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 LEVI WOODBURY, LL.D. 
 
 POLITICAL, JUDICIAL AND LITERARY, 
 
 NOW FIRST SELECTED AND ARRANGED. 
 
 
 i 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES. 
 
 VOL. I.— POLITICAL 
 
 ^ OF THE ^K* 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 BOSTON: 
 LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY, 
 
 1852. 
 
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 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1852, by 
 Charles L. Woodbury. 
 In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 
 
 S tere o typed by 
 
 HOBART & BOBBINS, 
 
 NEW ENGLAND TYPE AND STEREOTYPE FOUNDEBY, 
 
 BOSTON. 
 
 RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE: 
 PRINTED BY H. O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The object of this publication is to collect into a compact 
 form the- principal productions of the author, for more easy 
 reference and preservation by his friends. 
 
 They include some portions of his labors, — Political, 
 Judicial, and Literary, — devoting one volume to each. 
 
 But most of his occasional speeches on party politics are 
 omitted — giving one or two in the Appendix, as specimens. 
 Nearly half of his speeches in the IT. S. Senate, and all the 
 great mass of his official reports in the Navy and Treasury 
 departments during ten laborious years, except two or three, 
 have been omitted, for the reason that they would greatly 
 exceed the limits prescribed in the design of the present 
 publication. 
 
 Under the Judicial head, all his opinions on mere legal 
 questions have been excluded, as well as several of his 
 arguments in behalf of prisoners, and some of his charges 
 as a Judge to Grand Juries ; republishing only the opin- 
 ions on constitutional points, two arguments as counsel, 
 and a few charges of particular interest. 
 
 Among the Literary Writings, many Essays and Letters 
 1 
 
 204:033 
 
VI PREFACE. 
 
 have, from a necessity already stated, been omitted ; though 
 enough, perhaps, is given to illustrate the full and various 
 powers of the author's mind, and to induce others, at some 
 future time, to embody the whole for publication, embracing 
 his entire works. 
 
 It is indeed a subject of congratulation that the distin- 
 guished author had nearly completed the selection from his 
 papers for publication a few months before his last illness. 
 What remained to be done has been executed by his son, 
 Charles Levi Woodbury, Esq. 
 
 Judge Woodbury died at his mansion, Portsmouth, N. 
 H., September 4, 1851, aged sixty-one years. 
 
 The unexpected event of his death was noticed through- 
 out the country, by citizens of all parties, with deep and 
 unfeigned expressions of regret, and a respect manifested 
 for his character as sincere as it was profound. It was 
 noticed by the courts, and by meetings of the legal profes- 
 sion, in all parts of the Union, by appropriate speeches and 
 resolutions. 
 
 As the life and character of the deceased have been so 
 long and so honorably identified with the public admin- 
 istration of affairs in this country, it is quite probable that 
 they may form the subjects of a separate volume, at some 
 
 future time. 
 
 The Editor. 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE 
 
 Levi Woodbury was born at Francestown, N. H., 22d Decem- 
 ber, 1789.* He passed through the ordinary scenes of youth with 
 the usual variety of adventure, which we need not detail, except 
 to remark that he was distinguished for his faithfulness in the 
 observance of the requisitions of duty, and uniformly manifested 
 those amiable qualities which, in his subsequent life, have formed 
 so prominent a feature of his character. 
 
 Blessed, as he was, with a mother of extraordinary judgment 
 and excellence, he was early guided in the paths of virtue, and 
 encouraged to seek his pleasures in active usefulness. With a 
 mind balanced by nature quietly to discriminate between the 
 practical and the speculative, it was easy to commence the growth 
 of habits which favored the acquisition of knowledge, and which 
 make up the permanent basis of a true character. 
 
 He was favored with all the elevating influences of a prepar- 
 atory education, and entered Dartmouth College, Hanover, N. H., 
 October, 1805. He graduated with the highest honors of his 
 class, and joined the Law School of Judges Reeves and Gould, 
 at Litchfield, Conn., September, 1809. In 1812, and while he 
 was yet a student, he made a speech, on the war question, at 
 
 * His father was a descendant of John Woodbury, who came from Somersetshire, 
 England, in 1624, and settled in Beverly, Mass. His descendants were, Humphrey, 
 born in 1609, and who accompanied his father ; Peter, son of Humphrey, born in 
 1640 ; Josiah, the son of Peter, born June 16, 1702 ; Peter, the son of Josiah, born 
 March 28, 1738 : and Peter, the son of Peter and father of Levi, was born in Beverly, 
 Mass., in 1767 ; removed to Francestown, N. H., with his father, where he engaged 
 in mercantile and agricultural pursuits. He was about fifteen years representative, 
 and two years senator, in the State Legislature. (See History of Bedford, N. H., 
 p. 348.) 
 
VIII BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE. 
 
 Amherst. The politicians of Hillsboro' County were so well 
 satisfied with it that he was appointed to prepare an address to 
 the people upon the subject, which was adopted with great 
 unanimity. It will be found in this volume. He left the Law 
 School with distinction, and commenced the practice of law at 
 Francestown, September, 1812. His reputation soon commanded 
 the confidence of clients, and he almost immediately found him- 
 self in receipt of a large business income. It was soon dis- 
 covered, however, that he was peculiarly fitted by nature, as well 
 as by education, to serve the people in a public capacity. In 
 June, 1816, he was appointed Secretary of the Senate of New 
 Hampshire ; and, in December of the same year, he was com- 
 missioned as one of the Judges of the Superior Court of that 
 State. 
 
 In June, 1819, he was married to Miss Elizabeth W. Clapp, 
 of Portland, Me. ; and he is now surrounded by an interesting 
 family of five children, viz., Charles Levi, Mary E., Frances 
 Ann, Virginia Lafayette, and Ellen Caroline. 
 
 In 1823 he was elected Governor of the State of New Hamp- 
 shire, in which office he acquitted himself with great dignity, 
 energy, and usefulness. He was chosen a member and Speaker 
 of the House of Representatives in 1825, and, in June of the same 
 year, was elected a Senator in Congress. In March, 1831, he 
 was elected a member of the State Senate, and, in May of the 
 same year, he was appointed Secretary of the Navy, by President 
 Jackson. In July, 1834, he was appointed Secretary of the 
 Treasury ; in 1841 he was again elected a United States Senator 
 for six years, and in 1845 he was nominated, by President Polk, 
 Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, and 
 was unanimously confirmed by the Senate. It is proper to add 
 that a foreign mission was tendered to him in 1828, as minister to 
 Spain, and, in 1845, the embassy to England; but these he 
 declined. 
 
 It is not our purpose to detain the reader with any extended 
 notice of the life and public services of Judge Woodbury ; for 
 such a course would hardly be deemed in good taste, while the 
 distinguished subject of our remark is still in a high position of 
 active duty ; and it would seem to imply a want of confidence in 
 his acts to commend him without the aid of extraneous compli- 
 ment. His labors speak for him a stronger language than can be 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE. IX 
 
 found in words. His deeds have been those of practical wisdom, 
 and, as such, may be regarded as profitable lessons for the study 
 of the people throughout the nation. 
 
