the President approves of the general features of the Treasury 
 plan ! Was impudence and vanity the like of this ever equalled 
 in an opposition print ?" 
 
 About this time Scapin writes a letter which throws some 
 light on the matter. 
 
 June 21, he says, 
 
 "Mr. Clay s proji t for a bank was read in the Senate to 
 day. The important point of difference between the President 
 and Mr. Clay is in regard to the compulsory establishment of 
 branches in the States. The opinion alluded to yesterday that 
 Mr. Clay will not press his peculiar views to the extent of jeop 
 arding the establishment of a Fiscal Agent is gaining ground, and 
 the impression now is that the prominent measures of the party 
 will prevail at the Extra Session." 
 
 These are a few, selected from many testimonies, to the same 
 import, furnished by the newspaper depositaries of the Presi 
 dent s confidence. 
 
 The highest testimony of all which we could give upon this 
 point, the most unquestionable in the view of the nation, would 
 be the published letters of the Cabinet officers who resigned. 
 These letters are full and unequivocal, and supply the best ma 
 terial for history, as the evidence of honorable and approved 
 men. But these newspaper fragments are chiefly valuable as 
 contemporary announcements by intimates of the President 
 made while matters were in progress, while there was no motive 
 to misrepresent, and before any one had foreseen the disastrous 
 conclusion. 
 
 Enemies have maligned the letters of the retiring Cabinet 
 officers as being ex parte, against the President. There are, how-* 
 ever, high testimonies that are not ex parte in this sense but all 
 the stronger for being ex parte on the other side ; zealous party 
 friends of the President. 
 
 Mr. Gushing is one of these. In his letter to his constitu 
 ents, September 27th, 1841, written in defence of the President, 
 he puts the case somewhat thus : There were two courses 
 for Congress to pursue : either to pass a bank bill of their 
 
 
386 POLITICAL TAPERS. 
 
 own, without consulting the President, or to ask the President 
 for a bill and pass that. He argues, in effect, that if Congress 
 had done the first, and the President had vetoed their bill, they 
 could not have reasonably complained ; or if they had done the 
 second, asked for a bill and passed it, they would not have 
 found occasion to complain. 
 
 He then adds 
 
 "Congress saw fit to adopt neither of these courses, that is, 
 neither passing a bill of its own, nor accepting one from the Pres 
 ident. And hence its failure to incorporate a Fiscal Bank" 
 
 Mr. Wise is another of these witnesses. He also wrote a 
 letter after the Extra Session, November 5th, and published it. 
 "Who," he asks in that letter " according to all party usages, 
 ought to have been regarded as the true exponents and repre 
 sentatives of the Whig party ? Undoubtedly its President, elect 
 ed by the party, and the Cabinet chosen or continued by him. 
 Their joint councils ought to have been taken as the embodied 
 will of those they represented. What did they do ? It is well 
 understood that they had come to a compromise upon the vexed 
 question of a Fiscal Agent. The Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. 
 Ewing himself, proposed a plan which he recommended to Con 
 gress as one which would conduct our finances and commerce, 
 equalize exchanges, regulate currency and avoid all constitu 
 tional difficulties. This was the very desideratum, if it was 
 what he described it to be, and this was emphatically by a Whig 
 administration recommendation from the proper department, 
 said to be acquiesced in by the President, and it was called for by 
 both Houses of Congress. It was justly regarded as the Whig 
 measure of the first moment, and would, as such, have been 
 met and treated, doubtless, by the Opposition or Van Buren 
 party." 
 
 Upon this same point, highest of all, we have the testimony 
 of Mr. Webster. It was given to the world in that unhappy 
 Faneuil Hall speech of -his. 
 
 " At the Special Session Mr. Ewing proposed a plan for a 
 National Bank. // received the approbation of every member of 
 
A DEFEXCE OF THE WHIGS. 387 
 
 the Cabinet, as the only plan which would be likely to succeed, con 
 sidering the opinions of the individual whom we had all agreed to 
 put in the second place in the Government. It was the part of wis 
 dom not to see how much of a case we could make out against 
 the President, but how we could get on as wdl as we might, with 
 the President. Mr. Ewing s bill did not allow the establish 
 ment of branches without the consent of the States. I have 
 no idea myself that there is a constitutional necessity for this 
 restriction. I never had any such idea, but I could see no 
 great difference that it could make. It was merely a theoret 
 ic difficulty, attended with no practical disadvantages that I 
 could see." 
 
 Now, here is a brief of evidence from Scapin, of the Kitch 
 en, up to Daniel Webster, all strong to the same point, 
 the paternity, namely, of what is generally known as Ewing s 
 bill, in the President. 
 
 What is the corollary from this ? That Mr. Tyler was, as 
 late as the i2th of June, 1841, the friend and advocate of a 
 Bank of the United States. 
 
 No one imagined, at that time, that he would ever deny 
 this. It was no secret. He communicated his wish to have 
 a Bank to many members. He was thought to be particularly 
 tenacious about his Bank. The Whig party so understood 
 him and so relied upon him ; shaped their course with refer 
 ence to this reliance. 
 
 Mr. Ewing s report and bill were referred in the Senate to 
 the Select Committee on the Fiscal Agent, of which Mr. Clay 
 was Chairman. That Committee reported on the 2ist of June. 
 
 In all essential features the bill reported to the Senate by 
 Mr. Clay is the same as that of the President, with one excep 
 tion. That exception regards the establishment of Branches. 
 
 The Bank, in -this plan, as in the other, was to be situated 
 in the District of Columbia : it was to have the same capital 
 of Thirty Millions with a provision for future increase, if 
 Congress should think it advisable, to Fifty Millions ! 
 
 It provides for a Government subscription of Ten Mil- 
 
388 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 lions instead of the President s Six ; and it dispensed with the 
 Fourth Instalment of the Surplus Revenue, amounting to up 
 ward of Nine Millions which the President s bill proposed to 
 make part of the Capital : 
 
 It allowed dividends as high as Seven per cent. : the other 
 restricted them to Six : 
 
 It gave nine paid Directors, and required a majority to 
 transact business : the Executive scheme proposed seven paid 
 directors and three a quorum for business. It was somewhat 
 more stringent in its regulations than the Bill of the Execu 
 tive : among other particulars in these : 
 
 It forbade the appointment of any member of Congress, or 
 of a State Legislature, or officer, or Contractor of the Federal 
 or State Governments, as a Director in the Bank or its 
 Branches : 
 
 It forbade all discounting within the District of Columbia, 
 or loans, except to the Government : 
 
 It gave additional powers to facilitate free examination of 
 the Bank by the Secretary of the Treasury : 
 
 It added restrictions to the use, and guards against the 
 abuse, of Proxies : 
 
 It forbade the officers from borrowing money or obtaining 
 discounts from the Bank, or contracting debts with it : 
 
 In these and sundry other particulars, the Senate Bill was 
 more guarded and restrained than the Executive Bill. 
 
 These diversities between the two schemes mainly respect 
 the efficiency of the proposed institution : they did not touch 
 any debatable question of Constitutional power. 
 
 Such a question of Constitutional power, and the only one, 
 was presented in the clause relating to the establishment of 
 branches. In all other points the bills are the same in princi 
 ple, and, with very little variation, coincident in detail almost 
 identical in phraseology. 
 
 On this point of establishment of Branches the i6th Fun 
 damental rule in each Bill the Senate plan differed from that 
 of the Executive, to the following extent: 
 
A DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 389 
 
 The Executive Bill authorized the corporation to establish 
 a Branch, for Discount and Deposit, in any State whose Legis 
 lature should give its assent to such an act ; such Branch being 
 once established, not to be withdrawn without the assent of 
 Congress : or, instead of establishing such office, the directors 
 were authorized, from time to time, to employ any individual 
 agent, or bank, with the approbation of the Secretary of the 
 Treasury, at any place, to transact the business of the Bank, 
 other than for the purposes of discount. 
 
 The Senate Bill, first, made it obligatory upon the Corpor 
 ation to establish an office of Discount and Deposit in any State 
 in which two thousand shares should have been subscribed, 
 whenever, upon the application of the Legislature of such State, 
 Congress should require the same : second, the directors were 
 authorized to establish such offices in any State or Territory, 
 whenever they should think it expedient, without the assent of 
 the legislature : third, or, instead of establishing such offices 
 to employ an agent or bank to be approved by the Secreta 
 ry of the Treasury at any place to transact the business of 
 the Bank, other than for the purposes of discount. This lat 
 ter clause being to the same effect as that in the Executive Bill. 
 
 There is a view of the two provisions. It will be seen how 
 very narrow was the difference between Mr. Tyler s proposi 
 tion and Mr. Clay s : a difference, so far as Constitutional power 
 was concerned, that rested upon the naked alternative, of 
 
 Branches to be established originally with the assent of 
 the States, and that assent, once given, to be irrevocable ; or, 
 Branches to be established when and where found convenient, 
 without that original assent. 
 
 The President maintained, in justification of the principle 
 inserted in his bill, that, although he could find power in the 
 Constitution to establish a Bank, he could find none to establish 
 a Branch : That, to get this absent power, it was necessary 
 that Congress should apply to each State for a grant of it. 
 This argument, in deference to the President, we must call 
 " Strict Construction !" 
 
390 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 Mr. Clay, on the other hand, held, that if the Constitution 
 did not give the power to establish a Branch, no assent of a 
 State could give it ; and, therefore, that it was unconstitutional 
 to attempt to derive power from the assent of a State. This 
 argument we may presume was deemed "Broad Construc 
 tion!" 
 
 Mr. Tyler, the Strict Constructionist, thought an unconsti 
 tutional Branch might be made Constitutional by the assent of 
 a State : 
 
 Mr. Clay, the Latitudinarian, could fine no power in the 
 Constitution to ask assent as the foundation of a right. 
 
 Strange livery, this poor serving man, Construction, has got 
 into ! But there is the whole Question. Even upon such a 
 rock as this has our skilful Palinurus steered his cock-boat. 
 
 Upon this logic, a division of opinion arose in Congress : 
 not as to which of these positions was the sound one. I believe 
 there was not a man in either House who honestly and sincere 
 ly held with the President. Not one. But the question which 
 now divided Congress was Cannot the President be gratified 
 as to this crotchet of his regarding the Assent of the States ? 
 Cannot Congress, if it finds motive to do so, as a matter of ex 
 pediency merely, waive and forego Us right to establish a branch, 
 and ordain that that right shall not be exercised except in such 
 case as when a State may express a wish for a Branch ? 
 
 Upon this point, there was a very general, perhaps unan 
 imous, concurrence of the Whig party in the affirmative. Is 
 it expedient to establish such a precedent? May it not be 
 used, hereafter, to the prejudice of good Legislation ? On this 
 point there was less unanimity. Some members were strongly 
 opposed. Then it was suggested that the power might be 
 waived, with a protestation. I know not how many sugges 
 tions were made. There was certainly great solicitude to 
 comply with the President s wish, if possible. 
 
 The difficulty was, at last, thought to be settled by a Com 
 promise ; a Compromise to which it was reported the Presi 
 dent had agreed. Whether he had or not, I am unable to say. 
 
A DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 391 
 
 It was believed so, at least ; and more especially, as The Mad- 
 isonian broached the idea and advocated a settlement, much 
 in the terms of this now brought forward. 
 
 This Compromise was sufficiently ridiculous. There was 
 great repugnance to it through the Whig ranks. But it was 
 finally agreed to, because the majority thought the President 
 wished it. Nothing but that could have got it a dozen votes. 
 
 The whole controversy rested on a foundation so exceed 
 ingly frivolous this crotchet of the Assent of States that no 
 new frivolity in the progress of it excited surprise. 
 
 The Compromise was this 
 
 The Directors to have power to establish a branch with 
 the assent of the State, and, when established, not to be with 
 drawn without the consent of Congress : Provided, first, That 
 the power to establish a Branch shall be unrestrained, in re 
 spect to any State which shall not, at the first Session of its 
 Legislature, after the passage of the Charter, express its Dis 
 sent ; in defect of which, Assent shall be presumed : And Pro 
 vided, second, That whenever Congress shall deem it " ne 
 cessary and proper " to the execution of powers granted by the 
 Constitution, to establish a Branch in any State, then Con 
 gress may require the Directors to establish such Branch. 
 
 This Compromise being thus arranged in conformity, as it 
 was supposed, with the President s views, it was incorporated 
 in the Bill, and the Whigs then hastened to pass it, hoping 
 that they had thereby allayed the prickings of Mr. Tyler s sen 
 sitive and too prurient conscience. 
 
 The Bill was not agreed to without a smile. In fact, the 
 whole affair had a dash of the comic in it. 
 
 The Whig party having got through this their first trial 
 happily as they thought congratulated themselves upon 
 having so clear-sighted and practical an Abstractionist at the 
 head of affairs. 
 
392 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 II. 
 
 TYLERISM. 
 
 I will do Mr. Tyler the justice to say that I have no rea 
 son to suppose he ever gave any distinct promise to accept th 
 Compromise, although such a belief was prevalent. His de 
 meanor, at this time, became very diplomatic. Speculations 
 were afloat, would he veto the bill, or would he sign it ? 
 The Herald positively announced a Veto. The Madisonian, 
 of June 29th, had proposed and advocated a Compromise, as 
 we have said, of very much the same import with that which 
 was adopted : Now that the bill was passed, it assumed an 
 other tone and rather ominously hinted at a Veto. The great 
 est anxiety prevailed among the Whigs to avoid this catas 
 trophe. The President was well aware of this anxiety, but 
 gave no intimations of what he would do. From day to day 
 he encouraged hopes quite as vividly as he excited fears. He 
 either was or seemed to be greatly agitated by the question. 
 The Bill was passed on the 6th of August ; he kept it until 
 the 1 6th. During this interval his house was filled with visi 
 tors from the ranks of the opposition : they took possession of 
 his ear ; became his intimate advisers. What advice they gave 
 we may conjecture. He affected to complain that the Whigs 
 kept aloof from him ; and when, learning this, they hastened 
 to disabuse his mind of that impression and sought commun 
 ion with him, they were not only coldly received, but reproved 
 by his intimates for their importunity. 
 
 Thinking it their duty to do every thing in their power to 
 avert the threatened veto, they waited upon him in delegations, 
 to apprise him of the feeling which was likely to arise in the 
 country upon this act. One delegation in particular, of great 
 respectability the Whigs representing Ohio, called upon him 
 on Friday evening the i3th of August. They told him frankly 
 what they feared. Assured him of the earnest desire of the 
 party to preserve harmony and good will toward the President : 
 represented to him the deep concern of the nation in the Bank 
 
A DEFENCE OF THE WJIIGS. 393 
 
 question. He protested his own intense feeling upon the sub 
 ject : spoke apparently with frankness of the difficulties he felt 
 in regard to certain points in the com promise section : suggest 
 ed an amendment which would render this section acceptable 
 to him : declared his entire freedom from all prejudice or extrinsic 
 influence in regard to the measure : wept , promised to pray 
 for guidance and then asked, by way of remonstrance, "Why 
 did you not send me Ewing s bill ?" 
 
 "Would you sign that bill?" inquired one of the delega 
 tion. 
 
 " I would" was the reply. 
 
 Such was the interview as described by those who witness 
 ed it. The Ohio members left his apartment fully possessed 
 with the opinion that the President was sincerely desirous to 
 have a Bank such as his cabinet minister had reported. Al 
 though they had reason to expect a veto of t{ie pending bill, 
 they believed that all difficulty would be removed by adopt 
 ing the President s plan as it came from the Secretary. This 
 opinion they infused into the Whigs of Congress ; and the hopes 
 of a favorable settlement began to brighten. 
 
 Three days after this interview Monday, August i6th 
 Mr. Tyler sent the bill back to the Senate with his Veto Mes 
 sage. 
 
 So far as this act signified his dissent from the Senate bill, 
 it surprised nobody. The recent reports, especially that from 
 the Ohio delegation, had prepared Congress to expect it. But 
 the substance of the Message, and the grounds upon which it 
 placed the Veto, greatly surprised everybody excepting those 
 only who were in the secret. 
 
 The Message presents four objections to the Bill. 
 
 First, That it is an attempt to create a Bank to operate /<?r 
 se over the Union, and therefore unconstitutional. 
 
 Second, That it is a Bank of Discount, and therefore un 
 constitutional.* 
 
 *" I have not been able to satisfy myself that the establishment 
 by this government of a Bank of Discount, in the ordinary acceptation 
 
39-i POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 Third, That it was not a Bank exclusively confined to the 
 power of dealing in Exchanges, which would be constitutional 
 and eminently useful, if conducted on the plan of the Exchange 
 operations of the old Bank.* 
 
 Fourth, That the Assent of States toward establishing 
 Branches was not sufficiently secured. 
 
 The first three of these objections apply as forcibly to the 
 President s own bill as to that from the Senate. 
 
 If the latter is a bill to operate per se, so was the former, 
 that is, if there be any intelligible meaning in these words, 
 which I by no means assert, for I have .never seen any man 
 who could define exactly what the President meant by a Bank 
 
 of that term, was a necessary means, or one demanded by propriety, to 
 execute those powers. What can the local discounts of the Bank 
 have to do with the collecting, safe-keeping and disbursing of the 
 Revenue ? " Veto Message. 
 
 * " For several years after the establishment of that institution (the 
 old Bank) it dealt almost exclusively in local discounts ; and, during 
 that period, the country was, for the most part, disappointed in the 
 consequences anticipated from its incorporation." " It had, up to that 
 period, dealt to but a very small extent in Exclianges either foreign 
 or domestic, and as late as 1823 its operations in that line amounted to 
 a little more than seven millions per annum. A very rapid augmen 
 tation soon after occurred, and in 1833 its dealings in the Exchanges 
 amounted to upward of one -hundred millions, including the sales of 
 its own draughts. The currency of the country became sound, and 
 the negotiations in the Exchanges were carried on at the lowest pos 
 sible rates. The circulation was increased to more than $22,000,000, 
 and the notes of the Bank were regarded as equal to specie all over 
 the country: thus showing, almost conclusively, that it was the ca 
 pacity to deal in Exchanges and not in local discounts which furnished 
 these facilities and advantages. It may be remarked, too, that not 
 withstanding the immense transactions of the Bank in the purchase 
 of Exchange, the losses sustained were merely nominal, while in the 
 line of discounts the suspended debt was enormous and proved most 
 disastrous to the Bank and the country. Its power of Local Discount, 
 in fact, proved to be a fruitful source of favoritism and corruption, 
 alike destructive of the public morals and the general weal." Veto 
 
A DEFENCE OF THE WIIIGS. 395 
 
 to operate per se. But whatever hidden significance there 
 may be in this mystical phrase, we may assume that it applies 
 as much to one scheme as to the other. 
 
 The President s bank was more distinctly a Bank of Local 
 discount than the Senate Bank. For the latter absolutely 
 forbade discounting in the District, which the other allowed. 
 The discount power was as large in the President s plan as in 
 the old Bank. 
 
 Then as to dealing in Exchange, Mr. Tyler s plan encour 
 aged it no more than the other, but left this faculty pretty 
 much where it was in the former Charter. 
 
 The Fourth objection is peculiar to the Senate Bill. Yet 
 here the difference hangs by a cobweb. 
 
 Mr. Tyler had agreed, by the terms of his own bill, that a 
 State which once consented to a branch, should not have pow 
 er to revoke that consent. He objects to the compromise be 
 cause it raises an implied assent when a State does not dissent 
 at the first meeting of its Legislature after the passage of the 
 Charter ; upon which, he argues that this inference of assent 
 might in some cases be contrary to the known fact or avowed 
 wish of the State. Well ; it is standing on a small scruple 
 when we place the constitutional power of Congress on such 
 an abstraction as discriminates between a power to establish a 
 Branch in a State without asking consent, and a power to con 
 tinue a Branch after the State desires its removal. 
 
 But I have no wish to argue points or chop logic with a 
 President of the United States ; and less with Mr. Tyler than 
 with any President that ever lived. 
 
 I recount these proceedings only to show how completely 
 this Message bewildered the Whig party. It came like a 
 snow-storm in summer. After all that the President had said 
 to the Ohio members, and to sundry others ; after the open 
 ing Message ; after the Madisonian and the Herald ; after 
 the report and commendation of Ewing s bill ; after all thes^, 
 it seems he could not go for discounts ! 
 
 The Whig members, upon hearing the result of the Ohio 
 
 
396 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 delegation conference, had taken heart and partly resolved, in 
 order to conciliate and to avoid all future difference, to report 
 the Treasury bill and pass it. In perfect good faith and hon 
 esty of purpose this idea was entertained by the great major 
 ity of the Whigs. But here was the Message giving a flat re 
 pulse to any hope from that proceeding. 
 
 In the midst of these perplexities and doubts a most 
 strange fact comes to light, and with it another ray of hope. 
 
 A member of the Ohio delegation who had visited the 
 President on Friday, the i3th, had occasion to visit him again 
 on Monday, the i6th just after the Veto Message had been 
 despatched to the Capitol. 
 
 The President said to him, " I am glad to meet you again. I 
 wanted to see one of your delegation. When, on Friday even 
 ing, I told you I would sign Ewing s bill, if it were sent to 
 me, I HAD NOT READ IT. I wish to recall what I said. I 
 could not sign that. If you will examine the Message I have 
 sent to-day, you will find shadowed forth a much better bank 
 there, one THAT HAS BEEN LONG ENDEARED TO ME." 
 
 I do not pretend to give the very words, except in the two 
 remarkable declarations printed in capitals : I give the sub 
 stance and words both as reported, in no unfriendly spirit to 
 the President, immediately after the event, reported in a 
 friendly spirit rather, that farther concession for the sake of 
 harmony might be made. 
 
 The fact that Mr. Tyler had not read Mr. Ewing s bill, was 
 a new thunder-stroke in the atmosphere of the Capitol. 
 
 That he did not know that that bill embraced a power of 
 Local Discount ! This, after all that had happened ! It had 
 been in preparation ever since the 2oth of April. It had been 
 called for at the request of the President. It had been report 
 ed and officially printed in the Documents of Congress and in 
 every newspaper over the land, for upward of two months. 
 The subject had been in debate nearly all that time. It had 
 been the topic of deliberation, with a view to compromise, for 
 the last month. The compromise principle was submitted as 
 
A DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 397 
 
 a conciliatory proposition between this bill and that of the 
 Senate. "This bill was the President s bill" said Mr. 
 Gushing. " The President and his Cabinet had adopted it as 
 a compromise of the vexed question," said Mr. Wise. " It 
 received the approbation of every member of the Cabinet," 
 said Mr. Webster. And yet Mr. Tyler, the observed of all 
 observers, whose interest in this bill and the questions it pre 
 sented was deeper than that of any man in America he had 
 not read it ! 
 
 The Whigs, of course, heard this with a lively estimate 
 both of the sincerity and ability of him whom they had set up 
 to rule over this nation, and again congratulated themselves 
 upon the fellowship of so wise and vigilant a statesman. 
 
 A hope yet remained. He had " shadowed out" a plan 
 in his Message ; a plan " long endeared to him." What was 
 this ? The Message was examined, and it occurred at once 
 to every one, upon reading his commendation of the Exchange 
 operations of the Old Bank, that the plan shadowed forth in 
 that document the " long-endeared" plan was a bank to be 
 constructed with reference to such dealing in Exchanges as 
 were described to be so beneficial to the country in the Old 
 Bank, and which should be disabled from dealing in local dis 
 counts. 
 
 To make sure of the President s concurrence in this mat 
 ter, two gentlemen of the highest standing in Congress, 
 Mr. Berrien of the Senate and Mr. Sergeant of the House, 
 were deputed by the Whigs to ascertain from him pre 
 cisely what kind of a bill he would feel himself authorized to 
 approve. 
 
 They executed their commission with great fidelity : had 
 an interview with the President ; learned from him that he 
 was in favor of a fiscal agent divested of the discounting 
 power and limited to dealing in bills of Exchange other than 
 those drawn by a citizen of one State upon another citizen of 
 the same State. A bill was prepared in conformity with these 
 suggestions. It was submitted to Mr. Webster and by him to 
 
398 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 the President : was approved, sent to the House of Represent 
 atives : reported there and passed.* 
 
 When this measure was first proposed, and before it was 
 passed in the House, the President expressed great satisfac- 
 
 * This whole incident is so singular that it is best to give the ac 
 count of it furnished by the actors themselves. 
 
 Mr. Berrien and Mr. Sergeant being called upon to make a state 
 ment on this subject, the following papers were furnished. They 
 were published in the National Intelligencer on the 7th June, 1842. 
 
 " When the bill for the establishment of a fiscal agent, which 
 had been reported by Mr. Clay, had been returned with the Veto of 
 the President, I was requested to unite with Mr. Sergeant in pre 
 paring and reporting a bill to establish a Bank on the basis of the 
 projet submitted to the Senate by Mr. Ewing, or such other bill as we 
 believed could become a law. The alternative authority was given 
 expressly with a view to enable us to ascertain, with more precision 
 than was found in the Veto Message, in what particular form the 
 President would feel authorized to approve such a bill ; and the 
 whole power was conferred and received in a spirit of conciliation to 
 the Executive, and from an earnest desire on the part of the majority 
 in Congress to co-operate with the President in the adoption of some 
 fiscal agent which should meet the wishes and the wants of the 
 country. Mr. Sergeant and I waited on the President, and, at my re 
 quest, Mr. W. C. Dawson accompanied us. 
 
 " It is not proposed to detail the particulars of the conversation at 
 this interview, unless it shall be desired by some one who has the 
 authority of the President for asking it. It suffices to state the 
 result. The President, referring to his Veto Message, expressed him 
 self in favor of a fiscal agent divested of the discounting power, and 
 limited to dealing in bills of Exchange other than those drawn by 
 one citizen of a State upon another citizen of the same State. He de 
 clared his determination to confer with his cabinet on the question 
 whether the assent of the States ought to be required in the estab 
 lishment of the agencies to be employed by the Corporation, and also 
 as to the propriety of holding with us that informal communication 
 promising to inform us of the result by a note to be sent in the course 
 of the day. In the course of the same day Mr. Webster came to the 
 Capitol, with instructions, as he stated, to communicate to me verbal 
 ly the determination of the President, he (the President) believing 
 that that mode of communication would be equally acceptable with 
 the written one that had boon promised. He proceeded to state thnt 
 
A DEFENCE OF THE WIIIGS. O ( J ( J 
 
 tion at so happy an arrangement, and is said to have declared 
 to a member of the House, in the most earnest and emphatic 
 manner, that the passage of the bill, which, he added, ought 
 to be accomplished without delay would lay him under the 
 greatest obligations. 
 
 the President would approve a bill for the establishment of a fiscal 
 agency limited to dealing in foreign bills of Exchange. And to the 
 question whether he would require that the assent of the States 
 should be obtained for the establishment of the agencies to be em 
 ployed by the Corporation, he answered that he would not. He sug 
 gested the expediency of changing the name of the Corporation, 
 which was acquiesced in : and by an arrangement then made with 
 Mr. Webster, I received Mr. Ewing and Mr. Sergeant at my lodgings 
 at five o clock of the same afternoon. The details of the bill, sub 
 sequently introduced by Mr. Sergeant, were then and there agreed 
 upon, in conformity with the views of the President, as communica 
 ted to me by Mr. Webster and repeated by Mr Ewing : and in reply 
 to the question also proposed to Mr. Ewing, whether the President 
 would require the assent of the States to the establishment of the 
 agencies, he, Mr. Ewing, likewise replied in the negative. The 
 sketch thus arranged was committed to Mr. Sergeant, who prepared 
 from it the bill which he subsequently introduced in the House of 
 Representatives, a copy of which was, as I understood from Mr. 
 Sergeant, before introducing it, sent to Mr. Webster to be by him 
 submitted to the President. This was the same bill which subse 
 quently passed both Houses of Congress, and which was returned by 
 the President with his second Veto. 
 
 " J. MACPHERSON BERRIEN." 
 
 Memorandum by Mr. Sergeant. 
 
 " In compliance with a request to testify w hat I know of the mat 
 ter embraced in the above statement by Judge Berrien, I have care 
 fully examined the same and concur with him in every part of it, ex 
 cepting only that which details the conversation he had with Mr. 
 Webster. The rest is personally known to me ; but not having been 
 present at the interview between Judge Berrien and Mr. W r ebster, I 
 cannot speak of it from any knowledge of my own. I well remem 
 ber, however, that Judge Berrien told me of what had passed, very 
 soon after he had seen Mr. Webster (I think on the same day) in 
 substance as he had reduced it to writing . so that I never had a 
 doubt, and have not of its correctness. This conviction is confirmed 
 
400 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 The interview of Messrs. Berrien and Sergeant with the 
 President was on the i8th of August. The Bill was prepared 
 on the iQth and submitted to the President and approved by 
 him. It was then returned to Mr. Sergeant, who, on Friday, 
 the 2oth, introduced it into the House as an amendment to a 
 bill then pending in Committee of the Whole. On Monday, 
 the 23d, at 4 o clock, it was taken out of committee and pass 
 ed, without the alteration of a word from the original report, 
 by a vote of 125 to 94. 
 
 Every one now supposed all difficulties in regard to the Fis 
 cal Agency question were at an end. The bill was passed in 
 the Senate, without amendment, on Friday, the 30! of Septem 
 ber. 
 
 In six days afterward Thursday, the 9th it was return 
 ed to the House of Representatives with a Veto ! This bill, the 
 " long-endeared" progeny of the President s own fancy, met 
 its end from the President s own veto ! 
 
 The Message which accompanied the return of the bill is 
 altogether the most extraordinary paper that ever came from an 
 Executive of this nation. It repeats again and again the jar 
 gon of a Bank to operate per se. He cannot go for a Bank to 
 operate per se. He said so in his former Veto : this is a 
 
 by conversations between Mr. Webster and myself, which took place 
 after the meeting with Mr. Ewing referred to by Judge Berrien, and 
 before I moved the proposed bill in the House of Representatives. 
 These conversations were brief, but they were by appointment and 
 not casual ; were earnest and to the point, so that I do not think 
 there was any error in my understanding of them at the time, nor in 
 my recollection since. 
 
 I desire farther to say, as I can do with unhesitating confidence, 
 that my sole object in the whole proceeding, and, I believe, the ob 
 ject generally of those who took part in it, was, by a candid ascer 
 tainment and comparison of individual views and mutual explana 
 tions, fairly obtained in perfect good faith, to endeavor to conciliate 
 opinion and agree upon a measure which could become a law and 
 meet the public exigency. So far as I know or believe, there was no 
 other purpose whatever. JOHN SERGEANT. 
 
 "Philadelphia, Nov. 2, 1841." 
 
A DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. -iOi 
 
 Bank to operate per se Ergo, he cannot go for it. Then 
 comes a dash of rigmarole about " the moral and religious ob 
 ligations of Conscience and the Constitution," the sanctity of 
 his oath, and such like. Then a descant on the " great con 
 servative principle" of the Veto, " without the exercise of which, 
 on important occasions, a mere representative majority might 
 urge the government in its legislation beyond the limits fixed 
 by its framers" which freak of a mere representative majority, 
 he, Mr. Tyler, will by no means permit. He must be rather 
 harsh in this matter "or commit an act of gross moral turpi 
 tude" His duty is " to guard the fundamental will of the peo 
 ple themselves from infraction by a majority in Congress" 
 
 Then what sort of a corporation is this ? It is to operate 
 per se. It is National, although it is to be established in the 
 District. You may see it is national, because it has to per 
 form certain duties for the Government. He is not the man 
 to be deceived by such a cunning evasion as incorporating it 
 in the District ! Then, decidedly it operates per se over the 
 Union : that can by no means be tolerated. Even if it were 
 a District Bank, can you give a District Bank general or na 
 tional powers ? " Who can indulge the idea that this Govern 
 ment can rightfully, by making a State Bank its fiscal agent, 
 invest it with the absolute and unqualified powers conferred 
 by this bill ?" 
 
 And now, as to these bills of Exchange what are they ? 
 They may be unlimited as to time they may be renewable 
 they may be made to answer the purposes of mere accommo 
 dation. In fact this thing of exchange is no better than local 
 discounts : local discounts in disguise ! I cannot go for any 
 Exchange which takes off any thing from the amount of the 
 bill. That s discount, and discount is unconstitutional my 
 utter abomination : Talk not to me of discounts ! As to for 
 bidding persons residing in the same State from drawing bills 
 on each other, which you have put into this charter, what s the 
 value of it as long as bills may be drawn in Philadelphia on 
 Camden, Cincinnati on Newport ? Another objection j there 
 
402 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 is no limit set in the rate of Exchange. And then again, this 
 thing which you pretend to call a National Bank, might actu 
 ally grow so powerful as to be able even to control the State 
 Banks, which " would either have to continue with their doors 
 closed, or exist at the mercy of this National Monopoly of Bro 
 kerage !" There is the cloven foot of the " Old Monster" as 
 bad as ever ! And again, worse than all, being determined 
 to set my face against that unconstitutional enormity of local 
 discount I remark, " That while the District of Columbia is 
 made the seat of the principal Bank, its citizens are excluded 
 from all participation in any benefit it might afford, by a posi 
 tive prohibition on the Bank from all discounting within the Dis 
 trict" A doubly monstrous monster 1 
 
 All this parade of objurgation winds up dolefully with a 
 long-drawn sigh for the " anxious solicitude" he feels " to meet 
 the wishes of Congress in the adoption of a Fiscal Agent ;" 
 a regret in behalf of his unsatisfied conscience ; and a whin 
 ing remonstrance, and prayer for farther time to collect his 
 thoughts, which have been, ever since " the death of my la 
 mented predecessor," so " wholly, occupied in an anxious at 
 tempt to conform my action to the Legislative will." Con 
 gress has surely had glory enough without setting this chaplet 
 upon its brow ! " The two Houses have distinguished them 
 selves by the performance of an immense mass of labor, and 
 have passed many laws which, I trust, will prove highly bene 
 ficial to the interests of the country, and fully answer its just 
 expectations. It has been my good fortune and pleasure to con 
 cur with them in all measures except this. And why should our 
 difference on this alone be pushed to extremes ?" 
 
 With such " skimble-skamble stuff" as this, did he seek to 
 cover his desertion of his post as a Whig, and to protect his 
 inarch into the camp of the enemy : to hide his conscious 
 shame from the multitude who were standing by as witnesses 
 to his defection. 
 
 He, himself the author of that original idea of a Bank in 
 the District intrusted with the national duty of a Fiscal Agent ; 
 
A DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 4Ud 
 
 he, the author of the Bank of Local Discount ; he, the author 
 of this Bank of Exchange, with all its provisions is it stood, 
 originator, supervisor and approver of this identical scheme, 
 unchanged in letter or syllable as it came from his hand 
 pours forth such wretched drivelling before the whole American 
 people : so coolly abandoning what he had professed and prom 
 ised ; so deliberately taking back all that he had so ostenta 
 tiously put forward ; with such pitiful appeal for commiseration 
 forsaking his pledge ; with such affected martyr-meekness vio 
 lating his faith ! That he could write such a Message send 
 it to the Legislative Hall where American citizens were con 
 gregated give it to the world of the American people and 
 hope to be believed forgiven ! 
 
 III. 
 
 PROGRAMME OF THE TWELFTH OF JUNE. A SHUTTLECOCK. 
 
 What was the real secret of these vetoes? Was it con 
 science ? Was it political fidelity ? Was it deference to the 
 just expectations of the people ? 
 
 Mr. Gushing, in his letter to his constituents, heretofore 
 quoted, said it was conscience political fidelity consistency 
 of principle. " He conscientiously disapproved those bills" 
 says Mr. Gushing : " in what he has done, he has but acted 
 in accordance with the long-avowed, well-known, and persever 
 ing opinions of his whole life." That is Mr. Cushing s apology. 
 What a Jack-a-Lantern tramp this gentleman has had, in order 
 to keep pace with the President s rambles ! Hear him, in that 
 same letter. " It was known generally, and it was known par 
 ticularly to those members of Congress who, by their experi 
 ence and political position, had the best opportunity and the 
 greatest inducements to obtain a clear understanding of the 
 facts in this respect, that the President of the United States 
 had strong and fixed convictions concerning a National Bank :" 
 Here manifestly Mr. Gushing plunges into his first quag 
 mire : Strong&b& fixed convictions ! " that it was his anxious 
 
404: POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 wish, so far as his conscientious opinions would permit, to con 
 form his action in this matter to the wishes of Congress" 
 most obviously another quagmire : Congress was seeking to 
 conform to his wish : thought they had ascertained it from him 
 self : had his own Presidential word for it : " that, accordingly, 
 he had reflected much and counselled with his constitutional 
 advisers on the subject, and that among other conclusions, to 
 which he arrived, was this Either no Discounts ; or, if dis 
 counts, then assent of States. The President never lost sight 
 of the fundamental idea originally in his mind ; either no dis 
 counts, or if discounts, assent of States." 
 
 There is Mr. Cushing s solution most logically put. the 
 Jack a Lantern has left him a full fathom deep in the fen. 
 
 Does it solve the riddle of Mr. Tyler s vagaries, in this 
 Bank matter, to throw it into such a dashing syllogism ? 
 
 Mark these conclusions : 
 
 The President s " strong and fixed convictions," " his long- 
 avowed, well-known, persevering and conscientious opinions " 
 were, 
 
 First, That it is constitutional and expedient to establish a 
 Bank in the District of Columbia, with all the faculties neces 
 sary to a Government Bank. 
 
 Second, That it is constitutional and proper to make this 
 a Bank of discount, provided the assent of States be required 
 for the establishment of the Branches : and 
 
 Third, That if that assent be not required, then it is con 
 stitutional and proper to establish a Bank to deal in Exchange 
 without a power of Local Discount. 
 
 These are Mr. Tyler s opinions respecting a Bank, as 
 vouched for by his confidential friend and champion, Mr. 
 Gushing. Possibly enough, at one instant, they were so. Be 
 fore his first Veto they were broader still. After his first Veto 
 they were narrowed to this. After his second Veto, what were 
 his opinions ? Let any man read that Veto Message and say 
 if Mr. Tyler on the 9th of September was in favor of a Bank 
 in the District; was in favor of a Bank of Discount ; was in 
 
A DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 405 
 
 favor of a Bank of Exchange : whatever he might have been 
 on the i6th of August, on the ist of June. 
 
 I ask again What was the real secret of these Vetoes ? 
 
 When the President came to Washington in April, 1841. 
 in the youthful prime and ardent hopes of his new-fledged power 
 I believe he came with a hearty spirit of thankfulness to those 
 who had brought him to this extraordinary fortune, and with 
 an honest thought of evincing that thankfulness by a full, fair 
 and manly furtherance of the great objects which had embodied 
 the Whig party. In the glow of this feeling he made that 
 proclamation " you have only lost one Whig to gain another." 
 In the glow of this feeling he wrote and published his Inaugu 
 ral address, so full of promise promise that he really then in 
 tended to keep. In this genial and auspicious mood reap- 
 pointed the Harrison Cabinet : felt that there was no duty 
 upon him as a magistrate more sacred than that of hearty and 
 zealous co-operation- with the Whigs ; upon him, as a man, 
 more touching his personal honor, than to comport himself 
 toward the Whigs with unquestionable good faith. These, let 
 us have the charity to believe, were his ruling emotions. 
 
 When the Message for Congress was prepared these better 
 influences still prevailed still prevailed in the first four or 
 five days of the session. 
 
 But when men gathered round him ; when associations and 
 cliques began to plot and speak out; when the opposition 
 found they had a man to flatter ; when others found they had 
 a man to lead, the demeanor of the President was remarked 
 to have undergone a change. 
 
 There were many in Washington who saw, with inexpressi 
 ble sorrow, that the President began to grow ambitious and to 
 look to the prospect of ^another term. Whether this were an 
 original conception of his own, or whether it were infused into 
 his mind by others, it is not my purpose in inquire but it was 
 lamentably apparent that that idea had taken possession of his 
 thoughts. He has denied it ; and, as proof, has appealed to 
 the fact that, in preparing his Second Veto Message, he pro- 
 
.]. ) ; POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 posed to introduce a declaration that he would not be a can 
 didate. Whether on the Qth of September, his conduct had 
 become so equivocal as to make it necessary to resort to this 
 device of denial of his ambitious hopes, is a point of little sig 
 nificance. It certainly is suspicious enough to find Mr. John 
 Tyler, at any period, under a necessity of making proclamation 
 that he is not a candidate for " a second term." What put 
 "such toys of desperation" in his mind? 
 
 I say it is significant enough, that Mr. John Tyler should 
 have got himself into such suspicion, as to make it necessary 
 for him to explain that he did not seek " a second term." For, 
 on this Second Term question, Mr. Tyler was something of a 
 Knight Errant. He claimed to be one of the first men in the 
 nation to denounce it : wrote a letter against it, which has been 
 often quoted ; drank a toast which ran in this wise " Pil 
 grim Presidents and Travelling Cabinets, the fruitful offspring 
 of the Second Presidential Term : One Term and no Re-elec 
 tion : the best interests of the country demand it. Will not 
 the popular suffrage sustain it in 1840?" Indited some pun 
 gent essays in the Richmond paper on this point, if rumor 
 does him justice. He was a Knight Errant, therefore, as we 
 say, and had broken a lance in this cause was somewhat 
 Quixotic upon it. There must have been pregnant matter in 
 his conscience which could whisper to him Say to the world, 
 when you put your Veto on a Bank, you will not be a candi 
 date : even in so incongruous a way and on so odd an occa 
 sion as this, say so. Truly, the man who in his category, 
 should be reduced to the strait of certifying, in such wise, that 
 all his original Quixotism in favor of " a single term " was in 
 deed genuine, and not mere falsehood, such a man has 
 brought himself into a necessity for better vouchers than his 
 own word ! Why is he a candidate now NOW, after all this 
 zeal of denial ? Has he exemplified in his own experience 
 that all his arguments against " a second term" are futile ? 
 Has he found out that the incumbent of the Presidency has 
 no inclination or motive to use his patronage and influence to 
 
A DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 407 
 
 make him friends for an election ? or that these things are 
 not so corrupt as he fancied ? or, being corrupt, that they 
 are none the worse for that ? 
 
 Mr. Tyler s conduct can be reconciled to no theory but this, 
 that he had set his thoughts upon a second term. The in 
 cidents of the day all pointed to it. His express declaration to 
 Mr. Botts confirmed it. 
 
 It was very evident that, as a Whig, he could hope for no 
 success in this enterprise. The strong antipathy of the Whigs 
 was arrayed against a second term : it had been written on 
 their banner. It was not against a second election, but against 
 a second term, whether the first were by election or by accident 
 that they had taken their stand. They went against the prin 
 ciple, as tending to corruption, the principle of a President de 
 facto being under inducements to electioneer for another period 
 of incumbency in office. This applied to a Vice-President ac 
 cidentally elevated, as well as to a President elected. Mr. Ty 
 ler knew this, and knew that from the Whigs he could expect 
 nothing farther, even if he had been the worthiest and best be 
 loved in their ranks. Therefore, he meditated desertion from 
 the Whigs. 
 
 Having come to this point, he cast about him to make some 
 fair and plausible show of pretext for the deed. He was told 
 " Quarrel with Mr. Clay, the peculiar favorite, friend, leader 
 of the Whigs : denounce him as a Dictator : charge the 
 Whigs with Caucus Domination : and, above all things, Veto 
 a Bank ! in this Veto you will gain two great helps the De 
 mocracy will call you Deliverer the Abstractionist will call 
 you High Priest. A Third Party will grow on these founda 
 tions which shall be numbered as the leaves of the forest, Head, 
 Chief, Oracle of this third party, the Presidency and all its glo 
 ries will be yours for another, and perhaps another term." 
 
 This advice was taken. Mr. Clay was forthwith denounced 
 as the Dictator denounced even before Congress had well set 
 about the work of the session ; long before Mr. Clay had op 
 portunity to dictate an amendment even to a single measure. 
 
408 POLITICAL PAPEKS. 
 
 Here I invoke Scapin again. 
 
 The New York Herald of June i2th presents the affairs at 
 Washington in this position 
 
 " ist. From demonstrations in the House it may be safely 
 assumed that there is in that body a majority in favor of some 
 sort of a National Bank, of at least thirty votes. 
 
 " 2d. In the Senate a similar majority of, at least, three, and 
 probably five. 
 
 "3d. Mr. Clay has the entire control of loth Houses, and his 
 influence has predominated in the organization of all the im 
 portant committees. 
 
 " 4th. There is a most thorough and cordial understanding 
 between Mr. Webster and the President. This is a curious 
 fact, and grows out of the political history and present position 
 of each. 
 
 " 5th. Mr. Tyler and Mr. Clay must quarrel. Mr. Clay is 
 overbearing to an extraordinary degree, and the President will 
 not submit to his dictation much longer. 
 
 " 6th. If the influence of Mr. Clay shall carry through Con 
 gress a bank charter, conflicting at all with the President s con 
 stitutional notions, it will be vetoed by John Tyler beyond a 
 doubt : and this act will at once break down both the great parties, 
 Whig and Locofoco reorganize the masses anew -produce an ex 
 traordinary excitement throughout the country, and probably carry 
 John Tyler into the next Presidency, by an ovenvhclming force, 
 and place Daniel Webster in the line of succession" 
 
 This was the announcement of the Government paper, in 
 the City of New-York, on the i 2th of June, 1841, within the 
 first fortnight of the session, before Mr. Ewing s bill was re 
 ported to Congress, and before any business of moment had 
 been brought to the view of either House ! 
 
 Making allowance for the time necessary to prepare and 
 transmit these views from Washington to New York, scarce a 
 week from the commencement of the session could have elapsed 
 before this proclamation was made of Mr. Clay s disposition 
 to play the dictator. During that week both Houses had ad- 
 
A DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 409 
 
 journed from the 2d to the yth with a view to organization. 
 Nothing had been done : apparently, nothing but good feeling 
 and pleasant anticipation prevailed. 
 
 This paper is very noteworthy for two characteristics : the 
 singular accuracy with which it sets forth the President s as 
 pirations and the means by which he hoped to accomplish them ; 
 and the foreshadowing it gives of the precontrived plan by 
 which Mr. Clay was to be vituperated and shorn of his influ 
 ence. The charge against Mr. Clay of dictating to the Presi 
 dent, or manifesting an overbearing demeanor toward him or 
 toward any one else, here, in the first week of his appearance 
 at Washington under the new administration, is sufficiently ab 
 surd upon the mere statement of it. The other charge against 
 him of controlling the two Houses, through the organization of 
 the Committees, is childishly false, as any one may see who 
 will examine these committees : as every one at Washington 
 knew. 
 
 This paper, however, is a most ominous presignification of 
 the coming events. 
 
 Can we read such an announcement as this this laying 
 off, in advance, a quarrel between the President and Mr. Clay 
 this prophecy of the Veto; this foredooming of both par 
 ties to dissolution ; this strange prestige of Mr. Webster s 
 fate ; this reckoning upon the future popularity of John Ty 
 ler, and this prediction of his candidacy for another term ? Can 
 we read these remarkable paragraphs, published so early as 
 the 1 2th of June, 1841, in a journal, the chosen champion 
 of the administration, its flatterer and organ in New York 
 can we read these and fail to see in them the casting of a horo 
 scope by an astrologer who consulted his hopes rather than 
 his stars ? 
 
 The files of the Herald furnish innumerable proofs, from 
 this time forth, of the effort at the White House to spread 
 abroad the hopes and fears raised by this programme of politi 
 cal action. The effort was so far successful that, from that day, 
 all who were disposed to flatter the President spoke of Mr. 
 18 
 
410 
 
 POLITICAL PAPEKS. 
 
 Clay as " The Dictator." Nothing was understood to be more 
 agreeable to the Presidential ear than to hear that word. 
 
 The Veto was a more difficult point to carry. The Pres 
 ident stood so committed on the Bank ; had given such no 
 toriety to his ambition to establish a Bank, that he lack 
 ed the courage to come boldly up to this flagrant tergiversa 
 tion. He wavered, faltered, writhed to escape. Then, like a 
 man drawn two ways by tugs of supposed interest and real re 
 morse, he fell to equivocation : paltered with both sides. It 
 was lamentable to see a human being so tossed by opposing 
 forces lamentable to witness the reverberations of such a 
 shuttlecock. 
 
 In the alternate visits which he received from persons of 
 varying opinions on this bank question, each came away with 
 a fixed conviction that the President would sign the bill, or veto, 
 according to the hopes of the visitor. The last-comer always 
 seemed to have him. To Mr. Smith he protests his inclination 
 to sign : " If the Bill only had this out, and that in, he would 
 certainly sign. In regard to the Exchange Bank, what could 
 be so agreeable to him, as to sign that Bill !" To Mr. Brown, 
 he declares "he will certainly Veto that or any bill." 
 
 " We will prepare the bill to suit yourself : it shall be entire 
 ly as you wish it. We will give you the Exchange Bank in 
 your own words" say those who come from the Whigs. 
 
 " That Exchange Bank has been long endeared to me," 
 replies the President. " Pass that ; you can do it in three days 
 I will be under eternal obligations to you. Change the name : 
 call it Fiscal Corporation. I will sign it cheerfully." 
 
 " Remember ! " ejaculates the other side, in a sepulchral 
 voice " Veto a Bank, or surrender all hope of future glory. 
 Remember !" 
 
 "Alas, I have promised to sign" groaned the unhappy 
 man. " To this bill I am deeply pledged. How can I escape ? 
 Spare me this ! " 
 
 " Pledged ! are you not pledged to the glorious certainty 
 of another term? Were you not born to redeem the land ? Can 
 
A DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 411 
 
 you hesitate when such brilliant hopes beckon you onward ? 
 be a man, and Veto." 
 
 " It is my own bill there are witnesses against me." 
 
 " Outface your witnesses denounce the Bill or look for no 
 favor from the Democracy look for no third party look for " 
 " If I had not proposed the plan if I had not seen the bill 
 if I had not approved it" again sighed the President. 
 
 "Can you fine no quirp no quillet? you an old politician ! 
 Where are all your abstractions ? Take courage. Veto the 
 Bill. Jackson rose upon a Veto ; his name will make it popu 
 lar. So Veto the bill, no matter what shape it take !" 
 
 These counsels these hopes these terrors prevailed, and 
 the Veto came at last though well-nigh lost from faintheart 
 edness. 
 
 The quarrel with Mr. Clay being now well hatched ; Mr. 
 Clay himself successfully denounced as "The Dictator;" the 
 Veto being secured, the prosperous actors in this little drama 
 had nothing left to do, but to lie by and wait patiently for that 
 promised surging storm which was to wreck both of the old par 
 ties and on whose friendly billows the ambitious Shuttlecock of 
 the day was to be wafted to his predicted popularity. To a cer 
 tainty, it has come ! 
 
 IV. 
 
 DISMISSAL OF THE CABINET. THE CHEATS OF SCAPIN. 
 
 The next movement was to quarrel with the Cabinet. It 
 was very clear that the great game of the programme of the i2th 
 of June could not be played out, in friendly association with 
 the Harrison Cabinet. 
 
 That Cabinet consisted of the picked men of the Whig 
 party, and was looked upon as the living personation of Whig 
 principles. It possessed the most commanding talent. It 
 was distinguished for its lofty bearing, its honorable frankness 
 and fidelity, and for its thorough rightmindedness in the doc 
 trines and aims of the party to which it belonged. No sinis 
 ter object could be accomplished while that Cabinet had swr 
 
412 POLITICAL PAPEKS. 
 
 Mr. Tyler had not the courage to attack it openly. On the 
 contrary, to the last, he affected to entertain the most friendly 
 sentiments toward it : marvelled even that any member of it 
 could find motive to resign. 
 
 His Veto Message of the gth of September, whines, as I 
 have said, on the topic of his Whig attachments. " It has 
 been my good fortune and pleasure to concur with Congress in 
 all measures except this. Why should our difference in this 
 alone be pushed to extremes ? It is my anxious desire that it 
 should not be. May we not now pause until a more favora 
 ble time when, with the most anxious hope that the Executive 
 and Congress may cordially unite, some measure of finance 
 may be deliberately adopted promotive of the good of our 
 common country?" This, on the 9th of September, 1841. 
 Here is a profession of fellowship. On the i3th of Septem 
 ber Mr. Webster said, " I have seen no sufficient reasons for 
 the dissolution of the late Cabinet by the voluntary act of its 
 own members." 
 
 It is quite apparent that Mr. Tyler wished to represent him 
 self to the country as holding the defensive : that the dissolu- 
 tion of the Whig Cabinet was not of his seeking ; that he was 
 for harmony and union. 
 