 Duty and fidelity in a public servant make up an important 
 portion of a nation's moral wealth. Mind and skill, in the dispo- 
 sition and regulation of the great interests of humanity, may be 
 regarded as the chief source of a nation's prosperity. Whoever 
 masters his subject, and succeeds in teaching its relations and 
 tendencies to the people for practical purposes ; whoever aids in 
 developing the resources of a country, and in tracing out the 
 dangers and the benefits of a wise or of a doubtful legislation, 
 for the good of the people; whoever points out the great objects 
 of life, the means of their attainment, the legitimate sphere of a 
 righteous ambition, the elevating tendency of truth, justice and 
 integrity ; and, withal, whoever becomes a teacher in these rela- 
 tions, and enforces his instructions by the examples of a living 
 practice, is a public benefactor. He stands before the world as 
 the representative of those attributes of divinity which redeem 
 men from their sins and from their ignorance, and nations from 
 the misrule of corruption. It is a mission of mind, and heart, 
 and action ; and to be equal to its high requisitions presupposes 
 pure and disinterested motives, which belong only to the man 
 who seeks to be useful, and has confidence in the simple rewards 
 which inhere in the practice of virtue and patriotism. 
 
 If we view Judge Woodbury as a man and as a citizen, we 
 find in him an example of quiet and efficient duty which it is 
 profitable to contemplate. With a power to perceive the wants of 
 men, and with a mind both able and prompt to administer to their 
 proper gratification; with an unyielding perseverance, which 
 is checked by no obstacle, and swayed by no unholy purpose ; 
 with a dignity which is the natural language of truth, and a 
 simplicity which is alike approachable by the great and the hum- 
 ble ; with an integrity that is above selfishness, and with a phi- 
 lanthropy that is above speculation, — he has ever performed the 
 duties incumbent upon the man as a being of benevolence, and 
 upon the citizen as a liberal member of society. As a friend, 
 faithful ; as a man, devoted to the great concerns of humanity ; 
 and as a citizen, alive to all that advances and protects his coun- 
 try, or subserves the world. To use the application of a remark 
 made by an estimable friend, but few men are endowed to an 
 1* 
 
X BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE. 
 
 equal degree with that peculiar quality which Burke aptly 
 denominated " civil discretion" — which, while all are ready to 
 admire, but few can command the ability to practice. 
 
 His literary character may be best seen in the writings which 
 make the third volume of this selection. It is marked with that 
 peculiar thoroughness which distinguishes all his productions, 
 and which has its origin in science. He is conversant with the 
 poets, and seizes with a tasteful judgment the happiest gems of 
 thought, though he seldom indulges in the exercise of his powers 
 of imagination, except occasionally to subserve the more solid 
 themes of science and history, by the simple embellishments 
 which harmonize with a cheerful temper and the diversified 
 beauties of truth. 
 
 To speak of him as a jurist would seem to be almost an act of 
 supererogation. His station sufficiently indicates how he is 
 appreciated by his distinguished fellow-countrymen. His labors 
 discover with what completeness he disposes of the varying obli- 
 gations of citizens engaged in litigation, and his charges illustrate 
 with what versatility of talent he elucidates the fundamental prin- 
 ciples of law, and with what certainty and consistency he sustains 
 the great bulwark of our liberties, the Federal Constitution. As 
 a judge, his views are singularly comprehensive. The arts and 
 sciences are made his servants, and the sources of knowledge 
 appear to be within the sphere of his control, for the beneficent 
 purposes of truth and justice. 
 
 As a statesman, Judge Woodbury stands in the first rank of 
 those far-sighted men who scan at a glance the necessities of a 
 people — the wants of a nation. His powers of analysis are equal 
 to all subjects, and his simple tracing of the philosophy of cause 
 and effect, in the world of legislation, shows the hand of a master 
 and the skill of a prophetic mind. 
 
 His Message to the Legislature, as Governor of New Hamp- 
 shire, — which may be found at length in this volume, — is char- 
 acterized by a vigor and comprehensiveness of thought, by an ele- 
 vation of purpose and spirit of remark, not to be surpassed by any 
 similar document within the range of our knowledge. It com- 
 bines the philosophy of things with a method of practical applica- 
 tion of principles. It elevates while it teaches the citizen, and 
 encourages measures eminently calculated to promote industry 
 and enterprise, and add to the comforts of life. It is fraught with 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE. XI 
 
 suggestions in respect to the best means of advancing science and 
 multiplying the blessings of education, which, though not imme- 
 diately adopted by his native State, have since been realized in 
 other commonwealths, and gained for them a most enviable repu- 
 tation. 
 
 If we follow him to the counsels of the nation, — we there find 
 the same indomitable spirit in its varied workings for the good of 
 his beloved country, and for the advancement of the great prin- 
 ciples of freedom throughout the world. Vigilant, deliberate, 
 prompt, and equal to every emergency, he lost no opportunity for 
 doing good where duty called, and he spared no labor in gather- 
 ing information where ignorance was to be enlightened, or where 
 opinions were uncertain. Though as true to the Democracy as 
 the needle to the poles, he sanctioned no party movement incon- 
 sistent with magnanimity, and yielded to no factious influence 
 derogatory to character. He sought no schemes for gratifying a 
 vain ambition, and studied no compliment to gain the favor of 
 political opponents. He was firm without obstinacy, prompt with- 
 out haste, and confident without arrogance. He could be severe 
 with courtesy, and uncompromising without offence. Before he 
 was called to administer a government over others, he had 
 learned the prerequisite secret of governing himself. Before he 
 acted upon the condition of things, he acquired a knowledge of 
 their principles. 
 
 He became eminent as a practical statesman, and discovered 
 by his extensive inquiries and researches the value of knowledge 
 to a nation, and the power of knowledge to a people. 
 
 But to enlarge in this place is to detain readers from the repast 
 to which they have been invited ; and we can have no stronger 
 confirmation of our views in respect to the distinguished subject 
 of our notice, than may be found embraced in these volumes 
 herewith submitted to a discriminating public. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Page 
 
 PREFACE, . v 
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE, vn 
 
 SPEECHES. 
 
 THE IMPORTANCE OF A CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEE ON AGRI- 
 CULTURE, 13 
 
 IMPORTANCE OF A LOW DUTY ON SALT, 15 
 
 RELIEF OF THE SURVIVING OFFICERS OF THE REVOLUTION, . 29 
 
 JUDICIARY OF THE UNITED STATES, 41 
 
 MISSION TO PANAMA, 67 
 
 SURVEY AND SALE OF PUBLIC LANDS, 85 
 
 STATE OF THE NATIONAL TREASURY, 12G 
 
 STATE OF THE NATIONAL TREASURY (Second Speech), . . . 163 
 
 TEA AND COFFEE, — NECESSARIES OF LIFE, 182 
 
 ON THE LAND DISTRIBUTION BILL, 187 
 
 NATIONAL FINANCES, 212 
 
 IMPORTANCE OF THE VETO POWER, 236 
 
 TARIFF (1842), 266 
 
 TARIFF (1844), 302 
 
 NAVAL SCHOOL, 353 
 
 RE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS, 355 
 
 REPORTS. 
 
 ON THE SAFE-KEEPING OF THE PUBLIC MONEY, . . . .425 
 
 * LOSSES FROM BANKS AND BANK-PAPER, 432 
 
 SUBSTITUTE FOR SPIRIT RATIONS, AND FOR WHIPPING IN THE 
 
 NAVY, 454 
 
 BREAKWATER AT THE MOUTH OF DELAWARE BAY, ... 455 
 
XIV CONTENTS. 
 
 GUBERNATORIAL MESSAGE, SPEECHES, AND 
 REPORTS ON STATE TOPICS. 
 
 Page 
 
 GUBERNATORIAL MESSAGE (1828), 463 
 
 LAWS CONCERNING PAUPERS, 477 
 
 MARTIAL LAW, 485 
 
 PROTESTANT TEST FOR HOLDING OFFICES, 486 
 
 PROPERTY TEST, . . . . . . . . 490 
 
 OCCASIONAL LETTERS AND SPEECHES ON 
 IMPORTANT SUBJECTS. 
 
 RIGHTS OF CATHOLICS, 495 
 
 PUBLIC SERVICES APPRECIATED, • ... 506 
 
 GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF FREE TRADE, 510 
 
 THE UNION AND THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW, 534 
 
 AN ADDRESS, AT BOSTON, TO LAFAYETTE, ON THE OCCASION 
 
 OF HIS VISITING PORTSMOUTH, N. H., 535 
 
 BIRTH-DAY OF JEFFERSON, 536 
 
 RETURN FROM WASHINGTON (1841), 540 
 
 PRESIDENT POLK'S VISIT TO PORTSMOUTH, 544 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 WAR WITH GREAT BRITAIN (1812), 549 
 
 SPEECH IN FANEUIL HALL, ON PARTY SUBJECTS (1841), . . 560 
 
 ORATION, JULY 4, 1850, AT PORTSMOUTH, N. H., 575 
 
 SPEECH AT ELIOT, ME., BEFORE THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 
 
 (1844), 593 
 
 TABLES, 617 
 
SPEECHES. 
 
SPEECHES 
 
 THE IMPORTANCE OF A CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEE 
 ON AGRICULTURE.* 
 
 The resolution, that the SOth Rule of the Senate be amended, by adding thereto " a 
 committee on agriculture^ being under consideration, — 
 
 Mr. Woodbury observed, that he should vote for the resolution 
 now before the Senate, notwithstanding the strong opposition to it 
 which had been manifested. Yet he would not have risen to offer any 
 remarks upon its passage, but for the circumstance that, on Wednes- 
 day, he had voted against the amendment proposed to the Committee 
 on Manufactures, and, consequently, without explanation, an infer- 
 ence might be drawn, by some, of inconsistency between the two 
 votes. That amendment, however, was resisted by him upon the sole 
 and identical principle which, in his opinion, operated with the greatest 
 force in favor of the present resolution, — the principle of inexpediency 
 in referring the subjects of manufactures and agriculture to the same 
 committee, an inexpediency as great as to continue to refer com- 
 merce and manufactures to the same committee. All the arguments 
 so eloquently urged on that day, by the gentlemen from Massachu- 
 setts and New Jersey, for a separate committee on each of the two 
 last subjects, applied in equal vigor for a separate committee on 
 agriculture. Not that he believed the interests of all these cardinal 
 branches of industry were not inseparably connected, for he cordially 
 united with the gentleman from South Carolina in that particular ; 
 but it was a connection in their importance to society, and in favor 
 due from the government: nor that he believed they were not 
 sisters, as happily expressed by the gentleman from Maryland, — 
 
 * A speech delivered in the Senate of the United States, Dec. 9, 1825. 
 
 2 
 
14 A COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE. 
 
 but sisters, chiefly, in the affections of this House. They could be 
 received separately, and, like those sciences having one common bond, 
 must be examined in detail ; — peculiar talents could, in distinct com- 
 mittees, be brought to bear on the investigation of each ; and, by a 
 proper analysis and scrutiny of subjects of legislation, the same 
 utility is attained as by a proper division of labor in the common 
 affairs of life. That there was no employment for such a committee, 
 had been again pressed by the ingenious gentleman from Maine ; but, 
 in addition to the answer given by the mover of the resolution, he 
 would suggest, that all questions of direct taxes on land, all internal 
 duties and excises, and all imposts, no less than questions of foreign 
 and internal commerce, have a powerful, and often an immediate 
 influence, on the interests of agriculture. And, in a territory like 
 ours, of between two and three millions of square miles, with two- 
 thirds of its population exclusively engaged in agriculture, with 
 annual exports from agriculture of about forty millions, and with, 
 probably, fifteen millions of our duties paid, in the end, by the 
 tillers of the soil, who consume, and not by the merchants, who 
 import, it is impossible not to find subjects peculiarly proper, in 
 some stage of their progress through this House, to be referred to 
 such a committee. True it is, that the subject, as heretofore, might 
 be referred to other committees ; and it is equally true, that all sub- 
 jects whatever might be referred to a committee of the whole House. 
 True it is, also, that the duties of such a committee are not specifi- 
 cally defined ; nor are the duties of any other committee, but depend 
 on the express object of the committee, and the nature of subjects 
 coming before Congress. If those concerning agriculture are now 
 small, he hoped the prosperity of it would long keep them small. 
 But that her interests were daily touched, directly or indirectly, and 
 might be considered by reports of other committees being referred to 
 the committee before any final measures are taken, will be manifest 
 by adverting, not only to the effect of the tariff, as before named, on 
 some kinds of produce, but to the duties on sugar, as affecting the 
 agriculture of that section suited to the cane ; on hemp, as affecting 
 another section; on woollen and cotton goods, as affecting the 
 produce of other sections; tobacco, another. As a strong illus- 
 tration how agriculture may be affected by duties on articles con- 
 sumed merely, and not grown here, something more than half a 
 million in value of salt is annually imported, paying a duty of twenty 
 cents per bushel ; and a large proportion of it being consumed by the 
 farmers of the North, this duty is a tax on them. The hardy 
 yeomanry of the country may ask, in time, to be heard on these and 
 similar topics : and, though groaning under no such tithes and poor- 
 rates as to require for relief the cumbrous system of British Corn 
 Laws; though not wont to be so clamorous as those engaged in 
 some other pursuits ; though not thundering at your doors so often 
 with petitions, memorials, and remonstrances; yet they have the 
 
IMPORTANCE OF A LOW DUTY ON SALT. 15 
 
 same constitutional right to notice, are as deeply interested in all the 
 legitimate objects of national legislation ; and, as lords of the soil, 
 were known, by every hearer, to yield in no human excellence to the 
 lords of the spindle. The other House had a similar committee, and 
 he trusted this would be deemed an additional argument for one 
 here.* 
 
 IMPORTANCE OF A LOW DUTY ON SALT.f 
 
 The bill to repeal, in part, the duties on Imported Salt, having been read a second 
 time, tvas under discussion. 
 