 Now, it is a fact well known, notwithstanding these profes 
 sions, that Mr. Tyler had been at work to form a new Cabinet : 
 to get rid of the old. 
 
 In the first place, he held no such free communication with 
 his Cabine^ on these delicate questions of the Veto, as a 
 friendly President would hold with officers so confidentially 
 connected with the administration. They were taunted with 
 this in the public papers. 
 
 On the roth of August the Herald letter has the following : 
 
 " The impression is gaining ground that there must be an 
 entire recomposition of the Cabinet in the event of a Veto. 
 Every member, it is understood, lent himself to the views of 
 Mr. Clay, and encouraged the subterfuge which is facetiously 
 called a compromise, and no one of them, therefore, can sus- 
 
A PEFENCF OF THE WHIGS. 413 
 
 tain the President in a Veto. Is it not obvious, then, that 
 there must be a dissolution ? Up to this morning not one of 
 his constitutional advisers was apprised of the President s de 
 termination about the Bank Bill. It is apparent, therefore, 
 that there is no cordial understanding between the Executive 
 and his ministry, and a change must come of course." 
 
 From this time forward this correspondence is full of hints 
 of the President s dislike of his Cabinet Their successors 
 are frequently named several of them in accordance with the 
 subsequent appointments. 
 
 On the 6th of September a letter singularly impertinent is 
 published. As if impatient that the Cabinet had continued 
 insensible of these hints so long, Scapin writes in terms of in 
 solent insult. 
 
 I make more extracts from this letter than others because, 
 though coming from the back stairs, it is very notable as the 
 language of a familiar at the White House. 
 
 " The Bank Bill will be returned on Wednesday or Thurs 
 day, with a Veto Message to the House of Representatives 
 where the bill originated. The Clay men have held a caucus 
 and decided that it will be best to receive the Message without 
 any particular demonstrations of hostility to the President. 
 Their animosity has cooled down to a calculation of chances. 
 They think it wiser to receive the Message with some defer 
 ence to the character and position of the President, by which 
 course of proceeding it is hoped a dissolution of the Cabinet may be 
 prevented. In this way they propose respectively to return to 
 their constituents, and, by a common movement, arouse the 
 people against Mr. Tyler, while they are still in league with the 
 Cabinet. They are to return to the siege in the shape of in 
 dignation meetings, newspaper denunciation, and other affili 
 ated hostile movements, extending all over the country, while 
 in the interval of a calm of a few weeks, it is hoped the Presi 
 dent will, in his great good nature, confide the keys of the for 
 tress to their allies and his secret enemies. 
 
 " Were the Clay men to denounce the President just now, it 
 
414: POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 might lead to an immediate breaking up of the Cabinet, and 
 these magnanimous gentlemen might lose all future chance of getting 
 offices. The Cabinet, one and all, are hard at work to allay all 
 open evidences of a rupture, and counselling their friends to go 
 home and raise the standard of revolt there, while their own ef 
 forts are directed to undermine and circumvent the President here. 
 This is their game. Who would have believed that high-mindea 
 and honorable men, for such members of the Cabinet ought to 
 be, would thus concert a system of party movement, by which to 
 destroy the very man at whose will they hold their offices, and who 
 is constitutionally responsible for all thir official acts ? What 
 treachery ! What ingratitude ! Why do they not act like men, 
 and, at once, give in their resignation, and suffer the President to 
 bring to his aid such men as he has confidence in ? Nothing can 
 exceed the industry of the President. He rises early and re 
 tires late. Every hour of the day is devoted to his duties. 
 He is compelled to look over papers and decide on a great 
 mass of matters that would be handed over for the action of the 
 Secretaries if they were men really his friends ; but he knows full 
 well the secret objects the leading members of his Cabinet have in 
 view , and, of course, he is constrained to do almost every thing 
 himself. There is a total absence of all energy in every branch 
 of the Government. The cause of all this is obvious. The 
 President and his Cabinet are mutually mistrustful of each other, 
 there is, there can be, no cordial, confiding co-operation between 
 them. The Cabinet are playing the game of the President s ene 
 mies, and desire nothing so much as his defeat and dishonor. As 
 the thing works now, the President is forced to play into Mr. 
 Clay s or Mr. Webster s hands. The Cabinet know that the 
 President feels this to be his position, and yet they do not, wilt 
 not resign. Look at the dictatorial tone and language of the 
 Richmond Whig, the Boston Atlas, the Wall Street press pa 
 pers that have always defended Mr. Webster and Mr. Clay 
 these are the papers which are the most bitter and the most 
 insolent in their attacks upon Mr. Tyler and his friends. 
 Who can doubt that these papers are prompted to the course they 
 
A DEFENCE OF TTIE WHIGS. 415 
 
 pursue ly Mr. Webster and Mr. Clay ? Mr. Clay is pretty 
 open he likes a fair fight, but Mr. Webster, who is every inch 
 a coward, stabs the President through friends whom he affects to 
 disavow. Add to this an inordinate love for the honor and 
 emolument of station, and a desire to pervert their official in 
 fluence to the purposes of selfish aggrandizement hereafter, 
 and you have an explanation of the anomalous circumstance of 
 men of reputation and character holding on to office, while it in 
 volves personal degradation, and indicates both a total want of self- 
 respect and what is dut to the President of the United States" 
 
 No idle, chattering gossip was this of floating scandal, or 
 licentious coinage of quidnuncs of the capital. It was a voice 
 from the innermost chambers of the President s household It 
 tells of his early rising and late lying down, his private labors 
 and his secret cares, the silent griefs of his soul. Nor was it 
 current rumor and daily news, such as fill the pages of unpriv 
 ileged correspondents ; but it is the earnest, sorrowful defence 
 of the President against the pressure of an annoyance which 
 rests upon his heart the companionship, namely, of men who 
 were in his way. It is the President himself speaking through 
 this unofficial and irresponsible organ more authentically than 
 he spoke in levees or state papers. It is a direct strenuous 
 effort to enlist public sympathy in his behalf against a Cabinet 
 he could not manfully look in the face. 
 
 The author of this letter was a familiar and daily inmate un 
 der the President s roof, of free and unquestioned access at all 
 times ; having the entry of the private door ; a frequenter of 
 the President s board and family circle, and sharing the confi 
 dences denied to other men. The journal, too, in which this 
 was published, was the President s special favorite the only 
 defender he had out of the City of Washington ; by his orders 
 the recipient of government emolument and patronage ; daily 
 placed upon his table and read, for its flatteries and advoca 
 cies, with eager interest. The officers of the Cabinet were 
 well aware of this ; could not but meet this paper whenever 
 they went to the President s house. Here was this letter and 
 
416 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 others of a kindred stamp ; here was the author of the letter 
 unrebuked, not only unrebuked but fostered, cultivated, no 
 torious to all Wash ington for his terms of favor with the house 
 hold. This letter especially unrebuked unchallenged, un- 
 contradicted. How could they remain after this in the Cabi 
 net ? as gentlemen as honorable men, how could they main 
 tain farther association with the man who committed his cause 
 to a presumptuous underling that dare thus libel them? I 
 protest, I think this letter alone would have justified a rup 
 ture. Such an insult could not be offered by an honorable 
 President to honorable Secretaries. It has no parallel in our 
 past history I hope will never find one in our future. 
 
 Mr. Webster, however, thought there was no reason for the 
 resignation of the Secretaries. Well, that is a matter of taste. 
 I am not disposed to dispute it with him. If I were Daniel 
 Webster, I think I should have resigned. Mr. Webster was 
 deceived. He thought, at least, there was no distrust of him. 
 Manifestly on the i2th of June his resignation was not in the 
 programme. Even now we have his own word for it not 
 withstanding all that had passed, as late as the i3th of Sep 
 tember he had every confidence that the President would co 
 operate with the Whigs " in overcoming all difficulties." " It 
 is to the union of the Whig party," said he, in his letter, " by 
 which I mean the whole Party, the Whig President, the Whig- 
 Congress, and the Whig People, that I look for a realization of 
 our wishes." 
 
 Mr. Webster was deceived, at least, in this. 
 
 Some of the members of the Cabinet were astute enough to 
 see that the President desired to get rid of them, before this 
 time. They resolved, at all hazards, to resign. Every senti 
 ment which could move honorable men revolted at the idea of 
 holding a confidential relation where there was no confidence. 
 They were persuaded by friends to wait a little. It was a cur 
 rent opinion at that day that the Cabinet ought to wait to be 
 turned out. That they should not by a voluntary act abandon 
 their posts. Many thought otherwise. The majority of the 
 
A DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 417 
 
 Cabinet themselves thought otherwise. They delayed but a 
 few days after that letter of the 6th. The Veto came on the 
 9th, and the pitiful moan for farther time and harmony. 
 
 On Saturday, the nth, the whole Cabinet, except Mr. 
 Webster, resigned. Not because John Tyler vetoed a bank, 
 but because he deceived those who trusted him. 
 
 On Monday Mr. Tyler had a new Cabinet ready at his 
 hand the very men the Herald had announced, almost a 
 month before. 
 
 What astonishing fertility of resource ! exclaimed the flat 
 terers of the President. What wonderful readiness in select 
 ing men ! What self-possession what promptitude what de 
 cision ! ejaculated the Madisonian. A new Cabinet in twenty- 
 four hours ! Napoleon at the Bridge of Arcole ! 
 
 V. 
 
 ASPIRATION AND INSPIRATION THE MANIFESTO. 
 
 The conduct of Mr. Tyler would seem to be inexplicable 
 by any rule of estimate of human actions. Such laborious 
 wandering out of the way, such intrepidity of indirection, such 
 an " extravagant and erring spirit," such unprofitable perverse- 
 ness, how shall we account for them ? 
 
 Very conclusive is it to us that the fancies which took pos 
 session of his mind were not the ordinary whimsies which 
 sometimes beguile weak men from the plain career of duty 
 but some hallucination rather, that found peculiar sustenance 
 in the President s temperament ; that fed upon that Malvolio 
 vanity of his, and derived vigor from that immoderate intoxica 
 tion of unexpected power which had shaken the balance of his 
 judgment. -- 
 
 To speak of what has passed as " weak, vacillating and 
 faithless," is almost to use the phrase of amiable apology : 
 such language sounds like palliation of some lamentable mad 
 ness, which the kindness of friends would conceal even from 
 themselves, by imputing the conduct that suggests it, to some 
 1 8* 
 
418 POLITICAL I .Vri-lRS. 
 
 less shocking though more depraved weakness of nature or in 
 firmity of temper. 
 
 There were two letters published just after the Extra Ses 
 sion, which may throw some light on this extraordinary phe 
 nomenon. They are letters from members of the House of 
 Representatives ; friends of the President, one of them a 
 special friend ; both gentlemen of high repute ; worthy of all 
 belief ; in a situation to know ; and eminently capable of in 
 spiring an interest in what they say. These are Mr. Wise and 
 Mr. Ingersoll. The first gentleman representing what was 
 called the Guard, consisting of six members of Congress dis 
 tinguished for their support of Mr. Tyler ; the second a prom 
 inent leader of the Locofocos. 
 
 Mr. Ingersoll s letter is remarkable for a scrap of history 
 which it supplies, and for a hint of the source of the Presi 
 dent s action which it suggests. Both are sufficiently curious. 
 
 " Mr. Tyler" says this authority, " is an instrument of 
 overruling Providence, often marvellously snatching this Re 
 public from apparent jeopardy, to rescue it from the calamities 
 of -the late overwrought extraordinary session. The chapter 
 of strange accidents conducting him to the Chief Magistracy, 
 is said to nerve him with a sort of religious belief that he is des 
 tined, through higher power, to wonderful instrumentality. Un 
 compromising champion of the radical politics of the Virginia 
 Platform, he stood erect upon it, almost alone, environed by par 
 ty adherents opposed to his principles, confronting party oppo 
 nents sympathizing with those principles : fearlessly sustained 
 by a small sect of inflexible politicians, unjustly stigmatized 
 as a cabal or kitchen cabinet, counteracting an official ministry 
 without the President s predilections, if not their antagonists ; in 
 fact, the cabinet of another, most of whom have just departed 
 this political life after six months of a fitful ephemeral exist 
 ence."* 
 
 Mr. Wise s letter contains a suggestion of the same import 
 as the above. Manifestly this idea was afloat in the Presiden- 
 * This letter is dated Washing-ton, Sept. 13, 1841. 
 
A DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 419 
 
 tial atmosphere. Had it not its spell ? There is something 
 very notable in this shadowing of high influences on the con 
 duct of Mr. Tyler. 
 
 Mr. Wise seems to find evidence in the strange elevation 
 of the late Vice-President, of something more than ordinary 
 human vicissitude : almost imputes blasphemy and Atheism to 
 those who regard it as an ordinary human event, or believe it 
 to have come from less than a special interposition of Heaven. 
 
 " Providence placed in power a Constitutional Republican," 
 says Mr. Wise.* " He is called His Accidency by those 
 who could not make a President by design ; and by this scoff 
 ing title the Dictatorship seems to deny a Great First Cause 
 whose Providence overrules human events and the destiny of 
 nations, and to ascribe the death of the lamented Harrison 
 and the succession of the second choice of the people to a 
 blind chance." "This is not the first time that the stone reject 
 ed of the builders has become the chief of the corner ." 
 
 I shudder when I read these words and think of the com 
 parison to which they point. Could such an idea have got 
 possession of the President s imagination ? Then as to the 
 President s friends the Guard : " I thought that the Guard 
 around the Constitution might be less than a Corporal s in 
 Congress, but I knew well that politicians were not the people, 
 and that it would prove a host of freedom, and a host of God 
 in the country." 
 
 This letter ends in the same strain. 
 
 " The true sovereigns are true to themselves, and there is 
 an Overruling Providence as in our fathers days, and there 
 will be forever, to protect the liberties and reanimate the hopes 
 of the People in this God-favored land. I give you, then, my 
 cordial congratulations, one and all ; and, as a perpetual sen 
 timent for all Constitutional Republicans, I reverentially pro 
 pose to you God and the People" 
 
 I will make no comment on this letter, farther than to ex 
 press my hope and my -belief that it was the inconsiderate effu- 
 
 * Letter to Jolm B. Coles and others Nov. 5, 1841. 
 
- POLITICAL PAPEKS. 
 
 sion of a heated and disturbed period, when men s minds were 
 too much agitated by passing events to allow the due measur 
 ing of phrases. This much I say for the sake of the good-will 
 I bear to the author, who is commended to the Whigs by the 
 memory of many valiant blows struck in their cause in past 
 days. I have not forgotten them. 
 
 These letters are significant, as they point to the peculiar 
 conceit, which may, perhaps, furnish a key to Mr. Tyler s ec 
 centricities. Mohammed took many liberties on the score of 
 his divine mission, which even he, doubtless, would have re 
 garded as very unbecoming extravagancies in a mere every-day 
 caliph. Caliph Tyler may have thought his freaks altogether 
 selon les regies, upon the same reckoning. Nothing short of 
 some such potent influence as this, may satisfactorily account 
 for the strange things we have witnessed. 
 
 The result of this career of the President, during the Ex 
 tra Session, was the resignation of the Cabinet, as we have be 
 fore said. 
 
 I do not speak for the members of the Cabinet ; I have no 
 warrant from any gentleman, at that day connected with the 
 administration, for what I say but I speak what was well- 
 known in Washington at the time, that, at least, as regards a 
 portion of the Cabinet, the resignation was reluctantly delayed. 
 It was delayed in deference to the advice of those who still 
 hoped that affairs might take some unforeseen turn favorable to 
 harmony. They resigned, however, at last, as they have sta 
 ted in their own published letters, wherein they have given a 
 history of the events to which they were witnesses, not be 
 cause the President differed from them on the question of a 
 Bank. They threw up their places because he had forfeited 
 his word, treated them unworthily, and had manifested his 
 hostility to the principles and pledges of the party with whom 
 they were associated, to which he professed to belong, and 
 who had given to him all the consideration and importance 
 incident to his station. 
 
 It is wholly untrue grossly and signally false that the 
 
A DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 421 
 
 rupture with the President was occasioned by umbrage taken 
 at his dissent from a Bank. 
 
 It was, in no degree, to be assigned to that simple act. 
 The Whigs, doubtless, would have felt greatly chagrined and 
 mortified at the use of the Veto on such a subject. They had 
 hoped, in the election of General Harrison and Mr. Tyler, that 
 they had put an end to the hazard of that odious exercise of 
 Presidential prerogative, which had become doubly odious in 
 General Jackson s hands. They would, therefore, naturally 
 enough, have felt some annoyance at such an exhibition of this 
 prerogative by an administration of their own making. They 
 .would, very probably, have abated much of their respect for 
 the judgment and capacity of Mr. Tyler, upon the promulga 
 tion of a doctrine so absurd as that conceit of his regarding 
 the Assent of States. All this they might have felt, and would 
 certainly have greatly deplored. They might have acknowl 
 edged they had mistaken the qualities and fitness of Mr. Ty 
 ler for his post : but they would not have quarrelled with him ; 
 even have censured him, for an honest exercise of a conscien 
 tious conviction of duty had such been his conviction. 
 
 If he had frankly said that, on this point of the Bank, he 
 felt constrained to differ : if he had manfully told those 
 around him, and who had an interest in the success of his ad 
 ministration, what he could not do, or what he could do ; and 
 above all things had kept his word: had demeaned himself as 
 an upright, sincere, and earnest magistrate in his high place ; 
 had not treasured up against himself such a store of broken 
 promises ; had not so trifled with the capable and honorable men 
 around him ; had not thrown himself into such suspicious asso 
 ciations ; had not so vibrated between his will to desert, and 
 his fear of the event ; had not so concealed himself from those 
 who had a right to know his sentiments, and so disclosed him 
 self to those who had no right to his confidence he might 
 have put his Veto upon a Bank he might have asked and ob 
 tained delay he might have disappointed all that eager hope 
 which prevailed in the country for the settlement of the cur- 
 
POLITICAL PAPKHS. 
 
 rency hope that he had himself raised in his Inaugural Ad 
 dress, and in his first Message and yet there would have been 
 no rupture, no resignation, no repulse of the President by the 
 majority of Congress. 
 
 Never was there a party placed in such a difficulty before, 
 who showed so earnest a spirit of toleration, concession, and 
 surrender of personal feeling, as the Whigs of Congress on 
 this occasion. His Bank, as it came from the Treasury, was 
 by no means to their liking. They did not like to surrender 
 the broad principles of placing this institution wherever they 
 thought the public interest might suggest ; in deference to the 
 President, they agreed to the District of Columbia. The ap-, 
 plication to the States for the power to establish branches, 
 under any modification of it, was against all their preconceived 
 notions of Constitutional right : in deference to the President 
 they consented to the compromise : were even willing to take 
 the bill as reported by Mr. Ewing. They readily and cheer 
 fully concurred with the President in his plan of the Exchange 
 Bank, even to the frivolous point of changing the name, and 
 hastened, with the greatest alacrity to pass it, when they 
 thought it would meet his view. They carried their conces 
 sion to the utmost verge of compliance in every item compat 
 ible with the one great purpose the chief purpose of the 
 session, in the estimate of the nation the arrangement of the 
 momentous question of the Currency. All was unavailing ; 
 and they saw all fail in a secret intrigue of the President to 
 break up the Whig organization, and, upon its ruins, to lift 
 himself to the Chief Magistracy for a second term. 
 
 Feeling this deeply, sorrowing over the event, and indig 
 nant at the unworthy evasions and miserable throes of a self 
 ish ambition which they had detected, they could not but dis 
 avow all connection with him and his fortunes. They met to 
 gether in the last moments of the session such as were at 
 the seat of government, for many had set out for their homes 
 and published their Manifesto, by which they proclaimed to 
 the nation that, from that day forth, all political alliance be- 
 
A DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 4:23 
 
 tween them and John Tyler was at an end : that from that day 
 " those who had brought the President into power, could no 
 longer, in any manner or degree, be justly held responsible, or 
 blamed for the administration of the Executive branch of the 
 Government." At the same time acknowledging it to be " the 
 duty of the Whigs in and out of Congress, to give to his offi 
 cial acts and measures fair and full consideration, approving 
 them and co-operating in their support, where they could, and 
 differing from, and opposing any of them, only from a high 
 sense of duty. 
 
 There were, it is true, a few Whigs of Congress, who, 
 although concurring in the sentiments of reprobation of the 
 President, felt some reluctance against joining in this public 
 proclamation. The large majority, however, eagerly adopted 
 the measure, as no less due to their own sense of responsibility 
 to the country, than it was to the justification and support of 
 the retiring Cabinet. 
 
 Subsequent events have more than vindicated the truth, the 
 justice and the policy of the Manifesto. 
 
 VI. 
 
 THE MANIFESTO. DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 The Manifesto was a plain, direct paper that spoke right 
 out, stating the case of the Whigs fully to the country. It 
 told what they had done at the Extra Session : what they had 
 failed to do, and why. It disclosed their observation of the 
 past conduct of Mr. Tyler, and their apprehension of his fu 
 ture ; the withdrawal of his confidence from the Whigs, his af 
 finity with their enemies ; and it announced their entire separ 
 ation from him. It proclaimed the principles upon which the 
 Whigs would continue, as in past times, to maintain their or 
 ganization. At the head of these it placed 
 
 " The reduction of the Executive power, by a further limi 
 tation of the Veto, so as to secure obedience to the public will, 
 as that shall be expressed by the immediate Representatives 
 
4-2-Jr POLITICAL P APK I IS. 
 
 of the People and the States, with no other control than that 
 which is indispensable to arrest hasty or unconstitutional Leg 
 islation." 
 
 Here was the old war of Privilege and Prerogative revived 
 by the Whigs, against a Chief Magistrate whom they had lifted 
 into Power! Sad and bitter fruit of the indiscretion of 1839, 
 which committed so just a cause to so unfit a leader ! Strong 
 pledge to the nation of the sincere and faithful attachment of 
 the Whigs to the great principles upon which they were origin 
 ally embodied ! 
 
 The Veto had become distinguished in a previous admin 
 istration for its power of mischief. Mr. Tyler has given it a 
 new character ; he has made it ridiculous. 
 
 The Manifesto had the full concurrence and actual partici 
 pation of from sixty to eighty Whig members being nearly all 
 who were at the seat of Government when it was adopted. 
 With few exceptions, it has received the approbation of every 
 Whig member of the Twenty-seventh Congress. 
 
 Whatever doubts may have been felt by any at the time of 
 its promulgation, as to the expediency of making it, those doubts 
 quickly vanished before the rapidly-succeeding developments 
 of the Tyler administration. We have been surfeited with 
 proofs of the eminent propriety of that paper. 
 
 The only doubt which influenced any member on this sub 
 ject, at the date of the Manifesto, had respect to the position 
 which Mr. Webster occupied in the Cabinet. If he had retired 
 with his colleagues, the concurrence in the Manifesto would 
 have been unanimous. Whatever modicum of strength Mr. 
 Tyler retained with any portion of the Whig party in the Uni 
 ted States, is due to the name and influence of Daniel Webster. 
 
 It is not my purpose to censure the Secretary ; even to 
 complain of what he thought it right for him to do in that emer 
 gency. I am not willing to renounce a Whig whose life is so 
 crowned with noble services to the State as the Great Man of 
 Massachusetts. But I could wish that his remaining in the 
 Cabinet had been accompanied with such explanation as his 
 
A DEFENCE OF THE WIITftS. 425 
 
 case admitted : at least, that it had been accompanied by no 
 censure expressed or implied against his compeers. 
 
 There were, undoubtedly, strong public motives to excuse, 
 if not to justify, his temporary maintenance of his post 
 
 The situation of the country, as regards our relations with 
 England, was very critical. Mr. Tyler, and those who were 
 called his peculiar friends, had adopted a tone of exasperation 
 toward England, that was well calculated to defeat a reasonable 
 hope of amicable arrangement of existing difficulties with that 
 nation. The debates of Congress, on the part of these friends, 
 were characterized by an effort to create an artificial sentiment 
 of hostility against that power, at a time when, from the real 
 motives to a quarrel, great judgment and discretion were req 
 uisite to save the country from the calamities of war. It was 
 apparent to all who closely observed the temper of the Ex 
 ecutive and his allies, that Mr. Tyler counted on making 
 popularity by a war ; a measure at all times capable of en 
 listing a certain amount of administration support in the coun 
 try. The President hoped to prop his sickly acceptation 
 with the people, or, to speak in phrase more germain to his 
 himself, to augment his already boundless influence, by a 
 estimate of measure which should flatter the glory-seek 
 ing spirit of the nation in furnishing it an occasion for martial 
 broils. 
 
 So heady, pernicious and reckless a temper as this, very 
 cogently suggested to Mr. Webster, doubtless, the duty of not 
 abandoning his watch. The incapacity of the administration 
 at a moment so critical ; not only its incapacity, but the fatal 
 ply of its mind toward an incalculable mischief, may be regard 
 ed as presenting a patriotic invocation to one so conscious of 
 his power as the Secretary, to stand his ground and save his 
 country from the rash folly that threatened it. 
 
 I give Mr. Webster full credit for a due appreciation of this 
 sentiment. This impression soon became common ; and the 
 Secretary, it may be said, was excused, justified, applauded 
 even for the sacrifice of personal ease he was supposed to 
 
426 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 make in holding alliance with the Tyler Cabinet until the 
 ratifications of the Treaty of Washington were exchanged. 
 
 In view of this, the Whigs were reconciled to bear the loss 
 they had sustained, in another aspect, from Mr. Webster s re 
 fusal to move with his colleagues. 
 
 At this point my vindication stops. Every Whig saw with 
 sorrow that, when the ratification of the treaty was complete, 
 Mr. Webster did not resign. With inexpressible pain, every 
 Whig in the land read or heard the speech in Faneuil Hall : 
 saw Mr. Webster go back contentedly to his post : witnessed 
 his consent to the glorification of John Tyler, in conceding to 
 him the honor of having accomplished that happy pacification 
 of two great powers whose collision would have been long de 
 plored as one of the most signal misfortunes in the history of 
 either. Glory to John Tyler the Pacificator ! to him who had 
 stimulated every passion of discontent that could embarrass 
 the negotiation : to him who had suffered to pass without re 
 buke the conduct of the minister at Paris, in attempting to 
 embroil the two countries through a most unwarranted in 
 terference in the settlement of the Quintuple Treaty not 
 only to pass without rebuke, but to meet his approval : to 
 him who has been distinguished, both through his own di 
 rect action, and through the officiousness of his son, encour 
 aged by him, for an undignified intermeddling in the domes 
 tic affairs of the very nation whose difficulties he presumes to 
 believe he settled ! Glory to him for the Treaty of Washing 
 ton ! And that Mr. Webster is willing to certify to his share 
 of the glory ! Mr. Webster, whose chief justification for re 
 maining in the Cabinet was that he might counteract and dis 
 arm the vanity that could mar, and which, in no contingen 
 cy, could make what was good ! Who has not seen this with 
 sorrow. 
 
 If the Faneuil Hall speech had been what the Whigs of the 
 nation hoped it would be ; what those who invited Mr. 
 Webster to that Hall desired it might be ; what all the true 
 friends of Mr. Webster thought it could only be he would 
 
A DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 427 
 
 not now have to complain that his attachment to the Whig 
 party was drawn into question. 
 
 Still, the Whigs will pardon much to Daniel Webster: 
 more than to most other men. They will pardon much for 
 the sake of his past history : a history full of glorious remem 
 brances ; redolent with the odor of Constitutional Liberty. 
 They will not easily be driven to forget that, in the weary days 
 of their adversity, his h rm foot was planted upon their ram 
 parts, nor withdrawn as long as danger threatened : that in the 
 murky night when the enemy was creeping toward our Citadel, 
 he stood faithfully upon guard, with a constancy that "out- 
 watched the Bear :" that in the assault his voice of exhortation 
 rang like a clarion : that in the melee his stalwart form rode on 
 the tide of battle where the heaviest blows were struck ; and 
 whether the issue were defeat or victory they were ever accus 
 tomed to find him at hand ready to console or applaud. 
 While such recollections cluster around his name, the Whigs 
 will forgive much to Cceur de Lion forget much. 
 
 They know his dogged, moody temper ; his intractable 
 self-will ; his fretful waywardness. They have often seen these 
 scowling on his broad brow, and flashing in the awakened fire 
 of his eye : seen them often, not without a sigh. But they 
 know that his faults are not the faults of a temper which deals 
 in dissimulation or meditates over schemes of treachery : the 
 faults, rather of a mind that will not brook delay, which has 
 not trained itself to patience, which thinks of its hopes " not 
 wisely, but too well." 
 
 They will yet pardon much to Daniel Webster. 
 
 VII. 
 
 JUSTICE TO JOHN TYLER. 
 
 From the date of the Manifesto we have but little concern 
 to speak of Mr. Tyler. His career, from that period, has been 
 a persevering retrograde upon the path of his duty. It is 
 marked by flagrant dereliction of faith to his formerly pro- 
 
428 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 fessed principles, and by successive compliances lo an enemy 
 whom no excess of infidelity has yet been able to win. 
 
 He who dwelt in such pitiful accents, in his last Veto 
 Message, upon the cordiality with which he had sanctioned all 
 the Whig measures but one, has systematically devoted him 
 self, ever since the close of the Extra Session, to the wretched 
 endeavor of breaking up the party who made him what he is, 
 and of conciliating those who opposed his election, by the sur 
 render of those measures, and with them of every pledge upon 
 which he came into power. 
 
 His friends, with his concurrence, at the next session of 
 Congress, presented in his behalf two schemes for regulating 
 the currency. The one was a National Bank, to be solely 
 owned and conducted by the Government ; the other was the 
 exploded Sub-Treasury system. He who had shown such 
 sensitive constitutional scruple against a Bank which, for forty 
 years, had received the sanction of every authority in this gov 
 ernment, suddenly, in the depths of his perplexity, became the 
 patron of the only true "Monster this nation has ever seen a 
 Bank of Exchange, a Bank of Discount, a Banker se, belong 
 ing alone to the Government, without the vestige of a pretext 
 of its being either " necessary or proper." A scheme which 
 could not gain one poor vote in either House to do it honor. 
 He who had been so emphatic in denouncing the Sub-Treas 
 ury, suddenly, in the depths of his perplexity, was willing that 
 his friends should stake his hopes upon this same measure dis 
 guised with a few extra faculties of dealing in exchange. And 
 between these projects, wide as the poles asunder, lying on 
 the extremest verge of the circle of ultra political opinions, 
 the President vibrated like a pendulum, driven by opposing 
 hands, as if in sport to show how light a touch could sway the 
 motions of such a toy. 
 
 He who had made the Distribution of the proceeds of the 
 public lands a cardinal measure in his Message ; who was 
 even willing to bind them up in a Bank capital who had wit 
 nessed, at the Extra Session, the unrrippy restriction, which 
 
A DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 429 
 
 necessity compelled the Whigs to submit to, in the limitation 
 put upon that distribution by the Anti-Tariff party, witnessed 
 it, we must suppose, with regret, if his professions in favor of 
 the distribution were to be believed now, at the second ses 
 sion, applied his veto to prevent the repeal of the restriction.* 
 
 He who had professed to be friendly to a Protective Tariff, 
 now refused his assent to a bill which was designed merely to 
 continue the existing duties for one month, in order that time 
 might be obtained to mature a permanent bill upon the sub 
 ject : this for no better motive, that we can ascribe to it, than 
 to furnish a proof of his complacency to a party who have 
 shown as little respect for him as they have shown of favor to 
 the Tariff or the Distribution. 
 
 He who had so ostentatiously inveighed against the cor 
 rupt use of Executive Patronage ; who had uttered such an 
 emphatic censure against the sin of office-holders inter- 
 
 * The purport of the restriction introduced into the land Bill was 
 that the distribution should not take effect if the duties were raised 
 above twenty per cent. This limitation was forced upon the bill by 
 its enemies, aided by the vote of a few Southern Whigs opposed to 
 the Tariff. The bill was taken, with this restriction, by the Whigs 
 at large, rather than lose it ; with a determination, on their part, ex 
 pressed in debate, to repeal the limitation whenever they had the 
 power. The argument was that the same vote which could raise 
 the Tariff above twenty per cent., would be sufficient to repeal the re 
 striction. It was regarded as a device of the enemy, and submitted 
 to only under the compulsion of circumstances. Mr. Tyler, who had 
 recommended the Distribution as an act of Justice to the States, for 
 whom, he affirmed, the Government was but a Trustee ( see his Mes 
 sage, June, 1841 ), had originally as little expectation of the restric 
 tion, and, before his desertion, would have had as little relish for it, 
 as any Whig in Congress. After his desertion, he recommended the 
 Repeal of the Distribution, March 25, 1842, upon the ground that 
 when he prepared his Message for the Extra Session, he urged the 
 Distribution in mew of an anticipated Surplus Revenue! A Surplus 
 Revenue anticipated in June, 1841 ! In fact, one of the arguments of 
 his Message was that the Distribution would be a saving to the Gov 
 ernment to the full amount, in relieving it from sundry " appropria 
 tions to domestic objects." 
 
430 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 meddling in the political field ; who had even enacted the 
 farce of issuing a special circular of warning, from the State 
 department, against all offenders in such wise ; who had in 
 voked Congress to take this matter in hand and put some 
 qualification on the removal of officers* he it was who sub 
 sequently drove Jonathan Roberts from the collectorship of 
 Philadelphia, because he would not remove some twenty 
 or more of the subordinates in the Custom House under his 
 charge, for no better reason than that they were suspected of 
 being Whigs, and place in their stations as many supple 
 minions of the Executive. In following up the same corrupt 
 purpose, he removed Gen. Van Rensselaer from the Post Office 
 at Albany, and, subsequently, many of the most approved, 
 effective and honorable officers of the Government from sta 
 tions of high trust, to make way for that wretched crew of par 
 asites who render to his vanity a coarse and acceptable flattery, 
 by their assiduous conversancy with all the low schemes of 
 political traffic which may sustain the absurd hope he ven 
 tures to indulge of a second term. 
 
 I pass by the countless freaks which his inane ambition, 
 in other ways, has encouraged him to practice upon the for- 
 
 * The following passage occurs in liis Message of December, 1842 
 " I feel it my duty to bring under your consideration a practice 
 which has grown up in the administration of the Government, and 
 which I am deeply convinced ought to be corrected. I allude to the 
 exercise of the power which usage, rather than reason, has invested 
 in the President of removing incumbents from office in order to sub 
 stitute others more in favor with the dominant party, My own con 
 duct, in this respect, has been governed by a conscientious purpose 
 to exercise the removing power only in cases of unfaithfulness or in 
 ability, or in those in which its exercise appeared necessary, in order 
 to discountenance and suppress that spirit of active partisanship on 
 the part of holders of office, which not only withdraws them from the 
 steady and impartial discharge of their official duties, but exerts an 
 undue and injurious influence over elections and degrades the char 
 acter of the Government itself, inasmuch as it exhibits the Chief 
 Magistrate as using a party, through his agents, to the secret plots 
 or open workings of political parties." 
 
A DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 431 
 
 bearance of the nation : his seditious attempt to foment discord 
 by the extraordinary and unconstitutional measure of recording, 
 in the State Department, his objections to the single district 
 clauses of the Apportionment Bill, the wisest and most equi 
 table enactments of the Twenty-seventh Congress : his Protest 
 against the Proceedings of the House of Representatives on his 
 Veto of the Tariff Bill : his refusal to impart information in ref 
 erence to the Cherokee frauds, upon the requisition of Con 
 gress ; I pass these and other caprices not less conspicuous, 
 and consign them, without comment, to that judgment which 
 they have received from all intelligent men. My purpose is 
 not to follow Mr. Tyler beyond the confines of those delinquen 
 cies which have prevented the Whig party from redeeming the 
 promises of 1840. I have no desire to pursue him in that de 
 vious flight which carried him at last to the bosom of his old 
 adversaries, and from which he has been buffeted away, with 
 the contumely that ever awaits a leader in command who is in 
 sensible to the peculiar disgrace of deserting his colors in the 
 moment of trial. 
 
 There is poetical justice in his fate. He has fallen the vic 
 tim to his own easy virtue. They who first seduced him have 
 affected to cast him off, as tainted, spoiled of name and fame 
 alas ! 
 
 " Too soon made liappy and too late made wise ! " 
 
 He now remains an object not less avoided by many friends 
 he has deceived, than by the enemies upon whom he fawned. 
 Not even his preposterous imaginations of power and influence 
 " of popularity second only to that of Washington," as his 
 flatterers were wont to say not even these supply him now 
 with one residuary hope or topic of consolation. The fly upon 
 the wheel, that, but yesterday, deemed its swift revolution the 
 product of his impulse, finds to-day his utter want of weight to 
 turn it. He who was but lately the Merry Andrew of the farce, 
 and took to himself all the applause which other actors on the 
 stage had won ; who was so practiced in harlequinade and found 
 
432 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 v 
 
 so much to exalt his self esteem in the rapidity, if not the dex 
 terity of his changes, he has come to the conviction how lam 
 entably forlorn a puppet President may be, whose demerits are 
 unvarnished with the skill to render Official Power respectable 
 even to that small troop who feed upon its favors. The office 
 holders themselves are deserting him ! That conscience, 
 which was the first instrument of his jugglery, now haunts him 
 like a fiend upon his path : he can advance to no friendly shel 
 ter, and yet he dares not turn back, or look behind : 
 
 " Like one who on a lonesome road 
 Doth walk in fear and dread, 
 And having once turned round walks on 
 And turns no more his head, 
 Because he knows a frightful fiend 
 Doth close behind him tread." 
 
 I should not have dwelt so much upon the topics presented 
 in the history of that brief interval between the accession of Mr. 
 Tyler to the Presidency and the date of the Manifesto, if it were 
 not that this history became important in answer to the question 
 Why have the Whigs failed to perform all their promises ? 
 why have they not rescued the country from the tyranny of the 
 Veto ? why not secured the Legislative Privilege against the 
 encroachment of Executive Prerogative ? why not established 
 the single term ; restrained the corrupt use of Patronage ; settled 
 the question of the Currency ; distributed the proceeds of the 
 Public Lands ? 
 
 These questions are answered in the review I have given. 
 But for them the administration of Mr. Tyler might have been 
 passed over as a blank as a Parenthesis, to use the phrase 
 of a speaker in the House. It has no significance in the na 
 tion. It furnishes no precedent : it will never be remembered 
 as an example. It is the holyday of the Abbot of Unreason 
 with its thousand follies, its mummeries and morrice-dances. 
 We shall never have the like, of it again. 
 
 After all, it is not without instruction. We require a bea 
 con to show us what to shun, as well as a guide to teach us 
 
A DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 4:33 
 
 what to pursue. In this point of view, Mr. Tyler s adminis 
 tration will have a place in history. It will teach the people 
 never again to neglect the question of the Vice-Presidency. 
 It may even warn them against placing incompetent men in 
 any public station. If it does so, then the administration of 
 Mr. Tyler may be considered a benefaction. Thus we find a 
 moral in so great an evil as this. 
 
 His few partisans in the nation are clamorous in demand 
 ing Justice to John Tyler. Justice, assuredly, he will obtain 
 from the pen of History. 
 
 It will represent him as a President accidentally brought 
 into power, who, while the sudden honors of his station were 
 yet new, manifested a heart full of gratitude to his friends, and 
 replete with good resolutions to serve the great public inter 
 ests which had combined to place him where he was. It will 
 describe him as vainglorious, weak and accessible to any ex 
 travagance of flattery ; of a jealousy quickly provoked by the 
 ascendancy of superior minds, and nervously sensitive against 
 the suspicion of being under their influence. That, from the 
 fear of such an imputation, he had thrown himself into evil 
 associations, and surrounded himself with private, irresponsi 
 ble counsellors, who, neither by station or capacity, were en 
 titled to give him advice, and who fatally drove him into an 
 open rupture with those whom it should have been his pride 
 to call friends. 
 
 Variable and infirm of purpose, he will be exhibited as 
 ever halting between opposite opinions. Anxious to impress 
 the world with a reputation for inflexibility, he will be shown 
 to be, in fact, without a judgment of his own, and resolute 
 only in avoiding that obvious road, which, with least embar 
 rassment to himself, and least difficulty in the selection, it was 
 his plainest duty to pursue. It will be truly said of him 
 that it cost him more trouble to find the wrong way, than ordina 
 rily perplexes other men to discern the right. That, in seeking 
 excuses to differ from his friends, and gratify his enemies, he 
 was perpetually shifting from one awkward and difficult de- 
 19 
 
434: POLITICAL TAPERS. 
 
 vice to another, without the least attention even to the appear 
 ance of consistency, until he succeeded, at length, in aliena 
 ting from his society, every man whose support he should have 
 desired ; at the same time embittering the separation with an 
 unhappy distrust of his fidelity to those principles to which 
 he was bound by plighted honor. That while he was ever 
 changing his ground, conceding, retracting, affirming, denying, 
 his concessions were made without sincerity, his retractions 
 without excuse, and his conduct in all, distinguished for its 
 want of dignity. That, with a fair, though moderate reputa 
 tion for capacity, before he came to the Presidency, he lost 
 this in the first few months of his service ; disappointed the 
 hopes of his friends ; raised his enemies from the despondency 
 of recent defeat, into the highest tones of exultation, and dif 
 fused through all ranks of the community an opinion of his 
 want of fitness for the high station to which he had been call 
 ed. That emphatically the accident of an accident, without 
 popularity, without a mind to conceive, or a heart to execute 
 great undertakings he had chosen a position of intense respon 
 sibility and universal observation, and committed himself to 
 a hazard, which even the wisest and boldest might contem 
 plate with apprehension. 
 
 I do not say he has intentionally done all the mischief 
 which has resulted from his course. I am not willing to im 
 pute to him such depravity. He is said to be, in private life, 
 amiable, hospitable and courteous ; but he is not the first man 
 known to history who has presented the anomaly of blameless 
 private life, exhibiting on the stage of public affairs, a want 
 of political integrity. Perhaps he may be relieved from some 
 of the imputed excess of this delinqency, by ascribing his er 
 rors somewhat to a want of judgment, to an exorbitant vanity, 
 and to the influence of bad advice : That he lacked the qual 
 ity of attaching to him such friends as were indispensable to 
 his position, and therefore, had none of that kind. It is the 
 calamity of high place, that it stands most in need of that 
 counsel which it is most apt to repel. 
 
A DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS- 435 
 
 We may say of this President what Milton has said of an 
 other unhappy ruler, whose melancholy fate furnishes the most 
 awful example on record of the danger in a Chief Magistrate 
 violating his promises to the people, " that, for the most part, 
 he followed the worser counsels, and almost always, of the 
 worser men." 
 
 I do not profess to know who were his advisers. I only 
 know that those whom public duty had placed around him, and 
 who were eminently worthy of all trust, did not enjoy his con 
 fidence. While the press was full of annunciations, in ad 
 vance, of his intentions, his Cabinet was generally ignorant of 
 his views, or remarkably deceived in regard to them, on the 
 greatest measure brought to the notice of his administration. 
 
 In the vain hope, it is believed, of raising up a third party, 
 he came in direct collision with a majority of the nation ; and, 
 by his conduct, heightened the common feeling of disappoint 
 ment into the stronger emotion of indignation, provoked, in 
 those who elected him, by a doubt which every one felt it pain 
 ful to utter. The result was that irrevocable renunciation of 
 him proclaimed in The Manifesto. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 THE TWENTY-SEVENTH CONGRESS. 
 
 During the Extra Session, until that period when it be 
 came the President s cue in the play he had proposed to him 
 self, to break with the Whigs, the administration organ was 
 full of commendation of the activity with which Congress was 
 answering the expectations of the country. * 
 
 At the next session, a different game was found necessary. 
 A systematic and incessant vituperation of the proceedings of 
 Congress, became a conspicuous device in the tactics of the 
 Administration. The Legislature was daily assailed with 
 every species of slander. No effort was spared to lessen it in 
 the esteem of the nation. Detraction and falsehood did their 
 
 * " The House of Representatives is nobly responding to the pop- 
 ular voice." Madisonicui, July 22, 1841. 
 
4:36 POLITICAL PAPEKS. 
 
 worst to spread abroad an opinion that the majority of the 
 Representatives of the people were faithless to their duty, be 
 cause they could not receive their lesson from the Executive ; 
 because they could not obey the dictation of a power that 
 had already abandoned its trust, and forfeited all claim to their 
 confidence. They were charged with a factious spirit, when 
 they stood firm .in their endeavor to redeem the pledges they 
 had given to the nation ; and were aspersed *,vith the accusa 
 tion of being engaged in " President-making," when they re 
 fused to co-operate in the absurd and frivolous scheme of 
 glorifying John Tyler, with a view to a second term. For 
 this contumacy, war was waged against the majority of botii 
 Houses, by the Executive and his allies. 
 
 The most preposterous and odious claims of Presidential 
 prerogative, such as the country had witnessed in the worst 
 days of the Jackson administration were revived ; new claims, 
 even, added. The Legislature was assailed directly by the 
 President himself, as trifling with the public welfare, and mis 
 spending its time over "petty schemes of hatred or ambi 
 tion," instead of devoting it to " measures designed for gen 
 eral relief." 1 * 
 
 The reproof of Congress, thus beginning with the Presi 
 dent, was echoed from every servile press in his interest. It 
 was repeated by every obsequious flatterer who had a motive 
 to prove his fealty to the dispenser of Government patronage. 
 It became the theme of the thousand daily tirades by which 
 the minions of the Executive throughout the land, lent their 
 assistance to degrade the Representative body in the view of 
 the people, and, in its degradation, to assail the representative 
 principle itself. This, because the majority of Congress could 
 not agree, to receive their bills from the hand of the President, 
 their opinions from his suggestion ! 
 
 The President, indeed, in no ambiguous terms, asserted 
 the right to initiate acts of Legislation, and assumed to rebuke 
 Congress for disregarding his recommendations ; made a dis- 
 
 * Letter of John Tyler to Joseph Graham, June 4, 1842. 
 
A DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 437 
 
 play of what he had promulgated as his views, what he would 
 assent to and what he would not ; and claimed, in emphatic 
 language, to be an integral, co-ordinate branch of the Legisla 
 ture, affirming that the Constitution had given him, " for wise 
 purposes, an active agency in all Legislation."* 
 
 I have no purpose to say more than I have already said 
 on the right of a President of the United States to control the 
 action of the law-making power ; nor to comment upon either 
 the propriety or the dignity of his animadversions in private 
 letters, prepared for publication, or in any other manner, of 
 ficial or unofficial, against the members of the Legislative 
 body for what transpires in the Legislative Halls. Much less 
 am I inclined to expatiate upon that claim which purports to 
 make him a part of the Legislature, and to confer upon him 
 the right to " an active agency" in its proceedings. These 
 claims, after the signal denunciation which they have received 
 from the master minds of the nation ; after the stern judg 
 ment pronounced against them by the people ; after the con 
 tempt with which they have been treated by Congress, need no 
 farther sentence of condemnation. I dismiss them with the 
 remark that they are utterly repugnant to all Whig doctrine, at 
 least : abhorrent to all Whig practice : renounced and repelled 
 as assumptions hostile not only to the principles of our gov 
 ernment, but of all free representative government. They 
 cannot subsist with the notion of an independent Legislature ; 
 are incompatible with the spirit of that elemental principle of 
 Parliamentary Privilege which secures every representative 
 from being questioned for what is uttered in debate. They 
 are made in the tone and the temper of those pretensions of 
 the Stuarts in English history, which brought about that fa 
 mous recalcitration of the patriots of England who first de 
 fined and established the Liberty of Parliament, originated the 
 Whig party, and won the triumph of 1688. 
 
 The old political adversaries of the Whigs, finding in these 
 
 * See liis letter to Messrs. Harris and others of Philadelphia, July 
 2, 1842. 
 
JMUTFCAL J AI KK?. 
 
 clamors against Congress, something that might be turned to 
 account for themselves, joined in the scheme of vituperation ; 
 did all in their power to embarrass the proceedings of the ma 
 jority, to foment the President s quarrel, to stimulate his vani 
 ty toward new aggressions, and to spread complaint among 
 the people. They, the pretended Democracy of the nation, 
 faithful to their original instincts, were busy to second and en 
 courage the laudable design of the Executive in trenching 
 upon and denouncing the popular Privilege as it existed in 
 the independence of the Legislature. Truly, they were again 
 on their old track ! 
 
 Many good persons, at last, were brought to believe that 
 Congress was actually chargeable with the sins which its origi 
 nal calumniator had laid at its door. This pertinacity of 
 ceaseless imputation, which in general seldom fails to secure 
 some degree of credence to any calumny, wrought upon the 
 belief of many credulous minds who were not naturally un 
 friendly to the Whigs. The whole responsibility for whatever 
 was charged against Congress, of course, fell upon the major 
 ity. The minority, by joining in the aspersion, went scot free 
 not only scot free, but found it a weapon to wound their ad 
 versaries. They played their part with great dexterity on the 
 floor of Congress ; uttered many pitiful, sanctimonious excla 
 mations of horror at the sin of wasting the precious time, and 
 still more precious money of the people, in the unpardonable 
 enterprise of President-making, in the shocking neglect of 
 Presidential advice, in the contumacious censure of Execu 
 tive usurpation ! They affected to find another topic of invec 
 tive in the rules which the majority had adopted for the des 
 patch of business ; rules without which, amid these ceaseless 
 efforts to impede the course of legislation, the majority could 
 have done nothing. That golden " hour rule" especially, the 
 greatest improvement of our clay, almost the essential condi 
 tion upon which a numerous House of Representatives is ren 
 dered a practical body was denounced with singular viru 
 lence and spleen, as a gag upon the constitutional freedom of 
 
A DEFENCE OF THE WTTTOS. 439 
 
 debate. The people were said to be deprived of grave, fun 
 damental rights, because the " weak, washy, everlasting flood" 
 of parliamentary egotism was pent up within the confines 
 which good sense, for the most part, voluntarily prescribes to 
 itself. It is pleasant to perceive that, notwithstanding all the 
 exaggerations which party eloquence has indulged against this 
 rule, the country has failed to be convinced that the restraint 
 it has placed upon the vice of overtalking in Congress is not 
 founded upon a wise experience. The querulous declamation 
 of its opponents has found no sympathetic answer among the 
 people ; and we may venture to foretell that this u hour rule," 
 of the Twenty-seventh Congress will be preserved as long as 
 the prurient appetite of inane discourse shall be reckoned 
 among the maladies of our Logocracy : it will be valued for 
 the equal rights which it confers upon the effective business 
 man of Congress and the importunate and active babbler 
 who finds enjoyment in listening to the incessant cataract of 
 his own voice. 
 
 Notwithstanding all that was said, and at one time partially 
 believed, to the detriment of the Twenty-seventh Congress, it 
 is singularly true, that, from the commencement of the Gov 
 ernment to the present day, there has never been assembled a 
 National Legislature whose assiduity, within the appropriate 
 range of its business, has been entitled to higher praise ; none 
 which has wrought more effectively ; done so much. In the 
 face of every impediment which a hostile Executive and a tal 
 ented, mischief-making opposition could throw in its way, it 
 has accomplished great and permanent good to the country. 
 It came to its task at a period when the public affairs were in 
 a state of unexampled adversity shattered and disjointed by a 
 long system of improvidence : it found not only an empty 
 treasury, but the sources of revenue shut up ; and a determined 
 and fierce spirit of opposition arrayed against any attempt to 
 open them ; it found the people laboring under the pressure 
 of an almost universal bankruptcy ; it found peculation and 
 abuse in every department of public administration ; it found 
 
440 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 the results of a thriftless prodigality in a heavy national debt, 
 disguised and aggravated by issues of irredeemable govern 
 ment paper. Even under the most auspicious circumstances 
 of harmonious co-operation from an able and faithful Exec 
 utive, with every thing from that source to aid and nothing to 
 embarrass, the difficulties of its position would have been such 
 as the steadiest nerve and most skilful experience might have 
 shrunk from without disgrace ; but the darkness of its hour 
 was increased by that extraordinary mischance which cast upon 
 it an Executive without the will to assist, without the ability to 
 do good, with nothing to distinguish it, in fact, but its per 
 verse power and purpose to do evil. 
 
 It was in the midst of such embarrassments that the Twen 
 ty-seventh Congress set about its work. With a constancy of 
 patriotic effort never surpassed in our history, it maintained its 
 faith through every trial, steadfastly pursued its aims with a 
 most intelligent sense of its duty, and brought back the coun 
 try to as high and palmy a state of prosperity as the faculties 
 with which it was invested under the Constitution and not 
 wrested from it by the Executive, allowed. If it failed to ac 
 complish all that it desired and had proposed, the fault of this 
 failure is not to be found either in its want of skill to plan or 
 of labor to accomplish. The record of what was undone after 
 the Legislature had done its work, and of what was frustrated 
 after it was prepared, will supply a sufficiently plain account 
 of that failure. 
 