 Mr. Woodbury said, the object and tendency of this bill had 
 by some abroad been misunderstood, and by others misrepre- 
 sented. Standing, as may be thought, in some degree, in a pater- 
 nal relation to the measure, it might be expected that he should 
 attempt to correct these errors, and vindicate it from the numerous 
 objections with which it had been assailed. The bill, as you well 
 know, Mr. President, was not intended to injure the fisheries : noth- 
 ing of that kind being either implied or expressed in its provisions. 
 But its legitimate operation will be to aid the fishermen, in common 
 with all other consumers of imported salt. Neither is it gotten up in 
 hostility to manufacturers, nor will it prove injurious to any due 
 encouragement of them. Just as little, also, is it calculated to endan- 
 ger the financial operations of the government, as permanently estab- 
 lished for peace, or as they happen to exist at the present moment. 
 The principle of the bill is altogether different, and lies within a sin- 
 gle inquiry. It is this : Ought not a war-tax, — a tax imposed 
 merely to meet the great exigencies of such a crisis, — a tax tempo- 
 rary at its commencement, exorbitant in amount, and partial in its 
 operation, — ought not such a tax to be now lessened ? That is the 
 question. Now, after twelve years of plenty and peace, and after the 
 fullest examination by committees has shown that the passage of the 
 bill will aid, rather than injure, the fisheries, — will not sensibly affect 
 the present operations of the treasury, or any permanent branches of 
 the revenue, nor leave our manufacturers of domestic salt without a 
 protection as great as is extended to any article of a similar charac- 
 ter in the whole tariff, — these various circumstances bearing on the 
 bill shall be adverted to, briefly as possible. But, the paramount, 
 the primary object, is to ascertain if the present duty be indeed a 
 
 * The committee was raised. 
 
 t A speech delivered in the Senate of the United States, Feb. 1, 1827. 
 
16 IMPORTANCE OF A LOW DUTY ON SALT. 
 
 war-tax. When I call the present duty on salt a war-tax, it is not 
 by way of rhetorical figure, or for effect upon any honest prejudice ; 
 but it is to invite the attention of the Senate to the true origin of 
 the duty, as tending strongly to illustrate the opinion, that, not having 
 been designed for the state of things in peace, it is too large and 
 unequal for any legitimate purposes, in the present condition of the 
 country. 
 
 Gentlemen well remember, that, at the beginning of our late war, 
 salt was entirely free from even the smallest duty. It was not till 
 July, 1813, in a state of obstinate hostilities, under a diminished rev- 
 enue, with extraordinary expenditures and accompanied by great 
 financial embarrassment, that the present tax was imposed. It is 
 well known, that, in such a condition of public affairs, all ordinary 
 rules of taxation must bend. They must yield far enough to meet 
 the controlling necessities of the country. The necessaries of life 
 must then submit to be burthened, as well as its luxuries : and the 
 poor, in common with the rich, must then defend their hearths and 
 altars by large contributions and large sacrifices. It is on such occa- 
 sions only that salt, though an article of the first importance to all 
 classes, may properly be subjected to a great tax; because it is 
 thus subjected in common with the soil we till for our daily bread, 
 and with the houses that give us daily shelter from the weather. It 
 is true, I grant, that the great bulk and weight of salt compared 
 with its value, and that its universal use, often induce governments, 
 in the exigencies of war, to select it for the most severe taxation, in 
 preference to other necessaries ; because, for these reasons, it is more 
 clifiicult to be smuggled, and more certain to yield a revenue. But 
 these circumstances, it is manifest, furnish no reason for the tax 
 itself; and in an especial manner, when the tax operates exclusively 
 on a single section of a country. The true reason for the tax itself is 
 the controlling emergency of the occasion, — the stern necessities of 
 war : and I trust that no fair-minded politician can ever repeat again 
 and again the incidental circumstances before named, as the true rea- 
 son for either imposing or retaining a tax so exorbitant, unequal and 
 oppressive. Another decisive proof that it was deemed, when imposed, 
 a mere war-tax, is the express limitation of its continuance, in the act 
 of Congress, to only one year after the war. Had it been intended as 
 a part of the permanent system of our revenue, or merely as a pro- 
 tection to manufacturers, why this limitation ? 
 
 Again : The history of our country, which on this point cannot 
 deceive us, shows, that when the duty had once before been increased, 
 in 1797, as high as twenty cents, it was imposed as a quasi war-tax, on 
 account of our difficulties with France. Then, too, was a limitation 
 of it to three years ; and never afterwards, till totally repealed, was 
 it continued without an express protestation, in the act itself, that it 
 was not to become, for any purpose, either of revenue or protection, a 
 permanent part of our tariff system. 
 
IMPORTANCE OF A LOW DUTY ON SALT. 17 
 
 Our statesmen, at both periods, had numerous examples before 
 them, and we now have still more, that a large tax on this article was 
 injudicious, and inappropriate to any but a state of war; and that 
 then, as before remarked, it had chiefly for its apology the great 
 tyrant, necessity, — the great principle of self-preservation, and the 
 right of government to all constitutional means most likely to preserve 
 the endangered safety of the republic. 
 
 When the feelings of mankind, on any one subject, in different 
 nations and ages, thus coincide, it is a pretty sure indication of their 
 correctness. If a large salt tax in peace, then, has justly been the 
 abhorrence of mankind in all time, something has always been thought, 
 and should now be thought, due from government to such a universal 
 sentiment. I shall not detain the Senate by references upon this 
 point, when numerous instances are doubtless fresh in their recollec- 
 tion ; and when none of us can have forgotten the eloquence upon this 
 subject which was displayed in the Senate at our last session, from the 
 gentlemen both on my right and my left. Permit me, a moment, to 
 appeal merely to what has occurred within our own brief lives. Have 
 we not seen the salt tax, or gabelle, in France, first imposed as a war- 
 tax, become one of those wide-spread and odious oppressions most 
 instrumental in rousing the great mass of the population in their late 
 revolution, — a tax far more burthensome and execrated than even 
 the tax upon tea in our own Revolution 1 Let it not be forgotten that 
 there, as here, it had commenced as a war-tax ; and had been remitted 
 and renounced at different periods, till, under new pretexts, it slid into 
 a permanent peace impost, equalling nearly one-fourth of the whole 
 revenue of the empire. So stealth-like and absorbing is generally the 
 character of power, when abused ; and if no peaceful correction is in 
 time made by rulers, the people themselves, on some great crisis, are 
 generally inclined to inflict fearful retribution. 
 
 The tax on salt began in the same way in England, and fluctuated 
 in amount, and was suspended on various occasions. But the vast 
 expenses of her continental wars had, prior to the year 1816, com- 
 pelled her, as a measure of unavoidable necessity, under such press- 
 ures, to increase her excise on salt to fifteen shillings sterling per 
 bushel when used for domestic purposes, and from two to six shillings 
 as used in various other specified ways. There, too, having begun in 
 war, and at first being limited in duration, both rulers and ruled felt 
 it had swollen with emergencies to a most oppressive burthen. They 
 understood the principle on which it stood, and that it was fast begin- 
 ning to be incorporated into her permanent system of revenue ; and 
 though they at first resisted a repeal, on arguments similar to those 
 advanced yesterday and to-day, yet the natural hatred to such a tax in 
 peace, the strong sense of justice among her statesmen, and the pater- 
 nal regard of the government towards its agricultural subjects, at 
 length overcame every obstacle. All opposition to its repeal was in 
 2* 
 
18 IMPORTANCE OF A LOW DUTY ON SALT. 
 
 the end prostrated, and in May, 1822, provision was made for the 
 gradual removal of the whole excise. 
 
 A brief history of the transaction will furnish an instructive lesson 
 to us, who take pride in our alacrity to relieve the great mass of the 
 people from their burthens, rather than in our ingenuity to find rea- 
 sons for continuing them. The excise was the only tax felt on this 
 subject. 
 
 The first proposition was to remove the excise one-third annually : 
 the next, to leave a part of it permanent ; but, in the end, thirteen- 
 fifteenths was at once taken off, and the last two-fifteenths ceased in 
 January, 1825. This was by the 3d of George IV. ; and, what I may 
 now as well state, once for all, the same statute removed not only the 
 whole excise, but the whole duty on imported salt, except three pence 
 per bushel. So that now, for every purpose, in England, whether of 
 excise or tariff, or protection of any kind, the duty is short of ten cents 
 on the bushel. The grounds of opposition to the repeal, as before 
 remarked, were much the same there as here. It was urged to be an 
 article difficult to smuggle, certain to yield a revenue, and too produc- 
 tive in amount for the government to spare from taxation. But though 
 it furnished to the treasury more than a million and a half pounds 
 sterling annually, — and though the yearly expenditures of England, 
 at the time of the repeal, exceeded seventy-two million pounds ster- 
 ling, and she needed more than half of her whole revenue to keep 
 down only the interest on her national debt, — yet Parliament, from 
 regard to the landed interest, and in the exercise of sound practical 
 wisdom towards all classes, and in accordance with the enlightened mag- 
 nanimity of the age, relinquished the whole, and reduced the duty on 
 importations even lower than what is now proposed in this country. 
 Here the objections to the present bill are much weaker than to that 
 measure, and the arguments in its favor are much stronger. The 
 amount of revenue to be released by this bill is not more than one 
 twenty-fourth as large, and the necessities for the revenue here are, 
 comparatively, nothing. On the other hand, the reasons for the repeal 
 here are peculiarly urgent. Not only is the present exorbitant duty 
 a mere war-tax, as we have attempted to show, but it is unequal in its 
 operation, falling with most oppressive weight on the poor and mid- 
 dling classes. It resembles, to use the language of Mr. Gallatin in 
 1797, an odious poll tax, nearly equal upon every member of commu- 
 nity, male or female, indigent or rich, because each consumer of food 
 consumes about the same quantity of salt, and thus pays, as a consumer, 
 nearly a like sum. The tax is especially burthensome and invidious 
 to the agricultural interest. They are not only the most numerous 
 portion of consumers, but in many cases of the use of salt they pay the 
 whole tax in its price, without being able to obtain any remuneration 
 in subsequent sales of the articles in which salt is used. To the 
 farmer, like the elements of air and water, salt enters into the expense 
 of almost every article he either consumes or sells ; and, although in this 
 
IMPORTANCE OF A LOW DUTY ON SALT. 19 
 
 manner the tax is hourly felt, yet it is in such small quantities in each 
 article as generally to elude calculation in the prices he obtains. 
 
 Nor can the tax, as one upon a luxury, or upon a mere convenience, 
 be avoided by the highest degree of vigilance and economy ; for the 
 daily bread of every man, woman and child, is usually seasoned by 
 this universal condiment, as well for health as pleasure ; and, in the 
 preservation of butter, cheese and meat, as well as in the feeding of 
 every species of stock, its liberal use comports with the strictest fru- 
 gality, and in our present state of society is almost indispensable. 
 
 To measure at once the partiality of the tax against agriculture, it 
 has been seen that those engaged in this pursuit, though of moderate 
 fortune, and often indigent, pay, as mere consumers, as much per 
 head of the tax as those who compose the wealthier classes. As the 
 number engaged in agriculture in this country amounts to full four- 
 fifths of our whole population, they pay over $450,000 of the whole 
 annual tax of about $600,000. 
 
 But they pay also, as purchasers of the salt that is incorporated into 
 what they sell, but in so small quantities as not sensibly to affect the 
 price, a large portion of the other $150,000 of the whole tax; and, in 
 this way, doubly does the tax operate in a partial, oppressive, and, 
 indeed, almost exclusive manner, on that portion of our population. 
 What is still worse, it operates almost exclusively on a part of that 
 population, in a single section of the Union, bordering on the Atlantic 
 frontier. The British excise, before it was repealed, was much more 
 friendly to agriculture than our present impost; because, while it 
 imposed fifteen shillings per bushel on salt used for mere household pur- 
 poses, the tax was only one-sixth of that sum, or two shillings and six- 
 pence, on salt given to cattle, and only two shillings on salt used for 
 preserving provisions. But here no discrimination comes in aid of the 
 farmer, the utmost farthing of the highest duty being in every case 
 exacted. 
 
 These and similar considerations have once, in this country, under 
 the paternal administration of Mr. Jefferson, produced a total repeal 
 of the duty on salt ; and it was effected under circumstances no less 
 creditable to the government, and gratifying to the agriculturalist, than 
 was the late total repeal of the excise upon salt in England. In 
 December, 1807, some time before the expiration of the duty as lim- 
 ited by the act, Congress cheerfully and magnanimously removed the 
 whole of the burthen. The journals disclose the remarkable fact of 
 only five nays in one House, and ten in the other, upon the final 
 passage of the repealing bill. 
 
 Are we now to be considered less friendly to the great foundation- 
 stone of all our prosperity, the agricultural interest? Shall we 
 refuse to do even half as much for their relief, by a repeal of only half 
 the present duty 1 Are we unable to do half as much for them as 
 could be done twenty years ago ? Are we not half as prosperous as at 
 that time ? and, notwithstanding little local interests, shall we not show 
 
20 IMPORTANCE OF A LOW DUTY ON SALT. 
 
 this magnanimity, after the recommendation of such a measure by three 
 separate committees of our own House, — that on agriculture, the last 
 session, and those on finance, of both the last and present sessions 1 
 
 It now becomes me to notice more particularly some of the specific 
 objections that have been started to the present bill. Objections are 
 to be anticipated to every important measure, either from local inter- 
 est or natural diversities of opinion; but a consideration of those 
 offered in this case is due to the sources from which they come, and 
 will serve, in my apprehension, to show their true character, as well as 
 strengthen the arguments in favor of repeal. 
 
 One of those objections has been, that the bill is an inroad, — that it 
 breaks in upon the permanent system of our public revenue. As if a 
 tax once imposed, though under the iron necessities of war, was never 
 afterwards, though in peace and abundance, to be lessened or repealed. 
 As if, also, a tax, partial and unjust in its operation, could never 
 safely be modified. The facts already named prove that the present 
 duty on salt was imposed as a war-tax, and show that it was never, in 
 its origin, designed as a part of the permanent system of our public 
 revenue. The evidence of our own records, in their minutest details, 
 accords with this general fact: because this large duty, when first 
 imposed, in 1797, was expressly limited to only three years ; in 1800, 
 it was again limited to ten years, and, in 1807, entirely repealed. 
 When imposed anew, in 1813, it was, moreover, expressly confined to 
 a year after the war. It was then, as before, held out to the country 
 as only a temporary measure ; and that section more immediately 
 aggrieved by it were soothed with the siren song, that, with the dis- 
 tresses and embarrassments of war, which had occasioned the tax, 
 would also cease this unequal burthen. 
 