 The enormous expenditure of the preceding administra 
 tion has been reduced to little more than half its average an 
 nual amount ; gross abuses, which had heretofore grown up 
 under the neglect or connivance of former Legislatures, have 
 been fully explored and divulged ; peculation and fraud have 
 been arrested ; the revenues have been restored ; collisions 
 with foreign powers guarded against in future ; bankruptcy has 
 been released from its deadly burden, and thousands of useful 
 citizens have been recalled to active enterprise ; commerce 
 has been put under every protection of law and restored to its 
 
A DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 441 
 
 ancient vigor ; mechanical industry has been sent back, cheer 
 ful and happy, to its deserted field ; agriculture, the foundation 
 of the great mass of national wealth, has been encouraged to 
 a renewed labor, by the gift of a thriving and prosperous 
 market at home ; the great and invaluable principle of a Dis 
 trict Representation the safest and best guarantee which our 
 government can offer of its faith to maintain the most precious 
 right of Republican government, the protection, namely, of the 
 minority by giving them their proper voice in the National 
 Council, has been secured, as far as the Twenty-seventh 
 Congress could secure it by law. All these have been accom 
 plished. If the currency has not been settled ; if the States 
 have been deprived of their just inheritance in the public 
 lands ; if the district principle has not been effectually estab 
 lished, let the nation ask of Mr. Tyler and his new Democratic 
 allies why these measures have not been secured. 
 
 What was achieved will long be remembered to the honor 
 of the Whig ascendancy. The labors of the Twenty-seventh 
 Congress will not be lost. For years to come the investiga 
 tions, reports, plans and propositions of that Congress will fur 
 nish sure guides and aids to beneficent legislation in all the 
 great departments of the public interest. 
 
 It has been one of the subjects of outcry raised against that 
 Congress by its enemies, that it strove to carry its points by a 
 Caucus : that it was under the domination of a Caucus dicta 
 torship. 
 
 The point of this accusation is neither more nor less than 
 that the Whigs met together for the purpose of adjusting their 
 measures, before they presented them in the ordinary forms of 
 legislation. This, in regard to many important measures, is 
 true. It is not true, perhaps, as fully as it ought to have been. 
 Under any circumstances, it is but a wise and useful practice 
 for those having the responsibility and the control of legisla 
 tion, to meet frequently together with a view to successful and 
 efficient action. But in the peculiar position of the Whigs of 
 the Twenty-seventh Congress ; with all the difficulties of the 
 IQ* 
 
442 POLITICAL PA PILES. 
 
 public affairs before them : holding such relations as they held 
 to the Executive ; opposed, as they were, by a dexterous par 
 ty who had no principle of conduct but opposition to all and 
 every Whig measure, if this duty of consultation had been 
 avoided or neglected by the majority, they would have been 
 justly liable to whatever censure might attach to their want of 
 success. They would have been regardless of their most ob 
 vious duty to the country. 
 
 As a ground of serious accusation, this attempt to excite 
 hostility is merely ridiculous, and has therefore failed of its 
 aim. It is worthy of notice only, from the stress laid upon it 
 by the President, and by his new Democratic friends, while 
 the latter had a motive to natter him. We may regard it as 
 an abortive attempt to create a false odium, by the trick of an 
 imputation which really had nothing odious in it, but which, 
 in accordance with the estimate of the intelligence of the peo 
 ple, familiar to the new-fangled, counterfeit Democracy of late 
 days, it was conceived very practicable to impose upon the 
 public credulity as a heinous offence. No party has ever 
 practiced the Caucus discipline under more truly exceptionable 
 conditions than those purists themselves : no party has ever 
 carried it to the same length of denunciation against individ 
 ual dissent and of proscription. While the Whigs of the 
 Twenty-seventh Congress resorted to private consultation to 
 mature their course of proceeding, with a view to the attain 
 ment of the greatest good to the country, in the alleviation of 
 the public distress, their adversaries were no less diligently 
 assembled in frequent caucus, to devise plans to thwart, ob 
 struct and destroy. The malignant joy with which they con 
 templated each new embarrassment that arose ; with which 
 they cheered on the President to every act of obstruction ; 
 with which they lent their aid to defeat every valuable meas 
 ure ; and with which they lifted up the loud voice of exultation 
 upon the accomplishment of any signal mischief, or the dis 
 comfiture of any signal good, will long be remembered against 
 them in the future political contests of the people, and will 
 
A DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 swe41 the measure of retribution against them in that day of 
 reckoning which is certainly at hand. 
 Again, we bide our time. 
 
 IX 
 
 THE NEW DEMOCRACY. THE DICTATOR. THE ARRAY OF 
 
 1844- 
 
 1 have heretofore descanted, somewhat at large, upon the 
 character and aims of the two great parties which divide the 
 nation. The Whigs, I have shown, from their first organiza 
 tion up to the present moment, as standing upon the founda 
 tion of well-defined and well-understood principles of the 
 deepest import both in the structure of our government and 
 in the course of its administration. Their opponents those 
 who now call themselves the Democracy I have presented 
 as a party compacted, so far as regards either their principles 
 or their measures, of incongruous fragments, exhibiting the 
 most opposite and heterogeneous views, and associated only 
 upon personal predilections and interests : That this party 
 was, in fact, originally organized upon the popularity of Gen 
 eral Jackson ; was composed of Federalists and Democrats^ 
 Federalists making war against the old Democratic ascen 
 dency ; Democrats renouncing the ancient landmarks of the 
 party, and prepared to sanction any amount of Federal infu 
 sion into the policy of the administration ; That, combined 
 of these elements, it adopted and promulgated every variety 
 of political sentiment which had ever been developed in the 
 country. It pretended to no consistency of doctrine, but in 
 variably studied the humor of the day, and espoused and dis 
 carded the most opposite and conflicting opinions, without 
 even thinking it worth while to offer an excuse for its singular 
 aberrations. It has alternately, during the term of its exist 
 ence, advocated and rejected every great measure of pol 
 icy which has been agitated in the public councils. In the 
 beginning of its career, it proposed the Single term, a na- 
 
444 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 tional Government Bank, a protective Tariff, the distribution of 
 the Surplus revenue, the surrender of the Public Lands, the lim 
 itation of Executive Patronage. In its progress it renounced 
 every one of these measures. ]t has come, at last, to pre 
 sent the union of the most extraordinary political elements any 
 country ever witnessed. They who were the authors of the 
 Force Bill and the Proclamation are now ready to take for their 
 President the Chief of Nullification, he whom it was the object 
 of the Force Bill and the Proclamation to reward with a halter ; 
 whom many of them were even anxious to visit with that dis 
 tinction. They who were willing to sever the Union rather 
 than submit to a protective Tariff, are now ready to abide the 
 decree of a Convention which shall endeavor to place the Chief 
 Magistracy in the hands of him who voted for the Tariff of 
 1828. They who supported General Jackson s recommenda 
 tion in favor of a National Bank founded on the Revenues of 
 the Government, claim the honors of supreme dominion upon 
 their constitutional antipathy to a Bank in any form whatever. 
 They who denounced the Sub-Treasury as " disorganizing and 
 revolutionary," now commend it as a second Declaration of In 
 dependence. 
 
 It were useless to go through the catalogue. No imagin 
 able freak of political ambidexterity that may be alleged, would 
 more than excite a smile from a party which has not such in 
 trepidity of dissimulation as to talk of its consistency. They 
 who could consent to be driven into the fold and there unre 
 sistingly to await the lot which should consign them to the 
 portion of Mr. Calhoun or Mr. Van Buren, just as the legerde 
 main of a caucus of politicians should dispose of them, are 
 surely proof against all raillery on their political virtue. 
 
 The party was personal merely. Springing out of the re 
 nown of a Great Chief, and living by his will and on his breath, 
 it will come to its dissolution even before he who founded it 
 shall pay the debt of nature. As long as his influence was 
 rife, it possessed the vigor which belonged to his character. 
 As that influence wanes, in retirement and with advancing 
 
A DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 445 
 
 years that find subjects more congenial than the mean game 
 of worldly a ubition, the party gradually becomes shorn of 
 its strength ; hastens to that inevitable doom to which dis- 
 
 *D 
 
 cord and rival hate have, in all ages, consigned parties and 
 communities that have " no other principle of cohesion than 
 the hope of plunder." Not all the glory that encircled Char 
 lemagne and his Paladins could save the dominion to his en 
 vious and quarrelsome successors. That most notable disas 
 ter of Fontenay, where, say the historians, perished the 
 whole force which had so often turned back the tide of Saxon 
 war occurred in the second reign after the emperor. It was 
 the fatal result of an embroilment between three brothers, 
 grandsons of the Western Caesar, brawling for the empire. 
 The vast domain of Charlemagne sunk into a petty province. 
 The story is not without its moral. Another Fontenay is at 
 hand. 
 
 The gravest charge which we have now to make against 
 this strange Democracy is the supple support they have given 
 to the present administration ; an administration they have 
 lured to its ruin. They have extracted from it all the patron 
 age it is able to bestow. As the price of this compliance; they 
 gave it prompt encouragement in the worst acts of its malice 
 against the Whigs ; affected to applaud it for its treachery 
 and to praise it for its vices. They have, through such means, 
 succeeded in incorporating that administration in their party ; 
 have made themselves responsible for its misdemeanors. 
 They must answer this responsibility to the country. They 
 would, now, " cast it, like a worthless weed, away," hoping in 
 this tardy repudiation to escape the censure of their illicit in 
 tercourse. They may assume to deny it farther participation 
 in their favors, now that it has nothing more to grant. But it 
 is too late. They will not be allowed to shake off the connec 
 tion merely because it ceases to be profitable. They have 
 taken Mr. Tyler " for better," they must also hold to him " for 
 worse," and abide the censure of the nation, not only for the 
 mischief they have helped to do, but for having made an im- 
 
446 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 pure alliance for the sake of gain : for the hypocrisy and liber 
 tinism that have marked their whole career of seduction. 
 
 As to Mr. Tyler, our quarrel with him has lost all its sig 
 nificance in his feebleness. But as to the New Democracy, 
 our motives to contest are even whetted and rendered more 
 keen by the injury they have sought to inflict upon us, in tam 
 pering with the President s weakness, inflaming his hate and 
 encouraging his apostasy, conduct less pursued from any 
 hope of benefit to them, than from a meditated design of evil 
 to our cause. In this we have strong motive to renewed hos 
 tility, the effect of which will be felt when we take the field. 
 The country, if we are not deceived, will resent this reckless 
 ness to the public welfare, and will not hold a party excused 
 whose zeal to destroy had led it to forget its more obvious 
 duty of preserving what is good. 
 
 Our quarrel, therefore, is with Locofocoism, not with Mr. 
 Tyler. If we had no other griefs to complain of than his de 
 sertion ; if no enemy but him, we should congratulate our 
 selves upon the riddance of a man who never had the faculty 
 to do us service, and whose alienation was to be accounted 
 but a fortunate event. We should merely have preserved si 
 lence. 
 
 But we pay our adversaries the compliment to say, that, as 
 yet, their organization, their numbers, their purposes, their 
 means of warfare, more than these, the assiduity and the 
 craft of their misrepresentations, furnish cogent argument why 
 we should make our case understood ; furnish the most au 
 thoritative reasons why we should write and publish A DE 
 FENCE OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 The time is nearly come when we shall raise our banner 
 in another Presidential contest. We shall take care that there 
 be no mistake in our men. In part, it may be said, we have 
 already taken care of that. The Whigs, with one consent ; 
 with a unanimity, almost without parallel in history, have 
 turned their eyes to one man in this nation who will, assured 
 ly, if Providence spares him for the contest, be the Leader of 
 
A DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 447 
 
 our Host. Even he The Dictator, the great Champion of 
 Constitutional right, the personation of every public Virtue, 
 genuine image of the Whig Sentiment THE MAN OF THE 
 UNION, HENRY CLAY, will lead our Host To him the 
 hand of the general Whig Party points, as to our Cynosure : 
 Hand guided by the Heart of every Whig of the Land. 
 
 Our adversaries, in reproach, call him THE DICTATOR. 
 We take the word, and will turn their reproach to honor. 
 Happy is it for that nation that holds within its confines one 
 man, in whose sagacity and pure purpose there is such per 
 vading faith that his counsel shall acquire the authority of a 
 dictator ; toward whom such general trust abounds, that the 
 volunteer public deference shall receive his advice as a paren 
 tal command ! Glorious reward of stainless patriotism ! 
 Happy homage to Wisdom and Virtue ! Dictator, such as 
 this, the Country once had but once. 
 
 What more enviable chaplet can be woven for man s brow 
 than such a testimony? That Henry Clay, a private tiller of 
 the soil ; unostentatious citizen ; with no official power ; all 
 the power of the Executive government, the Gift-giving pow 
 er arrayed against him ; simply attired in his own virtues, il 
 lustrated only by his deeds should thus sway the affections 
 of the Republic, thus move " the wilderness of free minds ! " 
 What richer memorial of a patriot s worth than this ? 
 
 Would that our fortunate Commonwealth may never find 
 other Dictator than such as he ! had never found other ! 
 
 Illustrious living inheritance is ours in such a man. Au 
 spicious is it for the Whig party that with such prompt and gen 
 erous accord, we fix our thoughts upon him. That of the thou 
 sands worthy, none may stand in rivalry with him, worthiest 
 of all. 
 
 It were a small labor to write his vindication against the 
 calumnies of enemies. They but prove how much he is loved, 
 how much feared. If nothing were said against him, his fame 
 would want one testimonial to his eminent worth. It would 
 leave him under the suspicion of a tame mediocrity which, less 
 
448 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 than of any man in this Union, is his. Standing, as he does, 
 before the world, an impersonation of the principles of the 
 Whig party, he shares with them the enmity of many foes : 
 perhaps, it would be more just to say, opposition of adversaries, 
 rather than enmity ; for there is admitted to be a frank and 
 generous gallantry in his nature which, for the most part, dis 
 arms political hostility of personal ill-will, and extorts from 
 those who are arrayed in adverse ranks, a liberal confession of 
 respect ; even nurses a secret wish, and indeed often prompts 
 the open expression of it, that, party difference aside, his com 
 panionship were theirs. 
 
 Still he has foes, foes to his fame and name. We must 
 look for these, chiefly, in the purlieus of the White House. 
 There, his great sin would seem to be, that he could not sur 
 render his convictions of duty at the footstool of power. If he 
 could have consented to offer the incense of flattery there, and 
 joined with those who sought to break up the Whig patty for 
 the sake of elevating themselves, we should, perhaps, have 
 heard nothing of a Dictatorship ; but only praises to the man 
 whose flexible conscience could have been turned to such prof 
 itable account. 
 
 Mr. Clay presents, as guardian of his faith, the glory of a 
 life of eminent desert desert dearer to him than all renown. 
 In this, the evening of his days, he looks back from an emi 
 nence, far more exalted than any official station, upon a bril 
 .liant career of usefulness to his country, rendered more brilliant 
 by great talents guided by the utmost purity of motive and con 
 sistency of purpose to the promotion of national happiness. In 
 that retrospect he finds only ever fresh incentives to persevere 
 in the course he has pursued. His life is an epic of grand 
 achievements which have^never been tarnished by servility of 
 opinion to any man however distinguished. Few could have 
 meditated such an insult to his fame as to expect that he would 
 forfeit his title to this praise for the sake of conciliating the fa 
 vor or averting the malevolence of John Tyler. 
 
 His offence is that he misapprehended the character of the 
 
A DEFENCE OF THE WHIGS. 4-49 
 
 man whom the Constitution has intrusted with the Veto, and 
 deemed it impossible that the President could do that which 
 the public welfare, the public opinion and his own declarations 
 had authorized the country to believe he would not do. It is 
 that he preferred to adhere to his faith rather than bend to the 
 purpose of a versatile Chief Magistrate whom no man could 
 believe because no man could find him twice in the same opin 
 ion ; who, in the intoxication of sudden preferment, fancied 
 himself clothed with a heavenly mission, of which the chief pur 
 pose, as far as we can gather it from his acts, was to disband 
 and discard his first friends and prolong his unhappy power, 
 through the aid of new combinations which were not possible 
 consistently with any theory of fidelity to the trust implied in 
 his election. 
 
 For these offences, chiefly, has Mr. Clay been denounced. 
 The denunciation will scarcely rufHe the serenity of his temper. 
 He yet survives, tranquil in the privacy of Ashland, where each 
 hour of his life brings him more content than a whole century 
 of mawkish sycophancy which trails after the King of Shreds 
 and Patches in the White House. 
 
 Among all other classes of political adversaries Mr. Clay 
 is treated as a generous opponent. No one imputes to him 
 concealment of opinion, evasion of the full responsibility of his 
 position, or ambiguity in relation to any public measure. 
 There needs no proclamation to announce the exact issue put 
 in controversy, when Mr. Clay s name is inscribed upon our 
 flag. In those letters will be read the whole Whig formula of 
 doctrine. Go back to 1816 and follow his ample history up 
 from that day, then say if he has retracted one sentiment of 
 public duty, renounced one matured opinion of what is neces 
 sary to the public good. While the tide of changing events 
 has swept the most conspicuous of his adversaries along its 
 heady current into every latitude of doctrine, it has swept by 
 him, fast anchored on the rock of his political faith, and finds 
 him, to-day, the same champion of popular right that it found 
 him when he stood by Mr. Madison the sturdiest of his sup- 
 
450 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 ports. They call him a Federalist. Even the ancient Priests 
 of that Faith, now refulgent in the robes of the New Democra 
 cy, brand him with that epithet, as the most poignant opprobri 
 um they can heap upon his name. We may truly say, Mr. 
 Clay s democracy is not of the complexion which they profess. 
 But it is the democracy of him they hated most when living, 
 they most affect to praise when dead, the Democracy of Mad 
 ison. Such is the Democracy of the Whigs. 
 
 It is an unprofitable contention which dwells merely upon 
 names. We may permit our opponents to assume what dis 
 guise, in this sort, may best answer the stratagem of their war. 
 We look to things rather than to this bawble of a name. In 
 the hope to secure a fundamental good to present and future 
 generations, by curbing the pernicious extravagance of Execu 
 tive authority, pushed, as by late precedent it has been, to the 
 unwholesome verge of monarchical power ; by giving its. appro 
 priate scope to the Representative principle ; and, above all, 
 by securing the Will of the People, expressed in their Legisla 
 ture, against the caprices of Presidents or the faction of Parties, 
 we resume our array and throw ourselves upon the arbitra 
 ment of the Nation. Contending for these, and for a system 
 of measures long proclaimed and thoroughly understood, we 
 desire to be known by that appellation which is historically as 
 sociated with our aims, and which is illustrious in the annals 
 of Constitutional Liberty, on both shores of the Atlantic, as 
 indicating the friends of PRIVILEGE in opposition to the friends 
 of PREROGATIVE. Such are the Whigs who are now gathering 
 for the strife of 1844. 
 
FINANCE. 
 
 COUNTER EEPOET 
 
 FROM THE SELECT COMMITTEE OX THE CURRENCY, TO THE 
 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, UNITED STATES, FEBRUA 
 RY 17, 1842. 
 
 THE undersigned, from the Select Committee to whom 
 was referred so much of the President s message as 
 relates to the scheme of finance recommended therein to the 
 consideration of Congress, and the letter of the Secretary of 
 the Treasury on the subject of the Board of Exchequer, being 
 compelled to dissent from the decision of a majority of the 
 committee to report the bill which has been lately presented 
 by them to this House, respectfully asks leave to offer his rea 
 sons for that dissent : 
 
 He is duly impressed with a sense of the weighty responsi 
 bility imposed upon the committee in the duty assigned to it 
 by the House. He is profoundly conscious of the anxious 
 wish of the nation to see this long-agitated question of the 
 currency determined, by the adoption of some measure calcu- 
 lated to relieve th< sufferings of the community. No one more 
 painfully feels, than he does, the reality of those disorders in 
 the administration of the public affairs, which, for years past, 
 have been invading the private thrift and personal welfare of 
 our citizens in the pursuit of their daily occupations, and which 
 have at last, with a speed and certainty long foreseen, attained 
 to a most unhappy pre-eminence among the topics soliciting 
 the intervention and relief of national legislation. 
 
 He would express his conviction that the only sure and 
 effective remedy for the universal and increasing evils which 
 
452 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 are felt with so much poignancy at the present time through 
 out the community, is to be found in the suggestions of past 
 experience and in a return to that course of policy from which 
 the Government has departed. That in this department is to 
 be traced the sequence of errors which have entailed upon the 
 country the calamities under which it now suffers. Holding 
 this opinion, he has been reluctant to confide in any untried 
 measure of expediency, which even the most ingenious minds 
 could propose, as likely to restore the prosperity of the nation. 
 To him it seerns that the only obstacle in the way of this hap 
 py achievement has been set up by the exasperation of politi 
 cal sentiment or the pride of partisan opinion, which has 
 grown too wayward to be instructed, or too obstinate to confess 
 its errors, and turn back to the path which its secret judgment 
 points out to it ; and that the highest talents and most acute 
 intelligence have been employed to devise plausible contri 
 vances and artful shifts to escape the necessity of recurring to 
 the obvious, but proscribed measures which old usage has 
 demonstrated to be the best, and to which the impartial sense 
 of the nation invites, and its indignant voice warns them to 
 return. 
 
 The undersigned can find no reason to concur with the 
 majority of the committee in the bill they have reported to the 
 House. It is with great regret that he differs from his col 
 leagues, because he cannot but feel that, in his conflict of opin 
 ions with them, he exposes himself to the hazard of misrepre 
 sentation ; that he will be charged by many with the bias of 
 party attachments, by some even with factious division. He 
 disavows and repels all such motives. 
 
 When the President of the United States communicated 
 his message to Congress, at the opening of the late extra ses 
 sion, there was no sentiment uttered by him on that occasion 
 which met with a more hearty response from this body and the 
 people than the utter reprobation expressed against the exist 
 ing Sub-Treasury system. He spoke truly, when, in reference 
 to that measure, he declared that, " to say nothing of the inse 
 
FINANCE. 4:53 
 
 curity of the public moneys, its injurious effects have been an 
 ticipated by the country in its unqualified condemnation" After 
 so just, so explicit, and so public a censure, made with so 
 much deliberation, and so fully applauded as it was by the 
 country, so frequently fore-announced in Congress, and so cor 
 dially approved by that body afterwards, the undersigned can 
 discover no reason to rebuke the President s judgment in this 
 particular, by consenting to join in the recommendation of any 
 measure of the same character, to this House or the nation, at 
 the present time. Nothing has since transpired to cast a 
 doubt upon the soundness of the President s views at the time 
 referred to. That system was repealed, and no one has yet 
 asked to have it restored. It was, therefore, with no small 
 surprise that the undersigned was called to witness so striking 
 a fact as the reproduction of this exploded measure in the 
 committee ; with still greater sensation did he contemplate its 
 adoption by the majority who reported the bill. 
 
 The undersigned will not repeat the arguments which have 
 been so often presented to the nation against this scheme for 
 regulating the fiscal affairs of the Government ; but he will beg 
 leave to invite the attention of the House to a comparison of 
 the measure recently submitted by the committee with that 
 repudiated law to which he has referred. Such an examina 
 tion will show, that, in their most essential characteristic and 
 odious features, they are framed upon the same principle, and 
 are liable to the same objections. 
 
 The Sub-Treasury was placed under the control of the 
 Secretary of the Treasury and the Treasurer of the United 
 States. The one was to act as a check upon the other. The 
 Exchequer, according to the bill reported, is placed under the 
 control of the Secretary of the Treasury, the Treasurer, and a 
 commissioner. The Sub-Treasury established agencies at 
 Boston, New York, Charleston and St. Louis, which were 
 placed under the charge of receivers. It also exacted the 
 duties of agents from the directors and superintendents of the 
 mint and branch mints, the collectors (or surveyors, where no 
 
POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 collector existed), receivers of the land offices, and certain 
 post-masters. These officers were guarded or checked in the 
 performance of their several functions by the naval officers, 
 surveyors, registers of the land offices, and treasurers of the 
 mints, respectively. The Exchequer proposes to establish like 
 agencies at Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Charleston, New 
 Orleans and five others, if deemed expedient, wherever the 
 board may select. The superintendents of these agencies are 
 to be held in check by the registers attached to the same. It 
 also proposes to employ the mint and branch mints, under 
 such checks and regulations as the Secretary of the Treasu 
 ry may prescribe ; and, with fewer guards than weTe supplied 
 by the Sub-Treasury scheme, commits the public moneys to 
 the keeping of sundry collectors, land officers, and postmasters, 
 as agents of the Treasury, and subject only to the draft of the 
 Treasurer. 
 
 The Sub-Treasury supplied vaults and safes for the safe 
 keeping of the funds. 
 
 The Exchequer proposes the same precautions. 
 
 The Sub-Treasury required bonds from its several officers, 
 conditioned for the faithful performance of their duties. 
 
 The Exchequer contains the same provision. 
 The moneys in the possession of the several agencies un 
 der the Sub-Treasury were declared to be in the Treasury of 
 the United States. 
 
 The Exchequer plan suggests the same enactment. 
 
 The two systems contain similar or analagous provisions 
 against embezzlement. 
 
 So far the structure of the two systems bears a close re 
 semblance ; the Sub-Treasury having the advantage, perhaps, 
 in simplicity of organization and cheapness in the expense 
 inasmuch as it employed several officers of Government al 
 ready in existence, merely enlarging the sphere of their duties. 
 
 The two schemes differ in the following points : 
 
 The Sub-Treasury was designed to promote a metallic cir 
 culation. 
 
FINANCE. 455 
 
 The Exchequer proposes to furnish, instead of such a cir 
 culation, its exact counterpart in Government paper. 
 
 The Exchequer provides for a system of private deposits. 
 
 The Sub-Treasury had no correspondent provision. 
 
 The Sub-Treasury required the public dues ultimately to 
 be paid in coin. 
 
 The Exchequer authorizes the receipt of the notes of spe 
 cie-paying banks, and Government paper. 
 
 These differences, so far as regards the practical operation 
 of the two systems upon the country, will be found to be of 
 small import. 
 
 The Sub-Treasury went into operation at a time when the 
 Government had adopted the practice of issuing Treasury 
 notes ; a practice which had met with so much favor from the 
 friends of the Sub-Treasury system, as to constitute a mate 
 rial element in the policy of their administration of it. The 
 two were almost inseparably connected. The public dues 
 were consequently made payable in these notes, and they have 
 been accordingly so used. 
 
 How far the Sub-Treasury succeeded in promoting a me 
 tallic circulation every one is aware. Some small portions of 
 gold have been occasionally disbursed, chiefly to members of 
 Congress and officers of the Government ; its other disburse 
 ments have been made in drafts and notes. The Exchequer 
 plan would exert no greater or more beneficial influence upon 
 the currency. It proposes to receive its payment in the notes 
 of specie-paying banks. These notes it requires to be imme 
 diately converted, within the week of their reception or often- 
 er, into coin ; and it forbids the paying out of these notes to 
 any Government or other creditor. This is equivalent to the 
 enactment of the specie clause in the Sub-Treasury law, and 
 would produce precisely the same result. 
 
 The issue of a paper dollar for every metallic one in the 
 Exchequer, and a faithful guardianship of the coin until its 
 paper counterpart shall come in for redemption, is exactly 
 equivalent, in practical effect upon the currency, to the circula- 
 
456 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 tion of the coin itself. Nothing is added to the currency ; and 
 the only benefit this substitution presents, is in the supply of 
 a more portable medium. If the coin be gold, this advantage 
 is diminished. 
 
 As these issues of the Exchequer are required to be made 
 in denominations as low as fives and tens, and not to exceed 
 the denomination of one hundred dollars, and as they are to 
 be payable, on demand, to the bearer, they are destined for 
 local circulation, and not, to any great extent, for transmission 
 by mail a fact which still more diminishes the motive to pre 
 fer them before gold. 
 
 We may therefore assume that, in the relief to be afforded 
 the disordered currency of the nation, the Exchequer plan is 
 calculated to do little more for it than the Sub-Treasury was 
 able to effect. Both look to a collection of the revenues in 
 coin. The one ostensibly disbursed in coin ; the other dis 
 burses an order on itself, for coin actually held to meet the 
 order. The currency in neither case receives any augmenta 
 tion. 
 
 The majority of the committee, in providing for private de 
 posits, seem to think that this attribute of their plan will in 
 crease the paper circulation. The Exchequer is to invite de 
 posits of coin from individuals, and to give in return an exact 
 counterpart of the deposit, dollar for dollar, in the same kind 
 of paper, and restricted within the same denominations as 
 those above referred to. The depositor, it is supposed, will 
 be led to place his money in this Exchequer for safe keeping; 
 yet he is not allowed the privilege of holding it there subject 
 to his own order, and to be checked for as his occasions may 
 require, but he is to be compelled to take, at once, an equiva 
 lent amount of certificates, in the small denominations adapt 
 ed to local currency, payable to bearer, which he must carry 
 about his person or deposit at home in his own safe, or in 
 some bank or other place of deposit ; and it is imagined that, 
 under these circumstances, he will find an inducement to 
 change his coin for this //*/", with a view to its safe keeping! 
 
457 
 
 Individuals having immediate use for small sums of money, 
 or wishing paper adapted to the expenses of a journey, and 
 current beyond the circle of the trade of their own locality, 
 would undoubtedly find a convenience in such a substitution 
 for coin, and might perhaps, under such conditions, resort to 
 the Exchequer. 
 
 During the present suspension of specie payments, in the 
 States where this suspension exists, such deposits might also 
 be expected to be made, for the sake of getting a better paper 
 than the suspended Banks can afford. But, beyond these in 
 ducements, the undersigned can discover no possible motive 
 which could operate upon a single individual in the nation to 
 make a deposit on the terms prescribed. When a resumption 
 shall take place in the payments of the banks at present sus 
 pended, the success of this private deposit arrangement in the 
 bill must be limited to a circle of operations too small to give 
 it any significance in the view even of its friends. 
 
 But if the scheme of these deposits should be successful 
 to the full extent projected, it still fails to add to the currency 
 a single element better than what was in it before. 
 
 The undersigned, therefore, thinks that these apparent 
 differences between the Sub-Treasury and the Exchequer pre 
 sent, in fact, but little variation in the practical working of the 
 two schemes, and still less in the principles which have made 
 the sub-Treasury an odious and offensive law to the great body 
 of the nation. 
 
 The majority of the committee, however, have incorporated 
 another provision in the bill, which may be supposed to create 
 a difference between it and the Sub-Treasury. This will be 
 found in the Qth and loth sections, relating to the sale and 
 purchase of bills of exchange. 
 
 This feature constitutes no difference between the two sys 
 tems, except in a particular of greater hazard, which will be 
 noticed hereafter. 
 
 The bills of exchange to be bought or sold can have no ap 
 plication to any other fund than the public deposits. The pri- 
 20 
 
458 POLITICAL PAPEKS. 
 
 vate deposits being a fund to be retained untouched in the 
 Exchequer, to redeem the certificates issued upon it, and at 
 the place where issued, cannot of course be used either in the 
 purchase or sale of Exchange. Such an appropriation of this 
 fund is strictly forbidden, and even made a felony. The drafts, 
 therefore, are to be made only upon \hzpublic deposits, where- 
 ever they may be found. In like manner, the purchase of bills 
 is to be made from the same source. It is obvious that bills 
 of exchange, under these conditions, will be seldom bought or 
 sold, except for the transfer of Government funds for the pub 
 lic use. The wants of the Treasury, we may well conclude, 
 are not likely to leave much to be turned backward and for 
 ward for mercantile convenience. 
 
 Now, this power to deal in exchange existed under the Sub- 
 Treasury quite as largely as it could exist under the Exchequer. 
 The Secretary of the Treasury has always used it for Govern 
 ment purposes, as a necessary incident to the nature of his 
 duties. If the Government has money in New York, and wishes 
 it in Mobile, the Secretary sells a bill on New York for money 
 in Mobile ; or he buys a bill on Mobile for money in New York. 
 This is a familiar and daily operation, and is but an exempli 
 fication of the power conferred by the Exchequer bill. 
 
 The Exchequer bill superadds to this power a dangerous 
 modification of it : it authorizes one agency to draw bills on any 
 other agency, and to sell them this operation being first al 
 lowed by the board of control. 
 
 The effect of this provision would be to permit an agency 
 in New Orleans to make and sell bills upon New York ; thus 
 enabling that agency, if fraudulently disposed, to collect large 
 amounts of money into its possession, upon bills which it had 
 no authority to draw, and to embezzle the amount before the 
 board of control could possibly detect it. In this point, the 
 Exchequer presents a much greater risk of embezzlement 
 and abduction of the public funds than could possibly occur 
 under the Sub-Treasury ; inasmuch as it empowers an agent to 
 create a commodity a bill of exchange which he may sell for 
 
FINANCE. 459 
 
 money, and with which he may elope before detecting. This 
 is an enhancement of the risk, and of course an aggravation of 
 that " insecurity" which the President, in his message at the 
 extra session, placed so prominently before the country, as 
 one of the causes of the condemnation of the Sub-Treasury. 
 
 From this review of the chief characteristics of the two 
 schemes, the undersigned is persuaded the House will perceive 
 but little in the proposed plan of the committee to reconcile 
 them to the objections which have been urged against the Sub- 
 Treasury. He might ask, what consideration of public good 
 is presented in this bill, to relieve it from the condemnation 
 pronounced against the other ; Would the Sub-Treasury have 
 been rendered palatable to the nation, if it had embraced the 
 project of a counterpart representation, in paper, of the coin 
 it required for public dues ? Would the provision to take pri 
 vate deposits of gold and silver have subdued or mitigated 
 the reluctance of the country to the measure this subtraction 
 of the gold and silver from the banks being one of the deepest 
 sources of dislike to it? Unquestionably, if the Sub-Treasury 
 gave room to apprehend, from its tendency to hoard up coin, 
 an injurious action upon the metallic basis of bank circulation, 
 that argument applies with greater force to the proposed Ex 
 chequer, since the first merely received the precious metals, to 
 return them immediately back to circulation in public payments ; 
 while the latter proposes to receive these metals on special 
 deposit, and pledges an inviolable retention of them as long 
 as their paper representative can be kept abroad. 
 
 The chief objections to the Sub-Treasury may be summed 
 up in the following terms : 
 
 The political cast of its organization, giving to -eager and 
 obsequious partisans so large a control over the funds of the 
 nation ; 
 
 The insecurity to which it exposed these funds from fraud 
 and peculation \ 
 
 Its exaction of coin from the people, and the withdrawal of 
 it from public use j 
 
460 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 Its power over the best banking institutions of the States ; 
 and, finally, 
 
 Insufficiency to supply the business wants of the peo- 
 pie. 
 
 None of these objections, in the opinion of the undersign 
 ed, are removed by the plan submitted by the majority of the 
 committee ; some of them are even magnified. 
 
 The undersigned, therefore, is compelled utterly to reject 
 this plan of administering the fiscal affairs of the nation, hold 
 ing it to be altogether insufficient, mischievous, and already 
 placed under the stigma both of Executive denunciation and 
 popular reproof. 
 
 Greatly before this does he prefer that scheme of a Board 
 of Exchequer which the President of the United States has pre 
 sented to Congress through the Secretary of the Treasury, the 
 consideration of which has also been referred to the commit 
 tee. That project has, at least, the merit of proposing the 
 means of augmenting the circulating medium by a supply ol 
 Government paper ; which, under favorable circumstances of 
 trade, could not fail, perhaps, in a useful degree, to aid the 
 money operations of the country. It is constructed with skill, 
 and a sagacious reference to the only conditions upon which 
 an adequate supply of paper money could be afforded to the 
 nation. It professes to aim at the equalization of exchange ; 
 and, with this view, proposes to establish agencies for buying 
 and selling bills, with the exclusive purpose of facilitating com 
 mercial negotiations. 
 
 It embraces two very important principles : 
 
 The first is, an issue of Government paper to an amount 
 of three to one, compared with the specie upon which it was 
 founded. 
 
 The second is, a power of local discounting, under the name 
 of exchange. 
 
 Its chief defect is to be found in the absence of a capital 
 adapted to these two functions. 
 
 Deeming the evil to be a want of a good currency sufficient- 
 
FINANCE. 46 1 
 
 ly abundant for common use, the first of these principles noted 
 above is incorporated in the bill, to remove that evil by an issue 
 correspondent to the demand. 
 
 The second principle, the power of discounting, is designed 
 to promote the circulation of those issues. 
 
 The President, in the concoction of that scheme, seems to 
 have been conscious of the fact that the mere disbursements 
 of the Government could not but out and sustain a large cir 
 culation. 
 
 Twenty-five millions of annual revenue paid out to public 
 creditors, in Government notes based upon specie, and twenty- 
 five millions always receivable during the year in the same me 
 dium, would leave but a small part of the whole in constant 
 circulation throughout the year a portion too inconsiderable 
 to effect all that is desired in a reform of the currency. To aid 
 the operation, he was aware that discounting in some form was 
 indispensable. 
 
 If the design be to emit either a Government or bank pa 
 per, in such quantity as to leave a useful residuum for circula 
 tion, there are but two modes of ushering it to the community : 
 it must be either paid out to creditors, or loaned out, on proper 
 security, to borrowers. When the receipts are equal to the 
 payments, the first mode of emission will be insufficient. To 
 increase the amount desired to be kept out, it will then be ne 
 cessary to provide means for lending it. The most obvious of 
 these means is supplied by exchanging it for commercial paper. 
 In the discounting of a bill of exchange, the Government would 
 find an occasion for issuing an additional amount of its notes, 
 for which it would receive, in return, the avails of the bill dis 
 counted, in specie, from the acceptor. 
 
 It is manifestly under the influence of this conviction that 
 the President, through the Secretary of the Treasury, recom 
 mends the power of local discounting contained in the bill he 
 directed to be prepared. 
 
 Every one will perceive that this power of issue and of dis 
 count constitutes a bank; and that the President s plan, there- 
 
462 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 fore, is a Government bank, constructed with a view primarily 
 to the convenience of the Treasury, and secondarily to the ad 
 vantage of commercial speculation and adventure. 
 
 The principle defect of this plan, as the undersigned has al 
 ready observed, lies in its want of capital. So striking is this 
 defect, that any one who reflects upon it, and has noted the his 
 tory of recent events, must see that if the scheme had been put 
 in operation last August, it would, most probably, have sus 
 pended payment in November the Government in that inter 
 val not having been able, by its own credit, to raise money 
 upon its own stocks, thrown into market precisely under the 
 circumstances which the President s bill suggested for raising 
 a supply of specie to meet the demands of his projected bank. 
 His scheme, therefore, in this most material point, is singularly 
 imperfect. It has many other imperfections of less note, upon 
 which the undersigned will not stop to comment. The presen 
 tation of such a measure can be regarded in no other light than 
 the acknowledgment, from a high authority in this Govern 
 ment, of the indispensable necessity of a central federal insti 
 tution, clothed with the most important of the ordinary banking 
 powers. 
 
 Regarding the Executive opinion in this light, and assent 
 ing to the soundness of the principle to which it refers, the un 
 dersigned had some hope that the committee, instead of sink 
 ing to a Sub-Treasury, would rather have risen to a more per 
 fect bank, and thus have responded more effectually and more 
 satisfactorily to the often-expressed will and sober convictions 
 of the people convictions which, however they may have been 
 overborne or perverted by party influences, or silenced by the 
 empty clamor of political leaders, have, nevertheless, abided in 
 the minds of the nation with undiminished vigor, and been free 
 ly uttered as often as a cool judgment has been able to pre 
 dominate over passion and prejudice. 
 
 It seemed to the undersigned to be due to the Executive, 
 when thus recanting some of the errors of his past opinions, 
 and adopting the more congenial sentiments of the nation, that 
 
FINANCE. 463 
 
 the committee should have striven to amend his plan, by giv 
 ing it a more effective and practical tendency in the direction 
 he indicated, and thus have offered to the country a bank 
 clothed with the functions which the President has admit 
 ted to be so essential to the public interest, and free of the de 
 fects which are apparent in the structure of the bill he has 
 furnished us. 
 
 The undersigned will endeavor to supply this omission of 
 the committee. To do this, he conceives it will be necessary 
 to strip the machine offered by the Executive of its purely polit 
 ical organization, and invest it with a character which shall 
 exhibit, in mingled proportions, public and private attributes 
 in the union of which only, he conceives, may the public and 
 private functions assigned to the institution be adequately per 
 formed. He is impelled to this course, not only by a sense of 
 the expediency of such a union, but from the highest convic 
 tions of the necessity for it, imposed by the Constitution. 
 
 As to the plan of the bank proposed by the President, in 
 his bill for establishing the Board of Exchequer, the under 
 signed is obliged to say, in the language of that high function 
 ary himself, " I cannot conscientiously give it my approval." 
 
 In the first place, he regards it as an attempt, for the first 
 time made in this country, " to create a Government bank to 
 operate per se over the Union." Upon the power to establish 
 such a bank, founded exclusively on Government funds, and 
 committed to the management of Government officers, destined 
 to perform the ordinary operations of receiving private depos 
 its, issuing paper, and making discounts, the undersigned is 
 not aware, until the presentation of the bill, that any portion 
 of the citizens of this republic have ever entertained "different 
 or conflicting opinions." It is a new attempt, bold in its de 
 sign and dangerous in its character ; and it will suffice for the 
 undersigned to say, in the words of that high authority already 
 quoted, that his " own opinion has been uniformly proclaimed 
 to be against the exercise of any such power by this Govern 
 ment." 
 
POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 In the second place, the-bill provides for a system of local 
 discounting. 
 
 " It may justify substantially," to adopt the authoritative 
 language of the same exalted officer, recorded in a celebrated 
 State paper, "a system of discounts of the most objectionable 
 character. It is to deal in bills of exchange drawn in one State 
 and payable in another, without any restraint. It may, in fact, 
 assume the most objectionable form of accommodation paper. 
 It is not required to rest on any actual or substantial exchange 
 basis : a drawer in one place becomes the acceptor in another, 
 and so, in turn, the acceptor becomes the drawer, upon a mu 
 tual understanding. It may, at the same time, indulge in mere 
 local discounts, under the name of bills of exchange." 
 
 This operation, thus accurately described, is provided for 
 under the name of exchange in the Executive bill ; and the 
 power to exercise it is claimed for the Government itself, in a 
 simple machine of its own, constructed for the purpose of col 
 lecting, safe keeping, and disbursing the public revenue. The 
 undersigned, with very broad, and what are sometimes called 
 latitudinarian, opinions upon the construction of the Constitu 
 tion, cannot persuade himself to sanction this remarkable ultra- 
 ism of interpretation. He is willing to admit, and has, in fact 
 always admitted, the power of this Government to establish a 
 joint-stock bank, whenever Congress has deemed such an in 
 stitution necessary and proper to the collection and disburse 
 ment of the revenue. And, in accordance with an opinion 
 generally received, especially since it has been sanctioned by 
 the judgment of the Supreme Court, he holds it altogether with 
 in the authority of Congress to clothe such bank with all the 
 capacities necessary to its prosperous existence while it is em 
 ployed to aid the Government in its duties. The faculty of dis 
 counting notes and bills, of receiving private deposits, and of 
 issuing circulation, being an indispensable incident to its pres 
 ervation and success, although not necessarily a part of the 
 function to be performed for the Government, is yet so essen 
 tial to the existence of the machine as to be brought within the 
 
FINANCE. 465 
 
 power of Congress, which, without such power, could not fur 
 nish the Government with the principal and paramount facility 
 of the bank itself. Upon these grounds alone has the exercise 
 of such a power been justified. 
 
 But when the government proposes to construct a machine 
 for its own use in the management of the revenue, the vitality 
 of that machine is wholly independent of the incidents above 
 referred to ; and thus every pretext is removed which could 
 give the least plausibility to the excuse for usurping a power to 
 establish a purely Government bank, with the privilege of local 
 discounting in the shape of exchange, and to operate per se 
 over the whole Union. 
 
 To quote again from the same high source of instruction 
 already appealed to, the undersigned, " without going further 
 into the argument, will say that, in looking to the powers of this 
 Government to collect, safely keep, and disburse the public 
 revenue, and incidentally to regulate the commerce and ex 
 changes, he has not been able to satisfy himself that the es 
 tablishment by this Government of a Government bank of dis 
 count, in the ordinary acceptation of that term, was a necessa 
 ry means, or one demanded by propriety, to execute those pow 
 ers. What can the local discounts of the bank have to do with 
 the collecting, safe keeping, and disbursing of the revenue ? 
 So far as the mere discounting of paper is concerned, it is quite 
 immaterial to this question whether the discount is obtained at 
 a State bank or a United States bank. They are both equally 
 local ; both beginning and ending in a local accommodation." 
 The Executive goes so far ahead of the undersigned in latitu- 
 dinous construction of the Constitution, and claims the exer 
 cise of powers so novel, and even perilous, that the undersign 
 ed has thought it his duty to express his dissent from the doc 
 trine asserted, and respectfully to protest against this attempt, 
 emanating from such an authoritative source, to interpolate a 
 new principle in the Constitution, so hazardous to the rights 
 of the States, and tending so much to consolidation. 
 
 In the last place, the bill of the President incorporates a 
 2o !: 
 
4(56 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 most objectionable principle in its requirement of the assent of 
 the States to enable the fiscal agent of the Government his 
 Board of Exchequer to perform the duties which the national 
 Legislature is invoked to say are necessary and proper to the 
 regulation of the national concerns. 
 
 The introduction of this principle is neither more nor less 
 than the affirmation of the proposition, that the consent of any 
 one or of all the States is capable of conferring upon the na 
 tional Government a power which it did not possess before ; 
 and still more, that any one or all of the States may obstruct 
 the operations of the Government in a sphere of action which 
 the Constitution allows the Government to occupy. 
 
 This doctrine, in one aspect, leads so directly to centrali 
 zation in the national Government of powers not granted, and, 
 in another aspect, tends so decidedly to anarchy ; is so sub 
 versive of the rights of the States, especially of that right which 
 belongs to each State to require every other State to confine 
 itself to its own orbit ; is so fraught with mischief to the har 
 mony of the national laws and institutions, that it ought to be 
 discountenanced at the first moment in which it is presented 
 to Congress. It is a supersubtle abstraction a distillation of 
 other abstractions capable of no imaginable good, but only 
 of harm, and deserves to be put in the category of petitions un 
 der the twenty-first rule. The undersigned regrets that the 
 same principle, with even less show of justification for it, is in 
 corporated by the majority of the committee in the twelfth sec 
 tion of the bill they have reported to the House. 
 
 He has thus very cursorily pointed out his objections to 
 the plan submitted by the Executive, through the Secretary 
 of the Treasury. That plan professes to emanate from the 
 President and his constitutional adviser. Its defects are, per 
 haps, the result of the difficulty of combining the contrarieties 
 of conflicting opinion. The bill, we may imagine, has sprung 
 from the pressure of a cabinet necessity. It is presumed to be 
 a treaty between variant portions of the Executive the best 
 thing that could be done, considering the consciences of the 
 
FINANCE. 467 
 
 parties who produced it. This will sufficiently account for its 
 imperfections. It recognizes, however, a great and valuable 
 principle, for which the country owes the Executive its thanks 
 the principle that the chief relief to the nation is to be ob 
 tained through the exercise of a judiciously contrived and ad 
 ministered federal banking power. Happily concurring with 
 the Executive in this opinion, the undersigned feels it his duty 
 to contribute his aid towards the consummation at which the 
 Executive has aimed ; and persuaded that the only form in 
 which the Constitution allows the Government to avail itself 
 of the powers which the President claims for it is to be found 
 in the incoqDoration of a national bank, and, moreover, con 
 vinced that such an institution presents the only practicable 
 mode of relieving the currency and restoring to the business 
 of the country its former prosperity, he submits with this re 
 port a bill for the establishment of a bank, on such conditions 
 as he believes may be rendered instrumental to a great nation 
 al benefit. He conceives the present time to be eminently 
 favorable to this endeavor. The gross abuses everywhere ap 
 parent in the banking system, the fate of the late United States 
 Bank of Pennsylvania, the rapid succession of catastrophes 
 which are driving the worthless institutions of the country out 
 of existence, all furnish admonitions from which Congress and 
 the people may derive the greatest profit, in the establishment 
 and conduct of a new national bank. 
 
 We may hope that the Executive, whose opinions have un 
 dergone so important a change, will aid in this beneficent pur 
 pose. Professing to walk in the light afforded him by the 
 great fathers of the republican school, he will find an illustrious 
 example, to encourage his footstep, in one of the greatest of his 
 predecessors, who, long refusing to yield the convictions of his 
 mind to the advocacy of the constitutional right to establish a 
 bank, was taught, at last, by the public distress in a disordered 
 currency, and by the thickening disasters which invaded the 
 workshops and broke down the industry of the people ; which 
 stripped the laborer of the pittance of his daily toil, and swept 
 
408 POLITICAL PAPEKF. 
 
 away the accumulations of years of prosperous industry from 
 the thousands whom fortune had favored by these calamities, 
 written on the face of the country, he was taught to retract an 
 opinion which he found to stand in the way of the public wel 
 fare and a humane discharge of his great office. 
 
 The Executive may read now, in this day, on the face of 
 that same country, the same misfortunes more indelibly stamp 
 ed, marked by more haggard lines, and signified by deeper 
 anguish of expression. He must acknowledge to himself the 
 utter failure of all experiments and expedients of relief, and 
 realize the melancholy truth that the nation plunges, with fear 
 ful precipitation, from worse to worse ; that gloom and despond 
 ency are fast engendering a spirit of discontent, which may not 
 long endure without aggravating the common ills of the day 
 by the still more deplorable affliction of disaffection to a Gov 
 ernment which many begin to think has lost its paternal regard 
 in cold and selfish insulation. Reflecting on these unwelcome 
 facts, he may take heart of grace to follow that glorious ex 
 ample of patriotic magnanimity to which we have invited his 
 study. 
 
 To present him, therefore, with the same opportunity afford 
 ed to his predecessor to surrender his recent opinions upon the 
 altar of the nation, and to perform the same grateful duty of 
 restoring the prosperity of the land, the undersigned submits 
 to the House, with this report, a bill " to incorporate the Na 
 tional Bank of the United States," hoping that it will find favor 
 with Congress, and a cheerful support from the Executive. 
 
 The undersigned, in offering this measure to the considera 
 tion of the House and the country, cannot withhold the ex 
 pression of his clear conviction, fortified, as he knows it to be, 
 by the convictions of the great body of the people, that, how 
 ever effective a bank may be found in promoting relief from 
 the existing embarrassments of the nation, it must be disabled 
 of a great portion of its usefulness, unless it be sustained by 
 an instant and complete revision of the tariff. The bank can be 
 but the minister of the currency. The currency itself must be 
 
FINANCE. 469 
 
 created by the national means devoted to the payment of the 
 national debt. It must be guarded and preserved by a steady 
 and efficient revenue, adequate to meet the engagements of 
 the Government without the aid of loans or paper devices, by 
 which timid statesmen procrastinate a day of reckoning. To 
 supply such revenue is the first and great duty of Congress. 
 When that is done, the value of a bank will be daily acknowl 
 edged in the gratitude of the people. A good tariff and a bank 
 are inseparable elements of national success in all the depart 
 ments of industry. Our choice lies between these on the one 
 hand, and funded debt, irredeemable paper money, high-priced 
 loans, and all the shifts which lead to national dishonor and dis 
 grace, on the other. The country, above all things, desire 
 that Congress would make an immediate choice between them. 
 These views are respectfully and earnestly submitted to the 
 House, with the accompanying bill. 
 
 JOHN P. KENNEDY. 
 
 A bill to incorporate the subscribers to the National Bank of the 
 United States. 
 
 Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of 
 the United States of America in Congress assembled, That a Na 
 tional Bank of the United States shall be established in the 
 District of Columbia, with a capital of thirty millions of dollars, 
 divided into three hundred thousand shares, of one hundred 
 dollars each share. One hundred thousand shares shall be 
 subscribed for by the United States, and the residue of the 
 said capital may be subscribed and paid for by individuals, 
 companies, corporations, or States, the said individuals being 
 citizens of the United States, and the said companies and cor 
 porations being of the several States, or of these United States, 
 or Territories thereof, in the manner hereinafter specified. 
 But Congress reserves to itself the power of augmenting the 
 capital of the said bank, at any time after the ist of January, 
 1852, by authorizing the addition thereto of a sum not exceed 
 ing twenty millions of dollars, divided into shares as aforesaid, 
 
POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 which may be subscribed for, at not less than their par value, 
 by the United States, or by any State, corporation, company, 
 or individuals, in the manner directed by law ; Provided, That 
 the United States shall not subscribe for more than one-third 
 of the said additional capital. 
 