 It was not contended then, or at any subsequent period, till now, 
 that a tax so unequal and exorbitant had been imposed as a permanent 
 part of our revenue system ; for, beside all other objections, and espe- 
 cially the inequalities of its operation, before enumerated, everybody 
 can see that the whole of the tax falls almost exclusively on a single 
 section of the country. Let us pause a moment on this circumstance, 
 in connection with the idea that such a tax is to be permanent. Not 
 only is it chiefly paid on the eastern side of the Alleghanies, but, even 
 there, by a portion of that side, as domestic salt supplies some of their 
 population. Our four and a half million bushels of imported salt (for 
 in 1825 it was 4,574,202 bushels, and in 1823 it was 5,435,449 
 bushels), then, is about the average importation, for a few years past, 
 and is all consumed by a population, in that quarter, not exceeding 
 four and a half millions in number. What is used in the fisheries is 
 as much consumed by that population as what is used at the dinner- 
 table or in the meat-barrel. It thus becomes an exclusive tax on them 
 of twenty cents per person annually, or nearly two dollars annually, 
 to each agricultural family ; or, in the State of New Hampshire alone, 
 where no domestic salt is used, calling her population only two hun- 
 
IMPORTANCE OF A LOW DUTY ON SALT. 21 
 
 dred and fifty thousand, it becomes a tax of fifty thousand dollars 
 a year ; being full fifty per cent, more, on a single necessary of life, 
 than the whole tax on the people of that State for the support of their 
 State government. If the data for this calculation be the gross duty, 
 and be thus apportioned, then the duty of 1823, for instance, which 
 was 889,948 dollars, after deducting drawbacks for reexportation, 
 when divided among the four and a half millions who consume foreign 
 salt, amounts to more than nineteen cents per head, and leaves the 
 result not essentially different. This enormous tax, likewise, is imposed 
 thus partially, not on a luxury, or even a mere convenience, which 
 persons might, or might not, part with ; but on an article of daily and 
 universal necessity, and almost as indispensable to health as the air for 
 breathing, or fire for warmth. 
 
 Again : if, in any permanent system of revenue, it should become 
 expedient to tax highly the necessaries of life, it is palpable that the 
 tax should not be so disproportionate as the duty on salt. For, when 
 so disproportionate, one article consumed mainly in one section, and 
 another in another section, are not equalized in the burthen they im- 
 pose ; because the highest impost on other necessaries seldom exceeds 
 fifty per cent., while this impost on salt is generally two hundred per 
 cent., and occasionally higher. On tins last suggestion I shall soon 
 offer some particulars, which, it is hoped, will be perfectly conclusive 
 as to the fact of this great and invidious disproportion. 
 
 But though this tax cannot, for these reasons, in its present shape, 
 be deemed a part of our permanent revenue system, it has been urged, 
 by the senator from New York, that the amount derived from it can- 
 not, at this time, be spared by the government. That objection is as 
 old as the custom of taxation, and is invariably urged against the 
 repeal of all taxes. Those who receive taxes always wish them con- 
 tinued, either for present or anticipated purposes. This same objection 
 was pressed, but pressed in vain, in 1807, though the amount of 
 revenue then relinquished was $515,920, while the present bill releases 
 only $309,205. Then, also, the whole annual income from the duty 
 ceased at one time, while now the half repealed does not take effect at 
 all till next December, and only a moiety of it till a year from next 
 December. 
 
 The same objection was, at first, insisted on against a repeal of the 
 English excise on salt ; but was urged in vain, though the revenue 
 released amounted to more than six millions of dollars, or more than 
 twenty times as much as this bill proposes to release, and though at a 
 time when they needed nearly .£50,000,000 sterling annually to dis- 
 charge only the interest of their national debt. But in both countries, 
 on the above occasion, the governments well knew that the impost was 
 a war impost, — was partial in its operation and, after the exigencies 
 of war ceased, ought not to be enforced. They well knew, further, 
 that, in its origin, it was never intended as a part of their permanent 
 revenue : and, if its amount was desirable in the financial operations 
 
22 IMPORTANCE OF A LOW DUTY ON SALT. 
 
 of the treasury, it would be far more just and wise to collect it from 
 articles of luxury, or retrench, to that extent, some large expendi- 
 ture. 
 
 " Better were it," says Anderson, in his Essay on Agriculture, 
 page 330, "for the inhabitants of this country to pay one hundred 
 times the amount of the free produce of the duties on salt, if levied in 
 any one of a variety of ways that might easily be suggested, and which 
 do not bind up the hands of industry as this does." He intimates 
 further, what I hope will never be verified in America, — " But so long 
 as party cabals shall occupy the minds of the leading men in the legis- 
 lative and executive departments of government, to the exclusion of 
 any object from their serious thoughts that cannot be immediately 
 connected with them, it is in vain to think that observations which 
 tend to promote merely useful measures, which might, perhaps, affect 
 the interest and tend to disgust some powerful supporters of either 
 party, or their adherents, will ever command the attention of any 
 party." 
 
 The effect of this repeal, however, on the revenue, has commanded 
 full attention in this body. The committees on finance, during two 
 sessions, have deemed this partial repeal safe and expedient, under the 
 present state of the finances ; and a moment's reflection must convince 
 all that even its nominal effect upon the revenue must prove much 
 more inconsiderable than some have been inclined to suppose. Firstly, 
 because the sum received from half the duty now to be released is small 
 in itself, compared with the whole revenue, — being only about one- 
 seventieth of it, — and is to be released at a future period, and divided 
 into two separate years. And, secondly, because the article will be 
 likely to become so much cheaper, by the reduction of the duty, as 
 probably to increase its consumption, and in that way enable the gov- 
 ernment to realize, from the small duty, almost as much as they now 
 realize from the large duty. 
 
 I shall not detain the Senate by arguments and analogous cases, to 
 prove a position so well settled in political economy as that a large duty 
 seldom or never yields twice as much as a reasonable duty only half as 
 large. Two and two, in taxation, as Swift once remarked, seldom makes 
 four. A single fact on this point will be sufficient. By the reduction 
 of the British excise thir teen-fifteenths, it was calculated, on the old 
 amount of salt consumed, that the remaining two-fifteenths would yield 
 only ,£200,000 per year. But so greatly did the consumption 
 increase, through the fall of price, by means of lessening the excise, 
 that the impost exceeded £360,000 ; or, in other words, the consump- 
 tion was nearly doubled. It was there, and will be here, under such 
 circumstances, employed more freely in the feeding of all kinds of 
 stock, in the preservation of meats and hay, in manuring the soil, and 
 in various other uses too numerous for recital. 
 
 Again: this increased consumption would not only prevent the 
 revenue from much diminution, but would improve the health, and 
 
IMPORTANCE OF A LOW DUTY ON SALT. 23 
 
 promote greatly the pecuniary prosperity of the agricultural class. I 
 will not stop to argue this point in detail, any more than the preceding 
 one, with which it is intimately connected. It will suffice to remark, 
 that a very intelligent writer on this subject, whose work lies before 
 me ; calculates that the increased use of salt, by removing from it a 
 large tax, would be so considerable, and at the same time so healthy 
 and profitable, as nearly to double the utility of the same quantity of 
 food without the free use of salt. One of his remarks on this point I 
 will read, to prevent misapprehension: "It will be shown that, by 
 the liberal use of salt in feeding cattle and sheep, not only many dis- 
 eases of the latter might be prevented, but also that the same quantity 
 of food might be made to go much further, by the judicious use of salt 
 in feeding beasts, than can be done without it ; so that, were the duty on 
 salt removed, and the free use of that condiment adopted, it might be 
 said to augment the quantity of food for beasts, I will not say one half, 
 but in a proportion somewhat approaching to it, over the whole island ; 
 which is an article of such immense magnitude as almost to baffle all 
 attempts at calculation." (And. 131.) Yet the excise in England 
 on salt used for feeding cattle and sheep was only two shillings and 
 sixpence per bushel, before the repeal. 
 
 This increased consumption will also confer an incidental benefit 
 upon the navigation of the country. That navigation is now employed, 
 in the freight of this article, to only from three and a half to five mil- 
 lion bushels annually ; and any increase of consumption, whether to 
 six or eight millions, will extend a very acceptable benefit to the 
 freighting trade of the country, now languishing and depressed. 
 
 The principal remaining objection to the bill comes from the pro- 
 fessed friends to the domestic manufacture of salt ; and having been 
 reinforced by several memorials, read yesterday and to-day, as well as 
 by eloquent appeals from the senators of Maine (Mr. Holmes) and 
 ISTew York (Mr. Sanford), I shall attempt to meet this objection 
 in its fullest and strongest views. I am as ready as any person to give 
 all expedient and just protection to any portion of the great and grow- 
 ing branch of national industry consisting of manufactures. But 
 the present duty on salt was at first not imposed to introduce and 
 protect its manufacture. So large a duty can never, on sound 
 principles, be required for that object ; and in its present amount it is 
 both disproportionate and exorbitant. It was not imposed for that 
 object, either in 1797 or 1813 ; because, as we have seen, it was, at 
 both those periods, imposed for war purposes, and was expressly lim- 
 ited in duration, so as to meet only such purposes. The memorials 
 against this bill concede that the encouragement of manufactures has 
 only been an incidental or secondary effect from the duty. Again, it 
 is contrary to all analogy and correct principles of political economy, 
 to either retain or impose a tax so large and unequal for the protection 
 of any manufacture whatever. Let me entreat the Senate to turn 
 from general conjecture, and sympathetic appeals on this subject, to 
 
24 IMPORTANCE OF A LOW DUTY ON SALT. 
 
 established facts. When salt weighs sixty pounds per bushel, which is 
 the usual rate, the duty amounts to full two hundred per cent, on the cost 
 of the article ; because it seldom costs, abroad, over ten or twelve cents 
 per bushel. The price on the sea-board, as stated in the memorials on 
 your table, is only from thirty-five to thirty-seven cents, when weighing 
 seventy-eight pounds ; which, deducting the duty on that weight, and the 
 freight, would leave the original cost rather less than twelve cents. 
 Another test, that this is about the first cost per bushel, is our own 
 records. Take the imposts of 1825, and they are 4,574,202 bush- 
 els, and valued at 589,125 dollars, which averages twelve cents per 
 bushel ; and in the treasury tables it will be seen, in many cases, to be 
 estimated at less than ten cents. On Turk's Island salt, which weighs 
 eighty-four pounds per bushel, the duty ranges from two hundred to 
 three hundred per cent. 
 
 Will gentlemen now please to compare this duty on an article of 
 universal necessity, firstly, with the duties on our greatest luxuries ? 
 Take wines, not used by the poor and middling classes, but compar- 
 atively by nabobs, at a duty not one-half as large as that on salt, or 
 never over one hundred per cent. ; or take spirits of any kind, the 
 greatest moral poison and curse of our whole population, at a duty never 
 over two hundred per cent. Again, compare the present impost on salt 
 with the duty on articles of general use and convenience, and whose 
 manufacture it is very desirable to establish on the firmest basis, — as 
 sugars, at a duty not over seventy-five per cent. ; cottons, not over 
 twenty-seven to forty per cent. ; woollens, only thirty-seven and one- 
 third per cent. And, lastly, compare it with what the senator from 
 Maine calls manufactures essential in war, and hence to be highly 
 favored in peace, — the duties on iron not averaging beyond thirty per 
 cent. ; on fire-arms, not over thirty to forty per cent. ; and on gun- 
 powder itself, only from twenty-five to forty per cent. Gentlemen are 
 liable to err by dealing too much in generalities. 
 
 Pass the present bill, and it is thus manifest that you still leave for 
 the protection of the salt manufacturers a duty of full one hundred per 
 cent. ; a duty treble the amount of what the most judicious politicians 
 now consider sufficient to aid any established manufacture, and a duty 
 far exceeding any other in our own tariff for the protection of the 
 manufacture of any article, either a munition of war, or of the first 
 necessity in either war or peace. Is this ruining manufactures ? Is 
 this injustice to the memorialists on the table? — leaving them three 
 times as large protection as you give to the makers of iron, of woollen 
 cloths, or of gunpowder ? and some cents more than the present duty 
 on imported salt in England, it being there, since January, 1825, only 
 threepence per bushel? The House will thus judge whether the 
 complaints of the manufacturers in Massachusetts against the bill — 
 especially when they themselves say the present duty was imposed for 
 revenue, and not for their protection — are either well-founded or 
 consistent. 
 