 SEC. 2. And be it further enacted. That subscriptions for the 
 sum of twenty millions of dollars, towards constituting the 
 capital of the said bank, shall be opened on the first .Mon 
 day of May next, at the following places, that is to say : at 
 Washington, in the District of Columbia ; at Portland, in the 
 State of Maine ; at Portsmouth, in the State of New Hamp 
 shire ; at Boston, in the State of Massachusetts ; at Providence, 
 in the State of Rhode Island ; at Hartford, in the State of 
 Connecticut; at Burlington, in the State of Vermont; at New 
 York, in the State of New York ; at New Brunswick, in the 
 State of New Jersey ; at Philadelphia, in the State of Penn 
 sylvania ; at Wilmington, in the State of Delaware ; at Balti 
 more, in the State of Maryland ; at Richmond, in the State of 
 Virginia ; at Lexington, in the State of Kentucky ; at Cincin 
 nati, in the State of Ohio ; at Raleigh, in the State of North 
 Carolina; at Nashville, in the State of Tennessee ; at Charles 
 ton, in the State of South Carolina ; at Savannah, in the State 
 of Georgia; at New Orleans, in the State of Louisiana; at 
 Indianapolis, in the State of Indiana ; at Mobile, in the State 
 of Alabama ; at St. Louis, in the State of Missouri ; at Spring 
 field, in the State of Illinois ; at Detroit, in the State of Mich 
 igan ; at Natchez, in the State of Mississippi ; and at Little 
 Rock, in the State of Arkansas. And the said subscriptions 
 shall be opened under the superintendence of five commis 
 sioners at Washington city, and of three commissioners at each 
 of the other places aforesaid, to be appointed by the Secretary 
 of the Treasury, who is hereby authorized to make such ap 
 pointments, and shall continue open every day, from the time 
 of opening the same, between the hours of ten o clock in the 
 forenoon and four o clock in the afternoon, for the term of 
 twenty days, exclusive of Sundays, when the same shall be 
 
FINANCE. 4:71 
 
 closed ; and immediately thereafter, the commissioners, or any 
 two of them, at the respective places aforesaid, shall cause two 
 transcrips or copies of such subscriptions to be made, one of 
 which they shall send to the Secretary of the Treasury, one 
 they shall retain, and the original they shall transmit, within 
 seven days from the closing of the subscriptions as aforesaid, 
 to the commissioners at Washington city. And on the receipt 
 of the said original subscriptions, or either of the said copies 
 thereof, if the original be lost, mislaid, or detained, the com 
 missioners at Washington aforesaid, or a majority of them, 
 shall immediately thereafter convene, and proceed to take an 
 account of the said subscriptions ; and if more than the amount 
 of twenty millions of dollars shall have been subscribeb, then 
 the said last-mentioned commissioners shall deduct the amount 
 of such excess from the largest subscriptions, in such manner 
 as that no subscription shall be reduced in amount while any 
 one remains larger : Provided, That if the subscription taken 
 at either of the places aforesaid shall not exceed two thousand 
 shares, there shall be no reduction of such subscriptions, nor 
 shall, in any case, the subscriptions taken at either of the 
 places aforesaid be reduced below that amount. And, in case 
 the aggregate amount of the said subscriptions shall exceed 
 twenty millions of dollars, the said last-mentioned commission 
 ers, after having apportioned the same, as aforesaid shall cause 
 lists of the said apportioned subscriptions to be made out, in 
 cluding in each list the apportioned subscription for the place 
 where the original subscription was made, one of which lists 
 they shall transmit to the commissioners, or one of them, under 
 whose superintendence such subscriptions were originally 
 made, that the subscribers may thereby ascertain the number 
 of shares to them respectively apportioned, as aforesaid ; and 
 in case the aggregate amount of the said subscriptions made 
 during the period aforesaid, shall not amount to twenty millions 
 of dollars, the subscriptions to complete the said sum shall be 
 and remain open at Washington city, aforesaid, under the su 
 perintendence of the commissioners appointed for that place ; 
 
47-} POLITICAL PAP I PS. 
 
 and the subscriptions may be then made by any individual, 
 company, corporation, or State, for any number of shares, not 
 exceeding in the whole the amount required to complete the 
 said sum of twenty millions of dollars. 
 
 SEC. 3. And be it further enacted, That it shall be lawful 
 for any individual, company, corporation, or State, when the 
 subscriptions shall be opened as heretofore directed, to sub 
 scribe for any number of shares of the capital of the said 
 bank, not exceeding two thousand five hundred shares ; and 
 that the sums so subscribed shall be payable and paid in bul 
 lion, in gold or silver coin of the United States, or in foreign 
 coins made and declared current in the United States by the 
 act of Congress of the 25th of June, 1834, entitled " An act 
 regulating the value of certain foreign silver coins in the Uni 
 ted States," and by the act of the 28th of June, 18^4, entitled 
 " An act regulating the value of certain gold coins within the 
 United States," at the following rates, to wit : the sovereign 
 of Great Britain at ninety-four cents and sixty-two hundredths 
 of a cent for each pennyweight ; (he pieces of forty and twen 
 ty francs of France, at ninety-two cents and ninety-two hun 
 dredths of a cent for each pennyweight ; the doubloon and 
 parts of Spain, at eighty-nine cents and fifty-one hundredths 
 of a cent for each pennyweight j the doubloon and parts of 
 Mexico, at eighty-nine cents and fifty -one hundredths of a 
 cent for each pennyweight ; the doubloon and parts of Peru, 
 at eighty- nine cents and seventy-one hundredths of a cent 
 for each pennyweight ; the doubloon and parts of Chili, at 
 eighty-nine cents and seventy-one hundredths of a cent for 
 each pennyweight; the doubloons of Bogota, Colombia, at 
 eighty-nine cents and ninety-two hundredths of a cent for 
 each pennyweight ; the doubloons of Popayan, Colombia, at 
 eighty-eight cents and sixty-eight hundredths of a cent for 
 each pennyweight; the doubloons of 1837 and 1838 of New 
 Grenada, at ninety cents and two hundredths of a cent for 
 each pennyweight ; the doubloons of Bolivia, at eighty-nine 
 cents and ninety-two hundredths of a cent for each penny- 
 
FINANCE. 473 
 
 weight ; the doubloons of Central America, at eighty-five 
 cents and seventy-nine hundredths of a cent for each penny 
 weight ; the doubloons of La Plata, at eighty-four cents and 
 twenty-four hundredths of a cent for each pennyweight ; the 
 Johannes and half of Portugal, at ninety-four cents and forty- 
 six hundredths of a cent for each pennyweight ; the crown 
 (of 5,000 reis} and a half, since 1838, of Portugal, at ninety- 
 four cents and forty-six hundredths of a cent for each penny 
 weight ; the piece (of 5,400 reis) of 1838 of Brazil, at ninety- 
 four cents and forty-six hundredths of a cent for each penny 
 weight ; and in foreign silver coins at the value fixed upon 
 them severally in the act first above named, or in Treasury notes 
 of the United States, or in certificates of stock issued under 
 the act entitled " An act authorizing a loan not exceeding the 
 sum of twelve millions of dollars," approved July 2ist, 1841. 
 And the payments made in Treasury notes or in the said cer 
 tificates of stock shall be paid and received at the par value 
 thereof, including all interest which shall have accrued thereon 
 on the day of such payment. And the payments of the said 
 subscriptions shall be made and completed by the subscrib 
 ers, respectively, at the time and in the manner following, that 
 is to say : at the time of subscribing there shall be paid ten 
 dollars on each share, in bullion, in gold or silver coin, in the 
 Treasury notes of the United States, or in the said certificates 
 of stock ; and twenty-five dollars more, in bullion, in coin, 
 Treasury notes, or certificates of stock, as aforesaid, at the ex 
 piration of three calendar months from the first Monday in 
 May, 1842 ; and there shall be paid the further sum of twen 
 ty-five dollars on each share, in bullion, in gold or silver coin, 
 Treasury notes, or certificates of stock, as aforesaid, in eight 
 calendar months from the first Monday in May, 1842 ; and 
 forty dollars more in bullion, in coin, Treasury notes, or cer 
 tificates of stock, as aforesaid, at the expiration of twelve cal 
 endar months from the said first Monday. 
 
 SEC. 4. And be it further enacted, That if, in consequence 
 of the apportionment of the shares in the capital of the said 
 
471 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 bank among the subscribers, in the case and in the manner 
 hereinbefore provided, any subscriber shall have delivered to 
 the commissioners, at the time of subscribing, a greater 
 amount of bullion, or gold or silver coin, Treasury notes, or 
 certificates of stock, than shall be necessary to complete the 
 payments for the share or shares of such subscribers, appor 
 tioned as aforesaid, the commissioners shall only retain so 
 much of the said bullion, or gold or silver coin, Treasury 
 notes, or certificates of stock, as shall be necessary to com 
 plete such payments ; and shall, forthwith, return the surplus 
 thereof, on application for the same, to the subscribers law 
 fully entitled thereto. And the commissioners, respectively, 
 shall deposit the bullion, or gold and silver coin, Treasury 
 notes, and certificates of stock, by them respectively received 
 as aforesaid, from the subscribers to the capital of the said 
 bank, in some place of secure and safe keeping, so that the 
 same may and shall be specifically delivered and transferred, 
 as the same were by them respectively received, to the Nation 
 al Bank of the United States, or to their order, as soon as 
 shall be required after the organization of the said bank. 
 And the said commissioners appointed to superintend the sub 
 scriptions to the capital of the said bank, as aforesaid, shall 
 receive a reasonable compensation for their services, respect 
 ively, and shall be allowed all reasonable charges and ex 
 penses incurred in the execution of their trust, to be paid by 
 the bank out of the funds thereof. 
 
 SEC. 5. And be it further enacted, That no certificate of 
 stock, or any subscription, or any right thereto, shall be trans 
 ferred, except by operation of law, until after the whole amount 
 of the second instalment shall have been fully paid, and every 
 contract or agreement made or entered into for the transfer of 
 such stock, or for the holding the same in trust for the use of 
 any other person, except the person in whose name it is sub 
 scribed in the books, or for whose use it is therein expressed, 
 shall be wholly and absolutely null and void in law. That it 
 shall be lawful for the president, directors, and company of the 
 
FINANCE. 475 
 
 said bank, to sell and transfer, for gold and silver coin, or bul 
 lion, Treasury notes and certificates of stock subscribed to the 
 capital of the said bank, as aforesaid. 
 
 SEC. 6 And be it further enacted, That, at the opening of 
 the subscription to the capital stock of the said bank, the Sec 
 retary of the Treasury shall subscribe, or cause to be sub 
 scribed on behalf of the United States, the said number of one 
 hundred thousand shares, amounting to ten millions of dollars, 
 as aforesaid : which said subscriptions, so made by the Secre 
 tary of the Treasury, as aforesaid, shall be paid in bullion, in 
 gold or silver coin, or in stock of the United States, bearing 
 interest at the rate of five per cent, per annum ; and if pay 
 ment thereof, or any part thereof, be made in public stock, 
 bearing interest as aforesaid, the said interest shall be payable 
 half yearly, to commence from the time of making such pay 
 ments on account of the said subscription ; and the principal 
 of the said stock shall be redeemable in any sums and at any 
 periods which the Government shall deem fit, after the expira 
 tion of fifteen years. And the Secretary of the Treasury shall 
 cause certificates of public stock, to the amount of ten mil 
 lions of dollars, to be prepared and made in the usual form, 
 and shall at his discretion, and whensoever he shall think fit, 
 sell the same for gold or silver coin, or bullion, at not less 
 than the par value thereof, or he shall pay over and deliver 
 three millions five hundred thousand dollars of the same to the 
 said bank, on the first day of September, eighteen hundred and 
 forty-two, and two millions five hundred thousand dollars on 
 the first day of January eighteen hundred and forty-three, 
 and four millions of dollars of the same on the first day of 
 May, in the same year ; which said stock it shall be law 
 ful for the said bank to sell and transfer, for gold and sil 
 ver coin, or bullion, at their discretion. And if the Secretary 
 of the Treasury shall sell the whole, or any part of the said 
 stock, he shall pay to the said bank gold and silver coin, or 
 bullion, to the nominal amount of stock so sold, in like instal 
 ments : Provided, nevertheless. That if the amount of stock 
 
4-7 G POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 which may be offered for the subscription of individuals 
 States, or corporations, shall not be fully taken prior to the 
 thirtieth of August next, and the deficiency do not exceed or*e- 
 third, the residue shall be subscribed for by the Secretary of 
 the Treasury, on behalf of the United States, and shall be sold 
 by him as soon thereafter as he can obtain its par value ; and 
 for which the Secretary of the Treasury is hereby authorized 
 to issue stocks of the United States, in manner as before pro 
 vided. 
 
 SEC. 7. And be it further enacted. That the subscribers to 
 the said bank, their successors and assigns, shall be, and they 
 are hereby, created a corporation and body politic, by the 
 name and style of " the National Bank of the United States," 
 and shall so continue until the first day of June, in the year 
 one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two ; and by that name 
 shall be, and are hereby, made able and capable in law to have, 
 purchase, receive, possess, enjoy, and retain to them and their 
 successors, lands, rents, tenements, hereditaments, goods, chat 
 tels, and effects, of whatsoever kind, nature, and quality ; and 
 the same to sell, grant, demise, alien, or dispose of; to sue 
 and be sued, plead, and be impleaded, answer and be an 
 swered, defend and be defended, in all State courts having 
 competent jurisdiction, and in any circuit court of the United 
 States ; and also to make, have, and use a common seal, and 
 the same to break, alter, and renew at their pleasure ; and also 
 to ordain, establish, and put into execution, such by-laws and 
 ordinances and regulations as they shall deem necessary and 
 convenient for the government of the said corporation, not be 
 ing contrary to the constitution thereof, or to the laws of the 
 United States ; and generally to do and execute all and singu 
 lar the acts, matters, and things which to them it shall or may 
 appertain to do ; subject, nevertheless, to the rules, regulations, 
 restrictions, limitations, and provisions, hereinafter prescribed 
 and declared. 
 
 SEC. 8. And be it further enacted, That, for the management 
 of the affairs of the said corporation, there shall be nine direct- 
 
FINANCE. 4-77 
 
 ors, three of whom shall be annually appointed by the President 
 of the United States, by and with the advice and consent of the 
 Senate, and six of whom shall be annually elected at the banking- 
 house in the city of Washington, on the first Monday of Janu 
 ary in each year, by the qualified stockholders of the capital 
 of said bank, other than the United States, and by a plurality 
 of votes then and there actually given, according to the scale 
 of voting hereinafter prescribed : Provided, always, That no 
 member of Congress, or of the respective State Legislatures, 
 and no officer or contractor of the Federal or State Govern 
 ments, shall be a director in said bank or branches, and that 
 110 person being a director in the National Bank of the United 
 States, or any of its branches, shall be a director of any other 
 bank ; and should any such director act as a director in any 
 other bank, it shall forthwith vacate his appointment in the di 
 rection of the National Bank of the United States ; and the 
 directors so duly appointed and elected shall be capable of 
 serving, by virtue of such appointment and choice, from the 
 first Monday in the month of January of each year, until the 
 end and expiration of the first Monday in the month of Janu 
 ary of the year next ensuing the time of each annual election, 
 to be held by the stockholders as aforesaid. And the board 
 of directors annually, at the first meeting after their election in 
 each and every year, shall proceed to elect one of the directors 
 to be president of the corporation, who shall hold the said of 
 fice during the same period for which the directors are ap 
 pointed and elected as aforesaid : Provided, also, That the first 
 appointment and election of the directors and president of the 
 said bank shall be at the time and for the period hereinafter 
 declared : And provided, also, That in case it should at any 
 time happen that an appointment or election of directors, or 
 an election of the president of the said bank, should not be so 
 made as to take effect on any day when, in pursuance of this 
 act, they ought to take effect, the said corporation shall not 
 for that cause be deemed to be dissolved ; but it shall be law 
 ful at any other time to make such appointments, and to hold 
 
478 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 such elections (as the case may be), and the manner of hold 
 ing the elections shall be regulated by the by-laws and ordi 
 nances of the said corporation ; and until such appointments 
 or elections be made, the directors and president of the said 
 bank for the time being shall continue in office : And provided, 
 also, That in case of the death, resignation, or removal of the 
 president of the said corporation, the directors shall proceed 
 to elect another president from the directors as aforesaid ; and 
 in case of the death, resignation, or absence from the United 
 States, or removal of a director from office, the vacancy shall 
 be supplied by the President of the United States, or by the 
 surviving directors, as the case may be ; but the President of 
 the United States alone shall have power to remove either of 
 the directors appointed by him as aforesaid. 
 
 SEC. 9. And be it further enacted, That as soon as the sum 
 of ten dollars on each share, in bullion, gold or silver coin, 
 Treasury notes or certificates of stock, shall have been actually 
 received on account of the subscriptions to the capital of the 
 said bank (exclusively of the subscriptions aforesaid on the 
 part of the United States), notice thereof, shall be given, by 
 the persons under whose superintendence the subscriptions 
 shall have been made at the city of Washington, in at least two 
 newspapers printed in each of the places (if so many be print 
 ed in such places, respectively) where subscriptions shall have 
 been made ; and the said persons shall, at the same time, and 
 in like manner, notify a time and place, within the said city of 
 Washington, at the distance of at least thirty days from the 
 time of such notification, for proceeding to the election of six 
 directors, as aforesaid ; and it shall be lawful for such election 
 to be then and there made. And the President of the United 
 States is hereby authorized, if Congress be then in session, and 
 if not in session then as soon thereafter as Congress may be in 
 session, to nominate, and, by and with the advice and consent of 
 the Senate, to appoint three directors of the said bank, whether 
 they be stockholders or not any thing in the provisions of this 
 act to the contrary notwithstanding ; and the persons who shall 
 
FINANCE. 479 
 
 be elected and appointed, as aforesaid, shall be the directors of 
 the said bank and shall proceed to elect one of the directors to 
 be president of the said bank ; and the directors and president 
 of the said bank, so appointed and elected as aforesaid, shall be 
 capable of serving in their respective offices, by virtue thereof, 
 until the end and expiration of the first Monday of the month of 
 January next ensuing the said appointments and election : Pro 
 vided, That it shall and may be lawful for the President of the 
 United States, as soon as ten dollars on each share are paid, in 
 manner herein provided, to appoint three directors, who shall 
 serve until they are superseded by appointments made by the 
 President of the United States, by and with the advice and con 
 sent of the Senate, as hereinbefore provided : And provided fur 
 ther, That as soon the sum of six millions five hundred thou 
 sand dollars, in bullion, gold or silver coin, or in Treasury notes, 
 or certificates of stock, shall have been actually received on ac 
 count of the subscriptions to the capital of the said bank, (ex 
 clusively of the subscription often millions aforesaid on the part 
 of the United States), the operations of the same shall thence 
 forth commence and continue at the city of Washington. 
 
 SEC. 10. And be it further enacted, That the directors for the 
 time being shall have power to appoint such officers, clerks, 
 and servants, under them, as shall be necessary for executing 
 the business of the said corporation, and to allow them such 
 compensation for their services, respectively, as shall be rea 
 sonable ; and shall be capable of exercising such other powers 
 and authorities, for the well-governing and ordering of the af 
 fairs of the said corporation, as shall be prescribed, fixed, and 
 determined by the by-laws, regulations, and ordinances of the 
 same. 
 
 SEC. ii. And be it further enacted, That the following rules, 
 restrictions, limitations, and provisions, shall form and be fun 
 damental articles of the constitution of said corporation, to wit : 
 
 i st. The number of votes to which the stockholders shall 
 be entitled, in voting for directors, shall be according to the 
 number of shares he, she, or they, respectively, shall hold, in 
 
480 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 the proportions following, that is to say : for one share, and not 
 more than two shares, one vote ; for every two shares above 
 two, and not exceeding ten, one vote ; for every four shares 
 above ten, and not exceeding thirty, one vote ; for every six 
 shares above thirty, and not exceeding sixty, one vote ; for every 
 eight shares above sixty, and not exceeding one hundred, one 
 vote ; for every ten shares above one hundred, one vote ; but no 
 person, copartnership, or body politic, shall be entitled to a 
 greater number than sixty votes ; and, after the first election, 
 no share or shares shall confer a right of voting, which shall 
 not have been holden three calendar months previous to the 
 day of election ; no proxy to any officer of the bank, or of more 
 than ninety days standing, shall be valid ; no proxy shall have 
 a right to give more than three hundred votes ; and stockhold 
 ers actually resident citizens of the United States, and none 
 others, may vote in elections, by proxy or otherwise ; and any 
 person holding a proxy may be required by any stockholder, at 
 the time of voting, to make oath that he believes his principal, 
 in whose behalf he votes, to be the bona fide holder of the share 
 or shares, and that no sale or transfer has been made for the 
 purpose of evading the scale of voting established by this act. 
 
 2d. Not more than five-sixths of the directors elected by the 
 stockholders, who shall be in office at the time of an annual 
 election, shall be elected for the succeeding year ; and no di 
 rector shall hold his office for more than five years out of six 
 in succession ; but the director who shall be President at the 
 time of an election may always be reappointed, or selected, as 
 the case may be. 
 
 3d. None but a stockholder, resident citizen, shall be a di 
 rector. Not more than two directors shall be elected, and not 
 more than one appointed, out of any one State ; and they shall 
 be paid by said bank such reasonable compensation for their ser 
 vices as the stockholders, at their annual meeting, shall direct ; 
 but the salary of the president shall be fixed by the directors. 
 
 4th. Not less than five directors shall constitute a board 
 for the transaction of business, of whom the president shall al- 
 
FIXAXCK. 481 
 
 ways be one ; and at least three of the five shall be of the di 
 rectors elected by the stockholders ; and in case of sickness 
 or necessary absence of the president, his place shall be sup 
 plied by any other director whom he, by writing, under his 
 hand, shall depute for that purpose ; and the director so depu 
 ted may do and transact all the necessary business belonging 
 to the office of the president of the said corporation, during the 
 continuance of the sickness or necessary absence of the pres 
 ident. 
 
 5th. A number of stockholders, not less than sixty, who, 
 together, shall be proprietors of one thousand shares or upwards, 
 shall have power at any time to call a general meeting of" the 
 stockholders, for purposes relative to the institution, giving at 
 least four weeks notice in the public newspapers of the place 
 where the bank is seated, and specifying in such notice the ob 
 ject or objects of such meeting. 
 
 6th. Each cashier or treasurer, before he enters upon the 
 duties of his office, shall be required to give bond, with two or 
 more sureties, to the satisfaction of the directors, in a sum not 
 less than fifty thousand dollars, with a condition for his good 
 behavior, and the faithful performance of his duties to the cor 
 poration. 
 
 7th. The lands, tenements, and hereditaments, which it 
 shall be lawful for the said corporation to hold, shall be only 
 such as shall be requisite for its immediate accommodation, in 
 relation to the convenient transaction of its business, and such as 
 shall have been purchased at sales upon judgments or decrees, 
 or shall have been assigned or set off to said bank in satisfac 
 tion of said judgments or decrees, which shall have been obtain 
 ed for debts due, or as have been bona fide mortgaged to it by 
 way of security : Provided, That no loan shall be made on se 
 curity of real estate ; nor shall the said corporation hold any 
 one parcel of such lands or tenements, not necessary for the 
 convenient transaction of its business, for a longer period than 
 five years. 
 
 8th. The total amount of debts which the said corporation 
 21 
 
482 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 shall at any time owe, whether by bond, bill, note, or other 
 contract, over and above the debt or debts due for money de 
 posited in the bank, shall not exceed the sum of twenty-five mil 
 lions of dollars, unless the contracting of any greater debt shall 
 have been previously authorized by law. In case of excess, 
 the directors under whose administration it shall happen shall 
 be liable for the same, in their natural and private capacities ; 
 and an action of debt may, in such case, be brought against 
 them, or any of them, their or any of their heirs, executors, or 
 administrators, in any court of record of the United States, by 
 any creditor or creditors of the said corporation, and may be 
 prosecuted to judgment and execution, any condition, covenant, 
 or agreement, to the contrary notwithstanding ; but this provis 
 ion shall not be construed to exempt the said corporation, or 
 the lands, tenements, goods, or chattels of the same, from being 
 also liable for, and chargeable with, the said excess. Such of 
 the said directors as may have been absent when the said ex 
 cess was contracted or created, or who may have dissented 
 from the resolution or act whereby the same was so contracted 
 or created, may respectively exonerate themselves from being 
 so liable, by forthwith giving notice of the fact, and of their ab 
 sence or dissent, to the President of the United States, and 
 to the stockholders, at a general meeting, which they shall have 
 power to call for that purpose. 
 
 9th. The said corporation shall not directly or indirectly 
 deal or trade in any thing except bills of exchange, gold or sil 
 ver coin, or bullion, or goods, or lands purchased on execution, 
 sued out on judgments, or decrees obtained for the benefit of 
 said bank, or taken bona fide in the payment of debts due to 
 it, or goods which shall be the proceeds of its lands. It shall 
 not be at liberty to purchase any public debt whatever, nor 
 make any loan upon the pledge thereof, nor shall it take more 
 than at the rate of six per centum per annum for or upon its 
 loans or discounts ; nor shall the board of directors of the said 
 corporation make donations or presents of its funds to any of 
 ficer or director, for any purpose whatever. 
 
FINANCE. 483 
 
 i oth. No loan shall be made by the said corporation, for 
 the use or on account of the Government of the United States, 
 to an amount exceeding one million of dollars, nor for any pe 
 riod exceeding one hundred and eighty days, or on account of 
 any particular State, to an amount exceeding one hundred 
 thousand dollars, or for any period exceeding one hundred and 
 eighty days, unless previously authorized by a law of the United 
 States. 
 
 nth. The stock of the said corporation shall be assignable 
 and transferable, according to such rules as shall be instituted, 
 in that behalf, by the by-laws and ordinances of the same. 
 
 1 2th. The bills obligatory and of credit under the seal of 
 the said corporation, which shall be made to any person or 
 persons, shall be assignable by endorsement thereupon, under 
 the hands of such person or persons, and his, her, or their ex 
 ecutors or administrators, and of his, her, or their assignee or 
 assignees, and so as absolutely to transfer and vest the proper 
 ty thereof in each and every assignee or assignees, success 
 ively ; and to enable such assignee assignees, and his, her, or 
 their executors or administrators, to maintain an action there 
 upon, in his, her or their own name or names : Provided, That 
 said corporation shall not make any bill obligatory, or of credit, 
 or other obligation under its seal, for the payment of a sum less 
 than five thousand dollars, or for a longer period than one 
 year. 
 
 i3th. All bills or notes issued by order of the said corpo 
 ration, signed by the president and countersigned by the prin 
 cipal cashier or treasurer thereof, promising the payment of 
 money to any person or persons, his, her, or their order, or to 
 bearer, although not under the seal of the said corporation, 
 shall be binding and obligatory upon the same, in like manner 
 and with like force and effect as upon any natural person or 
 persons, if issued by him, her, or them, in his, her, or their pri 
 vate or natural capacity or capacities, and shall be assignable 
 and negotiable in like manner as if they were so issued by such 
 natural person or persons ; that is to say : those which shall be 
 
48-4 
 
 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 payable to any person or persons, his, her, or their order, shall 
 be assignable by endorsement, in like manner and with the like 
 effect as foreign bills of exchange now are ; and those which 
 are payable to bearer shall be assignable and negotiable by 
 delivery only : Provided, That all bills or notes so to be issued 
 by said corporation shall be made payable on demand. 
 
 i4th. Half yearly dividends may be made of so much of 
 the profits of the bank as shall appear to the directors advisa 
 ble, not exceeding four per centum for any one half year. When 
 a surplus beyond that limit shall have accumulated in the said 
 bank to an amount exceeding two millions of dollars, the excess 
 beyond that sum and beyond the annual dividends, as such ex 
 cess accrues, shall be annually transferred and paid over to the 
 Treasury of the United States ; and upon the expiration of this 
 charter, any surplus which may be in the said bank, after the 
 payment of dividends as aforesaid, and after reimbursing the 
 capital of the stockholders, shall in like manner be paid into 
 the Treasury of the United States. If the dividends shall, 
 in any half year, fall below the above limitation of four per cen 
 tum, the Secretary of the Treasury shall, out of the surpluses 
 which shall have been previously paid over to the Treasury, but 
 out of no other funds or money in the Treasury of the United 
 States, pay a sum sufficient to make up the deficiency. The 
 directors shall make no dividends except from the nett profits 
 arising from the business of the corporation, and shall not, at 
 any time, or in any manner, pay to the stockholders, or any 
 of them, any part of the capital stock of the said corporation ; 
 nor shall they at any time, or in any way or manner, reduce 
 the capital stock of the said corporation without the consent 
 of Congress ; nor shall the said directors, either of the said 
 principal bank or of any branch or office of discount and depos 
 it, or any agency, discount, or suffer to be discounted, or re 
 ceive in payment, or suffer to be received in payment, any note 
 or other evidence of debt, as a payment of or upon any instal 
 ment of the said capital stock actually called for and required 
 to be paid or with the intent of providing the means of making 
 
FINANCE. 485 
 
 such payment ; nor shall any of the said directors receive or dis 
 count, or suffer to be received or discounted, any note or other 
 evidence of debt, with intent of enabling any stockholder to 
 withdraw any part of the money paid in by him on his stock ; 
 nor shall the said directors apply, or suffer to be applied, any 
 portion of the funds of the said corporation, directly or indirect 
 ly to the purchase of shares of its own stock ; nor shall the 
 said directors, or any of them, receive as a security for any loan 
 or discount, or in payment or satisfaction of any debt due to 
 the said corporation, except in the necessary course of collec 
 tion of debts previously contracted in a bona fide manner in the 
 ordinary course of its banking operations, and actually due and 
 unpaid, any shares of the capital stock of the said corporation ; 
 and any shares of the said capital stock so received in payment 
 of any such debts shall be, in good faith, sold and transferred 
 from the hands and ownership of the said corporation within 
 ten months from the time of its transfer to and reception by 
 the same, in the manner and for the purposes aforesaid ; nor 
 shall the said directors, or any of them, receive from any other 
 banking or other stock corporation, shares of the stock of any 
 such banking or other stock corporation, or any notes, bonds, or 
 other evidences of debt issued by or upon the credit of such 
 corporation, in exchange for the shares of stock, notes, bonds, 
 or other evidences of debt of the corporation created by this act. 
 And the said directors, in determining what are " nett pro 
 fits" of the said corporation, from which the dividends allowed 
 by this article may be made, shall first deduct from the profits 
 of the business of the said corporation all expenses paid or in 
 curred, both ordinary and extraordinary, attending the man 
 agement of the affairs and the transaction of the business of the 
 said corporation ; all interest paid, or then accrued, due and 
 unpaid, on debts owing by the said corporation ; and all losses 
 sustained by the said corporation ; and in the computation of 
 of such losses, all debts owing to the corporation shall be in 
 cluded which shall have remained due, without prosecution, 
 and no interest shall have been paid thereon, for more than one 
 
486 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 year ; or on which judgments shall have been recovered that 
 shall have remained for more than two years unsatisfied, and 
 on which no interest shall have been paid during that period. 
 If there shall be a failure in the payment of any part of any sum 
 subscribed to the capital of the said bank, the stockholder so 
 delinquent shall lose the benefit of any dividend which may 
 have accrued prior to the time of making such payment, and 
 during the delay of the same. 
 
 i5th. Once in every year the directors shall lay before the 
 stockholders, at a general meeting, or publish for their infor 
 mation, an exact and particular statement of the debts which 
 shall remain unpaid after the expiration of the original credit, 
 and of the surplus of the profits, if any, after deducting losses 
 and dividends. 
 
 i6th. The directors of the said corporation shall establish 
 one competent office of discount and deposit in any State in 
 which two thousand shares shall have been subscribed or may 
 be held, whenever, upon application of the Legislature of such 
 State, Congress may by law require the same. And the said 
 directors may also establish one or more competent offices of 
 discount and deposit in any State, Territory, or district of the 
 United States, and shall have power to commit the manage 
 ment of the said offices and the business thereof, respectively, 
 to such persons, and under such regulations, as they may deem 
 proper, not being contrary to law or to this charter. Or, in 
 stead of establishing such offices, it shall be lawful for the 
 directors of the said corporation, from time to time, to employ 
 any agent or agents, or any other bank or banks, to be approved 
 by the Secretary of the Treasury, at any place or places that 
 the said directors may deem safe and proper, to manage and 
 transact the business proposed as aforesaid, other than for the 
 purposes of discount, and to perform the duties hereinafter re 
 quired of the said corporation, to be managed and transacted by 
 such offices, under such agreements and subject to such regula 
 tions as they shall deem just and proper. Not more than nine 
 nor less than five managers or directors of every office, estab- 
 
FINANCE. 48 7 
 
 lished as aforesaid, shall be annually appointed by the direc 
 tors of the said corporation, to serve one year. The said man 
 agers or directors shall choose a president from their own num 
 ber ; they shall be citizens of the United States, and residents 
 of the State, Territory, or District, wherein such office is estab 
 lished ; and at least one of the said managers or directors shall 
 be ineligible to reappointment at the end of every first and 
 each succeeding year : but the president may be always reap- 
 pointed. 
 
 i7th. The officer at the head of the Treasury Department 
 of the United States shall be furnished from time to time, as 
 often as he may require, not exceeding once a week, with such 
 statements of the condition and business of said corporation 
 as he may specially direct ; and he shall also have a right to 
 inspect, or cause to be inspected, by some one by him duly 
 authorized, all the books, papers, and accounts of the said cor 
 poration, of every kind, including the accounts of individuals, 
 and to make, or cause to be made, an examination into the af 
 fairs, transactions, and condition of the corporation \ and the 
 condition of the banlc shall be published monthly, in such man 
 ner and with such particularity as the Secretary of the Treasury 
 shall direct. And the said bank, and its offices of discount 
 and deposit, shall be open at all times to the full and unre 
 stricted inspection and examination of a committee of either 
 House of Congress, a committee of the stockholders, and to 
 each and all of the directors of the bank. And, for the pur 
 pose of securing a full and unrestricted inspection and exam 
 ination as aforesaid, the Secretary of the Treasury, or any one 
 by him duly authorized, or a committee of either House of Con 
 gress, may respectively summon and examine, under oath, all 
 the directors, officers, or agents of the said corporation, and of 
 any branch or agency thereof, and such other witnesses as they 
 may think proper, in relation to the affairs, transactions, and 
 condition of the corporation ; and any such director, officer, 
 agent, or other person, who shall refuse, without justifiable cause, 
 to appear and testify when thereto required, as aforesaid, shall, 
 
488 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 on conviction, be subject to a fine not exceeding one thousand 
 dollars, and imprisonment for a term not exceeding one year. 
 And upon the question of any loan or discount exceeding one 
 thousand dollars, where the same is granted, if any member 
 shall dissent, the vote shall be taken by ayes and noes, and 
 shall be entered en the books of the bank, and be subject to 
 the same inspection as the other proceedings of said bank ; and 
 no part of the proceedings of the bank, nor any loans, discounts, 
 or payments made by it, nor any order given by it, shall be con 
 cealed or kept secret from the Government directors, nor shall 
 said directors be excluded from the free and full participation 
 in all the transactions and business of the institution. 
 
 1 8th. No note shall be issued of a less denomination than 
 five dollars ; but Congress may hereafter, if it shall think fit, 
 restrain the lowest denomination of notes to ten dollars ; nor 
 shall the said bank, knowingly, increase the amount of the debts 
 due to it, when the notes in circulation exceed three times the 
 amount of specie in its vaults : and whenever such excess takes 
 place, it shall be the duty of the said corporation to return to 
 such proportion as speedily as shall be safe and practicable. 
 
 1 9th. The debts due and becoming due to said bank shall 
 never, at any one time, exceed the amount of the capital stock 
 actually paid in, and seventy-five per cent, advance thereon. 
 
 2oth. No paper shall be discounted or any loan made by 
 said bank for a longer period than one hundred and eighty 
 days ; nor shall any note, or bill, or other debt, or evidence of 
 debt, be renewed or extended by any engagement or contract 
 of said bank, after the time for which it was negotiated shall 
 have expired. 
 
 2 1 st. The said bank shall not hold any public debt or 
 stocks, or the stocks of any incorporated institution, unless 
 taken for the security or in satisfaction of debts previously 
 contracted. 
 
 22d. The said bank shall not pay out the notes of any 
 other bank, or any thing except legal coin, or its own notes. 
 
 230!. The directors of the said bank shall not, within the 
 
FINANCE. 489 
 
 District of Columbia, discount any promissory note or bill of 
 exchange, nor make any loan whatever, except it be a loan to 
 the Government of the United States according to the provis 
 ions of law. 
 
 24th. All notes or bills adapted and intended to circulate 
 as money shall be prepared under the direction of the parent 
 institution at Washington, shall be signed as hereinbefore pro 
 vided for, and shall be made payable at the banking house in 
 Washington, or at some one of the offices of discount and de 
 posit, to be specified on the face of the note or bill, except 
 notes of a denomination not exceeding ten dollars, which may 
 be signed by the president and cashier of any office of discount 
 and deposit at which they may be issued and made payable, 
 but shall, nevertheless, be prepared at and authorized by the 
 parent institution at Washington. And no notes or bills but 
 such as are prepared and signed, as aforesaid, shall be issued 
 by any of the said offices of discount and deposit : Provided, 
 That nothing herein contained shall be so construed as to pro 
 hibit the said offices from selling drafts for fifty dollars and up 
 wards, each, drawn and intended for the purpose of remittance. 
 
 The notes or bills of the said corporation, although the 
 same be upon their face, respectively, made payable at a par 
 ticular place only, shall, nevertheless, be received by the said 
 corporation, or at any of its offices of discount and deposit, 
 when tendered, in liquidation or payment of any debt or bal 
 ance due to said corporation. 
 
 25th. The officers of the corporation shall not be permit 
 ted to borrow money from the said corporation, or contract any 
 debt therewith, in any manner whatever ; and no note or bill of 
 which such officer is maker, drawer, endorser, acceptor, or other 
 wise a party, shall be discounted : Provided, That the entire li 
 ability of any one director- of any of said offices to said corpor 
 ation may exist to an amount not exceeding ten thousand dollars. 
 
 SEC. 12. And be it further enacted, That if the said corpo 
 ration, or any person or persons for or to the use of the same, 
 shall deal or trade in buying or selling any goods, wares, mer- 
 21* 
 
490 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 chandise, or commodities whatsoever, contrary to the provis 
 ions of this act, all and every person or persons by whom any 
 order or direction for so dealing or trading shall have been 
 given, and all and every person or persons who shall have been 
 concerned as parties or agents therein, shall forfeit and lose 
 treble the value of the goods, wares, merchandise, and commo 
 dities, in which such dealings and trade shall have been ; one 
 half thereof to the use of the informer, and the other half there 
 of to the use of the United States, to be recovered in any ac 
 tion of law, with costs of suit. 
 
 SEC. 13. And be it further enacted, That if the said corpo 
 ration shall advance or lend any sum of money, for the use or 
 on account of the Government of the United States, to an 
 amount exceeding one million of dollars, or for the use or on 
 account of any particular State, to an amount exceeding one 
 hundred thousand dollars (unless specially authorized by law), 
 all and every person and persons, by and with whose order, 
 agreement, consent, approbation, and connivance, such unlaw 
 ful advance or loan shall have been made, upon conviction 
 thereof, shall forfeit and pay for every such offence treble the 
 value or amount of the sum or sums which have been so un 
 lawfully advanced or lent; one-fifth thereof to the use of the 
 informer, and the residue thereof to the use of the United 
 States. 
 
 SEC. 14. And be it further enacted, That the bills or notes 
 of the said corporation originally made payable, or which shall 
 have become payable on demand, shall be receivable in all 
 payments to the United States, unless otherwise directed by 
 act of Congress : Provided, however, That if the said bank, or 
 any of its branches, shall at any time suspend specie payments, 
 or shall neglect or refuse to discharge, on demand, any and all 
 of its liabilities in specie, then its bills or notes shall not, dur 
 ing such suspension, be received in payment of any debt or 
 demand of the United States ; and such suspension of specie 
 payments shall be held and adjudged a cause of forfeiture of 
 the charter hereby granted. 
 
FINANCE. 491 
 
 SEC. 15. And be it further enacted, That during the contin 
 uance of this act, and whenever required by the Secretary of 
 the Treasury, the said corporation shall give the necessary fa 
 cilities for transferring the public funds from place to place, 
 within the United States or the Territories thereof, and for dis 
 tributing the same in payment of the public creditors, and shall 
 also do and perform the several respective duties formerly re 
 quired of the pension agents and commissioners of loans for 
 the several States, or of any one or more of them, without 
 charging commissions, or claiming allowances on account of 
 difference of exchange. 
 
 SEC. 1 6. And be it further enacted, That the deposits of 
 the money of the United States in places in which the said 
 bank and branches thereof may be established, shall be made 
 in said bank or branches thereof, unless Congress shall other 
 wise direct by law, and that all public moneys in deposit in 
 said bank, or standing on its books to the credit of the Treas 
 urer, shall be taken and deemed to be in the Treasury of the 
 United States, and all payments made by the Treasurer shall 
 be in checks drawn on said bank : Provided, That if the said 
 bank shall suspend specie payments during the recess of Con 
 gress, it shall be the duty of the Secretary of the Treasury to 
 provide for the safe keeping of the public moneys until the ac^ 
 tion of Congress can be had thereon, and he shall report the 
 same to Congress on the first day of the session next after 
 such suspension. 
 
 SEC. 17. And be it further enacted, That the said corpora 
 tion shall not at any time suspend or refuse payment, in gold 
 and silver coin, of any of its notes, bills, or obligations, nor of 
 any moneys received upon deposit in said bank, or any of its 
 offices of discount and deposit ; and if the said corporation 
 shall at any time refuse or neglect to pay, on demand, any bill, 
 note, or obligation, issued by the corporation according to the 
 contract promise, or undertaking, therein expressed, or shall 
 neglect or refuse to pay, on demand, any moneys received in 
 said bank, or in any of its offices aforesaid, on deposit, to the 
 
492 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 person or persons entitled to receive the same, then, and in 
 every such case, the holder of any such note, bill, or obligation, 
 or the person or persons entitled to demand and receive such 
 moneys as aforesaid, shall respectively be entitled to receive 
 and recover interest on the said bills, notes, obligations, or 
 moneys, until the same shall be fully paid and satisfied, at the 
 rate of twelve per cent, per annum, from the time of such de 
 mand aforesaid : Provided, That Congress may, at any time 
 hereafter, enact laws enforcing and regulating the recovery of 
 the amount of the notes, bills, obligations, or other debts, of 
 which payment shall have been refused as aforesaid, with the 
 rate of interest above mentioned, vesting jurisdiction for that 
 purpose in any courts of the United States, or Territories 
 thereof, as they may deem expedient. 
 
 Sec. 1 8. And be it further enacted, That if any person shall 
 falsely make, forge, or counterfeit, or cause or procure to be 
 falsely made, forged, or counterfeited, or willingly aid or assist 
 in falsely making, forging, or counterfeiting, any bill or note in 
 imitation of, or purporting to be, a bill or note issued by order 
 of the said bank, or any order or check on the said bank or 
 corporation, or any cashier thereof; or shall falsely alter, or 
 cause or procure to be falsely altered, or willingly aid or assist 
 in falsely altering any bill or note issued by order of the said 
 bank, or any order or check on the said bank or corporation, 
 or any cashier thereof; or shall pass utter, or publish, or attempt 
 to pass, utter or publish, as true, any false, forged, or counter 
 feit bill or note, purporting to be a bill or note issued by order 
 of the said bank, or any false, forged, or counterfeited order or 
 check upon the said bank or corporation, or any cashier there 
 of, knowing the same to be falsely forged or counterfeited ; or 
 shall pass, utter, or publish, or attempt to pass, utter, or pub 
 lish, as true, any falsely altered bill or note issued by order of 
 the said bank, or any falsely altered order or check on the said 
 bank or corporation, or any cashier thereof, knowing the same 
 to be falsely altered, with intention to defraud the said corpo 
 ration, or any other body politic or person ; or shall sell, utter, 
 
FINAXC I-1. 493 
 
 or deliver, or cause to be sold, uttered or delivered, any forged 
 or counterfeit note or bill in imitation of or purporting to be, a 
 bill or note issued by order of the said bank, knowing the same 
 to be false, forged, or counterfeited, every such person shall be 
 deemed and adjudged guilty of felony ; and, being thereof con 
 victed by due course of law, shall be sentenced to be impris 
 oned and kept to hard labor for not less than three years nor 
 more than ten years ; or shall be imprisoned not exceeding ten 
 years, and fined not exceeding five thousand dollars : Provided, 
 That nothing herein contained shall be construed to deprive 
 the courts of the individual States of a jurisdiction, under the 
 laws of the several States, over any offence declared punishable 
 by this act. 
 
 Sec. 19. And be it further enacted, That if any person shall 
 make or engrave, or cause or procure to be made or engraved, 
 or shall have in his custody or possession any plate, engraved 
 after the similitude of any plate from which any note or bills 
 issued by the said corporation shall have been printed, with in 
 tent to use such plate, or cause or suffer the same to be used, 
 in forging or counterfeiting any of the notes or bills issued by 
 the said corporation ; cr shall have in his custody or possession 
 any blank note or notes, bill or bills, engraved and printed after 
 the similitude of any notes or bills issued by said corporation, 
 with intent to use such blanks, or cause or suffer the same to 
 be used, in forging or counterfeiting any of the notes or bills 
 issued by the said corporation ; or shall have in his custody or 
 possession any paper adapted to the making of bank notes or 
 bills, and similar to the paper upon which any notes or bills of 
 the said corporation shall have been issued, with intent to use 
 such paper, or cause or suffer the same to be used, in forging or 
 counterfeiting any of the notes or bills issued by the said cor 
 poration, every such person, being thereof convicted by due 
 course of law, shall be sentenced to be imprisoned for a term 
 not exceeding five years, and fined in a sum not exceeding one 
 thousand dollars. 
 
 Sec. 20. And be it further enacted, That if any officer, agent, 
 
494: POLITICAL PAP KItS. 
 
 or servant of the said bank, shall embezzle or appropriate to 
 his own use any moneys, goods, effects, or funds of the said 
 bank, with intent to cheat or defraud the said corporation, or 
 shall make false entries upon the books of the said bank, with 
 intent to defraud the said corporation, or any other person 
 whatsoever, such officer, agent, or servant, shall be deemed 
 guilty of felony, and, on conviction thereof, shall be fined at 
 the discretion of the court, and imprisonment not exceeding 
 six years. 
 
 .SEC. 21. And be it further enacted. That no other bank shall 
 be established by any future law of the United States during 
 the continuance of the corporation hereby created : Provided, 
 That Congress may renew or modify the charters of the banks 
 heretofore established within the District of Columbia, or estab 
 lish other banks within and for the use of the said District, so 
 that the aggregate capital of all the banks chartered for the 
 said District shall not exceed the sum of five millions of dol 
 lars. And notwithstanding the expiration of the term for which 
 the said corporation is created, it shall be lawful to use the cor 
 porate name, style, and capacity, for the purpose of suits, and 
 for the final settlement and liquidation of the affairs and ac 
 counts of the corporation, and for the sale and disposition of 
 their estate, real, personal, and mixed ; but not for any other 
 purpose, or in any other manner whatever, nor for a period ex 
 ceeding two years after the expiration of the said term of incor 
 poration. 
 
 Sec. 22. And be it further enacted, That if the subscrip 
 tions and payments to said bank shall not be made and com 
 pleted so as to enable the same to commence its operations, or 
 if the said bank shall not commence its operations on or before 
 the first Monday in January next, then, and in that case, Con 
 gress may, at any time within twelve months thereafter, declare, 
 by law, this act null and void. 
 
 Sec. 23. And be it further enacted, That whenever a com 
 mittee of either House of Congress, appointed to inspect the 
 books and to examine into the proceedings of the corporation 
 
FINANCE. 4:95 
 
 hereby created, shall report that the provisions of this charter 
 have been by the same violated, or the President of the United 
 States shall have reason to believe that the charter has been 
 violated, it may be lawful for Congress to direct, or the Presi 
 dent to order, a scire facias to be sued out of the Circuit Court 
 of the United States for the District of Columbia, in the name 
 of the United States (which shall be served upon the President 
 of the corporation for the time being, at least fifteen days be 
 fore the commencement of the term of said court), calling on 
 the said corporation to show cause wherefore the charter here 
 by granted shall not be declared forfeited ; and it shall be law 
 ful for the said court, upon the return of the said scire facias, 
 to examine into the truth of the alleged violation ; and if such 
 violation be made to appear, then to pronounce and adjudge 
 that the said charter is forfeited and annulled : Provided, how 
 ever, That every issue of fact which may be joined between the 
 United States and the corporation aforesaid shall be tried by 
 a jury. And it shall be lawful for the court aforesaid to require 
 the production of such of the books or papers of the corpora 
 tion as it may deem necessary for the ascertainment of the con 
 troverted facts ; and the final judgment of the court aforesaid 
 shall be examinable in the Supreme Court of the United States 
 by writ of error, and be there reversed or affirmed, according 
 to the usages of the law. 
 
 SEC. 24. And be it further enacted, That if the said corpo 
 ration shall assume or exercise any franchise or privilege, or 
 attempt to carry on any business not allowed by this act, it 
 shall be lawful for the Attorney General of the United States, 
 under the direction of Congress, or the President of the United 
 States, to file an information, in the nature of a bill in equity, 
 in the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of Co 
 lumbia, to restrain by injunction the said bank from assuming 
 or exercising such franchise or privilege, or transacting such 
 business. And the said court may issue temporary or perpet 
 ual writs of injunction, direct such course of proceedings, and 
 make all such orders and decrees, on such information as may 
 
496 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 be consonant with the course of such court in cases in equity : 
 Provided, That no final decree shall be made in any such case, 
 unless the issues of fact joined therein shall be first found by a 
 jury ; and that, from such final decree, an appeal may be taken 
 to the Supreme Court of the United States. 
 
NAVAL AFFAIRS. 497 
 
 EXTKACT FEOM HIS REPORT AS SECRETA 
 RY OF THE NAVY. 
 
 Explorations and Surveys. 
 
 DURING the past year the attention of this Department, 
 in conjunction with the Department of State, has been 
 directed to the employment of the East India squadron in an 
 enterprise of great moment to the commercial interests of the 
 country the endeavor to establish relations of amity and com 
 merce with the empire of Japan. 
 
 The long interdict which has denied to strangers access to 
 the ports or territory of that country, and the singularly inhos 
 pitable laws which its government has adopted to secure this 
 exclusion, having been productive, of late years, of gross op 
 pression and cruelty to citizens of the United States, it has 
 been thought expedient to take some effective measure to pro 
 mote a better understanding with this populous and semi-bar 
 barous empire ; to make the effort not only to obtain from 
 them the observance of the rights of humanity to such of our 
 people as may be driven by necessity upon their coasts, but 
 also to promote the higher and more valuable end of persuad 
 ing them to abandon their unprofitable policy of seclusion, and 
 gradually to take a place in that general association of com 
 merce in which their resources and industry would equally en 
 able them to confer benefits upon others and the fruits of a 
 higher civilization upon themselves. 
 
 The extension of the domain of the United States to the 
 shores of the Pacific, the rapid settlement of California and 
 Oregon, the opening of the highway across the Isthmus of Cen- 
 
498 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 tral America, the great addition to our navigation employed 
 in trade with Asiatic nations, and the increased activity of our 
 whaling ships in the vicinity of the northern coast of Japan, 
 are now pressing upon the consideration of this Government 
 the absolute necessity of reviewing our relations to those East 
 ern communities which lie contiguous to the path of our trade. 
 The enforcement of a more liberal system of intercourse upon 
 China has met the approval of the civilized world, and its ben 
 efits are seen and felt, not less remarkably in the progress of 
 that ancient empire itself than in the activity which it has al 
 ready imparted to the pursuit of Eastern commerce. China is 
 awaking from the lethargy of a thousand years to the percep 
 tion of the spirit of the present era, and is even now furnishing 
 her quota to the adventure which distinguishes and stimulates 
 the settlement of our western coast. 
 
 These events have forced upon the people of America and 
 P^urope the consideration of the question, how far it is consist 
 ent with the rights of the civilized world to defer to those in 
 convenient and unsocial customs by which a nation capable of 
 contributing to the relief of the wants of humanity shall be per 
 mitted to renounce that duty ; whether any nation may claim 
 to be exempt from the admitted Christian obligation of hospi 
 tality to those strangers whom the vocations of commerce or 
 the lawful pursuits of industry may have incidentally brought 
 in need of its assistance ; and the still stronger case, whether 
 the enlightened world will tolerate the infliction of punishment 
 or contumelious treatment upon the unfortunate voyager whom 
 the casualties of the sea may have compelled to an unwilling 
 infraction of a barbarous law. ; 
 
 These are questions which are every day becoming more 
 significant. That oriental sentiment which, hardened by the 
 usage and habit of centuries, has dictated the inveterate poli 
 cy of national isolation in Japan, it is very apparent, will not 
 long continue to claim the sanctity of a national right to the 
 detriment of the cause of universal commerce and civilization, 
 at this time so signally active in enlarging the boundaries of 
 
NAVAL AFFAIR. 499 
 
 human knowledge and the diffusion of comfort over the earth. 
 The day has come when Europe and America have found an 
 urgent inducement to demand of Asia and Africa the rights of 
 hospitality, of aid and comfort, shelter and succor, to the men 
 who pursue the great highroads of trade and exploration over 
 the globe. Christendom is constrained, by the pressure of an 
 increasing necessity, to publish its wants and declare its rights 
 to the heathen, and in making its power felt will bring innum 
 erable blessings to every race which shall acknowledge its mas 
 tery. 
 
 The Government of the United States has happily placed 
 itself in the front of this movement, and it may be regarded as 
 one of the most encouraging guarantees of its success that the 
 expedition which has just left our shores takes with it the earn 
 est good wishes, not only of our own country, but of the most 
 enlightened communities of Europe. The opening of Japan 
 has become a necessity which is recognized in the commercial 
 adventure of all Christian nations, and is deeply felt by every 
 owner of an American whaleship and every voyager between 
 California and China. 
 
 This important duty has been consigned to the command 
 ing officer of the East India squadron, a gentleman in every 
 respect worthy of the trust reposed in him, and who contrib 
 utes to its administration the highest energy and ability, im 
 proved by long and various service in his profession. Look 
 ing to the magnitude of the undertaking, and the great expec 
 tations which have been raised both in this country and in Eu 
 rope in reference to its results, to casualties to which it may be 
 exposed, and the necessity to guard it, by every precaution 
 within the power of the Government, against the possibility of 
 a failure, I have thought it proper, with your approbation, to 
 increase the force destined to this employment, and to put at 
 the disposal of Commodore Perry a squadron of unusual 
 strength and capability. I have therefore recently added to 
 the number of vessels appropriated to the command the line- 
 of-battle-ship Vermont, the corvette Macedonian, and the 
 
500 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 steamer Alleghany. These ships, together with the sloop-of- 
 war Vandalia, originally intended to be assigned to the squad 
 ron, and with the ships now on that station, the steamer Sus- 
 quehanna, and the sloops-of-war Saratoga and Plymouth a 
 portion of which are now near to the term of their cruise will 
 constitute a command adapted, we may suppose, to any emer 
 gency which the delicate nature of the trust committed to the 
 Commodore may present. It is probable that the exhibition 
 of the whole force, which will be under the command of Com 
 modore Perry during the first year, will produce such an im 
 pression upon a government and people who are accustomed 
 to measure their respect by the array of power which accom 
 panies the demand of it, as may enable him to dispense with 
 the vessels whose term of service is drawing near to a close, 
 and that they may be returned to the United States without 
 any material prolongation of their cruise. 
 
 A liberal allowance has been made to the squadron for all 
 the contingencies which the peculiar nature of the enterprise 
 may create. The commanding officer is furnished with ample 
 means of defence and protection on land as well as sea ; with 
 the means, also, of procuring despatch vessels, when necessa 
 ry, transports for provision and fuel, and for such other em 
 ployment as may be required. Special depots of coal have 
 been established at various points, and abundant supplies pro 
 vided. He has, in addition to the instructions usually given 
 to the squadron on this station, been directed to avail himself 
 of such opportunities as may fall in his way to make as accu 
 rate surveys as his means may allow of the coasts and seas he 
 may visit, and to preserve the results for future publication for 
 the benefit of commerce. 
 
 Somewhat allied in character and importance to these pro 
 jected operations of the Japan squadron is the expedition now 
 prepared for the exploration and survey of the China seas, the 
 Northern Pacific, and Behring s Straits. The naval appropria 
 tion bill of the last session of Congress put at the disposal of 
 this Department one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars 
 
NAVAL AFFAIRS. 501 
 
 "for the building or purchase of suitable vessels, and for pros 
 ecuting a survey and reconnoissance for naval and commercial 
 purposes of such parts of Behring s Straits, of the North Pacif 
 ic Ocean, and the China seas as are frequented by American 
 whaleships and by trading vessels in their routes between the 
 United States and China." 
 
 Very earnestly concurring with Congress in the import 
 ance of this exploration and survey] I lost no time in the ar 
 rangement and preparation of what I hope will prove itself to 
 be a most effective and useful expedition. As the act of Con 
 gress has confided to the discretion of this Department the se 
 lection of the vessels which may be found necessary for the 
 prosecution of this enterprise, the equipment and distribution 
 of the force it may require, and the organization of every mat 
 ter of detail connected with it, limited only by the amount of 
 the appropriation, I have thought I should best accomplish the 
 object proposed and gratify the expectation of the country by 
 giving to the expedition the benefit of such naval resources as 
 the Department could command, rather than confine it to such 
 limited supply as would have resulted from either building or 
 purchasing vessels and providing for the other details of this 
 service out of the fund entrusted to the Department. With 
 this fund so applied the Department would have been con 
 strained to organize the expedition upon a scale which I con 
 ceive to be altogether inadequate to the nature of the labor re 
 quired, and which indeed would have been almost certain to 
 end in the failure to accomplish such results as Congress had 
 contemplated. Looking to the amount which it would have * 
 been necessary to reserve in order to provide for the special 
 contingencies of such an expedition, it would have been im 
 practicable to procure, by the application of the remaining 
 portion of the appropriation, more than one steamer of an in 
 ferior class, and perhaps two small brigs, to constitute the 
 force to be used in the undertaking. It is doubtful if even 
 this equipment could have been obtained by such an appropri 
 ation of the fund. The absolute necessity of altering, strength- 
 
502 POLITICAL PAPER? . 
 
 ening, and arranging any vessel which might be purchased, so 
 as to adapt it to the character of the service required, and give 
 reasonable assurance of safety and success, would have drawn 
 so largely upon the appropriation as to reduce the outfit to a 
 limit quite incompatible with the object expected to be attained. 
 
 This cruise of exploration and survey, destined to equal 
 employment in the tropics and the arctic regions, and required 
 to traverse the broad expanse of the Pacific among dangerous 
 and unknown shoals, and in search of islands and rocks mis 
 placed upon our charts, and therefore the more perilous to the 
 navigator, will find enough, and more than enough, of labor to 
 occupy it during the next three years. Its toilsome duties, ex 
 acting ceaseless vigilance and all the skill of seamanship, will 
 be inevitably enhanced by the disease incident to varying 
 climates and exposure to the peculiar casualties to boat navi 
 gation and contests with the savage islanders of the seas it is 
 destined to explore. I have therefore deemed it indispensa 
 ble that at least one large vessel should be always at hand to 
 afford a change of quarters to those who may be disabled, and 
 to supply reliefs of fresh men to take the place of those who 
 may be broken down by sickness or accident. It is impossible 
 to maintain the health of the crews of the small vessels in so long 
 a service without the comforts which such a change may afford. 
 These surveys also require an extra supply of men beyond the 
 usual complement destined to our cruising ships, there being 
 constant occasion for detachments in boats to conduct the op 
 eration of measuring and determining the position and bearings 
 of the shoals and islands which it is the purpose of the enter 
 prise to ascertain. 
 
 In consideration of all these conditions, and many others 
 of a kindred nature, I have determined to give to this little 
 squadron every facility which the resources at my command 
 have enabled me to supply. I have accordingly put the Vin- 
 cennes, one of our staunchest and best sloops of war, in the 
 lead of the expedition. I have added to this the propeller 
 John Hancock, which, being found to have an engine of the 
 
NAVAL AFFAIR!?. 503 
 
 strongest construction, needed only some alterations in her 
 size and frame and the addition of new boilers to make her in 
 every respect a most efficient contribution to the force re 
 quired. She has, with this view, been placed in the hands of 
 the naval constructor, who is now assiduously at work, and I 
 am happy to report with all desirable success, in fitting her out 
 with every accommodation which her future operations may 
 demand. Besides these two vessels, the brig Porpoise has 
 been detailed for the expedition, and put in condition for all 
 the exigencies of her employment A small pilot-boat, adapt 
 ed to speedy navigation and shallow waters, will be added to 
 the squadron. These vessels, fully manned and equipped and 
 furnished with all the necessaries appropriate to the hazardous 
 nature of their cruise, constitute the material elements of the 
 expedition. 
 
 To promote the scientific objects contemplated by the re- 
 connoissance, I have supplied the squadron with an astron 
 omer and hydrographer of known ability and accomplishment, 
 and also with a naturalist and botanist, who are charged with 
 the duty of collecting and preserving specimens of such natur 
 al productions as maybe interesting to science and commerce. 
 
 The squadron is placed under the command of an officer 
 already distinguished by his participation in a former Explor 
 ing Expedition, and well known for the valuable contributions 
 he has made to the hydrographical surveys of our western 
 coasts Commander Ringgold, whose professional accomplish 
 ment and devotion to the service eminently qualify him for the 
 duty committed to him. He will be able, I hope, to take his 
 departure in a few weeks, and will sail directly to the Pacific 
 doubling Cape Horn and proceeding by the Sandwich Islands 
 to Behring s Straits, where he may be expected to arrive at the 
 opening of the season for operations in that quarter. It is de 
 signed to employ the expedition during each year in the re- 
 connoissance of these high latitudes from June until October, 
 this being the only season in which the surveys may be prose 
 cuted in those regions. The remaining portions of each year 
 
504 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 will be devoted to the prosecution of survey and exploration 
 in the lower latitudes, along the coast of Japan, the China 
 Seas, and the routes of navigation between our ports on the 
 Pacific and the East Indies. Particular attention will be given 
 to the survey of the seas and coasts through and along which 
 our whaling ships pursue their perilous trade, looking carefully 
 to the coast of Japan, the Kurile Islands, the sea of Okhotsk, 
 and the unexplored shores of Northern Asia. 
 
 The commander of the expedition is made fully aware of 
 the necessity and value of an accurate survey of the various 
 lines of navigation between California and China, and will be 
 stow upon this undertaking an attention commensurate with 
 its importance. He is directed to make frequent reports of 
 his work, in order that no time may be lost in communicating 
 to the country the results, together with descriptive charts of 
 his survey, for the benefit of commerce and navigation. These 
 will be duly published as often as they are received by the De 
 partment. 
 
 Being persuaded that this Department cannot better contrib 
 ute to the fulfilment of the high expectations which the coun 
 try has ever entertained as to the value of the navy, nor per 
 form a more acceptable duty to the navy itself, than by impart 
 ing to this arm of the national power the highest spirit of en 
 terprise, as well as the greatest efficiency of action, I have 
 sought every opportunity to put in requisition for useful service 
 the various talent, skill, and ambition of honorable adventure, 
 which equally distinguish and embellish the professional char 
 acter of the officers under the control of the Department. Con 
 stant employment of ships and men in the promotion of valua 
 ble public interests, whether in the defence of the honor of our 
 flag, or in the exploration of the field of discovery and the 
 opening of new channels of trade, or in the enlarging of the 
 boundaries of science, I am convinced will be recognized both 
 by the Government and the people as the true and proper vo 
 cation of the navy, and as the means best calculated to nurse 
 and strengthen that prompt and gallant devotion to duty which 
 
NAVAL AFFAIRS. 505 
 
 is so essential to the character of accomplished officers, and 
 so indispensable to the effectiveness of the naval organization. 
 
 Acting in conformity with this opinion, 1 have availed my 
 self of events that favored the object to set on foot two other 
 expeditions, which may be classed with those which I have just 
 presented to your notice, and from which I have every reason 
 to hope much good is to be derived hereafter. My attention 
 has been invited by the Colonization Society of Pennsylvania 
 to the necessity of prosecuting some researches into the char 
 acter of the continent of Africa, and especially that portion of 
 it lying eastward of the settlements of Liberia. It is supposed 
 that an exploration of this region would lead to the discovery 
 of a broad tract of fertile and healthy country, well adapted to 
 the extension of that system of colonization which for some 
 years past has greatly interested the public attention, and more 
 recently attracted the favorable consideration of Congress. 
 
 The proposition submitted to my view by the society, and 
 referred to your approval, I regard as one which may be ren 
 dered productive of great public advantage, and in regard to 
 which you might confidently bespeak and anticipate the appro 
 bation of the country. I have therefore not hesitated, with 
 your concurrence, to give it the aid which it was in the power 
 of the Department to bestow. As I could not, however, with 
 out some special appropriation to the object, organize a full 
 and effective expedition for the prosecution of this enterprise. 
 I have thought that, by the employment of such means as have 
 been provided for the ordinary exigencies of the service, I 
 might profitably prepare the way for such an expedition as Con 
 gress might hereafter think it fit to authorize. I have accord 
 ingly directed a preliminary investigation to be made by an of 
 ficer of the navy, whom I have attached to the African squad 
 ron, with orders to devote the months of the coming winter to 
 an examination of the necessary conditions which this under 
 taking may require. 
 
 In Commander Lynch, to whom the country is already in 
 debted for important service in another field, I have found a 
 
 22 
 
506 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 prompt and ardent volunteer for this employment. He is 
 now on his way to the African coast. He will land at Liberia, 
 Cape Palmas, and other points, and will pursue his inquiries as 
 far as the river Gaboon, with a view to the ascertainment of 
 such localities on the margin of the African continent as may 
 present the greatest facilities, whether by the river courses or 
 by inland routes, for penetrating with least hazard to the inte 
 rior. He will collect information touching the geographical 
 character of the country, its means of affording the necessary 
 supplies of men and provisions, the temper of the inhabitants, 
 whether hostile or friendly, the proper precautions to be ob 
 served to secure the health of a party employed, and all other 
 items of knowledge upon which it may be proper hereafter to 
 prepare and combine the forces essential to the success of a 
 complete and useful exploration of the interior. In the per 
 formance of this duty, under the most favorable circumstances, 
 he will encounter the perils of a climate famed for its unwhole 
 some influence upon the white man, and may hardly hope to 
 escape the exhibition of hostility from the natives. The spirit 
 which has prompted him to court this perilous adventure, so 
 honorable to his courage and philanthropy, I trust will enable 
 him to brave every hazard with success ; to overcome every 
 obstacle in his progress, and to reserve himself for the accom 
 plishment of the great object to which these preparations are 
 directed. In the mean time, I most earnestly commend the 
 subject of the exploration to the early and favorable attention 
 of Congress, with the expression of my own conviction that 
 there is no enterprise of the present day that deserves a higher 
 degree of favor, or that will more honorably signalize the en 
 lightened policy of this Government in the estimation of the 
 present or of future generations. It will require a lib 
 eral appropriation of money, and an enlarged discretion to 
 be confided to the Navy Department for the organization and 
 arrangement of a plan of operations which must embrace the 
 employment of a number of men, the supply of boats, arma 
 ments, and tools, and the enlistment of such scientific aid as 
 
NAVAL AFFAIRS. 507 
 
 a long and laborious inland exploration, beset with many dan 
 gers and difficulties, will suggest. 
 
 With a view to the preparatory operations of Commander 
 Lynch, and also in consideration of the need which the African 
 squadron has at all times for such an auxiliary, I have direct 
 ed the small steamer Vixen to be prepared without delay and 
 sent to that. coast, to constitute a part of the force under the 
 command of Commodore Mayo, who is about to take charge 
 of the squadron. He will be instructed to furnish Commander 
 Lynch with every facility which his position may allow. A 
 small sum of money has also been placed at the disposal of 
 Commander Lynch for the contingencies of his present service. 
 
 The second expedition to which I have referred has grown 
 out of the recent decree of the Provisional Director of the Ar 
 gentine Confederation, which has very lately reached this coun 
 try, and which now throws open to navigation that long-seal 
 ed and excluded country lying upon the tributaries of the river 
 La Plata. The Uraguay and the Parana are at last opened by 
 this decree to the access of all nations who may choose to seek 
 the new associations which they offer to the spirit of adventure. 
 A vast territory of boundless resource, proverbial for its treas 
 ures of vegetable and mineral wealth, extending like the Mis 
 sissippi, from south to north, and reaching through twenty-four 
 parallels of latitude, with every climate between the temperate 
 and torrid zones, and with every variety of product which may 
 be gathered from the alluvial plains of the ocean border to the 
 heights of the Andes this is the field into which the liberal 
 decree of President Urquiza has invited the enterprise of our 
 country, as well as of other nations, who will be equally prompt 
 to pursue it. We have waited with anxiety for the occasion to 
 add this new resource to the industry of our people ; and I am 
 sure it will gratify the commercial pride and please the emu 
 lous ambition of the nation, not less than it will secure great 
 and permanent advantages to its trade, to have the American 
 flag and a national vessel the first to receive the greetings of 
 the population who, at the foot of the Andes, and along the 
 
508 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 navigable waters of inland Brazil, Bolivia, and Paraguay, are 
 ready to welcome the first messenger of commerce and throw 
 their treasures into his hands. 
 
 Anticipating the near approach of this opportunity, with 
 your approval, I admonished Lieutenant Page, before it arrived, 
 to hold himself in readiness for an exploration of these rivers, 
 and directed the steamer Water Witch to be put in condition 
 for the service. She is now nearly equipped, and Lieutenant 
 Page will be ready to take his departure at the first moment 
 that the steamer may be fit to receive him. He is provided 
 with an able crew, well adapted to the nature of his expedition, 
 and seconded by officers chosen for their efficiency, both in the 
 sphere of seamanship and scientific labor. A few boats are 
 provided, adapted to the navigation of the upper streams 
 above their falls ; and the equipment, though of simple and 
 unexpensive kind, will be in all respects such as may enable 
 Lieutenant Page to accomplish the duty assigned to him. 
 
 These four expeditions, each of them of a highly interesting 
 character, and likely to be productive of results which will be 
 beneficially felt and acknowledged long after the men who 
 may procure them shall have passed away, constitute, in great 
 part, the chief and most important topics which have engross 
 ed the care of the Navy Department during the past year. 
 
 It gives me pleasure to report, in connection with these, the 
 return of Lieutenant Herndon, to whom was consigned, in 
 conjunction with Passed Midshipman (now Lieutenant) Gib 
 bon, an exploration of the valley of the river Amazon, and its 
 tributaries. These officers were directed to cross the Cordil 
 leras in Peru and Bolivia, and by a selection of the most ju 
 dicious routes of travel, with a small company of men, for the 
 employment of whom means were furnished by "this Depart 
 ment, to explore the valley of the Amazon, and to descend that 
 river to the sea. More than a year has been spent in the act 
 ive prosecution of this duty. Lieutenant Herndon reached 
 the United States in July last, bringing with him a large amount 
 of interesting and useful facts, industriously collected by him 
 
NAVAL AFFAIRS. 509 
 
 in the course of his long and hazardous journey, embracing 
 many valuable statistics of the country, and adding most im 
 portant contributions to the hitherto unknown geographical 
 character of the country. He is now engaged in preparing a 
 full report of the incidents and discoveries of his travel, which 
 will be communicated to you as soon as it is placed in posses 
 sion of this Department. I beg to commend Lieutenant Hern- 
 don to your special approbation and thanks for the intelligence 
 and ability, and yet more for the high professional zeal, he has 
 exhibited in the performance of his difficult and honorable 
 duty. 
 
 Lieutenant Gibbon, having taken a different route from 
 that of Lieutenant Herndon, has not yet arrived, but may be 
 expected in the course of the winter. When he returns to this 
 city the result of his work will be submitted to your notice. 
 
 The brig Dolphin, which was employed during the last 
 year, under the command of Lieutenant Lee, in a survey of 
 portions of the Atlantic, for the purpose of ascertaining the 
 position of some dangerous rocks and shoals which were 
 known to exist in the routes of navigation between the United 
 States and Europe, has performed useful service, of which the 
 results will be communicated to Congress. This work being 
 yet incomplete, the Dolphin has again been dispatched on a 
 second cruise of the same character, under the command of 
 Lieutenant Berryman, and may be expected to accomplish a 
 work which will tend, in no small degree, to lessen the haz 
 ards which have hitherto embarrassed the voyages of our mer 
 chant marine. 
 
 Lady Franklin, whose devotion to the cause of her unfor 
 tunate husband has excited so large a sympathy in the United 
 States, has been encouraged to make an another effort to de 
 termine the fate of the gallant navigator of the Arctic sea, and 
 is now intent upon the organization of a new expedition under 
 the auspices of our countrymen, Mr. Henry Grinnell, and Mr. 
 George Peabody, of London. Their endeavor will be directed 
 to an exploration of the upper coasts of Greenland, by land as 
 
510 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 well as by sea, and will furnish occasion for valuable scientific 
 observation tending to the ascertainment of the magnetic poles 
 and the intensity and dip of the needle, and interesting also to 
 geological questions connected with the supposed existence of 
 an open polar sea, and other subjects of much importance in 
 the natural history of our globe. Apart, therefore, from its 
 main object, there is much in the projected expedition to ex 
 cite a high degree of interest in its results both in Europe and 
 America. 
 
 The distinguished lady whose sorrows have inspired this 
 zeal of adventure, and whose energy has given it an intelligent 
 and hopeful direction, has done no more than justice to a mer 
 itorious young officer of our navy, Passed Assistant Surgeon 
 Kane, in asking his co-operation in this hazardous exploit. 
 Dr. Kane has already won a high praise from his countrymen 
 by his intrepid perseverance in facing the extraordinary dan 
 gers of the last expedition on the same errand to the Arctic 
 sea, and still more by the diligence which, guided by scientific 
 accomplishments, has enabled him to contribute a valuable 
 fund towards the illustration of a subject that now engrosses 
 an unusual share of learned investigation. 
 
 The request of Lady Franklin to enlist Dr. Kane in the 
 new expedition has been communicated to me, and I have not 
 delayed to give him the necessary permission, and to confer 
 upon him all the benefit he may derive from his position in the 
 navy, by an order which puts him upon special service. If it 
 should become requisite in the field of operations to which he 
 is destined to provide him with means for the prosecution of 
 scientific discovery, beyond those which may be afforded by 
 the Department and the liberality of the distinguished gentle 
 men who have assumed the charge of this expedition, I would 
 commend it to the enlightened regard of Congress, with the 
 most confident hope that that body will respond to the sugges 
 tions of this necessity with a prompt appreciation and gener 
 ous support of an undertaking so honorable to humanity and 
 so useful to the enlargement of liberal science. 
 
NAVAL AFFAIRS. 511 
 
 The Naval Academy. 
 
 The Naval Academy at Annapolis presents to the regard 
 of Congress an institution worthy of the highest encourage 
 ment. 
 
 Under a judicious and energetic administration it has now 
 reached a stage in its progress which may enable the Govern 
 ment to form a satisfactory estimate of its influence in promo 
 ting and sustaining the future efficiency of the navy. 
 
 The school has grown up to its present stage in the pro 
 gressive expansion and improvement of a design which, in its 
 origin, forbade the adoption of a comprehensive and per 
 manent system of naval educr ~"~it was at first contrived 
 to supply nothing more than the opportunity of prosecuting a 
 few useful studies to a class of occasional students, who were 
 subject to all the interruptions of details for service at sea, 
 and who were, therefore, not in a condition to conform to the 
 requirements necessary to a regular course of professional in 
 struction. The obvious insufficiency of this mode of study 
 soon suggested the necessity for a more methodical arrange 
 ment. A plan was accordingly devised in 1850, to take 
 effect at the commencement of the next term of October, , 
 1851, by which all the acting midshipmen of the date of 
 that and subsequent years should be inducted into the school 
 in its lowest class, and proceed in due order through a pre 
 scribed course of naval education, which is specifically adapted 
 to a term of four years. The series of studies appropriate to 
 each year was defined, the practice of gunnery and seaman 
 ship established, and the whole organization, as it now exists, 
 completed. The classes were so contrived also as to receive, 
 according to an appointed succession, the acting midshipmen 
 of dates prior to 1851, who by this provision will, in the space 
 of the next three years, have had the opportunity of gradua 
 ting in the school. 
 
 The admissions of acting midshipmen to the navy, and 
 consequently to the academy, have been regulated and limited 
 
512 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 by several laws, of which the combined import now is to give 
 to each State and Territory its relative proportion of appoint 
 ments, determined by the ratio of representation in Congress and 
 its relation to the whole number of acting and passed midship 
 men allowed to the navy. To this determination of the quota of 
 appointments appropriated to each State and Territory there 
 has been added an allotment of a fractional share to each 
 Congressional district, and the nomination for each district 
 has been conferred upon the member representing it. 
 
 The whole number of midshipmen, including past mid 
 shipmen, allowed to the navy, is four hundred and sixty-four. 
 The number of representatives and delegates, according to 
 the last census, is two hundred and thirty-nine. Each repre 
 sentative, therefore, is entitled by the existing law to the nomi 
 nation of one candidate and a fraction equal to 225.239. 
 
 No provision has been made for the disposition of these 
 fractions, and I have therefore thought myself bound, in the ab 
 sence of any other regulation, to consult the wishes of at least 
 a majority of the representatives entitled to the fractional part 
 in receiving a nomination to supply the vacancy. 
 
 As the school does not contain more than a fourth of the 
 midshipmen belonging to the navy, and as the vacancies in 
 the number of students are dependent altogether upon the pro 
 motions to the grade of lieutenants and upon the resignations, 
 dismissals, and deaths in each year in the corps of midship 
 men, the annual nominations to the school must, when the 
 entire complement of midshipmen is regularly filled, be com 
 paratively but few in number. The present condition of the ser 
 vice supplies but a small ratio of promotions ; and, if it were 
 not for the operation of the resignations, dismissals and deaths, 
 it is manifest that the yearly recruits to be added to the school 
 would be so inconsiderable in numbers as to forbid any hope 
 of extensive usefulness ; while the fluctuating character of 
 these causes which produce the vacancies tends to a result 
 scarcely less injurious. 
 
 It is, indeed, the most obvious defect in the present organ- 
 
NAVAL AFFAIRS. 513 
 
 ization of the academy that its supply of students is liable to 
 these contingencies ; for while the classes are advancing by 
 regular steps, through the course of four years study, to the 
 term at which they must leave the school and enter into the 
 field of active service, the vacancies which they create are de 
 pendent upon such a limited fund of supply as must ultimately 
 reduce the number of pupils below the quota which is essen 
 tial to the administration of the system. 
 
 That this defect has not already been visible in the career 
 of the academy is to be ascribed only to the fact that, up to 
 the present time, the members of the institution have been re 
 cruited from the grade of midshipmen who have been em 
 ployed at sea previous to the new arrangements, adopted and 
 commenced with the class of 1851. The classes heretofore 
 have been furnished out of this corps, in addition to the 
 annual nominations. When this resource is exhausted and 
 the school is dependent on the yearly nominations alone, the 
 defect to which I have referred will be fully seen and felt. It 
 will then be manifest that the whole number at the school can 
 not exceed, at any time, the number of promotions added to 
 the occasional vacancies occurring in the corps of midshipmen 
 and past midshipmen in four years. 
 
 It is to remedy this defect, and to give the school an in 
 herent power necessary to its own perpetuation, and to make 
 it what I am sure the country desires to see it, a vigorous and 
 healthful institution, completely adapted to the useful ends for 
 which it was ordained, that I propose, with your approbation, 
 to submit to Congress the following change in its fundamental 
 structure. 
 
 The academy should be composed exclusively of cadets, 
 or young men who are received as candidates for admission 
 to the navy. Its design should be that of a preparatory 
 school to qualify these candidates for appointments, and they 
 should only be in condition to be selected for midshipmen 
 when they had successfully passed through this probation. 
 
 If this principle be adopted as the ground-work of the 
 
 22* 
 
514: POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 plan, then the whole number of cadets to be nominated for 
 the school may be established by law. For the present, I 
 suggest that this number may be fixed at two hundred and 
 forty-eight. It may be altered as future experience may re 
 quire. Of this number of two hundred and forty-eight who 
 are to be furnished to the academy every four years, one-fourth, 
 or sixty-two, should be nominated for admission at the com 
 mencement of each yearly term, to constitute the first or 
 lowest class of the school. Of this whole number of two 
 hundred and forty-eight, two hundred and twenty-eight might 
 be allotted to the nomination of members of Congress, appor 
 tioning them to each State according to the ratio of represen 
 tation, and requiring the nomination to the vacancies to be 
 made, not by the representative singly, but by the united coun 
 sel and action of the whole representation of each State, in 
 cluding Senators and Representatives. The remaining twenty 
 of the two hundred and forty-eight may be given with advan 
 tage to the President. 
 
 By this arrangement Congress would be called on to nomi 
 nate fifty-seven cadets every year, and the President five. 
 
 The classes would thus commence their career with sixty- 
 two members, and this number, or so many of them as are 
 not dropped in the progress of the four years, would represent 
 the annual number of graduates. Provision, of course, should 
 be made for the gradual absorption of all those acting mid 
 shipmen who, under the present system, are not disposed of. 
 In a few years they must disappear, after which the organization 
 of the cadets would be undisturbed. 
 
 In addition to this number of sixty-two nominations to be 
 made in each year, Congress and the President would also 
 have the appointment to such vacancies in the new class as 
 might arise out of the failure of the first candidates to pass 
 the preliminary examinations required at their admission. 
 The vacancies occasioned by subsequent examinations, and 
 by the other causes operating during the progress of the classes 
 through the term of the four years, I propose should not be 
 
NAVAL AFFAIRS. 515 
 
 filled ; but the classes, after their commencement, should ad 
 vance to the end of the term of study, subject to all the inci 
 dents of their career which may reduce their numbers. The 
 propriety of this provision will be recognized when it is ob 
 served that a vacancy occurring in any class after it has become 
 advanced in its studies could not be supplied, at that ad 
 vanced stage, by a new appointment to the school. The class 
 would still go on in its reduced state, while the supply of a 
 vacancy occurring in it could only operate to the undue in 
 crease of the lowest class of beginners, and would thus pro 
 duce a periodical and inconvenient increase of graduates for 
 whom no allotment could be made in the navy. 
 
 Assuming sixty-two as the number which shall always be 
 supplied to the lowest class or beginners of the school, we 
 have reason to believe, from the data afforded by the experience 
 of West Point, that the annual number of graduates would 
 not exceed some twenty-five or thirty, it being found, in the 
 general operation of the system, that the graduates do not 
 bear a greater average proportion to the admissions than forty 
 per cent. Upon this basis it may be estimated that these 
 twenty-five or thirty may be looked to as the ordinary yearly 
 resource for the supply of young officers to the navy. 
 
 I propose, in the next place, that the law should establish 
 the corps of midshipmen for the service at two hundred and 
 fifty. These should be recognized as midshipmen only, and 
 be subject to all the understood and appropriate duties of that 
 class of officers. They should then be consigned to service 
 on board of ships of war, and, after six months employment 
 at sea, should, upon examination and approval by a compe 
 tent board, be entitled to the midshipman s warrant, bearing 
 the date of the graduation at the school ; and after three 
 years service at sea and another examination, they should be 
 noted for promotion to a higher grade, which I propose should 
 be created by law, and denominated masters. The grade of 
 passed midshipmen should be abolished as soon as the gradual 
 promotion of the corps may allow. It is an anomaly in the 
 
516 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 naval service, presenting a class of officers to whom no duty 
 is specifically assigned, and constantly engendering discon 
 tent when the duties of ordinary midshipmen are required of 
 it. This class now perform the duty of masters, and I think 
 it but proper that the duty and the rank should be associated 
 by law. The change would require no increase of pay, and 
 would, I have no doubt, be productive of good effects. 
 
 The grade of masters might be established at one hun 
 dred, and might at once be filled by appointing to it that num 
 ber of passed midshipmen. The ultimate result of this plan would 
 give, when all the present passed midshipmen shall have been 
 absorbed in the regular course of promotion, two hundred and 
 fifty midshipmen and one hundred masters to occupy the space 
 now filled by the corps of four hundred and sixty-four officers 
 a reduction of one hundred and fourteen. This reduction of 
 course would increase the ratio of promotion to the corps of lieu 
 tenants, and would leave a sufficient complement for all the de 
 mands of the service, estimated" by the present size of the navy. 
 A future increase of the navy would suggest a proportionate in 
 crease of officers of every grade. 
 
 The promotions incident to this organization of the corps 
 that is to say, of two hundred and fifty midshipmen and 
 one hundred masters would supply about twenty-five vacan 
 cies a year. The present number of higher officers fur 
 nish something near this yearly average, and there is no 
 reason to suppose that it will be reduced in future ; the more 
 active service of the navy, even on the present establishment, 
 may rather increase it. The school, therefore, may be re 
 garded as subject to an annual demand for this number of its 
 graduates to be advanced into the regular line of service. 
 Estimating the number of graduates at twenty-five, the whole 
 of them would thus find position and employment ; an in 
 crease of thirty would of course give a remainder of five, 
 which may also be disposed of. 
 
 I propose, in further organization of this system, to construct 
 a scientific corps in the navy, to be established as the hydro- 
 
NAVAL AFFAIRS. 5 IT 
 
 graphical corps ; this corps to be designed, in its first formation, 
 upon a basis which shall provide for thirty masters, thirty lieu 
 tenants, fifteen commanders, and five captains making eighty 
 in all. It should be especially educated for that scientific pro 
 fessional service in which some portion of the navy is constant 
 ly employed. Its chief duties should be connected with hydro- 
 graphical surveys, astronomical observations, construction of 
 charts, preparation and improvement of ordnance, the super 
 vision of naval architecture and machinery, and the direction 
 of civil engineering in the construction of docks and other 
 structures requiring scientific knowledge and skill. 
 
 The corps should be entirely separate from and independ 
 ent of the regular naval service. Its line of promotion should 
 be confined to its own organization, and its government should 
 be under its own proper officers. In addition to the duties as 
 signed to it on shore and in hydrographical surveys, some por 
 tion of it might be appropriated to service at sea, and one or 
 more officers of the corps might be introduced into the com 
 plements of squadrons on foreign or home service. An expe 
 rienced officer of this corps would find useful and active duty 
 upon every cruise. It should be left to the Navy Department 
 to regulate the character and contingencies of this service and 
 to make all the necessary rules and orders for its application. 
 
 This corps should be built up under the direction of the 
 Secretary of the Navy from the material afforded by the acad 
 emy, with such additions to it, in its commencement, from the 
 regular line of naval service, as in his judgment the qualifica 
 tions of the present officers might enable him to make with 
 advantage. 
 
 With a view to the supply of this corps from the academy, 
 I propose that, upon the yearly examination of the graduates, 
 the Board of Examination shall be directed to bestow a close 
 attention upon the class submitted to them, in order to ascer 
 tain the particular adaptation of any of the graduates to this 
 species of service, and that they shall report to the Department 
 the names of such as they may find qualified by study, talent, 
 
5 IS POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 and acquirement for admission to the corps ; and if, upon this 
 report, the students so designated shall consent to enter the 
 corps, they, or so many of them as the established complement 
 of the hydrographical corps may require, shall be appropriated 
 to that service ; and, upon being so appropriated, they shall be 
 returned to the academy for an additional course of study of 
 two years, during which they shall be employed in obtaining a 
 thorough knowledge of the higher branches of civil engineering, 
 hydrography, astronomy, mechanism, and gunnery, in conform 
 ity with the best system of instruction which the academy may 
 be able to furnish. At the end of this probation of two years 
 they shall be subjected to a final examination, and, upon a rec 
 ommendation to that effect, shall be admitted to the rank of 
 masters in the hydrographical corps. Five years service in 
 this grade should entitle them to be promoted to lieutenants, 
 as vacancies may happen, and the promotions thenceforward 
 should await the ordinary incidents of the corps which may sup 
 ply the proper occasion. 
 
 If the Department should be able to contribute any mem 
 bers to the corps from the present officers of the service, I 
 think such appointments should not exceed twenty to each 
 grade of masters and lieutenants and ten commanders, and, 
 that no captain be appointed until after five years service in 
 the corps, there may be found the proper officers to occupy the 
 vacancies in this grade. It should also be well understood 
 that the Secretary of the Navy, in assigning present officers to 
 the corps, should be governed alone in his selection by high 
 qualifications and accomplishment in the science required, and 
 not by seniority in the service ; and that no appointments 
 should be made unless there be found officers of approved 
 reputation for their acquirements in reference to this service 
 who may be willing to enter the corps. 
 
 The yearly graduates of the academy will, according to this 
 system, be assigned to the two branches of service I have de 
 scribed ; that is to say, to the regular naval service and to the 
 hydrographical corps. The graduates required for these two 
 
NAVAL AFFAIRS. 519 
 
 branches should be selected from those who are adjudged by 
 the board of examination to stand highest on the roll of the 
 class ; and if at any time it should happen that the requisitions 
 should not embrace the whole number of graduates in each 
 year, then those whose services are not required, being the 
 lowest on the roll, should receive an honorable discharge from 
 the school. These would return to the occupations of private 
 life well educated by the bounty of the Government, and qual 
 ified for useful employment in the many important vocations 
 connected with commerce and navigation, and especially in the 
 various service of steamships, which create so large a demand 
 for expert and accomplished officers. In whatever situation 
 they may be placed, they will find abundant occasion to rejoice 
 in the advantages they shall have obtained at the school, and, by 
 the proper use of these advantages, indemnify the country for the 
 care and expense it may have bestowed upon their culture. 
 These conditions and incidents of an admission to the academy 
 being understood in advance, both by the cadet and his friends, 
 it is presumed, will prepare them to regard the discharge in 
 its true point of view, as the necessary contingency of a most 
 important good conferred, and not as a disappointment which 
 should occasion regret. If, on the other hand, it should turn 
 out that the annual number of graduates should not be adequate 
 to the demands of these two branches of service, the basis of 
 sixty-two in the class of beginners may be increased to the num 
 ber at which experience may show that the desirable result may 
 be obtained. It will be easy, after the experiment of a few 
 years, to ascertain this number with sufficient precision, and 
 as in the mean time the hydrographic corps is to be filled, the 
 extra supply of the classes for the next three years, by the ad 
 mission of the midshipmen of dates prior to 1851, will very op 
 portunely enlarge the classes to a number which will satisfy that 
 requisition. 
 
 In arranging the complement of officers to the hydrographic 
 corps, I have proceeded upon a conjectural estimate of what I 
 suppose may be found necessary to the service required of it. 
 
520 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 I submit this to the judgment of Congress for such alterations 
 in the grades and numbers as their investigations of the sub 
 ject may suggest. I have thought it safest to propose a num 
 ber rather below what I think the service may ultimately de 
 mand, as it is easier to increase this complement than to reduce 
 it. It is proper for me to say also that, in assigning five cap 
 tains to this corps, I may have exceeded the number which 
 may be appropriate to the organization. But as no captain, 
 according to this plan,, could be appointed before the lapse of 
 five years, the experience which may be gained in the interval 
 may enable Congress, before that period has gone by, to adjust 
 this grade to its proper number and assign to it its appropriate 
 duties. It may be hereafter looked to for the supply of the 
 head of the engineer department, the superintendents of naval 
 architecture and construction, the general supervision of hy- 
 drographical surveys, and the management of the Naval Acad 
 emy. If these functions may be efficiently discharged by it, 
 the number I have assigned will not be too large. 
 
 These are the general views and considerations which have 
 induced me to submit this plan to your approval and to the 
 consideration of Congress. 
 
 It will afford the annual appointment of sixty-two candi 
 dates for the navy. 
 
 It will give greater permanency and efficiency to the school. 
 
 It will quicken promotion in the navy, and give to the 
 younger officers hope of useful command while they yet possess 
 the vigor and ambition of youth. 
 
 It will establish a valuable corps of scientific officers who 
 will bring to the service equal devotion to the prosperity of the 
 navy and the highest attainments to promote it. 
 
 And it may occasionally give to the country men carefully 
 educated in useful knowledge, and bound by the strongest ob 
 ligation of gratitude and honor to requite this public bounty 
 by laudable service in the employments of civil life. 
 
 I think it proper, in presenting this new organization of the 
 school and of the officers which it is intended to supply, to ask 
 
NAVAL AFFAIRS. 521 
 
 of Congress that the grade of master in the service shall be 
 entitled to a commission and recognized in that character 
 by law. The masters are ward-room officers, and should be 
 placed among the commissioned officers of the navy. No 
 change of pay is necessary, and in that respect they may be 
 left upon their present footing. 
 
 It must be observed that some years will elapse, if this or 
 ganization be now authorized by law, before it can be rendered 
 complete ; and the sooner, therefore, that it is adopted the better. 
 
 The present class of passed midshipmen numbers two hun 
 dred and sixteen. These are to be disposed of. One hundred 
 of them may be commissioned as masters, and the grade may 
 be at once established at that number by law. The remaining 
 hundred and sixteen would be gradually absorbed by the grade 
 of masters in a few years ; after which the system will work ac 
 cording to its permanent regulation. 
 
 The present number of acting midshipmen is two hundred 
 and six, of which the school contains, by the last report, eighty- 
 one. Five appointments have been made for the next term, 
 and there are yet thirty-seven vacancies. To the nominations 
 already made for the new class of beginners to the next term 
 of October, 1853, may be added at once, with the thirty-seven 
 vacancies, as many as may be necessary to make sixty-two. 
 The classes should then advance regularly to the end of their 
 respective terms, without additions, and the law may provide 
 for the annual supply henceforth of sixty-two, in the manner I 
 have indicated. The grade of midshipmen might be at once 
 declared to be limited to two hundred and fifty, and the filling 
 of that complement should await the supply it may hereafter 
 obtain from the graduates. 
 
 If any of the present grade of passed midshipmen and 
 masters should be found qualified for admission to the hydro- 
 graphic corps, the vacancies which may be made by their ap 
 pointment to it may be filled by promotion, and so hasten the 
 period at which the new organization may be brought into full 
 operation. 
 
522 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 The school has yet to receive some classes of midshipmen 
 of the date previous to 1851. When admitted, they will con 
 stitute an extra portion beyond the quota allowed to the acad 
 emy, and I would suggest in regard to them that they should 
 be permitted, as heretofore, to constitute a part of any class for 
 which they may be qualified, and upon their graduation to be 
 entitled to their advancement to the proper grade ; it being 
 mainly important to provide at present that each yearly class 
 of new admissions should be constituted of the appointed num 
 ber of sixty-two, and in no event to exceed that number. The 
 future organization of the school will necessarily follow upon 
 the observance of this provision. 
 
 In proper connection with this subject cf the academy, it 
 is my duty to apprise you that I have recently adopted regulations 
 for the government of apprentices to be admitted at the several 
 navy yards and workshops under the control of this Department. 
 The propriety of these regulations has been suggested by the 
 bureau of yards and docks, and I am indebted to the intelligent 
 labors of three distinguished officers of the Department, Com 
 modores Morris, Shubrick, and Smith, to whom I referred the 
 subject for a report, which I have received, and which will be 
 found among the documents accompanying this communication. 
 The report presents the regulations which I have approved. 
 The number of apprentices as established, for the present, by 
 this system, is eighty-three. They are required to undergo an 
 examination twice in each year, and after the first year, those 
 most distinguished in the previous trials are to be subjected to 
 another of a still more extensive and rigorous character, upon 
 which such as shall be reported as worthy of the highest appro 
 bation and reward, and as demonstrating talent adapted to emi 
 nence in the public service, are to be commended to the Sec 
 retary of the Navy for such further advantages of instruction 
 as he may have it in his power to confer. 
 
 I regard it as a most salutary power to be invested in the 
 Secretary of the Navy, for the beneficial performance of the 
 duty thus assigned to him, that he should have authority to 
 
NAVAL AFFAIRS. 523 
 
 admit into the Naval Academy those apprentices whose good 
 conduct and capabilities shall have earned this distinction, and 
 to provide that they should there be conducted through a 
 course of study appropriated to their intended future vocations, 
 and calculated to advance them in mathematical and mechan 
 ical science, under such regulations in regard to the term of 
 their application, their duties and deportment, as the Navy 
 Department might think it expedient to adopt. Having com 
 pleted this course of study, they should be returned to the 
 yards from which they may have been received, or allotted to 
 suitable employments in the service. 
 
 It would be a useful provision in this scheme to give to the 
 young men so educated a preference in the admissions to the 
 corps of engineers for steamships, for which appointments 
 their education would particularly qualify them ; their admis 
 sion into that corps, nevertheless, to be dependent upon suc 
 cessful examination and a favorable certificate to moral and 
 intellectual character. 
 
 In the operation of this scheme the navy would derive the 
 benefit of the best talents and acquirement for the supply of 
 engineers, naval architects, and constructors and superintend 
 ents in the various departments of mechanical employment 
 connected with the service. 
 
 I take great pleasure in presenting this subject to your ap 
 proval and to the attention of Congress. 
 
 In view of this reorganization of the academy, I submit, also, 
 as a question worthy of consideration, whether it would not 
 be a salutary provision to require that the officers of the ma 
 rine corps should be prepared for that service by an education 
 at the school. My own opinion is that it would be attended 
 by manifest advantage, both as respects the necessary accom 
 plishment for naval service in that corps, and the personal 
 character and deportment of the officers belonging to it. It is 
 among the incidents of their employment that they are some 
 times required to perform important military duties on shore 
 in which a necessity is found for that species of knowledge 
 
524 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 only to be obtained in the military or naval school ; and in ev 
 ery service to which they are called it is quite apparent that 
 this knowledge, and the spirit to appreciate the duties of com 
 mand that is inseparable from it, must increase the efficiency 
 of the officer and elevate the character of the corps to which he 
 is attached. If these considerations should influence the opin 
 ion of Congress as they do my own, they will suggest the ex 
 pediency of making the provision to which I have invited their 
 attention. 
 
 In concluding this notice of the naval academy, it is due to 
 Commander Stribling, who has charge of the institution, and 
 to the officers, professors, and assistants under his command, 
 to say that the assiduity and intelligence with which they have 
 performed the laborious and complicated duties assigned to 
 them merit the highest approbation ; and that the prosperous 
 condition of the school and admirable arrangement of its de 
 tails, particularly manifested in the deportment and proficiency 
 of the young men confided to their care, eminently entitle it 
 to the favorable opinion and encouragement of the Govern 
 ment. 
 
 I particularly commend to the notice of Congress the con 
 sideration of the appropriations asked for by the Bureau of Ord 
 nance and Hydrography, for the improvements necessary to 
 purchase the grounds and complete the buildings required by 
 the academy. 
 
 Organization and Discipline of Seamen. 
 
 There is no subject connected with the prosperity of the 
 navy that, in my estimate, better deserves the attention of Con 
 gress than that relating to the condition of the corps of mar 
 iners, which constitutes the great working force in the naviga 
 tion and management of the public vessels. 
 
 In obedience to a sentiment which is prevalent throughout 
 the country, and which is naturally suggested by those impulses 
 that distinctively characterize the opinions and habits of our 
 people, Congress has been recently led to the consideration 
 
NAVAL AFFAIRS. 525 
 
 of the ^ordinary mode of punishment, which it had heretofore 
 been supposed was necessary to the preservation of the discip 
 line of the navy. The result of this consideration has been 
 the passage of a law for the entire abolition of corporal pun 
 ishment on board of our ships, both public and private. This 
 punishment which, for a long time, has been practiced in the 
 navy and commercial marine not only without question as to 
 its efficacy in maintaining the proper observance of duty on 
 shipboard, but which, indeed, had become so incorporated in 
 the sober conviction of both officers and men, as an indispen 
 sable necessity of the service, that it had grown to be the most 
 unquestioned usage and generally received incident of naval 
 discipline many judicious persons believed might be dispensed 
 with, not only most acceptably to the feelings of the nation, 
 but also without disadvantage to the service. The adoption 
 of this opinion by Congress, in the passage of the act of Sep 
 tember, 1850, which forbade the accustomed penalty, without 
 providing a substitute for it, has afforded the navy the oppor 
 tunity to make the experiment. I very sincerely regret to say 
 that the records of this Department, as well as the almost en 
 tire concurrence of facts and opinions, brought to my notice 
 from authentic sources, and vouched by intelligent and experi 
 enced observers, all tend to indicate a most unsatisfactory result. 
 The omission of Congress to provide for the punishment of 
 what may be called minor offences against discipline and good 
 order on shipboard may, perhaps, account in part for the fail 
 ure ; but the fact of the most serious detriment to the efficiency 
 of our service is so unhapily forced upon my attention, as the 
 effect of the recent change, that it becomes the gravest of my 
 duties at this time to lay the subject once more before Con 
 gress, and to ask its attention to the consideration of such a 
 corrective to the present condition of the service as I am con 
 fident it must find to be indispensable to the proper govern 
 ment of the navy. We have evidence furnished to this De 
 partment, in the history of almost every cruise, of acts of in 
 subordination that not only impair the usefulness of our ships, 
 
526 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 but which tend also to the gradual development of habits 
 among the seamen that threaten to lead to extensive and un 
 controllable mutinies. The multiplication of courts-martial, 
 and all the consequences of an increase of disorder and crime, 
 are among the least of the apparent and growing evils of the 
 new system. The demoralization of both men and officers is 
 a yet more observable consequence. The absence or prohibi 
 tion of the usual punishments known to seamen has led to the 
 invention of new penalties of the most revolting kind, in the 
 application of which full scope has been given and the strong 
 est provocations administered to that exhibition of temper and 
 passions which, however natural it may be to men of hasty and 
 excitable natures, is seldom indulged without leading to cruel 
 ties that must disgrace those who practice them ; and, what is 
 more to be feared, raise a sentiment in the public mind hostile 
 to the navy itself. The seaman, believing himself exempt 
 from the speedy penalty of disobedience or neglect of duty, and 
 looking with indifference to the remote and uncertain proceed 
 ing of a court-martial upon his delinquency, grows habitually 
 contumacious to his superiors, and infuses the same sentiment 
 into his comrades ; and in the very fact of the diffusion of this 
 spirit of insubordination finds ground to hope for immunity 
 from punishment naturally enough believing that what has 
 grown to be common and frequent will also come to be more 
 lightly considered when he is summoned to a trial at the end 
 of his cruise. It may excite some surprise in the statement 
 of what I learn to be true, that the most frequent complaints 
 against the abolition of corporal punishment are made, in great 
 part, by the seamen themselves. The difficulties arising out 
 of its abrogation, and the absence of any substitute for it, 
 now constitute the most prominent obstacles to the ready sup 
 ply of our squadrons with seamen. This Department is famil 
 iar with complaints from the recruiting stations of the difficulty 
 of enlisting the better class of seamen. Of that large number 
 of men who have heretofore constituted the pride of our navy, 
 by their good seamanship and highly respectable personal de- 
 
NAVAL AFFAIRS. 527 
 
 portment, comprising, I rejoice to say, the great body of the 
 manners who have sustained the honor and glory of our flag in 
 its most perilous as well as in its most useful career of these 
 men, it is a fact which invites the deepest concern of Congress, 
 we are daily deprived, by their refusal to enter again into the 
 service until, as they ask, they shall have some assurance that 
 a better system of discipline may be restored. They reasona 
 bly complain that, while the worst portions of the crew are 
 placed under arrest, and are exempt, in consequence, from the 
 severe duties of the deck, they find their toil increased by the 
 constantly recurring exigencies which compel them, for weeks 
 and months, during a cruise, to perform the extra work which 
 the reduction of the force of the ship inevitably throws upon 
 them. So oppressively is this evil felt, that I have reason to 
 believe, if the best seamen, who have heretofore been accus 
 tomed to man our ships, could find an occasion to express 
 their wishes to Congress, a majority of the whole number would 
 be seen to prefer a restoration of that form of punishment, 
 which has been forbidden, rather than be subject to the sever 
 ities imposed upon them by the present condition of disorder 
 in the naval discipline. 
 
 Looking at this state of things in the navy, I think the oc 
 casion propitious to the adoption of a new system for the or 
 ganization and government of the whole material constituting 
 the crews of our ships ; and I take advantage of the present 
 time to submit to your consideration the outline of a plan, 
 which I trust will engage your attention, and receive the ap 
 probation of Congress. 
 
 The supply of our navy with seamen has heretofore been 
 obtained by a system of enlistment, modelled, in its principal 
 elements, upon the plan adopted in Great Britain, from which 
 nation we have derived, by old habit and national descent, 
 the general features of our marine. Like England, we have 
 looked to our commercial navigation for the reinforcement of 
 the men of the navy. We enlist the mercantile seamen for the 
 national cruise, discharging and paying them off when it is fin- 
 
528 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 ished, and returning them to the merchant service. The navy, 
 in general, has been sufficiently attractive to the sailor to be 
 able to secure his service when needed ; and this mode of en 
 listment being an easy and accessible resource, but little con 
 sideration has heretofore been bestowed upon its effect either 
 on the navy itself or upon the seamen. To the navy it has 
 given a large and meritorious class of mariners, not unmixed, 
 however, with many of a different character, and from that 
 mixture itself requiring a prompt and effective system of pun 
 ishment adapted to secure a ready discharge of duty in every 
 emergency. The effect of the system upon the men of the 
 navy has been overlooked, or, if regarded at all, it has not at 
 tracted the attention of the public authorities. The sailor is, 
 in general, upon shore, a helpless being. Between himself and 
 all around him there is a palpable incongruity. He has come 
 off a long cruise and has earned some three or four hundred 
 dollars. He has no home ; often no friends but his comrades. 
 He knows no thrift, no saving economy ; has no adviser. 
 His only outlook is for some pastime, and his idea of that is 
 confined to sensual enjoyment. Every one is familiar with his 
 history in his brief sojourn on shore. He is a victim to that 
 class of persons who pander to his appetites and who plunder 
 him of his earnings. Necessity and inclination very soon 
 drive him back to the sea, where he finds his natural home 
 and the only friends who can understand his character and 
 sympathize with it. It is very apparent that a man so organ 
 ized and circumstanced stands very much in need of better 
 culture than this course of life affords. A discreet attention 
 to his condition by the Government, with a few salutary regu 
 lations that may teach him more thrift and furnish him guid 
 ance and encouragement, will make him more useful as a citi 
 zen, or at least more self-dependent and respectable in his in 
 dividual character, and render him at the same time certainly 
 not less useful in his profession. 
 
 I propose, for the consideration of Congress, a plan for 
 the reorganization of this portion of the navy, which, if matured 
 
NAVAL AFFAIRS. 529 
 
 by such experience as the future practice of it may afford, will, 
 I am confident, enhance the respectability and value of our 
 seamen, and secure to the country a most efficient corps of 
 men permanently devoted to the public service. 
 
 I think it cannot be doubted that the successful application 
 of the navy to the purposes for which it is designed would be 
 better assured by the services of a well-disciplined and care 
 fully-maintained body of seamen permanently attached to the 
 public naval establishment and incorporated with it, than it 
 ever has been or is ever likely to be by the fluctuating and va 
 riable resource of frequent enlistment and discharge. The 
 constant changes which this corps undergoes is unfavorable to 
 the growth of that sentiment, so essential to the service, which 
 makes a sailor proud of his flag. It is still more unfavorable 
 to the acquirement of that peculiar adaptation of habit and 
 training to the duties belongmg to the employment of a man- 
 of-war, which all officers regard as the test and indispensable 
 element of an efficient seaman in the navy. In a large navy 
 like that of England, where all the seamen of the mercantile 
 marine, in a certain sense, belong to the government, the dif 
 ference between the man-of-war s-man and the seaman of civil 
 employment is not so apparent or significant as it is in our ser 
 vice, in which the seamen bear so small a proportion to the 
 whole body of mariners of the nation. Every English sailor 
 has generally more or less service in the navy, and passes so 
 frequently from the private to the public employment as to give 
 him to a great degree an actual incorporation in the national 
 marine ; the one service is so connected with the other that 
 the seamen of bcth assimilate more in their training and edu 
 cation than the correspondent classes in this country. Our 
 navy, for obvious reasons connected with these considerations, 
 is much more dependant upon a body of men nurtured by 
 the Government and attached to the service than that of Eng 
 land. It is, therefore, a fundamental purpose in the plan 
 which I submit to Congress to provide for the ultimate estab 
 lishment of a permanent and recognized body of seamen, con- 
 23 
 
530 POLITICAL PAPKC3. 
 
 nected with the navy by the strongest and most durable bonds 
 of attachment and interest. 
 
 While providing for the gradual and eventual organization 
 of such a body, my attention has been directed also to the pro 
 curement of men of the highest character in personal and pro 
 fessional quality, in whose good deportment and faithful ser 
 vice will be found the most satisfactory reasons for protecting 
 by legal enactment their whole class against the form of pun 
 ishment which has of late so much excited the sensibility of 
 the nation. The successful accomplishment of such an object, 
 I trust, will commend the plan to the regard of all who desire 
 to preserve that exemption, and who have hoped to find it in 
 practice not incompatible with the efficiency of service on ship 
 board. 
 
 The general outline of the plan may be exhibited in the 
 following regulations : 
 
 With a view to the commencement of this system, and to 
 organize a body of efficient seamen of the most meritorious 
 class, I propose that every commanding officer of a squadron, 
 or of a single ship when not with a squadron, shall, on his re 
 turn from a regular cruise, report to the Navy Department in 
 the muster-roll of the men under his command, a statement of 
 the good or bad general deportment of each man, with a spe 
 cial designation of those whose conduct has merited that de 
 gree of approbation which shall entitle them to be admitted 
 into the navy. 
 
 That this report be submitted by the Department to the 
 President, who shall thereupon issue a general order to admit 
 into the navy the seamen who have been distinguished in the 
 report for good conduct. And the President shall transmit 
 with this order to the commanding officer of the squadron or 
 ship a certificate to each seaman, written on parchment and 
 stamped with the signature of the President himself, express 
 ing his approbation of his conduct and his permission to admit 
 the subject of it into the navy; which certificates shall be de 
 livered by the commanding officer of the squadron or ship to 
 
NAVAL AFFAIRS. 531 
 
 the men entitled to them before they are discharged from the 
 ship. This delivery to be made in the presence of the crews 
 and with suitable formality to attract public notice. 
 
 That each seaman to whom this certificate shall be awarded 
 shall, if he accept it, register his name in a book to be provided 
 for that purpose and kept on board of the ship, by which 
 registry he shall become a registered seaman of the navy of 
 the United States, and be entitled to all the privileges and be 
 bound to all the obligations of that character. This registry 
 book shall be transmitted to the Navy Department, where it 
 shall be preserved and the entries made in it copied into a 
 general registry, alphabetically arranged, and kept in the 
 Department. 
 
 The obligations incurred by every seaman who signs the 
 register shall be those of faithful service and due performance 
 of all seamanlike duty under the flag of the United States, 
 good moral deportment, and prompt obedience to all orders 
 that may be issued by his lawful superiors so long as he shall 
 continue to be a member of the navy. 
 
 The privileges attached to this registry shall be : 
 
 i. For every five years of actual duty on board a public 
 vessel an increase of one dollar a month over and above the 
 established rates of ordinary pay ; that is to say, for the first 
 five years of such service one dollar per month ; for a second 
 term of five years of such service an additional dollar per 
 month ; for a third term of five years another dollar ; for a 
 fourth term of five years making a total of twenty years 
 service another dollar, amounting in all for such twenty years 
 service to four dollars a month ; after which no further increase 
 to be made. This additional monthly pay, so earned by service, 
 to be paid to each man so long as he may continue to be a 
 registered seaman of the navy ; and, after twenty years of 
 service, to be paid whether he continues a registered seaman 
 or not. 
 
 The right to this additional pay to be liable to forfeiture 
 at any time within the twenty years actual service by the res- 
 
532 POLITICAL PAPEIIS. 
 
 ignation of any seaman on the registry, or by his being struck 
 off the list of registered seamen ; which may be done at any 
 time ; and shall only be done by the order of the Secretary of 
 the Navy or by the sentence of a naval court-martial upon 
 charges of misconduct ; in either of which events resignation 
 or discharge by sentence of the Secretary of the Navy or of a 
 court-martial he shall cease to belong to the navy, and shall 
 lose all the privileges of such a character. 
 
 2. Every registered seaman to be entitled to resign his post 
 in the navy at any time after three years service if not engaged 
 on a cruise. When engaged on a cruise and absent from the 
 ports of the United States, he shall not resign without the con 
 sent of the commanding officer of the ship. A record of all 
 resignations to be duly kept and reported to the Department. 
 
 A registered seaman of more than twenty years service 
 continuing in the navy only to forfeit his additional pay when 
 such forfeiture shall be adjudged by a court-martial as a pun 
 ishment for grossly immoral or insubordinate conduct. By 
 such sentence also for such offences his additional pay may be 
 suspended by a court for such time as they may adjudge. 
 
 3. No registered seaman of the navy to be subject to any 
 corporal or other punishment of a degrading character, and to 
 such only as may be ordered by a court-martial on charges 
 duly preferred and trhd. This prohibition not to prevent the 
 punishment without a court-martial of such minor delinquen 
 cies in conduct and discipline as may be corrected by withhold 
 ing the usual indulgences of the service, stopping portions of 
 the ration, or increasing ordinary duty. 
 
 4. Every registered seaman to be entitled after any term of 
 three years service to a furlough of such reasonable length as 
 may enable him to make one or more voyages in the merchant 
 marine, not extending, without special permission, to more than 
 six months ; such furlough to be granted by the commanding 
 officer of the squadron, or the commandant of the navy yard 
 nearest to the port at which his cruise may terminate, and only 
 to be granted in any case with an expressed reservation and 
 
AFFAIRS. 533 
 
 notice that the seaman to which it is given shall report for duty 
 in the navy when any public emergency shall render it neces 
 sary so to order him, the order for his return to duty to be is 
 sued by the Navy Department or by such officer as may be au 
 thorized by the Department to do so. A failure to report in 
 accordance with this provision to render him liable to be struck 
 off the registry by the Secretary of the Navy. Every register 
 ed seaman reporting for duty within three months of his last 
 cruise, and being thereupon ordered to duty, to be entitled to 
 pay from the date of termination of his last cruise. 
 
 All furloughs to be regularly reported and noted at the 
 Navy Department 
 
 5. Every registered seaman to be entitled to wear on his 
 dress some appropriate badge by which he may be distinguish 
 ed and known in the navy, which badge will be designated and 
 provided by the Navy Department. 
 
 6. The petty officers of each ship to be selected, as far as 
 convenient, from the class of registered seamen, and the ap 
 pointment always to be regarded as dependent upon the merit 
 and good character of the person selected, to be held on good 
 behavior, during the term of a cruise. 
 
 7. A record to be kept, under the direction of every com 
 manding officer of a squadron or ship, of the actual amount of 
 sea service performed by each registered seaman while under 
 his command. This record to be returned to the Department 
 at the end of every cruise, and to be transferred to the general 
 registry of seamen. Upon the evidence of this general registry 
 the additional pay to be granted. 
 
 8. Every seaman to be admonished to give his true name, 
 age, and place of birth upon signing the registry, and to be re 
 quired to engage not to ship in merchant or other vessels while 
 on furlough by any other name. His being convicted of viola 
 ting this engagement to render him liable to be struck from the 
 list of registered seamen upon the order of the Secretary of 
 the Navy. 
 
 9. In every case of dismissal from the service as a register- 
 
534 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 ed seaman, the party so dismissed to receive whatever moneys 
 may be due to him, unless the same shall have been forfeited 
 by the sentence of a court-martial imposed as a punishment for 
 an offence committed by him. A seaman dismissed from the 
 registry not to be entitled to be restored but upon the permis 
 sion of the head of the Navy Department, granted in consider 
 ation of the meritorious character of the applicant. 
 
 10. Seamen, ordinary seamen, and landsmen in the service, 
 not belonging to the registry, to be subject to such discipline, 
 duty, and penalties as Congress may provide in a code of reg 
 ulations adapted to their government, under such restrictions 
 or modifications as the Department may think proper to make. 
 
 n. A printed book or circular to be made by the Depart 
 ment, containing all the regulations and conditions relating to 
 the establishment of registered seamen, giving a full descrip 
 tion of the obligations to be contracted by them, and of the priv 
 ileges to which they may be entitled. Copies of this book or 
 circulars to be furnished to every squadron or single vessel in 
 commission, of which copies one shall be given to every sea 
 man, in order that he may be fully informed ^f the nature of 
 the engagements to be incurred by him on entering the service 
 of the United States. These regulations to be read and ex 
 plained to the several crews, and, as far as may be necessary, 
 to every seaman before he signs the registry. 
 
 12. The Department to be authorized to make, alter, and 
 modify all rules and regulations, so far as it may be found ex 
 pedient for the due establishment and support of this purpose 
 of creating a corps of registered seamen, in accordance with the 
 general objects intended to be promoted in the above plan, and 
 for the supplying of any defect which experience may show to 
 exist in it. 
 
 The term seaman, as used throughout this plan, is to be un 
 derstood to embrace every class of mariners on board a public 
 vessel, whether denominated seamen, ordinary seamen, or 
 landsmen. 
 
 13. A limited number of boys to be received into the navy 
 
.NAVAL AFFAIBS. 535 
 
 upon obligations contracted according to law, to serve until 
 they arrive at the age of twenty-one years. Their number, the 
 quota to be allowed to each vessel, and all needful and proper 
 rules for their government and duties, to be regulated by the 
 orders of the Navy Department 
 
 This system of providing for a more effective marine I re 
 spectfully submit to your consideration. There already exists 
 power in the Executive to adopt nearly the whole of its details. 
 It may be proper, however, to submit it to the approval of Con 
 gress, with a view to obtain for it a legislative recognition, and 
 especially to procure such enactments as may be necessary to 
 give the sanction of law to the establishment of the registry, 
 which constitutes the ground-work of the plan. 
 
 Increase of the Navy. 
 
 In the activity and diversity of enterprise which the busy 
 spirit of this time has exacted from the navy, it has now be 
 come manifest that the increase of the naval establishment of 
 the country is not only recommended by the most urgent pub 
 lic considerations, but is also forced upon the attention of Con 
 gress as an absolute necessity. The honor as well as the suc 
 cessful adventure of the nation, and I might even say the in 
 dispensable obligation of national defence and the constantly 
 recurring need for the exhibition of the national power, all 
 combine to present this question to Congress as one of the first 
 magnitude. During the past year this Department has been 
 impelled, by a due regard for the great public interests com 
 mitted to its charge, to put in requisition nearly the whole dis 
 posable force of the navy. The details of this report will show 
 that constant and various employment has been demanded of 
 officers, ships, and crews. I trust that Congress will see in 
 these requisitions how much the demands of necessary service 
 engross the means provided to accomplish it, and will deduce 
 from this fact an argument .in favor of enlarging the naval re 
 sources for still larger naval operations. 
 
 While other great maritime powers are strengthening and 
 
536 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 extending their capabilities for aggression and defence, and are 
 bestowing a sedulous labor upon the creation of steam navies 
 of singular efficiency, they have imposed upon us a new obliga 
 tion, if not to track their progress with equal steps in an effort 
 to bring ourselves abreast with them in their advance, at least 
 to maintain that position of relative strength which it has been 
 our policy heretofore to assume. 
 
 The actual exigencies of our own service, so conspicuously 
 multiplied by the rapid extension of our domain and the settle 
 ment of new marts of trade and the establishment of new lines 
 of commerce on the Pacific, cannot but present to every citizen 
 of the United States an altogether irresistible argument to per 
 suade the nation to a much larger provision of ships and men 
 than we have heretofore kept in commission. The Pacific, 
 during the next ten years, is likely to become the theatre of the 
 most interesting events of our time. A nation is growing up 
 upon its shores which will both attract and supply an amount 
 of commercial enterprise in the rapid growth and activity of 
 which the world has yet had no parallel. The discovery of 
 America did not give such an impulse to this spirit as we now 
 witness in the energy and occupations of these recent settle 
 ments. 
 
 At this moment we are without a public steamship in that 
 ocean. Our various commerce scattered along the whole coast 
 from Oregon to Chili, and our citizens who are found in every 
 port throughout that extended line, are left to the protection of 
 but two frigates and two sloops-of-war, composing a squadron 
 whose utmost activity can but half perform the duty assigned 
 to it. Our new relations with Asia and the intermediate isl 
 ands, which are constantly multiplying the resources of trade, 
 and with them the hazards of collision, and the consequent in 
 crease of numbers drawn from the population of every country 
 to the commencement of an era of great political significance, 
 which will henceforth exact from the Government more than 
 its accustomed vigilance in noting the progress of events, and 
 more than its usual energy in the duty of guarding our citizens 
 
XAVAL AFFAIRS. 537 
 
 who may be connected with them. It is, therefore, more ne 
 cessary than ever that we should have a respectable force al 
 ways accessible to our countrymen in this field of action, and 
 capable of giving them protection against the perils of war and 
 popular outbreak and revolutionary commotion, which in future, 
 even more than in the past, may be expected to characterize 
 many of the States and communities to which their business 
 invites them. A steamer of a large class, adapted to the gen 
 eral duties of a cruise, and a smaller one to be kept at hand at 
 San Francisco, for use in California and Oregon, I regard as 
 almost indispensable additions to the squadron assigned to that 
 service. 
 
 Looking to the Atlantic, we find motives equally strong for 
 the increase of our naval armaments, and particularly for the 
 enlargement of the number of our steamships. 
 
 While I am fully aware that the power of the United States 
 happily consists more in their ability to provide for the contin 
 gencies of invasion than in the actual exhibition of an equipped 
 force, and that we may dispense with much that is deemed req 
 uisite in the relations of European powers, still we cannot fail 
 to recognize the fact that the respect due to the interests of 
 our people requires the habitual and familiar presence of our 
 flag in every region of commerce, sustained by such an amount 
 of force, and of such a quality, as may give some significant 
 token of the resources we command at home. A salutary con 
 viction on this point is, to a great extent, inspired by the ex 
 cellence of our armaments when brought into comparison with 
 those of other nations. We cannot afford to lose or impair our 
 reputation for producing the best ships and the best-disciplined 
 crews that navigate the ocean, however we may afford to ex 
 hibit them in smaller numbers. 
 
 The principal maritime nations are now diligently intent 
 upon the effort to build up powerful steam navies. Most of 
 them are already far ahead of us in this species of force ; and 
 it is very obvious, from the urgency with which the new marine 
 of Europe is pressed to assume this character, that there is a 
 
538 POLITICAL TAPERS. 
 
 deep and earnest conviction of an impending necessity in which 
 the improved force will be mainly relied on as the efficient ele 
 ment of war. Are we so far removed from the occasion or the 
 scene of apprehended conflict as to warrant any indifference 
 on our part to the possible issues of a collision ? Are our af 
 fairs so little exposed abroad, or so concentrated at home, as 
 to exempt us from all necessity to consider the effects which 
 may follow the recent changes in the naval organization of Eu 
 rope? 
 
 These considerations, and others which they suggest, in 
 duce me to ask the attention of Congress to the recommenda 
 tions of the Bureau of Construction accompanying this report, 
 and to invite them, with the most earnest solicitude, to provide 
 for the building of three first-class screw-propeller frigates, and 
 the same number of propeller sloops-of-war. To these might 
 be added with advantage a few smaller steamers adapted to 
 quick despatch and coast navigation. 
 
 Our navy yards are abundantly supplied with large quanti 
 ties of the best timber, in the best condition, which could not 
 be better appropriated than to this object. There are two frig 
 ates, the Santee and the Sabine, which have been housed on 
 the stocks in Portsmouth and New York for the last ten years. 
 These might be launched and fitted for service, and their places 
 might be occupied as well as the sheds now vacant in other 
 yards by the new steamships proposed to be built. 
 
 In connection with this subject I would call the attention 
 of Congress to the necessity of authorizing the establishment 
 of one or more factories for the construction of all the machin 
 ery necessary to the complete equipment of the largest class 
 of steamers. The great importance of such establishments to 
 the Government is felt by this Department in the daily convic 
 tion that only by the command of such a resource may the navy 
 be promptly and surely supplied with the best machinery for 
 the public vessels. The inspection and control of the work 
 while it is in progress, the assurance of the best material, and 
 the punctual compliance with the demands of the service, are 
 
NAVAL AFFAIRS. 539 
 
 advantages that may only be efficiently secured by having the 
 workshop under the command of the Government. The expe 
 rience of the past will also fully demonstrate that this mode of 
 supplying the machinery of our public vessels must be, in its 
 general result, more economical than any other, and will cer 
 tainly secure much the most reliable kind of work. The plans 
 would be more uniform, failure of machinery less frequent, and 
 the improvement of the models of construction more certain. 
 
 The mail contract law of 1847 contains a provision which 
 authorizes the Government to appropriate any of the vessels 
 built under it to the naval service. I would reommend that 
 one of these, of the first class, be selected and equipped with 
 the proper armament. I make this suggestion from a persua 
 sion that it is a matter of importance to the Government 
 practically to determine, by experiment, a question upon which 
 much doubt is entertained, and which it is necessary to solve, 
 whether these steamers are really adequate to the demands of 
 the naval service, and may be usefully converted into ships of 
 war. The determination of this question may settle a point 
 of great moment touching the reliance to be placed upon 
 these ships in any sudden emergency a point much more 
 safely to be settled in a time of peace than in moments of ex 
 citement and pressure, when no other resource may be at 
 hand to meet the consequences of a failure. 
 
 It is further necessary to make provision for an increase 
 of seamen. The present limit of seven thousand five hundred 
 men is insufficient even for the necessities of the service in its 
 present existing condition. If the full complement of men ap 
 propriated by the regulations of the navy were now on board 
 of the vessels in commission, more than the whole number 
 allowed would be required. I think it therefore indispensable 
 to the proper efficiency of the service that an addition of not 
 less than fifteen hundred be authorized to be made to the es 
 tablishment, and that a correspondent addition be made to the 
 yearly estimates of naval pay. It is equally necessary that 
 provision be made for an increase in wages, either in monthly 
 
540 POLITICAL RAPERS. 
 
 pay or in the shape of a bounty, to be given after enlistment. 
 The amount of this increase should be regulated by some ref 
 erence to the wages given in the merchant service, which are. 
 now so much higher than the naval pay as to increase the dif 
 ficulty to which I have heretofore alluded, in the procurement 
 of the best men. 
 
 A reference to the report of the Bureau of Medicine will 
 inform Congress of the condition of the medical service of the 
 navy and the pressing necessity that exists for an increase of 
 officers in that department. Great relief would be afforded 
 by an authority to appoint a number, not exceeding twenty as 
 sistant snrgeons, and to make a correspondent promotion of 
 an equal number, or of so many as by proper length of ser 
 vice may be qualified for it, into the upper grades. 
 
 I beg leave also to call the attention of Congress to the 
 report of the commanding officer of the marine corps, which 
 will show how inadequate is the present limitation of that 
 corps to the ordinary demands of the service. The opinion 
 of General Henderson upon this point, of itself entitled to 
 great weight, is reinforced by that of many of the most ex 
 perienced officers of the navy, as will be seen in the corre 
 spondence accompanying the report, to which I invite a careful 
 attention. In conformity with these opinions, I respectfully 
 recommend to Congress the passage of a law to authorize the 
 enlargement of the corps by the addition of eighty sergeants, 
 eighty corporals, thirty drummers and fifers, and one thousand 
 privates, and that the four captains, four first and four second 
 lieutenants, conditionally allowed to the service by the proviso 
 to the naval appropriation bill of March 3, 1849, be retained 
 permanently in the corps. 
 
 The same necessity which has led to this representation 
 of the embarrassments of the service in those branches to 
 which I have just alluded, compels me to ask for some addi 
 tion to the corps of pursers. This important division of the 
 naval organization is found to stand in need of more aid than 
 the present allowance affords. The corps scarcely furnishes 
 
NAVAL AFFAIRS. 541 
 
 that proper rotation in service which the peculiar duties of the 
 purser demands. It is necessary after every cruise to allow 
 this officer a sufficient time on shore to settle his accounts 
 a period which will not always place him at the disposal of 
 the Department for an early return to sea, if it were even prop 
 er to compel these officers to a repetition of duty without 
 some time for such refreshment on shore as every officer re 
 quires. 
 
 If Congress should think proper, in consideration of this 
 condition of the corps, to sanction an increase of its members, 
 I would earnestly recommend the establishment of a grade of 
 assistant pursers, to which only the new appointments should 
 be made ; that these assistants should undergo an examina 
 tion as to their physical and mental abilities previous to their 
 appointment ; that the age of admission should be regulated 
 by the Navy Department ; and that no applicant should be 
 nominated for the corps without a satisfactory conformity to 
 the preliminary condition. Promotion and pay should be reg 
 ulated by law, and no promotion should be made but upon 
 full evidence of the capability of the individual to comply 
 with all the demands of the service ; this evidence to be ob 
 tained by such course of examination as the Department may 
 prescribe. With such conditions, I would recommend that 
 Congress should at present authorize the appointment of twen 
 ty assistant pursers to be attached to the corps. 
 
 As a subject of great interest to the efficiency of the navy, 
 I beg leave to renew the recommendations heretofore made by 
 this Department for the gradual reduction of the number 
 of officers who are incapable of useful service, by the 
 adoption of some suitable plan for retiring all of this char 
 acter from the sphere of ordinary duty. A well-organized 
 naval system requires that the officers charged with its admin 
 istration should, as far as possible be maintained in a condi 
 tion for whatever employment may be demanded of them, and 
 should always exhibit the utmost alacrity in their obedience to 
 orders. There is no better test of the spirit of the corps, nor 
 
542 POLITICAL PA PEES. 
 
 no more commendable sign of a good officer, than his readi 
 ness to accept every call of his profession. This high charac 
 ter can only be maintained in the navy by exempting from com 
 mand all who obstruct the path of duty. Those whose disa 
 bility has been the result of long and faithful toil in the nation 
 al service, should be provided with an honorable retreat, in 
 which old age and infirmity may find repose. They who, with 
 out service to plead for their incapacity, only stand in the way 
 of more willing and more capable men, should be consigned 
 to a retirement on smaller pay, by the operation of a law which 
 should render their retirement compulsory. 
 
 It may be worth the consideration of Congress to make 
 permanent provision for these two classes of officers. This 
 might be advantageously accomplished perhaps by a law 
 which should confer upon the first class a rate of retired pay, 
 graduated from half-pay up to that allowed to leave of absence, 
 according to the amount of sea service they may have per 
 formed, and adding to this an honorary promotion of one de 
 gree in rank, and which should dispose of the second class by 
 retiring them on half of leave of absence pay. 
 
 The details necessary to such a system may be easily reg 
 ulated whenever Congress shall find occasion to take the sub 
 ject into their deliberations. 
 
 I repeat also my concurrence in the views presented by 
 my predecessor in his report of November, 1850, on the pro 
 priety of " recognizing by law the office of Commodore, and 
 the creation of at least two officers of the rank of Rear Ad 
 miral." I can add nothing to the satisfactory arguments with 
 which that recommendation is enforced, and therefore content 
 myself with a reference to the report, and an earnest invoca 
 tion to Congress to give it a favorable consideration. 
 
THE BORDER STATES. 543 
 
 THE BOEDER STATES: 
 
 THFJR POWER AND DUTY IN THE PRESENT DISORDERED CONDI 
 TION OF THE COUNTRY. 
 
 r I ^ HE country is now, or, from all the tidings that reach us, 
 JL must soon he compelled to accept the fact that South 
 Carolina has seceded from the Union. 
 
 Whatever may be the right of secession, it is about to be 
 come a practical fact. South Carolina has announced her 
 purpose, as far as it is in her power, to dissolve the Union. 
 Other States belonging to that series which has lately assumed 
 the designation of the Cotton States as expressive of a pecu 
 liar affinity in interest and policy are likely to follow her ex 
 ample. Alabama, which is, in some sense, the offspring and 
 pupil of Carolina, has shown herself already too eager to pre 
 cipitate herself into revolution to leave us any hope that she 
 will hesitate to array herself on the side of her teacher. Per 
 haps we may still find some encouragement to a better augury, 
 in the good sense and prudence of Georgia and the other 
 States which have not been wholly possessed and fevered by 
 that extraordinary contagion of frenzy which Carolina has 
 spread through the lowlands of the South. But I confess my 
 fears. The signs are against it. The chances are for this 
 event is not under the control of the sober judgment and wise 
 estimate by which all matters of State should be directed 
 the chances are that passion will rule the hour, and that the 
 revolution \vill move onward, swayed by the same rash im 
 pulses as those in which it originated. 
 
 We of the Border States, therefore, cannot too soon take 
 counsel together, touching our own interest and duty in the 
 
544 POLITICAL PATERS. 
 
 new condition of affairs which is about to be forced upon us. 
 The question that now concerns us is What position are we 
 to assume in the beginning of the strife ; where are we to 
 place ourselves at the end of it ? 
 
 Is it not very obvious that Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, 
 Missouri, North Carolina, and Maryland cannot, with any re 
 spect for their own dignity, with any regard for their welfare, or 
 with any security for their own peace, suffer themselves to be 
 dragged into that track of revolution and civil war, of wild exper 
 iment and visionary project into which Carolina is endeavoring 
 to force them ? These States are quite able to determine for 
 themselves what griefs they suffer and what redress they require ; 
 they want no officious counsellor nor patronizing friend to tell 
 them what it becomes them to do, either for the maintenance of 
 their own honor, or the promotion of their own advantage ; they 
 can hear with quiet scorn the taunt that they " have placed the 
 Union above the rights and institutions of the South " and hold 
 at what it deserves the offensive rebuke " that no Southern State 
 intent on vindicating her rights and preserving her institutions 
 would go into conference with them."* 
 
 Every substantial hope of a successful issue out of the af 
 flictions of the country, produced equally by the wickedness 
 of Northern fanaticism, and the intemperate zeal of secession, 
 depends upon the calm and earnest wisdom of the Border 
 States. That they will be true to the duties of the crisis, no 
 one who has studied their character can for a moment doubt. 
 
 However the lowland States may now slight their counsels 
 and disparage their patriotism, it is a most weighty and signifi 
 cant truth, for the consideration of the leaders of the projected 
 revolution, that the Border States are at this time the most 
 authentic representatives of the conservative power of the 
 Union. Their various and equal relations to the North, the 
 South and the West, their social organization for the support 
 
 * See the Charleston Mercury of November 19, where this lan 
 guage is held to Virginia and the other Border States, in the editorial 
 headed " Southern Conference too late." 
 
THE BORDER STATES. 545 
 
 of every interest connected with good government and perma 
 nent peace, their internal strength, and, above all, their health 
 ful tone of opinion toward the preservation of constitutional 
 right and resistance against wrong, point them out as the safest 
 and best arbiters in the present difficulties of the country. 
 Whatever there is of real vigor in the slaveholding communi 
 ties, exists in them and is derived in greatest degree, by oth 
 ers, from their sympathy and alliance. Without them, we may 
 affirm, that no confederacy of Slave States, at all worthy of 
 respect and consideration as an independent power, can pos 
 sibly be formed. 
 
 The attempt, whenever made, will speedily prove itself to 
 be a most unhappy failure. 
 
 The Border States have a better right to claim a hearing, 
 just now, than any other member of the Union. Indeed, until 
 they have spoken, it would almost seem to savor of an unbe 
 coming officiousness on the part of any other State to put 
 itself in the van to raise an outcry of wrong or to dictate the 
 measure of remedy. 
 
 While these States have always manifested a just and be 
 coming sensibility to their rights, connected with the employ 
 ment of slave labor, and have shared in the common indigna 
 tion of the South against the malignant hostility of certain 
 sections of the Northern people ; while they have been the 
 chief and almost only sufferers from the inroads of organized 
 abolitionists, who have stealthily abstracted their slaves in 
 numbers whose value may be reckoned at little less than a 
 million of dollars a year ; while, indeed, it may be said, that 
 these States are the only portions of the slaveholding region 
 which have any direct, immediate or definite interest, worthy 
 of special consideration, in the vexed questions touching the 
 present or the future of slavery in the United States that is 
 to say, in the question of emigration to the territories, the 
 rendition of fugitives, and the organization of new States 
 they have, nevertheless, shown themselves in all contingencies, 
 the confident and considerate assertors of their rights in the 
 
546 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 mode ordained by the Constitution, and at all times the deter 
 mined friends of the Union. They have never yet felt an 
 aggression which they did not believe more effectively to be 
 repelled by the due exercise of the power of the government, 
 than by retreat before the aggressor and resort to a covert 
 revolution that seeks to legalize its action by taking the name 
 of secession. 
 
 They certainly cannot be expected now, with the painful 
 conviction which passing events are creating in their minds 
 that the Union itself is the chief grievance which stirs the 
 hostility of those who are most active in raising a banner of 
 revolt, and that the assaults upon the property of slaveholders, 
 of which they, the Border States, have so much cause to com 
 plain, are but the pretext to cover a concealed design of por 
 tentous mischief they cannot be expected now, with such a 
 conviction, to renounce the wisdom of their accustomed trust 
 in the law, and allow themselves to be persuaded or beguiled 
 into a desertion at once of the Constitution which they have 
 always respected, or of the Union which they have always 
 revered. Their course is too plainly marked out to them by 
 the incidents of the day to admit of any such fatal aberration 
 as that. They are not blind to the fact that the present crisis 
 has been forced upon the country with a haste that allowed no 
 halt, chiefly because its contrivers feared the sound of that 
 voice from the Border States, which they knew would speak 
 peace to the troubled waves in strife, and would reach the 
 heart of hosts of loyal citizens in the very bosom of the com 
 motion, citizens, alas ! now bereft of their loyalty by the force 
 of the tempest of revolution that has swept over them. 
 
 If thus Carolina and her comrades are lost all is not lost. 
 There is space for arbitrament still left which may at least 
 secure an opportunity for meditation, and I would hope an 
 eventual settlement that may, perhaps, include even those who 
 are at present the most resolute in their recusancy. Carolina 
 now repeats defiantly that all chance of her return is gone 
 forever. I would fain believe that affairs mav be conducted 
 
THE BORDER STATES. 547 
 
 into such a channel as to awaken in her a better view of her 
 own future. 
 
 It is very important that the country should consider the 
 true character of the danger that threatens it. The public 
 mind is sadly at fault upon this point. There has been a sin 
 gular occurrence of accident and design to lead even sensible 
 and observant men off from the perception of the real causes 
 of this disturbance ; and a not less singular exhibition of prac 
 ticed skill in the address with which the popular masses in 
 the region of the commotion have been enlisted in an enter 
 prise of the scope and consequences of which they had neither 
 the leisure to examine nor the temper to comprehend. 
 
 The public for the most part believe that the impending rev 
 olution grows out of the organization of the Republican party, 
 and that the recent election presented the culminating point at 
 which that organization could no longer be endured with safe 
 ty to the Southern States. 
 
 Unfortunate as that election is, not only in its results, but in 
 all the stages of its progress from the day of the Chicago Con 
 vention down to that of its consummation unfortunate for the 
 tranquillity of the country, and for the predominance it has given 
 to certain men and certain political sects it is not less unfor 
 tunate for the opportunity it has afforded to the accomplish 
 ment of designs long nourished, which have been held in sus 
 pense only to await a juncture favorable to their success. 
 
 The graver and more thoughtful portions of the community 
 have recognized with no little pain, the steady growth in some 
 sections of the South, for many years past, of a disposition in 
 the leaders of Southern opinion to undervalue both the strength 
 and the beneficence of the Union. It belongs to the school 
 of doctrine of which South Carolina is the head, to imbue the 
 people with the idea that the State Sovereignty has the first 
 claim to the allegiance of the citizen, and that no more is due 
 to the National Sovereignty than may be found not incompat 
 ible with this superior duty ; that to support the State, right 
 or wrong, in whatever demand it may make in conflict with the 
 
548 POLITICAL PAPKR*. 
 
 Federal authority, is the natural and most proper exhibition 
 of a becoming State pride. 
 
 This school has also been the source of certain theories 
 touching the structure and aims of our goverment, which, al 
 though founded, as we conceive, on mistaken views both of the 
 facts of its history and of the necessary conditions upon which 
 alone any government of a population so extensive as ours is 
 practicable, could not but lead in time to angry dissension and 
 inveterate sectional prejudice. 
 
 Conspicuous among these theories are two which have 
 taken a deep hold upon the Southern mind. To their influence 
 we may trace no small amount of the discontent which has 
 weakened the attachment of some of the Southern States to 
 the Union ; and which has also led to the large acceptance they 
 have given to the efficacy and lawfulness of that extreme meas 
 ure which Carolina now proposes as the proper remedy for the 
 evils which threaten her in common with all other slavehold- 
 ing States. 
 
 The first of these theories asserts that the Federal Govern 
 ment was constructed on the basis of an equilibrium of power 
 between the Free and Slave States, which equilibrium was de 
 signed to be forever preserved in all the vicissitudes of the 
 future. The failure to preserve it is consequently regarded as 
 a violation of a fundamental compromise. 
 
 The second is that which affirms all import duties to be an 
 exclusive tax upon the Planting States, by virtue of which they 
 are burdened with the charge of the entire support of Govern 
 ment. 
 
 I might add to these, that other theory from the same 
 school, and equally questionable, which conceives the ever- 
 present and effective remedy for all real or fancied griefs to 
 exist in the doctrine of a lawful right of secession. 
 
 Without stopping to debate the soundness of these several 
 tenets, I refer to them as presenting the real germs of the dis 
 content which has been smouldering at the heart of Carolina 
 for years, and as suggesting the true explanation of that phe- 
 
THE BORDER STATES. 54:9 
 
 nomenon which puzzles the whole nation at this day, the ac 
 tivity, namely, and apparent supererogatory zeal with which 
 Carolina has first, and before all her sister States of the South, 
 flung herself into the arena to vindicate them by revolution 
 and destruction of the Union. 
 
 These teachings have been long silently undermining her 
 attachment to the Federal Government, and have at last wholly 
 obliterated in her that sentiment of reverence for the Union 
 which our forefathers inculcated, with a religious earnestness, 
 as the foundation of American Nationality. 
 
 It is a fact of common observation that the present genera 
 tion of public men in Carolina have been educated in omin 
 ous familarity with the thought of disunion. It has been the 
 toy of their childhood, the weapon of their age of active life. 
 It has gathered edge and strength in a long and petulant quar 
 rel with the National Government. It has, at last, taken visible 
 shape in the instant, defiant act of secession. 
 
 Carolina frankly avows the Union to be an obstruction to 
 her prosperity. That is not the sentiment alone of to-day. It 
 has, for years past, been her earnest conviction that the Fed 
 eral Government, administered on the principles most accord 
 ant with the wishes of a large number of the States, is not 
 compatible with her welfare. She, therefore, thinks she has a 
 right to retire from the compact and assume the position of an 
 independent nation. 
 
 She, moreover, thinks that it is altogether consistent with 
 her duty to her sister States with whom she has had no ground 
 of quarrel, to propagate her own discontent among such of 
 them as she may deem useful to her project, and by persua 
 sion, solicitation, and convention, to lure them out of the 
 Union into alliance with herself. 
 
 The short compend of these claims is expressed in the 
 postulate a right, at her pleasure, to dissolve the Union. 
 
 Every one has heard and read how pertinaciously she has 
 argued this right in every forum open to her service. 
 
 Persuading herself that she has this right, to be used when- 
 
550 POLITIC AI PArEKS. 
 
 ever she thinks proper, she deduces from it, quite logically, 
 the right to meditate over every problem of passable contin 
 gencies which might, in the evolution of* events, be turned 
 to her advantage. As for instance, whether she would not 
 thrive better if certain prohibitions of the Constitution were 
 removed ? Would it be to her benefit to make Charleston a 
 free port ? to negotiate a commercial treaty with England ? 
 with France ? to make a new Confederacy within the territo 
 ry of the Union ? to open and re-establish the African slave- 
 trade? a hundred such questions which she may deem fit to 
 consider and determine while she remains a member of the 
 Confederacy and the objects of which, if she cannot accomplish 
 them in the Union, she thinks it unreasonable to be denied 
 the privilege of accomplishing by secession from the Union. 
 
 I would not willingly misrepresent Carolina much less 
 speak in derogation of her really high and admirable qualities of 
 character. There is no community of the same size, I believe, in 
 the world that has produced a larger share of distinguished 
 men. There is no society in the United States more worthy 
 of esteem for its refinement, its just and honorable sentiment, 
 and its genial virtues. 
 
 The men of Carolina are distinguished by the best qualities 
 of attractive manhood. They are brave, intelligent and frank. 
 They speak what they think, and they mean what they say. 
 They are the last people in this Union we should desire to part 
 with notwithstanding their strange insulation of opinion, their 
 exclusive philosophies, and, what they must pardon us for think 
 ing, their political sophisms ! 
 
 In these sundry meditations of theirs, they have long since 
 struck upon one or more of the conclusions which I have hint 
 ed above the opinion, namely, that they would do better in a 
 Southern Confederacy than in the Union made by their fore 
 fathers. And having come to that conclusion, they have 
 wrought themselves to the sober or rather, let me say, the ve 
 hement conclusion that they are the most oppressed people of 
 Christendom. 
 
THE BORDER STATES. 551 
 
 In 1832, their oppression existed in the unhappy fact that 
 the Government persisted in continuing a policy originally 
 supported, if not demanded, by Carolina herself, which was 
 founded upon the most approved economical science of that 
 day, and the practice of all enlightened nations the encour 
 agement of the domestic industry of the country. As a rem 
 edy for this grief they proposed secession and dissolution of 
 the Union but not being unanimous in that conclusion, they 
 resorted to the milder process of nullification. 
 
 How many times since that, they have determined to dis 
 solve the Union, it would be tedious to enumerate. But in 
 1851, their grievances grew so intolerable, through the admis 
 sion of California into the Union, with a constitution made 
 according to its own view of what was best for it, that all the 
 altars were lighted up once more with an unusual conflagra 
 tion of the never-dying flames of liberty and independence. 
 
 What was the extent of suffering then, and what the peculiar 
 gravamen of that day, we may learn from their own oracles. 
 
 In order that I may speak from the book, I will quote 
 some passages almost too long, but still so full of matter 
 that I am unwilling to shorten them, from the chosen and au 
 thentic expounder of Southern opinion The Southern Quar 
 terly Review. 
 
 In an article of the October number of 1851, entitled, 
 "South Carolina, her present attitude and future action," 
 from the sum of much grave advice touching revolution, and 
 hinting, among other things, at the passage of bills of attain 
 der and the use of the axe, I extract the following exposition 
 of wrongs and suggestions of remedy : 
 
 " But the people of South Carolina," says the reviewer, 
 " have not yet entirely forgotten the angry feelings growing 
 out of the war of the Revolution. Well, then, let them read 
 over the Declaration of Independence, and compare the wrongs 
 recited there, with those we now endure. What was the actual 
 grievance then ? What is it now ? Then they augured mis- 
 government at a distance. Now, the evil is upon them, and 
 tenfold greater evil than the most far-seeing politician of that day 
 
552 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 anticipated from British tyranny One, and but one of the lux 
 uries of the rich was taxed not more than five per cent. Now, 
 every necessary of life which she does not produce at home, 
 is taxed at an average rate of not less than thirty per cent. Then 
 Old England claimed the right to exact from her a portion of 
 the revenue necessary for the support of the British Empire, 
 while the amount expended for the benefit of South Carolina 
 very far exceeded all that she was called on to contribute. 
 Now, New England requires her together with a few of her 
 uncomplaining and acquiescent sisters to furnish the whole rev 
 enue of the Union, no part of which comes back to them, ex 
 cept in the shape of bribes to such as are willing to sell them 
 selves into the service of their enemies, for Texas scrip and 
 the emoluments of office." 
 
 * * * # * # * 
 
 " She (Massachusetts) was wronged. She was outlaw 
 ed and her port of Boston was shut. We took up arms in 
 her quarrel. It was hardly our own. But we made it our 
 own. It was for her that our Moultrie, Marion, Pickens and 
 Sumpter fought in defence of our firesides, against an enemy 
 whom our zeal in her behalf brought upon us. From Ninety- 
 Six to Charleston, our country is full of monuments of our ef 
 forts in her cause. It was for her the gallant Hayne died a 
 felon s death ; and the requital of that sacrifice is, to threaten 
 the like doom to his descendants should they be as bold in 
 defence of our own. rights as he was then in defence of hers. 
 We separated ourselves from Old England because the port 
 of Boston was shut up. Should we now separate ourselves 
 from New England, we hear from Boston itself that the port 
 of Charleston is to be shut up." 
 
 After this, we have a glimpse of the remedy proposed for 
 these oppressions. 
 
 " What is there at this day antagonistic between the inter 
 ests of Great Britain and those of South Carolina ? Is not 
 each the consumer of all the other s productions, reciprocally y 
 Is not their relation like that of the sexes, each necessary to 
 the other ? And shall South Carolina, like the Circassian 
 slave, continue shut up in the harem of a brutal and sordid 
 tyrant, when a generous lover is waiting to make her his hon 
 ored wife, and to establish her in wealth and comfort and free 
 dom and all the dignity of a Christian matron ? " 
 
THE BORDER STATES. 553 
 
 "With all her professions of friendship Massachusetts 
 hates England with an inextinguishable, because an interested 
 hatred. They are rivals in commerce. They are rivals in 
 manufactures. An especial object of rivalry is the commerce of 
 the Southern States, and hence Massachusetts does all she can 
 to keep alive their old animosities and to prevent the growth of 
 an)- sympathy between us and England. Hence she excites the 
 impertinent clamors of English abolitionists. What for? Can 
 they interfere with our institutions ? No. They can but make 
 us angry" * * 
 
 It is a mistake, as we may gather from what follows, to 
 suppose that England is really opposed to slavery. Her pro 
 fessed aversion to it is a mere stratagem to allay her own dis 
 contents. Her object is to keep her own work-people quiet, by 
 inducing them to believe that the world contains more wretched 
 beings than themselves. 
 
 " They (her West India possessions) have become a bur 
 den to her. They continually harass her with well-founded 
 complaints and demand some indemnity in the way of protec 
 tion to their sugar in the English market. But this is oppres 
 sive to her people at home, and especially to the manufacturing 
 operative, to whom coarse sugars are a necessary of life. To 
 reconcile him to this, nothi?ig so ready as an appeal to his sympa 
 thies with his brother slave on this other side of the Atlantic ; and 
 he, poor wretch, shut up in the work-house, the factory or the mine, 
 readily believes that the condition of the negro slave must be a 
 lower depth in that lowest deep with the horrors of which he is 
 familiar" 
 
 ###*### 
 
 " Let but South Carolina, even alone, set up for herself, and 
 establish such commercial relations with Great Britain as 
 woul d be best for both parties, how long would it be before 
 Great Britain would see her interest in permitting and encourag 
 ing and aiding Jamaica and her other West India Islands, to 
 form one State, and Demerara another, and to enter into confed 
 eracy with South Carolina ? " 
 
 And as a matter of course, a new slave-trade from America 
 would be established by the aid of England in this hopeful 
 project. 
 
 " Getting slaves from the continent, they would need no 
 more protection, and all clamor about slave-grown sugar 
 
 24 
 
554 POLITICAL PAPE11S. 
 
 would cease forever. Entering the ports of England under a 
 moderate revenue tariff, the sugar would find its way to the 
 operative at half its present price, and the poor woman, wasted 
 and worn by her twelve hours of unceasing toil, would not be 
 obliged to deny herself the cheering influence of her indispen 
 sable cup of tea her only luxury and not her least necessary." 
 
 It is with such food as this that the mind of warm-hearted, 
 impulsive, credulous Carolina is fed to nurture this project of 
 disunion ! 
 
 Extravagant as this declamation may appear to a calm 
 reader, capable of estimating, at their true value, the happy 
 certainties that belong to the present and the future of a State 
 in the American Union, and the dreadful uncertainties that 
 impend over separation, even in its most hopeful reckoning, it 
 nevertheless expresses the views and expectations of that por 
 tion, at least, of the community in which it is uttered, who have 
 been allowed "to instruct the Southern mind and fire the 
 Southern heart" for the momentous struggle which is now 
 inaugurated in South Carolina. In that aspect it is worthy 
 of special notice at this time. 
 
 It demonstrates what I have already intimated, that the 
 secession movement is not the suddenly inspired project of the 
 present day ; that it does not grow out of the events of the 
 recent canvass and election, nor even primarily out of that 
 agitation of slavery, which constitutes the flagrant cause of dis 
 turbance in the Border States. 
 
 If we analyze this paper we shall see that the aggressions 
 of the Northern States upon the peaceful employment of 
 Southern labor, is scarcely referred to at all ; that the real and 
 predominant grievance complained of is found in the old ques 
 tion of taxation. The support of the government by imports, 
 regulated to the revenue standard, is presented as an abuse 
 tenfold more oppressive than all the tyranny that led to the 
 revolution of seventy-six. The State of South Carolina and 
 her few uncomplaining sisters are represented as groaning 
 under the intolerable burden of paying the whole revenue of the 
 Federal Government and getting nothing in return. This is a 
 
THE BOEDER STATES. 555 
 
 repetition of the grief of 1832, when the country was mystified 
 with that most inscrutable of all revelations, "the forty-bale 
 theory," and which so far prevailed in the philosophy of the 
 National Councils as finally to secure the triumph of what is 
 claimed to be the free-trade adjustment of 1846, which adjust 
 ment, it seems now, is no more satisfactory than the protect 
 ive system it displaced. 
 
 It is also worthy of note, that the rabid abolitionism of En 
 gland, of which so much has been said of late in the way of de 
 nunciation, and which, in fact, is quite as mischievous to South 
 ern peace as the fanaticism it encourages in New England, is 
 regarded not only as harmless, but even as not standing in the 
 way of a most cordial alliance with Great Britain. The re 
 viewer actually apologizes for this little indiscretion in the ex 
 pected ally, and treats it with a temper of good sense which 
 might be commenclably adopted in regard to the same trans 
 gression at home " can they interfere with our institutions ? 
 No. They can but make us angry. 1 
 
 We have a further exposition of the policy of disunion, in the 
 imagination of a Southern Confederacy composed of Jamaica, 
 and other British West India Islands, and Demerara or, I 
 suppose, the reviewer meant British Guiana on the South Amer 
 ican continent to which may now be added as a more recent 
 development of the grandeur of the contemplated republic, the 
 conception of similar accretions embracing Cuba, San Domingo, 
 Mexico, and perhaps Central America. This Confederacy, if 
 we mistake not the significance of many ill-suppressed hints 
 from indiscreet friends, is to be rendered still more magnifi 
 cent and bountiful of blessings, still more attractive to the con 
 templation of mankind by the aid of a productive commerce in 
 African slaves, which seems to be not the least winning feature 
 in the project. 
 
 These are the fervid dreams of the contrivers of disunion. 
 For such fantasies as these, our -great Republic, the matured 
 product of so much thought and suffering, is to be rent asun 
 der, just at the era when we fondly imagined it to have risen 
 
556 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 to that height in the estimation of mankind which gave it an 
 assured position among the proudest empires of history. For 
 such impracticable conceits as these, it is to be resolved into 
 discordant fragments whose perpetual jars may illustrate the 
 saddest moral of blighted hopes the world has ever known ! 
 
 We might bear this melancholy lot with submissive pa 
 tience, as the chastisement of offended Heaven, if we could 
 believe there was any cause to give it the semblance of an 
 unavoidable affliction ; if, indeed, it did not spring from the 
 merest wantonness of a temper engendered by too much pros 
 perity or ingratitude to God for blessings too profusely be 
 stowed to be valued. 
 
 There is something in the time and in the pretext chosen 
 for this great work of mischief that peculiarly provoke re 
 mark. The pretext is the general agitation of the Southern 
 mind by the Northern triumph over slavery. What quarrel 
 there is that grows out of this, is, as we have affirmed, the just 
 and proper quarrel of the Border States. That quarrel does 
 not necessarily, and most probably would not, lead to a breach 
 of the Union. Firm remonstrance and wise counsel, aided by 
 that strong attachment to the government, which, both North 
 and South, lives in the heart of millions of conservative men 
 may bring a truce, which, indeed, is already begun, au 
 spicious to reflection and the settlement of all these differences. 
 It is no difficult matter in this breathing space, when consid 
 erate citizens are brought face to face with honest purpose of 
 peace, to frame an adjustment in which future repose and suf 
 ficient pledge against the renewal of strife may be obtained. 
 
 It is just at such a time as this in the interval when rea 
 son, judgment, and fraternal affection are beginning to infuse 
 a benignant influence over the disturbed mind of the country 
 that the master-spirits of the new Confederacy rush to the 
 verge of the gulf and drive their maddened partisans to the 
 dreadful leap that makes recall impossible. They pursue 
 their desperate course without a moment s pause, neither look 
 ing back, nor taking breath ; deaf to all entreaty of friends, 
 
THE BORDER STATES. 557 
 
 and blind to all sights but the visions that rise in the distant 
 prospect. There they behold their Arcadia, with its phantoms 
 of untold wealth, its free ports, its untaxed commerce, its il 
 limitable cotton fields, its flattering alliances, its swarms of re 
 inforcement from the shores of Africa. To reach this prom 
 ised land, the only condition of the enterprise is to press for 
 ward with fiery haste and outrun the speed of the peace 
 makers. 
 
 In 1851, Carolina pursued her scheme of secession as reso 
 lutely as she does at this day, and only failed through the pru 
 dence of those who refused to accompany her. Her purpose 
 was as ripe then, her hopes as high, as now. Yet, at that 
 epoch there was no fear of a Republican President. There 
 was then no question of intervention or non-intervention, no 
 debate of equal rights in the territories, no Kansas, no John 
 Brown. In the absence of all these, she had nothing but Cali 
 fornia and the Compromise to disturb her repose. Yet her 
 sufferings, as she declared, were too intolerable to be borne. 
 Let her speak for herself. It was the Union she could not en 
 dure. " Welcome as summer showers to the sun-parched 
 earth " (was the wail of her Quarterly of that time) " wel 
 come as heaven s free air to the heart-sick tenant of a dungeon, 
 would come to us the voice of freedom, the word, the deed 
 which would tend to burst our bonds, and in earnest faith con 
 tribute to the disruption of this proud fabric (once beautiful, 
 but now rotten to the core) which, under the name of Union, 
 threatens to crush us beneath its unholy power." 
 
 We cannot believe that this complicated tissue of extrava 
 gant projects, of fancied ills, of illusory imaginations, has taken 
 any absolute hold upon the judgment of the really sound intel 
 lect of Carolina. The many wise and patriotic men, who have 
 adorned the councils of the nation as well as of the State ; the 
 many whom we know in private life, distinguished for good 
 sense, clear perception of duty and the highest order of ability, 
 forbid the belief that, when this extraordinary tempest of pas 
 sion shall subside, they will not be at hand to lead the State 
 
558 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 to the path into which her true renown and her best interests 
 invite her. We are aware of the bewildering force of popular 
 excitement lashed into fury by the eloquence and the arts of 
 ambitious leaders ; how irresistible it seizes upon impressible 
 and ardent natures, how strangely it, sometimes, overmasters 
 the discretion of the wise. But we also know that, in the very 
 highest rage of its sweep, it is never without an earnest and 
 silent dissent in the bosoms of grave and interested spectators 
 who dare not, or, in the hopelessness of a hearing, will not even 
 whisper a remonstrance against the heady current of the mul 
 titude. They abide their time. We believe that at this mo 
 ment there is in Carolina many a sad and watchful citizen 
 anxiously awaiting the day when the collapse of this overstrain 
 ed ardor shall present an occasion to speak a word for the 
 Union and for the stricken fortunes of the State, without fear 
 of that stern and angry derision which now compels him to 
 hold his peace. 
 
 But I leave this topic to recur to the question, What is 
 the proper duty of the Border States, looking to the contingen 
 cies of this unhappy strife? 
 
 Obviously they cannot, in the present circumstances, cast 
 their lot with Carolina. They cannot adopt either her passion 
 or her policy. They can go into no confederation of the low 
 land States, organized on the principles and motives which 
 they have so much reason to fear now direct and stimulate the 
 ambition of Carolina. Then let them say so at once. 
 
 Let them say to her and to those who may unite their for 
 tunes with hers, that, deeply deploring a separation which they 
 would make every just or generous sacrifice to avert, a sep 
 aration that is forced upon them by a profound conviction that 
 it is the only expedient left open to them to guard against still 
 greater evils they must submit to it as the inevitable destiny 
 of their position. 
 
 The Border States have their own welfare to protect, their 
 own injuries to redress. They believe that both of these may 
 be accomplished within the Union. They have no issue with 
 
THE BOEDER STATES. 559 
 
 any section of the Union, but that which springs from the hos 
 tility engendered in the minds, and manifested in the public ac 
 tion, of certain portions of the Free States. They have no 
 hopes or fears which may not be encouraged or quieted by the 
 lawful and orderly administration of the constitutional powers 
 of the Federal Government. They regard that government as 
 the wisest scheme that can be devised for the rule of this na 
 tion. They can never abandon it until experience shall con 
 vince them that it is no longer capable to resist its perversion 
 by faction, or to protect the rights of every State and citizen. 
 
 That experience they have not yet had. 
 
 They acknowledge that in the resolution of the Union into 
 fragments, which may be the possible result of the present dis 
 turbances, a contingency may be presented to them in which 
 they will be compelled to choose their own lot. 
 
 Their first and greatest desire is to avert that contingency 
 and to restore peace and universal concord among the whole 
 sisterhood of States. 
 
 Supposing these to be the sentiments of the Border States, 
 which, from every authentic indication, I cannot doubt, I ven 
 ture to suggest for their consideration, 
 
 The expediency, as a preliminary measure, of holding, at 
 an early day, an informal Conference to be conducted by one 
 or more distinguished citizens from each of the Border States, 
 and from such of the other Southern States as maybe opposed 
 to secession in the present state of affairs these to be selected 
 by the Executive of each State for the purpose of determin 
 ing on a course of joint action to be recommended to the adop 
 tion of the whole number. 
 
 To sach a conference I would submit the following propo 
 sitions : 
 
 i. The propriety of making an earnest appeal to the seced 
 ing States to retrace their steps and await the result of the 
 measures proposed for the establishment of general harmony ; 
 with a declaration that if this appeal be unsuccessful, they, 
 the Border States, will be compelled to decline entering into 
 
5GO POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 a Southern Confederacy as now proposed by South Carolina 
 and her allies in secession. 
 
 2. That if the secession of South Carolina be followed by 
 that of Alabama or any other State, and a serious breach of 
 the Union be thus established, it will then be incumbent on 
 the Border States and the other Southern States concurring 
 with them, to take measures for their own security, by demand 
 ing from the Free States a revisal of all topics of complaint be 
 tween them and the Slave States, and the adoption of such 
 stipulations on both sides as shall be satisfactory to each for 
 the determination and protection of Southern rights, and for 
 the restoration of harmony. 
 
 These stipulations would, of course, become the subject of 
 a negotiation with the Free States ; a negotiation which should 
 be conducted in a frank and conciliatory spirit, through such 
 agencies as the parties may arrange. 
 
 I think it would be just to both parties, and would be like 
 ly to meet the general approval of the country, to direct these 
 stipulations to the following points : 
 
 The re-establishment of the Missouri line and its extension 
 to the Pacific, as an easy, practicable mode of settling the ter 
 ritorial question on a basis with which the people are familiar. 
 
 The adjustment of the question of the rendition of fugitive 
 slaves : 
 
 By such modifications of the provisions of the act of Con 
 gress on that subject, as shall remove every reasonable objec 
 tion to it, compatible with its efficient adaptation to its pur 
 pose ; and by an agreement on the part of the Free States, to 
 execute it in good faith, and to repeal all laws heretofore 
 passed with a view to its obstruction : 
 
 This, coupled with an engagement, in case any State should 
 find itself unable, by reason of the repugnance of the people 
 to the execution of the law, to deliver up the fugitive then, to 
 be allowed and required, by way of alternative, to make a just 
 indemnity to the owner, under such regulations as may be de 
 vised. 
 
THE BORDER STATES. 561 
 
 The settlement of the question in regard to the admission 
 of New States on the foundation at present adopted, of leaving 
 each territory to form a State Constitution in accordance with 
 its own wishes. 
 
 Finally, a pledge to be given by the Free States to exert 
 their influence, as far as possible, to discourage discussions of 
 slavery in a tone offensive to the interests of the slaveholding 
 States and to endeavor to procure legislative enactments 
 against preparations for assault on the peace of the States, 
 either by individuals or organized bodies. 
 
 If there be any of the provisions proposed in these stipula 
 tions which may require an amendment of -the Constitution 
 an agreement should be made to propose and support it. 
 
 3. If these stipulations can be obtained then the Border 
 States and concurring States of the South, which have not se 
 ceded, shall retain their present position in the Union. 
 
 But in the adverse event of these stipulations, or satisfacto 
 ry equivalents for them, being refused, the Border States and 
 their allies of the South who may be disposed to act with them, 
 will be. forced to consider the Union impracticable, and to or 
 ganize a separate Confederacy of the Border States, with the 
 association of such of the Southern and Free States as may be 
 willing to accede to the proposed conditions. 
 
 4. When this programme of action, or such substitute for it 
 as the Conference may devise, shall be adopted, it should be 
 submitted, through the respective Executives of the States rep 
 resented in the Conference, to the people of each, to be acted 
 upon in a General Convention of those States, called by the 
 direction and appointment of their several Legislatures. 
 
 5. That pending the whole course of this proceeding, the 
 Border States and those concurring with them shall engage to 
 prevent, by all means in their power, any attempt on the part 
 of the Federal Government or of any State or States to coerce 
 the seceding States by armed force into submission. 
 
 It may be a proper subject for such a Conference, as I have 
 proposed, to consider whether it would not be useful, in any 
 
502 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 event even in that of the single secession of South Carolina, 
 before any other States shall have followed her to offer the 
 Border States as mediators in the present unhappy differences, 
 and to endeavor to procure, for the benefit of all, the stipula 
 tions I have described above, or some other pacific arrange 
 ment of the same character and object. 
 
 If the Border States can be brought into combination in 
 the manner pointed out by those propositions, it is easy to per 
 ceive that they must immediately become the masters of the 
 position from which the whole national controversy is most 
 likely io be controlled. They will not only hold the general 
 peace in their hands, by their authority to persuade an absti 
 nence from all attempts at coercion ; but they will also be re 
 garded and respected on all sides, as the natural and appro 
 priate medium through which the settlement of all difference 
 is eventually to be obtained. 
 
 By taking the ground, at the earliest moment, that tney can 
 not unite in the scheme of the Southern Confederacy, and that 
 if separation should, at last, after all efforts to avert it, be im 
 posed upon them by an inexorable necessity from which there 
 is no escape, they will be compelled to construct a Confedera 
 cy of their own, in which they may be able to associate with 
 themselves, perhaps, the whole body of the Middle and West 
 ern States. If they, the Border States, shall firmly and dis 
 passionately take this ground, such a determination cannot but 
 suggest to the .seceding States the gravest motive to pause in 
 their meditated career, and to await an opportunity for further 
 conference and debate. It will then be for these States to in 
 quire with more deliberation than they have yet given to the 
 subject, what will be the strength and capacity for self-support 
 of a Confederacy unsustained by the power and resource of 
 such communities as those which decline the alliance. When 
 that question comes to be seriously discussed by them it will 
 present many new and momentous considerations which have 
 not yet been canvassed. 
 
 The popular notion of a united South is but an impractica- 
 
THE BORDER STATES. 563 
 
 ble fancy. A united South is a more uncertain problem than 
 even the support of the present Union under the difficulties 
 that now surround it. 
 
 I think it will appear to any careful explorer of the subject, 
 that if the fifteen States south of Mason and Dixon s line were 
 to enter into a Confederacy among themselves, such an organ 
 ization would speedily prove itself to be more productive of dis 
 sension than the present Union has been during the last twenty 
 years. 
 
 The policy prefigured by the seceding States is in many 
 points wholly repugnant to the views and interests of the Bor 
 der States. 
 
 These latter could never be reconciled to be made accom 
 plices in the disgrace and guilt of a restoration of the slave-trade ; 
 they would never undertake to face the indignation of Chris 
 tendom which would arise upon its revival much less would 
 they agree to involve themselves in the expense and burden 
 of the wars that it would inevitably provoke. 
 
 The Border States would scarcely less endure the commer 
 cial system, so often and conspicuously insisted on by Carolina 
 and her comrades in secession, by which free ports are demand 
 ed and the consequent necessity of a public revenue resting 
 upon direct taxation. 
 
 They could not be persuaded into that expansive policy of 
 annexation and conquest which has dazzled the imagination 
 of the South and tormented the ambition of its people, in per 
 sistent forays upon neighboring States and perpetual schemes 
 of acquisition. 
 
 The Border States exhibit within their area a representa 
 tion of almost every interest and pursuit in the Union. They 
 are thriving and vigorous communities, with most prolific re 
 sources for every species of industry. Their agriculture fur 
 nishes an abundant supply of the sustenance of life, with a 
 large surplus for external commerce. The region occupied by 
 these States embraces also a wide area adapted to the culture 
 of hemp and flax, tobacco and cotton. It abounds in mineral 
 
564 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 wealth, in water power, in pasturage, in cattle, sheep, horses, 
 in all the elements of the most diversified manufacturing 
 industry. Its healthful climate, its robust population, and its 
 cheap means of livelihood are singularly favorable to the growth 
 and prosperity of the mechanic arts, the multiplication of vil 
 lages and the gradual increase of thrifty and industrious work 
 men in every department of handicraft invariably the best in 
 dications of the progress of a State to wealth and power. 
 
 Beginning at the cities of Baltimore, Richmond and Nor 
 folk on the Atlantic, and extending over a broad domain stud 
 ded with flourishing inland towns, it ends at the city of St. 
 Louis on the Missouri, presenting throughout the series every 
 facility for a wide and profitable commerce, already furnished 
 with railroads, canals, and navigable rivers. 
 
 Here are all the elements necessary to the organization of 
 the polity of a first-class -power. In extent of territory, in re 
 source, in population, it may take rank among the master 
 States which, in any new combinations of the fragments of our 
 once happy Union, broken by the madness of faction, may 
 hereafter be gathered from the wreck. 
 
 In the worst event that may happen, therefore, greatly as 
 every old-fashioned lover of the Union may deplore the neces 
 sity for such a work, here are the ready materials for the con 
 struction of a new nation able to protect the welfare of its 
 people, secure their peaceful pursuit of happiness, and furnish 
 a safe refuge to all who may flee to it to escape the disorders 
 and distractions of the time. 
 
 It is a -sad speculation which forces us to the computation 
 of the resources of any section of our present Union, with a 
 view to the exhibition of its capacity for independent existence ; 
 but when the vision of a united South is conjured up to our 
 contemplation, as a possible or impending reality, we are com 
 pelled to face and question it. 
 
 I have therefore looked at the character of the Border 
 States, to show how incompatible their interests are likely to 
 prove with the policy which is deemed essential to other sec- 
 
THE BORDER STATES. 565 
 
 tions of the South. It must be apparent from even this brief 
 examination, that communities of such different pursuits, and 
 marked by such variant conditions, would scarcely find, in 
 political alliance with the projected Southern Confederacy, 
 that harmony of interests which is essential to the prosperity 
 of both. 
 
 The four or five States now reputed to be most likely to 
 enter into compact with Carolina may be described as chiefly 
 representing one vast cotton field. The whole region embraced 
 by them is, in all physical qualities, if we except Georgia, 
 thoroughly homogeneous. Its business is planting. It has no 
 mechanic art and but few manufactures. Its rural inhabitants 
 are divided between numerous proprietors of the soil and their 
 slaves the proprietors, in great degree, migratory, the slaves 
 stationary thus necessarily creating, in many locations, a 
 great preponderance of slave population. Its productions are 
 singularly valuable as one of the most indispensable wants of 
 mankind, and readily exchangeable into money. This ex 
 change is made through an active factorage that has built up 
 prosperous cities and created a large commerce. So far as 
 this commerce is concerned with the planting region, it is re 
 duced into a simple system of transactions in the great staple 
 of the country a commerce without variety of resource, and 
 too dependent upon the accidents of a single product and the 
 vicissitudes of season, to support a costly mercantile marine, 
 and which is therefore compelled to seek its transporation 
 from foreign and friendly sources. Such a commerce, we must 
 perceive, is peculiarly exposed, not only to damage, but utter 
 overthrow by the occurrence of war. In its overthrow, the 
 whole resource of the country is destroyed. This is the com 
 mon and inevitable weakness of all merely agricultural coun 
 tries. 
 
 If Louisiana, shaken from her balance by the fervor of the 
 moment, could be persuaded to join this Confederacy, she 
 would contribute, it is true, not only another resource in her 
 product of sugar, but a great commercial mart of commanding 
 
POLITICAL PAPEK3. 
 
 importance in the trade of the world. It might nevertheless 
 be questioned whether even so valuable an acquisition as this 
 would, in the end, turn out to be a permanent accession of 
 strength. The prosperity of the city of New Orleans is so 
 essentially united with the fortunes of the West in fact, so 
 entirely dependent upon them as to suggest many possibili 
 ties of collision, both en the part of the city and State, with 
 the policy of the government to whose control they would have 
 surrendered themselves. Indeed, with the obvious motives for 
 hesitation which must occur to the intelligent judgment of 
 Louisiana, against the wisdom of entering into the proposed 
 Confederacy, it is scarcely to be presumed that she may be se 
 duced, even by the passionate solicitations of her present anger 
 against Northern aggression, into a measure, in its best aspect, 
 so doubtful ; in its apparent probabilities, so rash. 
 
 She cannot slight the consideration that the adverse pos 
 session of a great seat of trade at the mouth of the Mississippi 
 may furnish in the future, as it has done in the past, a fruitful 
 source of quarrel between the power that holds it and the nu 
 merous commonwealths upon the banks of the river and its 
 tributaries, which now claim its free and uninterrupted use, to 
 gether with its depots, at all times and in all contingencies ; 
 that there is no form of agreement or treaty which can afford 
 complete and invariable protection to this enjoyment ; none 
 that would probably be regarded as an adequate equivalent 
 for the surrender of the right which has been acquired by 
 purchase out of the common treasure, for the benefit of these 
 claimants. 
 
 Will not these reflections suggest a pregnant inquiry 
 whether the defence of this mart by a confederacy foreign to 
 the claimants may not prove a charge too costly to be com 
 pensated even by the unquestionably great advantages of such 
 a possession? Does it presignify no danger that, in the vex 
 atious emergencies of future years, there may be provoked a 
 new motive in Louisiana, for secession from a confederacy that 
 is to be built upon a full recognition of that doctrine ? In view 
 
THE BOEDER STATES. .">(> 7 
 
 of these possibilities and many others that experience may 
 bring to light, may we not assume that Louisiana will prudent 
 ly weigh the question of her own permanent peace and pros 
 perity before she takes the step to which she is now invited ? 
 Will it not be equally well for the new Confederacy to delib 
 erate upon the point whether such a possession may not be as 
 much a source of weakness as of strength ? 
 
 Looking back to the elements with that notable excep 
 tion to which I have already adverted which are expected to 
 compose this Confederacy ; to its people and pursuits, and the 
 peculiar character of a large portion of its population ; to its 
 deficiency in mechanic art, its defective supply of the staff of 
 life ; to the influence of its climate ; to its entire destitution of 
 the means to build and man ships, and to many other dis 
 abilities which will occur in any review of its resources, we can 
 not but think that this fancied New Atlantis, which has so pos 
 sessed the imagination of its votaries, will, upon trial, prove 
 itself to be the most defenceless, and, in a significant sense, 
 the weakest of independent nations. 
 
 It may have some hope of rising above this condition by 
 the accession of the State of Georgia. If that vigorous com 
 monwealth, in an hour of blindness to its own happy destiny 
 in this Union, should fall into the fatal error of joining in this 
 alliance, it will be, as every one must admit, a constituent of 
 real strength in the Confederacy. Georgia would then arise 
 to the unenviable supremacy of being the only solid and trusty 
 support of the whole fabric. She has already, under the au 
 spices of a Union which has conferred nothing but blessings 
 upon her, advanced beyond all her compeers of the South, to 
 the position of a truly powerful and commanding common 
 wealth. Surely, before she takes this fatal step, she will med 
 itate over the prosperity of her admirable effort in the estab 
 lishment of manufactures, her multiplying towns and villages, 
 her fertile and healthy uplands, her rapid growth in peaceful 
 arts, and her thousand capabilities of ever-varied industry, 
 and anxiously and coolly weigh the question, whether she 
 
568 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 should put all these in jeopardy by submitting them to the 
 domination of such a policy as the new Confederacy will offer 
 her. But if, in full view of these admonitions, she chooses to 
 be led into the first movement toward this combination, may 
 we not hope that in a calmer moment than the present she 
 will retrace her steps, and once more place her better destiny 
 under the guardianship of the Stars and Stripes the only 
 symbol worthy of her fortunes and her hopes ? 
 
 Georgia has not yet left us. Let us trust to the clear 
 judgment and earnest patriotism of her hosts of friends to the 
 Union, and to the eloquent and manly counsel of her sons, 
 that she will move with more deliberate pace, and in company 
 with more temperate comrades, along the path of conciliation 
 and trial, before she ventures to lend a hand to the demolition 
 of the government under which she has grown to her present 
 stature. And if that day of destruction must ever come, let 
 her be found among the ruins, with kindred congenial to her 
 own nature, employed in the task of gathering the fragments 
 of our broken Union together for reconstruction and renewal 
 of its ancient harmony. 
 
 Texas is looked to as a component of the new Confederacy. 
 Her lot, if dissolution be a settled fact, and a general saiivt 
 qui peut should compel her to decide upon her whereabout, I 
 presume, would be once more to raise her banner of the Lone 
 Star. She is a young nation, quite able to take care of her 
 self. She exists as a portion of the American Union by a 
 simple resolution of Congress. A dissolution repeals that act 
 and remits her to her original position. She becomes again 
 a detached and independent power ; and, in that event, may 
 wisely judge it to be her true policy to accept the position and 
 maintain it. We have yet no proof that she has so soon be 
 come weary of the Union which, but a few years gone by, she 
 so eagerly sought, and which has, in that short interval, heaped 
 almost fabulous treasures into her lap. On the contrary, what 
 proof we have presents her in the attitude of a hopeful friend 
 of peace. We pray that she may prove steadfast to the 
 
THE BOEDER STATES. 569 
 
 admonitions of the wise and true-hearted hero whom she has 
 honored with the highest gifts she had to bestow ! 
 
 This is a brief survey of the materials which, in the sad 
 event of the disruption of our Confederacy, many suppose 
 may be moulded into a united South. It exhibits two divis 
 ions of the present slaveholding States separate, not hos 
 tile but divided from .each other by nature and incompatible 
 conditions, impossible to be brought into harmonious alliance 
 under any system of political organization founded upon the 
 basis of what are deemed the essential and peculiar interests 
 of either. 
 
 I have endeavored to demonstrate my conviction that with 
 whatever caution or friendly spirit of compromise they might 
 begin the experiment of Confederation, they would infallibly 
 lapse into antagonisms through the collision of which their 
 association would soon be reduced to a mere political form, as 
 impotent to hold them together as our present Union is likely 
 to prove under the doctrines which one of the divisions I have 
 mentioned above has already proclaimed and adopted as the 
 indispensable condition of its alliance. 
 
 Among many topics of discussion which would arise in the 
 course of that experiment, there is one which would certainly 
 loom into fearful proportions as a source of constantly increas 
 ing discontent. It is exemplified in our present history, and 
 would find even a more acrimonious revival in the progress of 
 the supposed new alliance. 
 
 The tendency of nearly all perhaps I might say of the 
 whole of the Border States, in considerable portions or sec 
 tions of each, must be under any form of organization wheth 
 er in the present Union or out of it ; whether pursuing their 
 .own welfare united with the whole South, or in a Confederacy 
 of their own toward the increase of free labor by immigration 
 and settlement, and to a correlative gradual diminution of slave 
 labor. That process is marked out for them in the future, as 
 it has been in the past, by the irresistible law of their nature. 
 It is an onward force which derives its vigor from the stimulus 
 
570 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 of interest, and is both the issue and the exponent of the pros 
 perity of the community itself. In the grain-growing portions 
 of these States, this process will be more rapid ; but, even in 
 the planting portions, though slower and perhaps for a time 
 imperceptible, its influences will be felt. As population in 
 creases and the competition of labor* becomes more intense, 
 these States must expect a continuance of the same partial and 
 progressive mastery of free over slave labor which is now vis 
 ible in many local divisions of their own area, and which has 
 been slowly and steadily converting slave into free States from 
 the date of the Revolution down to the present time. Mary 
 land, portions of Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri are moving 
 onward to the final condition remote but certain of free 
 labor communities. That movement may be greatly acceler 
 ated by extrinsic forces. The enhancement of the value of 
 slaves draws this labor from a less productive to a more pro 
 ductive region from the wheat to the cotton field. The de 
 preciation of the value has, to some extent, a similar effect. 
 By impoverishing the owner, it compels a necessity to sell, and 
 the purchaser is most likely to be the agent or factor of the cot 
 ton planter. In either case the gradual decrease of slavery in 
 the farming region I use this designation in opposition to the 
 planting is the constant result. The establishment of the 
 slave-trade would not be without its effect in the same direction. 
 It would create disgust in many against slavery itself, and thus 
 lead to emancipation. These contingencies are entitled to con 
 sideration as causes which, in the lapse of time, may operate 
 more or less actively upon the interests, habits, and sentiments 
 of the Border States to produce not only a sharp diversity of 
 views and policy, but also dissension and conflict between them 
 and other sections of the South. They would grow to be reck 
 oned as unfriendly to the South, or, in the current phrase of 
 our day, " unsound " on the question of Southern institutions. 
 They would thus be regarded with a growing dislike, and. in 
 the end, put to the ban of extreme Southern opinion, under 
 the odious and comprehensive appellation of abolitionists. 
 
THE BORDER STATES. 571 
 
 Not in this question alone would be found a source of jeal 
 ousy and division. Political ambition would contrive many 
 pretexts for quarrel, and parties would vent their discontents 
 in threats of secession and new combinations. Disunion 
 would find a terrible precedent in the example of the pres 
 ent time, and grow to be the familiar and frequent threat, 
 and often the actual deed of disappointed States. Mr. Jef 
 ferson long ago described this very condition of things. 
 His words now reach us with solemn warning, as counsels 
 sent to their erring sons from the sanctuary of our departed 
 fathers. 
 
 "In every free and deliberating society," he says, in a let 
 ter to John Taylor, in the year 1798, "there must, from the 
 nature of man, be opposite parties and violent discussions and 
 discords ; and one of these, for the most part, must prevail 
 over the other for a longer or shorter time. Perhaps this par 
 ty division is necessary to induce each to watch and delate to 
 the people the proceedings of the other. But if, on a tempo 
 rary superiority of the one party, the other is to resort to a scis 
 sion of the Union, no Federal Government can ever exist. If to rid 
 ourselves of the present rule of Massachusetts and Connecti 
 cut we break the Union, will the evil stop there ? Suppose 
 the New England States alone cut off, will our natures be 
 changed ? Are we not men still, to the South of that, with all 
 the passions of men ? Immediately we shall see a Pennsylva 
 nia and Virginia party arise in the residuary confederacy, and 
 the public mind will be distracted with the same party spirit. 
 What a game, too, will one party have in their hands, by eter 
 nally threatening each other, and unless they do so and so, they 
 will join their Northern neighbors ! If we reduce our Union 
 to Virginia and North Carolina, immediately the conflict 
 will be established between the representatives of these two 
 States, and they will end by breaking into their simple units. 
 Seeing, therefore, that an association of men who will not 
 quarrel with one another, is a thing that never yet existed, 
 from the greatest confederacy of nations down to a town 
 meeting or a vestry; seeing that we must have somebody 
 to quarrel with, / had rather keep our New England associates 
 for that purpose than to see our bickerings transferred to others. 
 ******* 
 
 A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass ever, 
 
572 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 their spells dissolved, and the people recovering their true sight, 
 restoring their government to its true principles" 
 
 We may commend both the philosophy of these extracts and 
 the prophecy with which they end, to the sober meditation of 
 all who think the evils of the day incurable. 
 
 It is proper for me to say here that the propositions I have 
 submitted as the foundation of a settlement, to be urged by the 
 Border States, are but selections from the many suggestions 
 which have in various forms been lately thrown before the pub 
 lic. I have selected these, not only because I think them al 
 together just, in view of the rational demands which both 
 North and South are entitled to make upon each other, but 
 also because they seem to have met a larger concurrence from 
 the conservative portions of the people, on both sides, than 
 any others that have been brought into discussion. A temper 
 ate debate of these propositions and their recommendation by 
 the authority of a grave and influential convention of eminent 
 citizens representing the moderate conservative opinion and 
 th most important interests of the country which I do not 
 doubt greatly preponderate in both sections, and are quite able 
 to outweigh and overmaster all the leaders and followers of the 
 ultraisms of both would, it strikes me, command, at once, the 
 assent of the most authoritative mass of citizens, and gradual 
 ly bring into submission, if not concurrence, the whole disturb 
 ing force which now distracts the public peace. 
 
 The advantage which the Border States hold in this contro 
 versy is very manifest. As I have said before, they are the 
 masters of the position and may control the events of the 
 future. It is in their power to isolate those portions of the 
 Union which are most violent and reckless in driving the 
 country to extremes, and thus give them occasion to perceive 
 that they are to find no support out of the circle of their own 
 impetuous allies. They have, also, the power to give, even to 
 these, a strong assurance that every fair and just complaint 
 they are entitled to make shall be redressed by satisfactory 
 arrangements which they, the Border States, will demand, and 
 
THE BORDER STATES. 573 
 
 will most assuredly procure. The North will listen to their 
 demands and meet them in honorable conference, with a tem 
 per of conciliation which it would be hopeless to expect from 
 a conference representing the more excited and exacting por 
 tions of the South. We have proof of this temper furnished 
 every day in the Northern journals. The abolitionists proper, 
 the firebrands of the North, have lost their influence and 
 would have no share in any movement towards a settlement. 
 The truth is, that by far the greater number of the people of 
 the Free States are awakened to a new perception of the dan 
 ger which has been produced by the violent assaults of the 
 North upon the South, in which they themselves have more 
 or less participated without dreaming of the bitter injuries they 
 were inflicting upon the public peace and integrity of the 
 Union. They have listened to evil counsellors and have been 
 led away by the inflammatory philosophies of their own ambi 
 tious leaders. They see this now, although they have not seen 
 it before ; and in this awakening of their minds to the reality 
 of the crisis, they are ready and willing to make every proper 
 concession for the restoration of present tranquillity and for 
 protection against future disturbance. They are thus fortu 
 nately able and well inclined to drop, henceforth and forever, 
 this offensive and detestable agitation of slavery, which they 
 now perceive to be a real and dangerous grievance. 
 
 Our purpose should be to negotiate with this class of men. 
 It can be only effectually done by the Border States. A 
 General Convention of all the States would, inevitably, pro 
 duce more bickering and confusion in the present state of 
 affairs. Even a General Convention, as has been proposed, 
 of all the Southern States, with a view to their own course of 
 proceeding, would be attended with the same difficulties. It 
 would run the risk of being converted into a theatre of angry 
 debate upon extreme propositions, and would be as likely, as 
 the Charleston Convention in May, to be broken up by the 
 secession of discontented members who could not get all they 
 asked. A Convention of the Border States would have no 
 
57-i roLlTIUAL PAPERS. 
 
 difficulty of this kind. They would be harmonious, just and 
 reasonable in their views, and firm in meeting the real evils of 
 the time, by offering and demanding a full and adequate 
 remedy for them. 
 
 This would be their position in the first efforts towards 
 peace and permanent security. If they succeed in obtaining 
 a just settlement, the seceding States could not resist the 
 necessity of acquiescing in such a settlement, and of returning 
 to the Union. As they calmed clown into a cooler mood, and 
 brought their unclouded judgment to a consideration of the 
 case, they would cordially approve and support the settlement, 
 and the whole country would thus receive an incalculable 
 benefit from the present commotion. It would be a great and 
 happy purification of the morale of the country, and we 
 should all rejoice that the crisis has been turned to such good 
 account. 
 
 But if this service, proffered by the Border States, should 
 unhappily fail to produce these results, in this first stage of 
 the process of pacification, they would still occupy a ground 
 not less important and beneficial in the second and more re 
 mote phase of the quarrel. 
 
 Supposing a disintegration of the Union, notwithstanding 
 all efforts to prevent it, be forced upon us by the obstinacy and 
 impracticability of parties on each side the case would still be 
 iar from hopeless. The Border States, in that event, would form, 
 in self-defence, a Confederacy of their own, which would serve 
 as a centre of reinforcement for the reconstruction of the 
 Union. The attraction of interest and good brotherhood would 
 instantly become effective to draw to this nucleus, one by one, 
 every State in the Confederacy. A beneficent power of gravi 
 tation would work with irresistible energy in bringing back the 
 dislocated fragments. New York, New Jersey, and Pennsyl 
 vania would be among the first to fall in. Illinois, Indiana, 
 Ohio, perhaps all the Western States, would be unable to resist 
 the tendency towards this centre, and would come into cohesion 
 with an utter abjuration of all those fancies and follies which 
 
THE BOEDER STATES. 575 
 
 have been engendered by the slavery question. And when it 
 was seen that North and South could thus unite on a basis per 
 fectly free from the disturbance of these old questions, the more 
 moderate of the seceding States Georgia especially, if she 
 be one of them would come to the acknowledgment that their 
 true interests directed them to the same reunion. Last of all, 
 the most ultra States of the secession movement would obey 
 the same law of attraction, and, once more, after a lapse of 
 weary trial and profitable experience, we should see the Union 
 reconstructed by the healthful agency of the Border States. 
 
 Those who have carefully noted the progress of political 
 opinion for more than thirty years past, and marked the ten 
 dency of its teaching, toward the adoption of certain distinctive 
 theories of Government having reference to supposed geo 
 graphical interests, have been able to predict the certainty of a 
 convulsion that, sooner or later, would present an inevitable 
 necessity for a reconstructed, or, at least, a reconsideration and 
 explicit determination of the principles upon which the Union 
 is to be preserved. 
 
 The present ferment is but the verification of this pre 
 diction. 
 
 If wisely handled, as I have shown, it may be productive 
 of inestimable good. If allowed to solve its problem under 
 the guidance of the fierce instincts and rash counsels of those 
 who have first assumed its direction, it will become the source 
 of an " Iliad of woes " not to the present generation alone, 
 but to many generations hereafter. 
 
 The time and the occasion, therefore, demand the most 
 free and full examination of the causes, open and concealed, 
 which are shaking the loyalty of the people and turning men s 
 thoughts towards disunion. 
 
 I have endeavored in these pages to demonstrate that 
 there are other and more secret discontents in our condition 
 than those which grow out of the slavery question. 
 
 While we painfully perceive and feel that the action of the 
 Northern States on that question, and, still more, the wicked 
 
576 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 fanaticism of individuals and sects in preaching hostility to 
 the peace of the South, have kindled in the mind of the whole 
 population of this division of the United States a profound and 
 just indignation against this wanton spirit of aggression which, 
 if not arrested, we have long been conscious, would surely lead 
 to a rupture of the Union, it is also a matter of deep concern 
 that we should apprehend and notice the fact that there are 
 other disturbing forces operating upon sections of the South 
 perhaps in some degree owing their vitality to the alienation 
 produced by the slavery agitation, but now apart from it and 
 looking to other subjects, which have grown to be seriously 
 hostile to the harmony of our united system of government. 
 My aim has been to bring these into view, as well as the more 
 pervading topic of discontent, in order that, in the attempt to 
 restore peace and confidence, which is practicable through the 
 settlement of the slavery dispute, we may not be misled by the 
 clamor of those to whom such a settlement would be but the 
 frustration of a cherished design. The dissatisfaction of this 
 class of agitators must be left to the cure of time. There is 
 no mode of treating it but to let it alone, consigning it to the 
 good sense and right reason which it has to encounter at home. 
 
 It will, doubtless, be received as a bold assertion, when I 
 say that the slavery question, as one for political cognizance 
 in the United States, presents the most futile subject for leg 
 islation or administrative policy, perhaps, within the whole 
 range of measures consigned to the notice of government. 
 
 It cannot be controverted that the whole power of the Fed 
 eral Government is inadequate to change the condition of a 
 single slave within any State of the Union. Nor can any com 
 bination of party, with all the aids which the apparatus of gov 
 ernment may afford, with all the temper of proscription and in 
 tolerance that fanatical zeal may beget, with all the concur 
 rence of sectional State legislation, ever be able to make a 
 successful invasion of the rights of the smallest of the Slave 
 States. Such an attempt would meet the instant resistance 
 not only of the whole circle of those States, but with the re- 
 
THE BORDER STATES. 577 
 
 sistance of three-fourths of the people of the whole country. 
 That parties and individuals may threaten irrepressible conflicts 
 and undying hostility, is true. But, as to acting upon such 
 threats, the Constitution renders them as powerless as chil 
 dren. 
 
 And in regard to slavery in the territories although there 
 may be ground on which the government may claim to control 
 it, I affirm that, as a practicable policy, no exercise of that pow 
 er, in the present actual condition of the domain possessed by 
 the nation, can either force the establishment of slavery into a 
 territory ungenial to it, nor keep it out of one adapted to its 
 employment I mean, that there is no motive of interests to 
 take slavery, as a permanent thing, to a region where it is un 
 productive ; nor any motive, either political or philanthropic, 
 to forbid its transfer to the region where it is essential to the 
 interests of production. At this time we have no territory in 
 which there is any possibility of raising the question ; but if 
 we should obtain one in a planting region, it would be settled 
 from the population of the slaveholding States without a nota 
 ble opposition from any section of the Union. 
 
 The agitation of slavery, therefore, notwithstanding its en 
 grossment of the country and the odious prominence it has as 
 sumed, is, after all, but a parade of idle and mischievous de 
 bate. It lives upon the incessant ministration of stimulants 
 supplied by small declaimers in quest of notoriety. It is, in 
 the present generation, a moral epidemic which has seized 
 upon whole districts, like St. Anthony s Dance in the four 
 teenth century. The fancy of getting up " a great abomina 
 tion," in order to turn it to account as a topic of popular 
 preaching, is as old as the first consecrated cobbler. Nor is 
 it at all a new thing to set up a popular sin to be extirpated by 
 law. Many quack politicians have been wasting their energies 
 for years upon the abortive attempt to legislate peaceable fam 
 ilies into the disuse of spirituous liquors, by bringing alcohol 
 into platforms and making parties upon it ; but alcohol has 
 gained the day and the Maine Liquor Law has become a dead 
 25 
 
578 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 letter. The world laughs at this prodigality of ineffectual zeal. 
 May we not learn to treat with quiet scorn the more malignant 
 but still impotent ebullitions of the sanctimonious vanity of 
 New England ? 
 
 In truth, slavery has not, in itself I mean African slavery 
 as now existing in the United States the condition for any ve 
 hemently honest indignation against it ; nor, on the other side, 
 for any vehemently honest affection for it. It is simply a very 
 appropriate and necessary agent in the interests of civilization 
 where it is ; and would be, generally, a very wretched thing 
 where it is not. The wrath that is stirred against it, and the pa 
 triarchal beauty that is claimed for it, are both the offsprings 
 of excited imaginations. African slavery, in this country, at 
 least, is, for the most part, a clear gain to the savage it has civ 
 ilized. Whatever it may be to others, it has been a blessing 
 to him. It is also clearly a blessing to Massachusetts, and to 
 England, France, Germany. But, it is a very doubtful bless 
 ing to the master who has charged himself with the solicitude 
 of supporting, employing, and caring for the slave ; it is, at 
 best, but a mixed and greatly diluted blessing to him. Strange, 
 that those who enjoy the unmixed blessing of sharing the prof 
 its of slavery, should be the rancorous conspirators against the 
 peace of him who takes all its burdens and hazards upon him 
 self! 
 
 The true solution of all this extravagance is, that the im 
 portance given to the questions evolved by the slavery excite 
 ment, is the mere artifice of politicians. Our slavery would 
 have slept quiet under the surface of society, until the day 
 of its appointed term, if it had not been found serviceable as 
 a figure for the arena of politics. Unfortunately, it is a topic 
 of singular capability for either a discourse in the pulpit or a 
 speech upon the stump ; the most fruitful for exaggeration, 
 the most sensitive for alarm. It has proved to be a " draw 
 ing" theme for sensation parsons in pursuit of popularity ; for 
 sensation politicians in pursuit of the Senate ; for speculative 
 editors who are anxious to increase their subscription lists by 
 
THE BORDER STATES. 579 
 
 means of pious politics and cheap philanthropy. It has shown 
 itself capable of converting atrabilious tradesmen into govern 
 ors, legislators, and judges ; and of lifting up innumerable 
 apprentices, journeymen, colporteurs and pedagogues to the 
 elevation of shining lights in the Conventicle. It has fired 
 the soul of many a cross-road orator of the " sunny South" 
 with indignant and eloquent wrath against universal Yankee- 
 dom ; and given birth to scores of conventions and thousands 
 of resolutions, to expound the Constitution on the theory 
 that its authors did not know what they were about. 
 
 Then, again, it has furnished to strong-minded women, 
 who have declared their independence of the petticoat, an oc 
 casion for an equally heroic abnegation of the prejudice of col 
 or, an-d so to bring both pantaloons and amalgamation into 
 their bill of rights. 
 
 It has over and over again supplied a conclave of crazy fa 
 natics, in the orgies of their anniversaries, with an opportunity 
 to denounce the Union as a covenant of hell, and the Bible and 
 the Constitution as a double curse to mankind. It has, on the 
 other hand, wrought the remarkable effect of diverting hot 
 headed young politicians from their newspapers to the study of 
 the Scriptures to find texts in the Pentateuch and the Epistles 
 of Paul, to convict the whole North of the iniquity of blas 
 pheming the "divine institution." 
 
 It has done all this and a thousand times as much, but it 
 has never yet succeeded in establishing a single point for which 
 it has professed to contend, nor accomplished a single result at 
 which slavery would not have sooner arrived, if left to the silent 
 evolution of its own destiny ; always excepting, from this denial 
 of its doings, that solitary achievement in which its success 
 has been perfect the opening of a Pandora box of murder, 
 rapine, implacable hatred and revenge. 
 
 It has made and defeated Presidents, cabinets, and diplo 
 matists, has got up wars and annexations, built and destroyed 
 platforms ; but it has been utterly impotent to arrest the steady 
 increase of slave labor, or its transfer to whatever region it 
 
580 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 has been found profitable to remove it. So far from promo 
 ting lawful emancipation, or checking either the growth or 
 productiveness of slavery, it has wholly arrested the first, 
 and has witnessed the augmentation of the value of the slave 
 and the profits of his work a hundredfold since the agitation 
 began. 
 
 These are the chief triumphs, and these the failures of a 
 slavery agitation of thirty years, conducted by men claiming 
 to be intellectual, conscientious, and stricken with a conviction 
 that it is the great and paramount duty of the age to reform, 
 what they have wrought themselves to believe, the damning 
 sin of a nation. For this, clergymen who think they have "a 
 mission, v spouters who think themselves orators, and politi 
 cians who think themselves statesmen, have gone on laboring 
 all these thirty years, in the same ceaseless and fruitless rou 
 tine of sermons, philippics, conventions, and discourses ; vex 
 ing the heart of the South with vulgar vituperation and insult, 
 and ruffling the temper of Congress with silly petitions to do im 
 possible things, showered, in endless profusion of repetition, 
 from the kitchens and primary schools and factories of New 
 England. 
 
 So far as the agitation kept within the limits of this phase 
 of its career, it was comparatively harmless. It could only 
 provoke, but could not sting. In the language of the reviewer 
 I have quoted above : " It could but make us angry." The 
 South, indeed, are to blame for their loss of temper under 
 this provocation ; as that really afforded the assailants the only 
 gratification they had. It would have been wiser to treat it as 
 more self-possessed nations are accustomed to treat the extrava 
 gancies of fanaticism ; as we ourselves, indeed, now treat Mor- 
 monism, or free love, or the nonsense of Fourierism. 
 
 But the agitation in the last few years has become venom 
 ous. It has directed its activity towards disunion and destruc 
 tion of the Government. Finding that the pretence of consci 
 entious regard for law and action within the pale of the stat 
 utes cramped its benevolent designs, it changed its tactics and 
 
THE BORDER STATES. 581 
 
 entered into a more congenial career devoting its energy to a 
 plot for illegal and even treasonable disturbance, by enlisting 
 companies and providing facilities for stealthy abduction of 
 slaves, by provoking servile insurrection, and by armed incur 
 sions against the peace of communities within the slavehold- 
 ing region while, at the same time, it solicited and won the 
 co-operation of many States to this organized plan of felony, 
 so far as to obtain from them the passage of laws to nullify the 
 provision of the Constitution and the statutes of the National 
 Legislature for the recovery of the fugitives which might escape 
 or be abducted from the South. 
 
 This is the second and now existing phase of the agita 
 tion. Could any sensible man in the North suppose that a 
 union of our States was at all possible if this system of assault 
 and disturbance were recognized and sustained by any respec 
 table or authoritative opinion in the Free States ? Could any 
 one imagine that if such a system of annoyance should receive 
 the sanction of legislative bodies, of conventions representing 
 a predominant power in any State, of religious communities, 
 of parsons holding a grade above an insane fanatic, of profes 
 sors of colleges, lawyers, merchants or gentlemen of any weight 
 in society in short, of any portion of Northern society that 
 might be regarded as the exponent of the common opinion of 
 the community and not inevitably and inexorably force upon 
 the whole South, not only the desire, but the duty to retire 
 from a compact of union with all such States as fostered such 
 an agitation ? Between independent nations, such provocations 
 would be the instant and just cause of war, and no nation, with 
 the power to protect its own peace and honor, would hesitate 
 to vindicate itself in that way. 
 
 This latter scheme of aggression presents the first earnest 
 and effective movement towards disunion which has been made 
 outside of the seceding States. The Free States which have 
 encouraged, or co-operated in, this scheme, may claim what 
 ever credit there is in being the first to set the ball of disunion 
 in motion*. The Border States, though the chief sufferers from 
 
582 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 these attacks, have been loyal to the Constitution and Union, 
 when these agitators have been recreant. 
 
 When the Republican party was organized in the bosom 
 of this agitation, and abstract and useless speculations, touch 
 ing the control of slavery by the Federal Government, were 
 brought into the political field by both parties, to heighten and 
 embitter the feud between the two sections ; when all the pres 
 tige and power of organized political forces predominant in the 
 popular vote of the Union, were enlisted in battle array against 
 the South ; when a President and Vice-President, contrary to 
 all previous usage, were selected from the same section to rep 
 resent it j and when this new embodiment was heralded to the 
 country, with proclamation that its purpose was the adminis 
 tration of the Government towards the enforcement of the theory 
 of an irrepressible conflict with slavery, until every vestige of 
 it should be banished from the Republic ; and that the aid of 
 a higher law than the Constitution should be sought for the rati 
 fication of the act, was there not enough to propagate a wide 
 and fearful alarm throughout the whole South for the safety, 
 not only of its property, but of its very existence ? 
 
 The systematic abduction of slaves, through organized 
 Northern agencies, is already sequestering not much less than 
 a million of Southern wealth every year. The final consum 
 mation of this movement to the destruction of slavery, would 
 be the sequestration of one or two thousand millions of that 
 wealth. It would be to turn several States back into a jungle 
 for wild beasts. It would be to paralyze the industry and sub 
 tract one-half from the comforts of Europe and America. Is 
 it at all wonderful that now, when that party has succeeded and 
 has elected its President, that the alarm of the South should 
 be increased, and that the Southern States should feel that a 
 crisis had been forced upon them which is to determine wheth 
 er we can have a Union in peace or peace without a Union ? 
 
 These are the true sources of alarm to the South, and these 
 the questions which the people there earnestly believe they have 
 to solve. 
 
THE BORDER STATES. 583 
 
 If it were really true that the whole North were united in 
 this scheme of aggression, then, indeed, the case would be 
 hopeless. Hundreds of thousands in the South the great ma 
 jority of the people believe this to be so. But it is not true. 
 Happily, it is not true. The belief is the delusion by which 
 the Southern mind has been cruelly abused : abused by credu 
 lous and ardent politicians ; by selfish demagogues ; by a pre 
 judice, and, sometimes, by a wicked press ; by the politicians 
 of party, who hope to find in the wreck of society something 
 serviceable to the reconstruction of their power. No, it is not 
 true that these are the purposes of any portion of the Free 
 States, worthy of a moment s consideration as a force to influ 
 ence the current of government. Three-fourths I might say 
 nine-tenths of the people of the Free States are as guiltless 
 of any imagining against the rights of the South, or its peace 
 ful enjoyment of its own pursuits, as the people of the South 
 themselves. Any one acquainted with the real opinion of the 
 North will say, that the masses in those States are profoundly 
 unconscious of the tendency of the doctrines of which they 
 have heard so much, towards any serious assault upon the South. 
 Their prurient tastes have been fed to plethora, with stories of 
 the barbarism of slavery ; and, naturally enough, they believe 
 that it is a very bad thing ; but as to meddling with it, further 
 than going to hear a lecture upon it by the Rev. Mr. Pepper- 
 pot, and to feast upon his spiced flummery, they have not the 
 least wish or purpose. As to dissolving the Union for it ! 
 they open their eyes to an incredulous stare, and won t, even 
 now, believe that there is a man in the United States so insane 
 as to dream of such a thing. 
 
 To the conception of all this mass, constituting the whole 
 real power of the Free States, the Republican party and the 
 Republican President are but the regular successors to the ad 
 ministration of the government which, in their belief, is to be 
 conducted in the old fashion of attending to the business of 
 the country, to the preservation of the Union, and to giving as 
 
584: POLITICAL PAPER?. 
 
 much content as possible to every section ana every interest 
 in the country. 
 
 They are quite ready I speak now of the people, and not 
 of the politicians ; the latter have already prc ve 1 themselves 
 to be Incapables, and the matter will have to be taken out of 
 their hands these masses are now quite ready to make any 
 arrangements, constitutional or conventional, which mny be 
 found necessary for peace. They will come to any reasonable 
 agreement upon intervention or non-intervention, squatter or 
 non-squatter sovereignty, protection or non-protection of slav 
 ery in the territories, without the attempt to unriddle these 
 jargons, that may be found requisite for the restoration of 
 good temper and good will among the States. They will do 
 any thing to save the Union on principles adapted to make it per 
 petual. It will not be three months before that will be the 
 whole creed of the Republican party. Let the South be as 
 sured of this. 
 
 The first duty of conciliation lies on the side of that party. 
 Let the North dismiss its obstinacy and its silence, and come, 
 with its customary shrewdness, to doing the right thing. Get 
 slavery out of that gigantic and tenacious conscience of theirs, 
 which is such a voracious absorbent of other people s sins, 
 and fill its place with Christian charity, and love of its neigh 
 bor, and other forgotten virtues, and we shall then find some 
 returning sunshine. But let the Free States everywhere, and 
 the sober, reflective, and honest men in them, understand, that 
 the old Union is an impossibility unless the agitation of slavery is 
 brought to an end. 
 
 There is nothing in the election of Mr. Lincoln which may 
 now be regarded as an obstacle to this pacification. With 
 whatever apprehension many may have allowed themselves to 
 anticipate, from that election, the inauguration of a policy 
 which would be one of continual exasperation, it is veiy evi 
 dent, now that the election is over and the views of the new 
 President are becoming known through the best accredited 
 organs of the party he represents, that there is no reason to 
 
THK BORDER STATES. 585 
 
 fear his administration will not be conducted with a salutary 
 and becoming respect for the rights and interests of every 
 portion of the country. Indeed, from the date of the nomi 
 nation of Mr. Lincoln, the presages of political events have 
 all been favorable to a better hope of the future than we 
 might gather from the pernicious zeal and intemperate proc 
 lamation of those who assumed to be the leading champions 
 and most authentic expounders of the principles of his party. 
 
 His nomination was both a surprise and a disappointment 
 to what may be termed the most demonstrative portion of the 
 Republican party. He was selected as the more eligible can 
 didate, in the belief that he would attract a support from States 
 and large masses of the people who were not willing to adopt 
 the extreme views upon which his rival for the nomination was 
 put forward. And in the eventual trial he was elected, in 
 great part, by a vote representing rather an opposition to the 
 democratic, than a concurrence with the distinctive and excep 
 tionable principles of the Republican party. In, other words, 
 Mr. Lincoln was both nominated and elected by what may be 
 called the moderate, conservative division of the Republican 
 party. And it is now claimed for him and apparently with 
 his own approbation that he stands before the people of the 
 United States unembarrassed by the extreme pretensions which 
 were set up for the party in the canvass; and that he will 
 enter into office not only with the determination, but with the 
 desire to render his administration one of impartial justice to 
 the South. 
 
 There is at least a good omen in this, and the strongest 
 motive for an appeal to the South to wait for more explicit 
 demonstration of the policy of the coming administration. 
 
 If the seceding States, in their zeal for a separate confed 
 eracy, are not willing to wait for this demonstration, it will 
 be justly regarded by the world as a confession that the revo 
 lution in which they have embarked has only been promoted, 
 but not originated, by the event upon which they have here 
 tofore placed its justification. 
 25 " 
 
58 1 POLITICAL PAPER?. 
 
 If they are not willing to wait, the Border States will not 
 be shaken from their resolves to wait and avail themselves of 
 every favorable incident that may be turned to the account of 
 peaceful adjustment. 
 
 Upon the new President will then devolve the responsibility 
 of bringing the influence of the government, and the weight 
 of his own admonition and example, to the duty of denning 
 and determining (if that be not successfully done by his friends 
 before his inauguration) the pledges which his party are dis 
 posed to give for the permanent establishment of friendly 
 relations between the two sections of the Union. We have 
 no reason to doubt that Mr. Lincoln s influence to this end 
 will be propitious to peace. It will then be seen, that in the 
 position assumed by the Border States in their firmness, jus 
 tice, and dignified bearing throughout this controversy they 
 will have become the authoritative and controlling power to 
 devise and establish the foundations of a secure and durable 
 settlement, with every provision for the preservation of South 
 ern rights which the seceding States themselves could reason 
 ably demand. 
 
 BALTIMORE, December 17, 1860. 
 
THE GREAT DRAMA. 58T 
 
 THE GKEAT DEAMA. 
 
 AN APPEAL TO MARYLAND. 
 
 IT is the most deplorable misfortune of our unhappy coun 
 try, at this moment, that it has no authentic voice to speak 
 its honest, sober judgment on the public affairs. Here we are 
 in Maryland, involved in a dreadful revolution which has al 
 ready convulsed society to the centre, torn up its prosperity by 
 the roots, sown discord in families, alienated old and familial- 
 friends, and spread consternation through the whole communi 
 ty. It has visited peaceful and thriving households with want, 
 stricken down fortunes acquired by long and patient industry, 
 scattered the small accumulations of humble thrift, and re 
 duced to absolute beggary thousands and thousands of the 
 best and most useful of our working population. These are 
 the ravages of the first act in the Great Drama. 
 
 The second act is about to open upon us. The pride and 
 flower of our youth are in arms. Hostile camps are gathering 
 their forces. Wild, ungovernable and savage men are openly 
 and stealthily armed with terrible weapons. Hatreds are cast 
 abroad and sown in fierce hearts Denunciation and proscrip 
 tion are uttered in undertones and with ominous threats of 
 mischief. Soot? we shall hear the clash of arms. What then ? 
 Read the wars of the Roses ; read the marches and the raids 
 of Cromwell ; the ravages of the Palatinate ; the fusilades of 
 Lyons. Read, at random, any page that records the rage, the 
 demonism, the hellish passion of civil war, and fancy the sack 
 of cities, the brutal and indiscriminate murder of old and young 
 of either sex, the rape and rapine, the conflagration, the shriek 
 of surprised families, the midnight flight of mothers and chil- 
 
POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 dren tracking their way with bleeding feet the mourning, the 
 desolation, the despair which are all painted in such horrid col 
 ors in that history fancy all these pictures converted into the 
 realities of our own experience, and we shall then come to the 
 perception of the second act of this portentous drama. 
 
 How does it come to pass that this, our prosperous State 
 of Maryland this, our beautiful City of Baltimore, is suddenly 
 hurled into the bosom of this commotion ? Why is it that 
 Maryland, so remote from the first theatre of revolution, so 
 little concerned in its issues, so reluctant to take sides in this 
 miserable quarrel Maryland, "happy and peaceful why is it 
 that she is doomed to stand forward, the first to encounter the 
 sweep of this storm, to bear its continuous brunt, and to give 
 up her substance, her children and her homes, to the alternate 
 ravage of contending factions, until war, wearied with slaughter 
 and exhausted by its own destruction, shall no longer find a 
 victim or a country to punish ? 
 
 We answer this terrible question truly when we say that 
 Maryland, like her sisters of the Confederacy, is allowed no 
 free and honest expression of her thoughts. It is too painfully 
 obvious that Maryland opinion is surrendered to the control 
 of influences that repress all wise and earnest consideration of 
 the momentous topics that belong to the public welfare. Its 
 key-note is derived from the heated utterances of passionate 
 and thoughtless youth, of impressible women and girls, of infu 
 riated politicians, of all that multitude of excitable, rash, un 
 reasoning persons who fly to conclusions under the impulse of 
 prejudice, desire or interest ; and lastly and more significantly, 
 of wily, unscrupulous partisan leaders who are moved by pre 
 meditated design to accomplish a selfish party triumph. In 
 the domineering ascendancy of these agencies over the public 
 mind, the quiet, reflective good sense of the community is re 
 pressed ; the orderly and industrious are kept in the back 
 ground ; the timid are overawed ; the weak are silenced, and 
 the credulous are misled. 
 
 The whole movement towards secession, even in the States 
 
THE GREAT DRAMA. 589 
 
 most favorable to it, has been artfully promoted by the fabrica 
 tions of a false opinion. It has been borne along by a whirl 
 wind of contrived excitement. The passions of the people 
 have been inflamed by exaggerated representations of impend 
 ing dangers ; by skilful exhibition of the idle ravings of mad 
 and wicked fanatics as the settled views of the Government ; 
 by startling conjunctures preconcerted by the managers to 
 madden the temper and overwhelm the discretion of the popu 
 lace, and by provoking outbreak and violence as the topics for 
 frantic appeal to the manhood and patriotism of the State. 
 The unnecessary bombardment of the starving garrison of 
 Sumter was intended to stimulate the reluctant mind of Vir 
 ginia to secession. The simultaneous seizures of Gosport 
 Navy Yard and of Harper s Ferry were the arranged stimulants 
 to confirm the wavering resolution of that State. The futile 
 and calamitous attempt to resist the passage of the troops 
 through Maryland was but another spur to quicken the speed 
 of secession, by driving the State against its better judgment 
 into rebellion. The secession enterprise, everywhere, has been 
 remarkably characterized by the signs of a conspiracy to give 
 the minority a command over the majority. It avoids refer 
 ence to the popular consent, screens its plans from public crit 
 icism by secret sessions, and plies the machinery of passion to 
 rush the people into the abyss of revolution, with the renuncia 
 tion of all thought and forecast of its consequences. 
 
 There is something ungenerous, and even worse, in the ad 
 vantage which the Seceding States have taken of the wise and 
 patriotic sentiment of the Border States against coercion. 
 When these latter States pledged themselves, in the beginning 
 of the rupture, that they would not sanction any attempt of the 
 Government to coerce the Seceders into submission, it was a 
 pledge that the experiment of secession should be allowed to 
 take its allotted course in peace, with the hope that peace 
 would bring calm judgment into action, and, through its influ 
 ence, an early return to harmony in the Union. Such a pledge 
 implied a counter-pledge of moderation of counsel and honest 
 
590 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 confidence in the unbiassed judgment of the people, by the Se 
 ceding States. It implied that the good sense of the country 
 should be left free to act, with perfect immunity from artificial 
 excitement, on the whole subject wherever it might be brought 
 into debate. Instead of granting this freedom from agitation 
 to the Border States, the secession party of the South, taking 
 advantage of the promise against coercion, has busily employ 
 ed itself in provoking collision by assault and spreading pan 
 ic by alarm, and thus stirring the population of the Border 
 into sudden revolt against the Government. They contrive 
 a necessity for coercion, and then call on the Border States 
 to resist it, in fulfilment of a promise really made to secure 
 peace. 
 
 Such are the conditions in which Maryland is now invoked 
 to imbrue her hands in the blood of civil war. It cannot es 
 cape observation, that, notwithstanding the large majority of 
 the people of Maryland are now, and ever have been, true and 
 faithful to the Union, and averse to every design to drag them 
 into this ruinous career of revolution, there is an active, intel 
 ligent and ardent minority in the State who are bent upon forc 
 ing her into the Southern Confederacy ; and that although 
 this secession party, now accidentally in possession of the leg 
 islative power, finds itself compelled to succumb to the force 
 gathering around it and to temporize with the difficulties it can 
 not surmount, it still cherishes the purpose of future control, 
 and only lies at lurch waiting the events of the day, to make a 
 new effort to array the State against the Government. 
 
 In this condition of things, it is of the profoundest moment 
 that we should invoke the good sense of every patriotic citizen 
 in our Commonwealth to look the danger around us in the 
 face, and before it is too late, to make a united effort to recall 
 our excited brothers to an honest and sober consideration of 
 our destiny. The men of Maryland, of all parties, are too 
 earnest, too faithful to their duty to themselves and the com 
 munity in which they live, too honorable, frank and just, know 
 ingly to perpetrate a wrong against the prosperity and happi- 
 
THE GREAT DRAMA. 591 
 
 n-ess of their own homes and kindred their children and their 
 friends We accord the fullest honesty of intention even to the 
 rashest and most thoughtless of those who are endeavoring to 
 cast our lot upon the path of disunion. We believe them sin 
 cere in thinking that the honor and the welfare of the State de 
 mand that we should follow the lead of the bold spirits of the 
 South who have plunged the country into this commotion. 
 Our ingenuous and excitable youth have yielded to what we re 
 gard as but a natural impulse, when they bravely rushed to 
 arms to resent what they were taught to think an invasion of 
 our rights. In doing this, they have only demonstrated a no 
 ble and mistaken ardor proper to their age and temper, and 
 which now but wants a good cause to win all the applause to 
 which they aspire. They prove to us how much we may de 
 pend upon their manhood when the country really requires 
 their arm. But they, like many of their elders, are acting un 
 der a delusion. 
 
 Maryland has no cause to desert our honored Stars and 
 Stripes. Out of this Union, there is nothing but ruin for her. 
 In the Union, dark as may be the present day, the stout re 
 solve of Maryland to maintain her fealty to the faith of her 
 fathers, will secure to her yet a glorious future. 
 
 Let us not fall into the fatal error of thinking that the great 
 interests of the Union are irretrievably lost by the election of 
 an Administration we do not like. At the worst the present 
 predominance of a sectional party in the National Government 
 is but a transient evil. We shall never have another but 
 through the ignoble surrender of the loyal men of the South. 
 Even indeed now, the perpetuation of such a party is an im 
 possibility in the North. The excitement and storm of this 
 day if it has, for a season, unseated the prosperity of the na 
 tion is worth all its privations, in the good it has already ac 
 complished. It has forever put an end to that pestilent agita 
 tion of slavery which, for thirty years, has disturbed the repose 
 of the country ; it has forever put an end to sectional Presi 
 dents and parties ; it has revealed a great truth to this nation 
 
592 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 that the Union is above all party, and that peaceful brother 
 hood is the most beneficent of all our blessings. 
 
 Let us bring our minds to a calm estimate of our own duty 
 in this great crisis. There is but one issue before us, Union 
 or Disunion. Every man in Maryland must meet that issue. 
 
 Union, on the one side, is loyalty, faith in the traditions of 
 our ancestors, devotion to our historical renown, brave sup 
 port of our country in its adversity. 
 
 Disunion let us not evade the conclusion is rebellion, 
 desertion of our duty, dishonor to our flag ; voluntary dis 
 grace cast upon the names of the heroes and sages who have 
 made our country illustrious in human annals. It is prompt 
 ed by the assertion of a principle of anarchy which makes 
 all government impossible ; a false dogma which affirms 
 a right of disintegration that may pervade every division of 
 society. 
 
 This assumed right of secession is scouted by the judgment 
 of the world. No jurist, no statesman, no man of honest judg 
 ment ever affirmed it until, in these later days, it was found to 
 be the convenient pretext for a party design. Every Presi 
 dent who has heard it uttered, every Cabinet, every State, 
 every party, at one period or another of their progress, has 
 disowned it. If Washington or Jackson were alive they would 
 account it only as rank rebellion and would so treat it. 
 
 We may not shelter ourselves under the plea of revolution. 
 Maryland has no cause for revolution. No man in Maryland 
 can lay his hand upon his heart and say that this Government 
 of ours has ever done him wrong ; has ever stinted its bounty 
 to him in the full enjoyment of his life, liberty and pursuit of 
 happiness. We cannot answer to God or man, therefore, for 
 plunging into the great crime of rebellion and treason. Our 
 honor, our faith, our religion will rise up in judgment against 
 us, to convict us of the greatest wickedness man can commit, 
 if, on such a pretence, we lifted a bloody hand against the 
 blessed parent of our political life. Is loyalty nothing? Sub 
 mission to law nothing ? Fidelity to duty nothing ? Gentle- 
 
TTTE GREAT DRAMA. 593 
 
 men of Maryland, do these things no longer touch your honor ? 
 Will you listen to the sordid arguments of gain, to the mean 
 persuasions of interest, to the fear of danger, to the wretched 
 slanders of fanatics, to the dread of that vulgar obloquy which 
 brands you with the name of " Submissionists," to seduce you 
 from your allegiance to the government you have inherited 
 from brave ancestors ? Has the cavalier blood become so di 
 luted in your veins that you can for such motives abandon 
 your country in her distress ? We mistake you, and have long 
 misunderstood you, if that be the spirit in which you meet the 
 crisis. No, no. Stand by your ancient flag. Be true to Ma 
 ryland and keep her where your fathers placed her, and when 
 the time comes redeem your country. 
 
 For what does Secession now rear a mutilated banner ? 
 
 For what cause does it invite us to take up arms ? 
 
 We hear different answers to these questions. 
 Some, who think a sectional patriotism to be their greatest 
 duty, answer, k * For Southern Rights." 
 
 Others, who think worldly profit a higher motive, say, " For 
 Southern trade." 
 
 Others again, who seem to be swayed by a kind of fatalism, 
 say, " We have no choice we must go as Virginia goes." 
 
 We have not yet heard the first man on that side say any 
 thing about Maryland rights, Maryland honor, or Maryland inde 
 pendence. 
 
 Is it not strange that they forget Maryland has any duty to 
 perform to herself and for herself? 
 
 Let us weigh these answers. 
 
 What are Southern rights ? Everybody speaks of them, 
 nobody defines them. So vague, so misty, so variable, they 
 escape every attempt to grasp them. 
 
 Do they comprise, as a chief demand as many say they do 
 the right to maintain the institution of slavery unmolested 
 and unimpaired in the States that possess it ? 
 
 If so, no one now disputes that right. It is affirmed and of 
 fered to be made perpetual, even by the late Republican Con- 
 
594 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 gress, by the enactment of an irrepealable amendment to the 
 Constitution, which guarantees it forever. 
 
 Do they assert the right to take slaves into all territory of 
 the United States south of the Missouri line, as proposed by 
 the Crittenden resolutions ? 
 
 If that be the demand, that right now exists to its fullest 
 extent, and slavery is at this day by law protected in every foot 
 of territory south of 36.30 ; and even the three new territories 
 north of that line are open to the admission of slaves without 
 restriction. 
 
 Do they mean the right to recover fugitive slaves from the 
 Free States ? 
 
 If so, all impediment to that right is virtually withdrawn. 
 The administration affirms a purpose to execute the law, and, 
 in point of fact, the law is now executed with more efficiency 
 and less obstruction than it has been for thirty years past. 
 
 Are these the Southern rights for which we are invited to 
 get up revolution and war, and will war be likely to secure them 
 in more full enjoyment than we have them now ? 
 
 Are there any other Southern rights in dispute ? We hear 
 sometimes of a right to free trade and direct taxation ; a right to 
 traffic in African slaves ; a right to Cuba, to Mexico, to Cen 
 tral America. Is Maryland willing to fight for these? 
 
 Then as to " Southern trade," which has captivated the 
 imagination of some who have fallen into the Secession 
 ranks. 
 
 There are many variant and contradictor} 7 notions on this 
 point. Carolina hopes to make a New York of Charleston, 
 Georgia claims this bounty for Savannah, Virginia demands it 
 for Norfolk, Louisiana pleases her fancy with the miraculous 
 growth of New Orleans. The visionaries of Maryland quietly 
 smile at all these delusions, perfectly confident that the cornu 
 copia is to be emptied upon Baltimore. 
 
 We say nothing of the heart-burnings and jealousies which 
 these various hopes must engender if any one of these dreams 
 are realized to the disappointment of the others. We are 
 
THE GEEAT DRAMA. 595 
 
 only concerned to look at the probable result upon Mary 
 land. 
 
 This supposed commercial advantage is founded upon the 
 idea, much commended in the South, of free trade with all the 
 foreign world, and heavy restrictions upon the trade with the 
 United States; a system of commerce built upon compla 
 cency on one side and revenge on the other. The Southern 
 Confederacy, it is presumed, will, in the future permanent ar 
 rangement of its policy, encumber one-half of its trade and 
 that its most indispensable and necessary supply with heavy 
 duties, and leave the other half, which chiefly concerns its lux 
 uries, free. Does any experienced merchant believe this? 
 What will the South gain by laying duties upon the thousand 
 productions of the North that now enter so largely into their 
 common household and agricultural wants? Will they get 
 their farming implements, their machinery, their wooden ware, 
 their fish, their beef, their hay, their ice, their carriages, shoes, 
 hats, and clothing any part of their whole inventory of family 
 requisitions more cheaply for that ? No other country can 
 supply them so well, and the experiment will soon prove that 
 every cent of tax so levied is but a charge upon themselves. 
 When that is proved, and the passion of the day subsides, it is 
 reasoning against all the motives of human conduct to suppose 
 that a merely vindictive restriction will be allowed to exist. 
 The North would soon grow to be in the same category to the 
 South with all the rest of the world in war, enemies, in peace, 
 friends ; and the free-trade system, if practicable at all, will be ex 
 tended equally to all within the range of Southern commerce. 
 
 There are some who think these discriminations will be 
 made with a view to the establishment of large manufacturing 
 interests in the South. But to this there is the obvious reply, 
 that no manufacturing system ever was built up in companion 
 ship with free trade ; and the Southern Constitution has al 
 ready put a veto upon the attempt by a specific prohibition of 
 all power to protect any domestic, industry. 
 
 The Northern manufactures are sufficiently established and 
 
596 POLITICAL PAPEKS. 
 
 prosperous to compete with the world in free trade, and they 
 will always continue to find a Southern market from their ex 
 act adaptation to Southern wants. But the manufactures of 
 Maryland, in great part, are precisely those which would with 
 er and perish under the free-trade policy. We could supply 
 no iron from our mines, no iron fabrics from our workshops. 
 Our great steam enginery, our railroad apparatus, our heavy 
 works of the foundry, our cast and rolled metal, could never 
 hold their own in the presence of free impoitations from Eng 
 land. It will occur to any one conversant with our workshops, 
 that much of our most important industry here in Baltimore, and 
 throughout the State, would be compelled to yield under the 
 pressure of European rivalry. 
 
 Again, free trade implies direct taxation to raise revenue 
 for the support of government. A glance at this will sup 
 ply another element for the consideration of those who fancy 
 that Maryland is to prosper in a Southern Confederacy. 
 
 The expenses of the new government are inevitably to be 
 cast upon a higher estimate than we have ever witnessed in 
 our heretofore harmonious Union. Large armies and navies 
 are to be provided as the necessary apparatus of government. 
 Fifty millions a year will not be an unfamiliar experience to 
 the Southern financier. If that amount is to be levied upon 
 some nine million of free population, which about represent 
 the present number of the whole of the Southern States, it af 
 fords a ratio of more than five dollars a head. If but thirty 
 millions be the expenditure, it will be over three dollars a head. 
 Maryland contains near six hundred and fifty thousand free 
 persons, and thus we estimate her annual share of the tax at 
 over three millions per annum, on a fifty million expenditure, 
 and on the supposition of thirty millions, something near two 
 millions per annum. Our present State tax is about two hun 
 dred and fifty thousand dollars. The addition to this, for the 
 support of the Confederate Government, will, on the first sup 
 posed rate of expenditure, be twelve, on the other, eight times 
 the present tax. I give these figures as a formula of calcula- 
 
THE GREAT DRAMA. 597 
 
 tion which any one may apply to his own estimate of the prob 
 able expenditure of the new government, if its revenues are to 
 be supplied by direct taxation. 
 
 How the trade and industry of Maryland may reconcile 
 themselves to such a system, I leave those to judge who are 
 best acquainted with the tax bills our present necessities im 
 pose upon us. 
 
 Ii" it should be discovered, as I have no doubt it will be 
 after some sore and short experience, that this free-trade fancy 
 is but an expensive delusion, and that the old, long tried, uni 
 versal and inevitable system of duties, known to and practised 
 by all nations, as the most commendable system of national 
 support, must be substituted by the Confederate States, what 
 then will be the condition of their commerce ? It will then be 
 found that the revolution has been a vain work. The bubble 
 will have burst, and the experimenters, after having turned the 
 whole nation back a quarter of a century in its career having 
 ruined a generation, subverted more capital than would suffice 
 to purchase every slave in the nation, accumulated a debt im 
 possible to be paid, and spread repudiation and bankruptcy 
 over a whole circle of States happy, if to these evils it has not 
 added the clothing of every household in mourning the ex 
 perimenters will then find themselves vainly endeavoring to 
 restore trade to the same relations and arrangement in which 
 it was at the fatal moment when they initiated their new ca 
 reer. All that will then have been achieved will be the crea 
 tion of a double set of political dignitaries, and the distribution 
 of a double supply of loaves and fishes to the patriots of the 
 ferment. 
 
 A tariff of duties for revenue once adopted, it then be 
 comes the plain policy of the United States of the old Confed 
 eracy to enact the same rates, and commerce will immediate 
 ly oscillate back to the track and custom of its old career. 
 
 Even if it should not be drawn again into that current, 
 what has Baltimore to hope for? Will she import for the 
 South, from the head of the Chesapeake, while Norfolk lies on 
 
598 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 the margin of the sea at its mouth, with an admirable harbor, 
 and with all the means of Western and Southern distribution 
 by railroads that penetrate to the Mississippi and Ohio ? Do 
 old and sagacious merchants of Baltimore allow this delusion 
 to seize their minds ? Boys may prate about such things, but 
 surely men of sense will repeat no such absurdity. But, we 
 have heard it said, if Maryland be not a member of the South 
 ern Confederacy, Virginia, in time of war, may close all access 
 to the Chesapeake against us. That is true. But if Mary 
 land should be a member of that Confederacy, then the North, 
 in time of war, may also shut up the Chesapeake against us ; 
 and not only that, but may also shut up our Western and 
 Northern Railroads. It may deny us the Ohio river j it may 
 deny us access to Philadelphia, to New York utterly obliter 
 ate not only our trade, but cut off our provisions. In the other 
 case, Virginia could not do that, nor even impede our transit 
 on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, as long as Western Vir 
 ginia shall stand our friend, as assuredly it will if we are true 
 to ourselves. 
 
 The last argument popularly used in favor of the secessi )n 
 of Maryland, is that which asserts a necessity that compels us 
 "to go as Virginia goes." 
 
 It is supposed that the recent attempted secession of Vir 
 ginia leaves us no choice. It is declared that our sympathies 
 as well as our interests are with Virginia ; in fact, that our 
 fate is in her hands. If this were true, it would have been 
 but a becoming decorum in Virginia to have invited us into 
 her counsels, or at least, to have warned us of the complica 
 tions she was preparing for us. As it is, she has led us blind 
 fold to the verge of the precipice, and those of our own fellow- 
 citizens who renounce for us all freedom of opinion on our 
 own destiny, tell us we have no choice but to take the leap. 
 
 We deny that Maryland is so bound up in the fortunes of 
 Virginia. We regard the interest of that State to be quite as 
 dependent upon the favor of Maryland as Maryland is upon 
 her. In all that denotes vigor, growth of power, and capacity 
 
THE GREAT DKAMA. 599 
 
 for great enterprise, Maryland is ahead of Virginia. While 
 our population in the last decade has increased twenty-five 
 per cent, that of Virginia has not advanced over twelve. 
 What we have accomplished in public works and in the ex 
 tension of commercial activity bears a still more favorable 
 comparison in the estimate of the resources of the two States. 
 Let us not so derogate from the influence and capability of 
 our own State as to surrender our independence to the con 
 trol of politicians who have as yet shown so little capacity in 
 governing their own. In truth, we might, with good reason, 
 reverse the affirmation of the argument we are considering, 
 and say that Virginia should look to Maryland, and should 
 adapt her policy, on this question of separation, to ours. She 
 should at least consult the other Border States, Kentucky, 
 Tennessee, Missouri, as well as Maryland, and shape her 
 course in conformity with their common views. 
 
 When we speak of Virginia, there is another most signifi 
 cant question to be considered. To what portion of Virginia 
 are we to attach our fortunes ? Is it to that waning Eastern 
 section which at present holds the political power over the 
 State that section whose population, scattered over the re 
 gion visited by the tide, is gradually declining in numbers and 
 losing its ascendancy in the public affairs, and whose power 
 at this day is founded rather upon the traditions of the past 
 than upon any inherent capacity to govern ? or is it to that 
 vigorous and healthful Western Virginia upon whom nature 
 has lavished her bounty in the provision of all the elements 
 of a prosperous and powerful community ? 
 
 Virginia is divided into two distinct sections, altogether 
 different in physical quality and in moral character. The one 
 teems with a redundant slave population of which the excess 
 is kept down by a continual drain of emigration to the South. 
 Its habits are Southern, its affinities are for the South. These 
 are not less nourished by the character of its labor than by 
 the temper of its leading men talented and impulsive and 
 educated in strong sympathy with the Secession States. 
 
600 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 The other division includes the land of the mountaineer 
 a land of mineral wealth, of rapid streams, of fertile pastures, 
 of bracing atmosphere, where the people have little dependence 
 on slave labor, and who see in the resources of the soil and 
 climate an invitation to all the varied industry of populous and 
 thriving States. 
 
 We of Maryland are solicited to associate ourselves with 
 the first of these divisions. It is said our natural relationship 
 is with them. 
 
 We certainly have had abundant reason in the past to 
 know that the governing power of Virginia does not reciprocate 
 the favor of this relationship. Maryland has no more persistent 
 and steady antagonism to her policy to contend against than 
 she has ever found in the domination of this low country influ 
 ence. Let those who have had the management of our public 
 works, our railroad and canal, say what difficulties they have 
 had to encounter in the hostility of Virginia to the grant of the 
 smallest privilege or aid from that State ; and let them describe 
 how all solicitations have been refused until the friendly inter 
 cession of the Western counties, often baffled, has at last by 
 peremptory demand secured us the grace of being permitted to 
 expend millions of Maryland capital upon Virginia soil. 
 
 The true friends and allies of our policy are in the West. 
 At this moment that region is making its protest against seces 
 sion. It is a matter of the deepest moment that we should 
 wisely appreciate this fact. It is not for us now to discuss the 
 probable contingencies of the future which may spring out of 
 the state of opinion in the Western counties, but we should not 
 blindly adopt a policy in the present juncture which may for 
 ever alienate them from the interest which makes them the 
 guardians and protectors of our road and the ministers to our 
 tracte. 
 
 The singular change of opinion which has recently brought 
 Virginia into secession is one of the inexplicable things of the 
 day. Time may perhaps prove it to be a forced assent obtain 
 ed by the arts which have, everywhere in the seceding States, 
 
THE GREAT DRAMA. 601 
 
 more or less subdued and coerced public opinion. At present 
 the world can only perceive that " the Mother of States," in 
 spite of her protestations of independence, in spite of the con 
 tumely and insult heaped upon her, has succumbed to the dic 
 tation of Carolina has been " dragged" into revolution and 
 compelled to an act of submission, by which she has surren 
 dered her lofty position as a mediator in the national quarrel 
 and sunk into a secondary power in the new Confederacy. She 
 is the first of the Border States that has given way. Let Ma 
 ryland be the last to follow her example. 
 
 We cannot forget that the Southern Confederacy has hither 
 to repudiated all connection with the Border States ; that they 
 were contemptously repelled as unworthy of consultation. It 
 is only now, when a severe experience has demonstrated the 
 necessity of friends able both to pay and fight, that these States 
 are approached with flattering appeals to take a stand in the 
 very front of war and bear the brunt of its worst assaults. We 
 who never felt or professed any respect for their cause, who, in 
 deed, accuse them of having produced all the difficulties and 
 disgraces which have resulted from the recent Presidential 
 election, are now counselled to patient submission to this co 
 ercion, and even to embrace it with thankful avidity as an hon 
 orable duty. Virginia has placed herself at the head of the 
 Submissionists, and men whom we have esteemed, here in 
 Maryland, for their manhood, tell us we have no choice but to 
 follow her example ! 
 
 I draw this view of our condition to a close by repeating 
 my clear conviction that the interests and safety of Maryland 
 coincide with her loyalty to the Union, that disunion is ruin to 
 her. 
 
 Let us not be moved by the taunt that we are aiding the 
 Republican cause and vindicating the administration of Mr. 
 Lincoln. That is but the party vituperation of those who seek 
 to frighten us by false clamor into an abandonment of our op 
 position to their own party schemes. We deplore the unfortu 
 nate ascendancy of the Republican party ; we censure the pol- 
 26 
 
002 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 icy of the Administration. We may claim much more respect 
 for our sincerity in this than our opponents are entitled to ask, 
 since it is only by their machinations that the Republican par 
 ty has won its ascendancy, and by their desertion of their 
 posts and their duty in Congress, that Mr. Lincoln s adminis 
 tration has obtained any power to involve the country in the 
 present commotion. In the stage at which the public embar 
 rassments have now arrived, all the questions of the late can 
 vass have disappeared. The country is aroused to the protec 
 tion of the Union, to the defence of our system of government. 
 The men who were most earnest in opposing the election of 
 Mr. Lincoln throughout the whole North and West are united 
 into a compact body, in a unanimous determination to vindi 
 cate the right of the people to the Union bequeathed to them 
 by their fathers. Large numbers in the South, whose voices 
 are suppressed by the despotism of party rule, have the same 
 sentiment deeply impressed upon their hearts. The conserva 
 tive Northern men who have come so sternly and with such 
 alacrity to this duty of defence a majority of the Northern 
 people will visit with indignant disgust the fanatical agitators 
 of the slavery question, whose wicked pertinacity has raised 
 this storm in the nation, and we shall hear no more of the 
 wretched cant of the sin of slavery in the South. That abuse 
 of the peace of the nation will be purged away by this commo 
 tion, if no other good result from it. 
 
 On one side of us is a united nation of nineteen millions of 
 people. On the other, a divided population of nine millions. 
 We stand between them. If we remain true to the Union, we 
 shall have protection and peace, and hereafter an easy settle 
 ment of all our complaints. If we desert the Union, we shall 
 be driven into a confederacy which has but little sympathy 
 with our interests, and less power to protect us against the 
 ravage of the frequent wars which must inevitably arise be 
 tween the two sections. 
 
 The Southern Confederacy is essentially weak in the basis 
 of its construction. It is founded on a principle which must 
 
THE GREAT DRAMA. 603 
 
 lead to the ever-recurring dangers of new secessions and the 
 exhibition of a worse than Mexican anarchy. It may witness 
 pronunaamentoes upon every discontent, and the strife of par 
 ties ending in further disintegration. If the Border States go 
 into that Confederacy, the opposition of material interests will 
 soon develop the utter want of capacity in the new government 
 to secure its cohesion. 
 
 Maryland, under any circumstances of peace or war, must 
 soon become a Free State, and she will then be found to be 
 wholly ungenial to the principle upon which the Southern Con 
 federacy is established. It would, therefore, not be long be 
 fore she would be compelled to retire from the alliance and 
 become a suppliant for shelter under the wing of that old 
 Union which in a rash moment she had abandoned. 
 
 If she remain where she is, her example may influence the 
 course of the other Border States which now are drawn to the 
 verge of secession, and with them may happily bring about a 
 restoration of the whole Union. Four years hence, this Ad 
 ministration will give place to another. A popular, conserva 
 tive President then elected will restore confidence to the whole 
 country. The Union sentiment of the South will make itself 
 heard in the remotest sections of the secession, and disen 
 thralled from the domination that now forbids it to speak, it will 
 once more assert its attachment to the Stars and Stripes. 
 
 Let the true voice of our State now be heard on these ques 
 tions. The Legislature now in session has one solemn duty 
 to perform. It is to give the State an opportunity to declare 
 its wish. Much has been said about the desire of Maryland to 
 fall into the ranks of the Seceding States. There has been a 
 great clamor for a Convention by those who have been anxious 
 for Secession. Let the Legislature now put the question to 
 the people Do you want a Convention, with power to de 
 clare Maryland out of the Union ? 
 
 Put that question, and we shall then know what part Mary 
 land will take in the Great Drama. 
 
 BALTIMORE, May 9, 1861. 
 
604 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 LETTEK ON THE ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 
 
 TO A CITIZEN OF BALTIMORE. 
 
 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, May 15, 1844. 
 T^VEAR SIR : You are right in supposing that I am not in- 
 J- clined to favor the proposition for the annexation of Tex 
 as. I have just seen the resolutions which were adopted by 
 the meeting on Monday evening of those who call themselves 
 the Democracy of Baltimore. One of the resolutions relates to 
 this subject : 
 
 " That this meeting considers the re-annexation of Texas to 
 the United States, of which it was rightfully a portion previous 
 to the improvident cession of 1819, a measure indispensable to 
 our security against foreign aggression in that quarter, the ex 
 tension of the domestic commercial exchanges of our country, 
 and the securing the blessings of Republican Government to a 
 people allied to us in blood and political sympathy ; and that 
 we shall hail the day when her now solitary star shall blend in 
 harmonious order with the constellation that blazes on the 
 American flag." 
 
 This resolution, in common with the others, the Republican 
 informs us, was adopted by "acclamation." 
 
 Notwithstanding this acclamation, I venture to say the sen 
 timent is not the sentiment of our State. 
 
 Maryland has very strong reason to oppose the annexation. 
 We have been sufficiently drained of valuable portions of our 
 population already, by the opening of new States, to teach us 
 the duty of resisting this effort to incorporate Texas with the 
 Union. 
 
THE ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 605 
 
 Up to the present day, however, we have felt, in the won 
 derful growth and prosperity of the West, and in the strength 
 and grandeur which that region has given to our Republic, too 
 many incentives to patriotic pride not to acknowledge that it 
 would be selfish in " the old thirteen " to complain of that glo 
 rious march of civilization which began and moved forth from 
 our borders. But, surely, we may be content now with the 
 limits of our present Confederacy, and be excused for desiring 
 to pause in the career of territorial acquisition. The next 
 half century may find useful occupation in filling up the space 
 which we have acquired, and in turning to its appropriate uses 
 that vast domain which we have laid off for future settlement 
 and habitation. 
 
 Maryland has paid her full tribute to this great enterprise. 
 To say nothing of her gallant effusion of blood and treasure in 
 the war of the Revolution, by which this imperial domain was 
 won from the British Crown nothing of her cheerful acquies 
 cence in the allotment of large sections of that domain to the 
 local benefit and special use of the Western States, and her 
 own utter exclusion from all share or lot in that rich posses 
 sion, she has lost incalculably more than any division of that 
 domain might reimburse, in the diminution of her resources by 
 the constant flow of her people and wealth beyond the Allegha- 
 riy. Much of our best soil untilled, many mines unexplored, 
 many excellent farms abandoned, the whole of our landed prop 
 erty depreciated in value, some of our counties not only be 
 come stationary, but actually retrograde in population, tax 
 ation increased, and the capacity to bear it diminished ; these 
 are some of the evidences of our sacrifices in favor of the 
 new territories of the Union sacrifices which we have borne 
 without repining, from the affectionate interest we have 
 taken in the success of the younger States. The vigor of 
 these States, we have painfully felt, is drawn in part from the 
 life-blood of the parent stock. I think we may be approved 
 and seconded now for desiring to see some concentration, 
 some consolidation, at least, of the present elements of this 
 
606 POLITICAL PAPKIJS. 
 
 Union, before we set out anew in quest of more extensive ac 
 quisitions. 
 
 These considerations, apart from many graver objections, 
 would disincline me to look with favor upon the incorporation 
 of Texas with the Union. But there are many graver objec 
 tions. 
 
 The present attempt is distinguished by incidents which 
 ought to raise against it the revolt of every honorable mind. 
 It has begun in a humiliating intrigue, on the part of our Gov 
 ernment, to persuade Texas to permit, if not to solicit this alli 
 ance ; and the people of that country have, there is good rea 
 son to believe, only been reconciled to this act of condescen 
 sion by systematic misrepresentation of the state of opinion 
 here, by alternate threat and entreaty, and by the lure of exor 
 bitant profit to be conferred by our act. Among these misrep 
 resentations was that which has proved so notoriously false, im 
 porting that two-thirds of the Senate were ascertained to be fa 
 vorable to the measure, and would vote to sustain it. I might 
 refer to many others, but the whole history will be very soon 
 made public. 
 
 Towards Mexico this proceeding is still more dishonorable. 
 If not a downright act of perfidy, it is, at the best, a flagrant 
 violation of former pledges of friendship ; an offence against 
 the law of nations ; a positive act of war altogether unworthy 
 of a just and magnanimous people. It has the air of vulgar 
 domineering over one supposed to be inferior in prowess a 
 trespass upon the feebleness of an adversary which would not 
 be attempted against one who had the power to resist us. In 
 this point of view, nothing could be more repugnant to the 
 proud sensibility and genuine American spirit of our people. 
 It will be spurned by them as a stain upon their courage, no 
 less than an imputation upon their honor. 
 
 There is fraud confessed in the very artifice which is used 
 to recommend the measure to the country. Why is it called 
 the RE-annexation of Texas ? This term is employed to in 
 duce an opinion that the territory equitably belongs to us now. 
 
Till: AN.XKXATIOX OK TKXAS. (507 
 
 In the ethics of those who make this claim we are to under 
 stand that whenever the United States has a contest for bound 
 ary with a neighbor, and that boundary, after debate, is sol 
 emnly settled by treaty, the treaty may be set aside at pleasure, 
 if it has settled the question in dispute by the relinquishment of 
 any original pretension. In short, that this nation can never 
 abate, forego, or abandon a particle of any claim it may set up, 
 no matter how extravagant, how much or how reasonably contest 
 ed : that we may take all equivalents given in a treaty, and re 
 sume, when convenient, all that we have parted with. The 
 advocates of the RE-annexation say that a Republic like ours 
 has no power to part with territory, and that as we once claimed 
 Texas, the treaty which relinquished the claim is void. In the 
 next breath they tell us that the Republic of Texas, which is 
 modelled after ours, may not only part with a portion of its ter 
 ritory, but may cede the whole, and even extinguish its own 
 existence. With such wretched sophistry as this, is the honor 
 of the American people brought into question the good re 
 pute of our country tarnished in the eye of mankind ? 
 
 Our constitutional power to admit foreign nations into this 
 Union seems to be taken for granted. This is, to say the 
 least of it, an obvious departure from the doctrine of the Jef- 
 fersonian school. The sage of Monticello did not think so. 
 He thought it clear that the Constitution forbade the purchase 
 of Louisiana, and he therefore recommended an amendment to 
 ratify that act. The opinions of Jefferson, however, are of 
 small authority in his own school when they stand in the way 
 of a party purpose. I am no strict constructionist, as that 
 phrase is understood, yet I cannot but marvel at the easy con 
 sciences of gentlemen of that sect who are so much given to 
 talk of "the compromises of the Constitution," when I find 
 them so clear upon the question of this power, and so willing 
 to disturb that "balance" which they have represented to be 
 in their own language " sacred " in the adjustment of the 
 weight of the free and slave States. Is it uncharitable to be 
 lieve that they are reconciled to this invasion of the compro- 
 
608 POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 mises of the Constitution, in the present instance, because they 
 fancy it will bring the beam down on their own side of the bal 
 ance ? Where does this power to annex foreign States end ? 
 With Texas ? What of Cuba, St. Domingo, Canada ? Can it 
 reach Ireland ? Or is it confined, as we might infer from some 
 of the declamation on the subject, to the enemies only of the 
 Anglo-Saxon ? It has a broad field on that basis. These are 
 significant questions. 
 
 I do not doubt that two nations may become one, when 
 ever it may suit their tastes and tempers to enter into such 
 wedlock. But they will not do this by virtue of the powers 
 conferred upon their respective Governments for separate ad 
 ministration. It will not be done under existing Constitu 
 tions. Mr. Walker holds that this right of self-extinction is a 
 right reserved to every Government, unless expressly forbidden 
 by its Constitution. Certainly, this is a very odd specimen of 
 strict construction. The existing administration may destroy 
 the Government by giving the whole territory away in a treaty 
 unless the law forbid it. That, he affirms, will be the basis 
 of our title to Texas, if we confirm the Treaty. These are 
 new views of government. I can see but one way to accom 
 plish this object. When the general wish of the PEOPLE not 
 the Government of the United States and of Texas is to form a 
 new Confederacy, they will be obliged to alter their organic 
 law to suit the case ; they will then have occasion to make a 
 new Constitution, or amend the old one. The new Union 
 must provide Constitution and law for itself. 
 
 I think I discern, from some manifestations I have seen, at 
 the bottom of this scheme, in the minds and wishes of some of 
 its contrivers, an ultimate purpose to form a new Confederacy, 
 of which it shall be a prominent feature that no free State shall 
 come into the League. It has grown into fashion of late to 
 talk about slavery as " a blessing," which is affirmed to be es 
 sential to a prosperous Democracy. The corollary from this 
 is, in a few men s minds happily but few that visible advan 
 tage would flow from a Confederacy founded on this essential 
 
THE ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 000 
 
 blessing as a fundamental element. I trust there are not many 
 States in this Union which will acquiesce in this logic, or place 
 their title to democratic government upon such a concession. 
 I can speak very confidently for Maryland, that she will not be 
 one. The State that cherishes such a thought will assuredly 
 come to an "ill-starred and unblest catastrophe." I forbear 
 to expatiate on so revolting a theme, and fervently pray that 
 no such treason may be meditated. 
 
 What is it that the proposition proposes to r<?-annex 1 What 
 is Texas ? Is it the territory bounded by the Colorado by 
 the Nueces by the Rio Bravo or by any still more southern 
 limit ? Is it the whole intendancy of San Luis Potosi ? Does 
 it reach to the Pacific ? Does it comprehend California, or 
 Sonora ? Who can answer ? It is all indefinite : there is a 
 great question of boundary left. If the annexation be made, 
 then there will arise more discourse about other /-^-annexations 
 Mexico, Yucatan, Panama. Where will it end ? This little 
 nation of Texas only about the size of France is but the be 
 ginning a stepping-stone. It would be but justice to settle 
 the extent of all future claims before we conclude negotiations. 
 Are they not purposely left indefinite ? nest eggs-for a future 
 brood of claims. 
 
 It is a comfort to think that this nefarious scheme is des 
 tined very soon to explode, and to take its place among the 
 thousand repudiated follies of this foolish Administration. It 
 has but few friends in the Senate, and when that body have 
 rejected it, and the nation comes to a calm estimate of the 
 event, there will be a universal expression of wonder at the 
 temerity of the men who could so seriously trifle with the hon 
 or of the country. 
 
 The project has been sprung so suddenly upon the people, 
 and has been so little considered in the past time, that there 
 may be said to be no real public opinion upon it. All are 
 taken by surprise, and many who would abhor the scheme 
 upon mature deliberation are now in a state of passive reliance 
 upon the authorities here too willing, perhaps, to abide by 
 26* 
 
CIO POLITICAL PAPERS. 
 
 the judgment of Congress on the question. It was to obtain 
 this advantage that the politic Mr. Tyler has been so cunning 
 to keep the treaty secret. This is one of those strokes of 
 statesmanship that have made our Polonius President so of 
 ten the wonder of his times a coup d etat by which the sec 
 ond-hand hero of the Vetoes has hoped to win that most impos 
 sible of honors, a vote from some State in favor of another 
 term. The scheme thus sets out under the very worst of con 
 ceivable auspices. It would miscarry on that ground alone. 
 
 It is said that a messenger has been sent to Mexico to pro 
 pose some terms of accommodation with that Power, to buy out 
 her claim on Texas. If this be true, what a confession is it of 
 the injustice of the treaty ? I think they greatly miscalculate 
 the temper of the Mexican Government and the disposition of 
 that people who suppose that this overture will produce any 
 effect but exasperated defiance. Perhaps some ebullition of 
 such a feeling is desired by the patrons of the plot here, in the 
 hope of finding, in an exhibition of resentment from Mexico, 
 a topic to kindle a war fever on this side. 
 
 Has any one counted the probable cost of a war with Mex 
 ico? Annexation, without the consent of that Government, 
 would inevitably involve us in immediate strife. She would 
 invade Texas without delay, and we should be bound by every 
 consideration of pride to protect our new acquisition. It cost 
 us thirty millions to expel a few Indians from Florida. Twice 
 that amount per annum would not more than suffice to carry 
 on hostilities upon the remote plains of the Texian border and 
 to defend ourselves against the privateers which would swarm 
 like mosquitoes on the path of our commerce. We should be 
 obliged to maintain armies by land to pursue the alert and 
 sleepless guerillas of the Mexican frontier, and squadrons to 
 blockade the coast. Fever, famine, and tempest would be all 
 on the side of the adversary. Thousands of our troops would 
 perish ; many staunch ships would be shattered by storms, 
 wrecked or driven away ; many of our seamen overthrown by 
 the pestilence of the Gulf. The treasury would be drained by 
 
THE ANNEXATION OF TEXA*. 611 
 
 hordes of contractors, speculators, and job-agents, the natural 
 canker of a war ; and at ihe end we should come out of the 
 contest loaded with debt, weary with disaster, and loathing 
 every recollection of the folly which had brought us into such 
 a barren enterprise. What is not among the least of its mor 
 tifications, we should come out of it without the sympathy of a 
 single nation upon the globe, or even of a single individual be 
 yond our own confines. All the world would watch the con 
 test with a prepared smile at every discomfiture which might 
 befall us, with a sincere regret at every success. 
 
 Whence has this scheme obtained any favor? In part, 
 doubtless, from the affinities which subsist between our people 
 and the settlers of Texas. This is natural and honorable. 
 No small share of the favor it has won, however, is to be traced 
 to motives of sordid personal interest. Upwards of sixty 
 millions of acres of private land claims, I understand, are to 
 be recognized : ten millions of public Texian debt. The bond 
 holders and the land-scrip holders have interest enough to 
 make great efforts in the cause, and to win much influence 
 over the popular mind of the country. It would be much 
 cheaper, perhaps, and more honorable, for us to pay all these 
 at once out of our own Treasury, and leave Texas as she is ; 
 since, by such a course, we should know the extent of our losses 
 in the beginning and do no violence to the laws of nations or 
 the duty we owe a friendly Power. Why should we embroil 
 ourselves for the speculators in Texian lands or the holders of 
 Texian bonds ? 
 
 The influence of the annexation upon the slave question, it 
 strikes me, has been very much overrated both in the South 
 and the North. I cannot see that it would either augment the 
 influence of the slave States on the one hand, or that the re 
 fusal to annex would mitigate the evil of slavery on the other. 
 Texas, in a state of prosperous peace, whether a part of the 
 United States or an independent Power, would, in the long run, 
 equally attract emigration and settlement from the present pop 
 ulation of the Union It will draw manv slaves alons; with 
 
612 POLITICAL PA PI-IKS. 
 
 their proprietors from the Southern States, and with them sub 
 tract a proportionate amount of political power. 
 
 Every slave withdrawn from the present slave States will 
 have his influence in lessening the representation of the dis 
 trict from which he goes. This career of settlement upon the 
 Gulf of Mexico will sooner or later convert Maryland, Virginia, 
 North Carolina, Kentucky, and perhaps other States into free 
 States. It will break down South Carolina, weaken Georgia and 
 Tennessee, and probably reduce the value of land in Alabama, 
 Mississippi, and Louisiana. Its annexation to the Union can 
 do no conceivable good to any of these States. I cannot, 
 therefore, but feel great surprise at the zeal for this measure 
 which is said to pervade certain portions of the South. Can 
 it be other than the artificial excitement produced by a skilful 
 appeal to popular considerations which do not really belong to 
 the subject ; and must not this fervor subside before the more 
 deliberate reflection of the people ? A new competitor in the 
 production of sugar and cotton, growing strong under the 
 stimulus of that eagerness for emigration which is a character 
 istic of our people, and which, in the first few years after the 
 incorporation of Texas, would carry great numbers into the 
 new territory, we may well imagine would raise up no harmless 
 antagonist to the present South ; while it is quite apparent, in 
 looking to the effects of this emigration upon our domestic 
 commerce, that it would, in reality, add but little to its exten 
 sion, since the same consumers and producers would only be 
 removed from one field of employment to another. Exactly in 
 proportion as Texas would be strengthened either in political 
 power or commercial importance, other sections of the Union 
 would be weakened. 
 
 Another result would follow the annexation, which would 
 disappoint the expectations of many. Texas would come into 
 the Confederacy as a territory, and the same considerations 
 which led to the settlement of the Missouri question upon a 
 compromise between the slave and free States, would, we may 
 be persuaded, be again sufficiently powerful to induce a similar 
 
THE ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 613 
 
 arrangement of the new acquisition, by providing for an equal 
 number of free and slave States to be carved out of the terri 
 tory. It is even doubtful whether, with the present vote of Con 
 gress (still more questionable with the vote after another cen 
 sus), there would not be power to settle this point upon a basis 
 much more favorable to the views of the free States. In the 
 contemplation of such a contingency, I ask if the inducements 
 to the annexation, on the part of the South, are not likely to 
 be greatly weakened ? 
 
 It is suggested in the English papers that the cause of free 
 trade would find a valuable ally in the annexation. There is 
 some plausibility in the opinion, that by increasing settlement 
 towards the tropics and extending the field of our planting in 
 terests, many auxiliaries would be gained to Great Britain 
 against the protection of our mechanical industry. Such a be 
 lief may recommend this measure to England, to some of the 
 Southern States, and to all that part of the Democracy who 
 have raised their hands against the success of the labor of our 
 country ; but it will scarcely succeed in convincing the manu 
 facturers, the mechanics, and the farmers of Maryland, or of 
 any other State friendly to domestic industry, that the measure 
 is in anywise to be desired by them. And as to the notion 
 that the annexation is " indispensable to our security against 
 foreign aggression," or to " the extension of the domestic com 
 mercial exchanges of our country" (as the declaration of the 
 Baltimore meeting asserts), every one must see that these are 
 but phrases of commonplace political rhetoric, thrown in as 
 unmeaning expletives to round off a claptrap resolution, and 
 intended merely as a sonorous prelude to that " acclamation " 
 which was a prepared and expected part of the programme of 
 the evening. 
 
 Mr. Tyler, it will be seen, when the documents accompany 
 ing the treaty are published for the injunction of secrecy has 
 just been removed has already been making warlike prepara 
 tions to pick a quarrel with Mexico. He is gathering troops 
 upon the bank of the Sabine and sending a squadron to the 
 
614 POLITICAL PAPEKS. 
 
 coast. His purpose is to intimidate Mexico. His military 
 preparations were directed even before the treaty was signed. 
 It is negotiation at the point of the bayonet Congress, the only 
 authority to declare war, being utterly ignorant of the whole 
 proceeding until now. These are the first necessary steps be 
 longing to this peaceable and righteous proceeding a threat 
 of war if Mexico should be restive. They show us what must 
 be the certain result if the audacity which prompted this out 
 rage be not checked by the prudence of the Senate. A few 
 days more, and I trust the whole plot will be broken up and 
 rebuked by an overwhelming vote for the rejection of the treaty. 
 There is so much mischievous misrepresentation on this 
 Texas question, at present, and so much motive to give it a 
 party character, that the public mind has but little chance to 
 be set entirely right in its estimate of the subject until the Pres 
 idential election is out of the way. I scarcely doubt, when 
 that shall be the case, that three-fourths of the people will take 
 a decided ground against the scheme in any shape. They will 
 agree, I think, that we have territory enough to satisfy our 
 reasonable wants for the next half century, and that, if after 
 that period we should feel pressed for elbow-room, the genera 
 tions who may suffer this inconvenience will be quite able to 
 take care of themselves, somewhere between the North Pole 
 and Terra del Fuego. They will hardly thank us for such a 
 trifling cantlet as Texas. 
 
 Very truly, yours, J. P. KENNEDY. 
 
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