IMPORTANCE OF A LOW DUTY ON SALT. 25 
 
 Again, the manufacture of salt in this country is far from being in 
 its infancy, so as to require as large a duty as once might have been 
 necessary, if ever necessary. Most of this manufacture — all of it in 
 the interior — is beyond the power of tariffs or monopolies. Its found- 
 ations are not laid in twenty per cent, duties or tariffs of any kind, but 
 are laid deep as those of the Alleghanies themselves. They are laid 
 by God and nature, in the distance of the manufacture from the sea- 
 board, the great expense in the transportation of so heavy an article, 
 and the small cost of its production. These constitute an unalterable, 
 an eternal protection, and one which a duty of even two hundred per 
 cent, cannot affect beyond a distance of thirty or forty miles, — as it 
 will not pay for its mere transportation beyond that extent, — over the 
 dividing line of country, where the domestic and the imported salt can 
 now be afforded at equal prices. The interior manufacturers, and the 
 prices of their salt, except on that line, and to that extent, will remain 
 as unaffected by this bill as they would be by a ukase in Russia. Those 
 manufacturers, if they ask or need a protecting duty, will still have left 
 a protection of one hundred per cent., which is treble that for their iron 
 or wool, and with which, I am conscious, from their intelligence and 
 magnanimity, all of them must remain fully satisfied. The manufac- 
 turers also on the sea-board will still enjoy an equal protecting duty 
 of one hundred per cent. They have had thirteen years to establish 
 themselves under a duty still larger ; and if their works cannot now be 
 continued to advantage, under a treble protection to what most other 
 manufacturers enjoy, it will not be difficult to decide whether any fault 
 should be imputed to Congress. It would only show that the finger 
 of nature pointed out to them, as it has to the people of the west, from 
 what quarter they should seek their great supplies of this article. 
 They should seek it where made by the influence of the sun on the 
 ocean that laves their shores, without so much expense or aid of art. 
 Of the extent of the manufacture on the whole sea-board I have no 
 means of judging, except from the duties, and from observation in my 
 own State : and on those I did suppose, at the last session, that the 
 manufacture was of such a character as to have diminished even under 
 a duty of two hundred per cent. If, as a memorial read yesterday 
 suggests, it has rapidly increased and become extensively established, 
 then the legitimate inference for us is that it can now probably go on 
 with a less duty. And if the manufacture existed before the last war, 
 when no duty whatever favored it, and when the encouragement by 
 the State in not taxing it could not exceed one or two cents a bushel 
 (and, that it did so exist, they themselves state), then also would it 
 seem they might now go on with a duty of ten cents per bushel. 
 Their existence before the last war, but not their great utility during 
 the war, — a point about which the senator from Maine spoke so 
 strongly, — was evinced in a striking manner by the recorded fact, 
 that those establishments, being necessarily planted so near the sea- 
 shore, were often battered down, and laid under contribution at pleas- 
 3 
 
26 IMPORTANCE OF A LOW DUTY ON SALT. 
 
 ure, by the enemy. On the other hand, if they have declined since 
 the war, it shows that the manufacture on the sea-board is one which 
 no reasonable encouragement can there render flourishing; because 
 the article is obtained so cheap at the salt islands and elsewhere, and 
 can be so cheaply transported by water to the Atlantic shore. That 
 it had declined I had reason to believe, because every old establish- 
 ment in my own State had become abandoned ; and because, notwith- 
 standing the increased manufacture of salt in the interior, the use of 
 imported salt in the country had increased, since 1807. nearly a million 
 of bushels. This, it was supposed, could not have been the fact, if 
 the manufacture of salt on the sea-board had also increased, or even 
 remained stationary. But, be the manufacture on the sea-board 
 prosperous or otherwise, the present bill will not, from a cause still 
 different, be likely at present, if ever, to affect it essentially. 
 
 The northern West India vessels, which formerly loaded home with 
 salt, mostly from the British islands, are now, by our difliculties con- 
 cerning the colonial trade, driven entirely from that market ; and the 
 article must therefore, to an extent of nearly one-half our whole import- 
 ation, be obtained more circuitously, and at an expense somewhat 
 increased, though probably not so much as the proposed reduction of 
 the duty. One other circumstance under this head. In speaking of 
 the encouragement of manufactures by any duty, it is not to be for- 
 gotten that the present disproportionate duty on salt is a positive 
 injury to many other useful manufactures in which salt is an ingre- 
 dient. As an instance, I would mention the manufacture of the acid so 
 largely employed in bleaching cottons and linens. Although this last 
 manufacture may appear of diminished consequence in the eyes of 
 those who have not witnessed the great establishments at the north 
 for spinning and weaving cotton, yet of so much importance was it 
 deemed in England, that for twenty years before the late repeal of 
 their excise, the duty on salt used in the manufacture of that acid was 
 greatly lowered, if not totally remitted. 
 
 So far, likewise, as the reduction of the duty would increase the 
 consumption of salt, and thus give employment to more tonnage in its 
 transportation, as we have before seen is highly probable, it would 
 increase that most essential and much overlooked manufacture of ves- 
 sels, — a manufacture, whether in a sectional or national view, of no 
 trifling magnitude, and which, by its iron, canvas, and cordage, is also 
 interwoven with many of our most valuable establishments. I believe 
 that full eight-tenths of the freighting vessels from New Hampshire 
 load homeward, more or less, with salt. 
 
 One or two collateral considerations have been so connected with 
 this bill as to require some answer. It was urged at the last session, 
 and has now been reiirged by the senator from Maine, that the reduc- 
 tion of the duty on salt would not lessen its price to the consumer. 
 This must mean, all other circumstances affecting the prices remaining 
 equal or unchanged. Two replies can be made to this conjecture, 
 
IMPORTANCE OF A LOW DUTY ON SALT. 27 
 
 either of which might suffice. The first is, that if it will not lessen 
 the price to the consumer, then the duty becomes a tax exclusively on 
 the importer, and is thus partial, invidious, and oppressive to him. 
 The second is, that if it will not lessen the price, and, in consequence 
 of that fact, is not thus partial against any class deserving our pro- 
 tection, we might and ought to increase the duty still further, and 
 might safely increase it to forty or eighty cents, or even eight hundred 
 cents, on the bushel, and thus increase our revenue, without wrong 
 to anybody, and with great benefit to the treasury. Because, if a 
 reduction will not affect the price, neither would an augmentation ; and 
 in this way the soundness of the gentleman's reasoning is fairly tested. 
 We might thus easily restore the blessings of the gabelle on salt in 
 France, or of the late excise in England ; and do it, too, on that rea- 
 soning, without injury or cause of complaint to any class of society. 
 No. The whole argument is founded in misapprehension, and in a 
 want of proper discrimination between the effect of a large and small 
 duty on an article of small value. It arises from not discriminating 
 between the effect of any duty on the price of an article, when the duty 
 is equal to the original cost, or double that cost, and when it amounts 
 to only a small fraction of that cost. 
 
 The duty on salt is not merely a twentieth or thirtieth of the whole 
 price of it on the sea-board, as is the duty on many other articles, and, 
 therefore, but slightly affecting their whole price ; but it constitutes 
 two-thirds of the whole price. This causes the distinction. Look 
 also at real life, a moment. It must be idle to suppose that the salt 
 used in the fisheries, and in common purposes, and which is chiefly 
 bought of the importer himself, and of the merchant purchasing 
 directly from the importer, would not vary in price, when the whole 
 actual cost per bushel to the importer was only ten or twelve cents, 
 instead of thirty or forty cents ; and that removing the duty, and thus 
 lessening the cost to him one-half or two-thirds, would not lessen the 
 price he would be disposed to ask, or others would be willing to give. 
 If any attempt was made to keep up the price, under such circum- 
 stances, all other things being equal, how soon would the eagle eye of 
 enterprise and commercial competition watch to increase the importa- 
 tion of salt, so as to bring the market price to its just level ! Again : 
 if the repeal would not affect the price, what becomes of the gentle- 
 man's argument, that the manufactories must be injured or destroyed 
 by a reduction of the duty ? For, if the price remains the same, their 
 business will remain as profitable as before. The whole conjecture, 
 however, is erroneous, and, if pushed through, would forever prevent 
 any reduction in any duty whatever. Indeed, it is less applicable to 
 the case of salt than to any other duty in the whole tariff, as the duty 
 on that article constitutes a larger proportion of its whole price, in the 
 hands of the importer, than the duty on any other article within my 
 recollection. 
 
 I cannot consent to detain the Senate much longer, and have 
 
28 IMPORTANCE OF A LOW DUTY ON SALT. 
 
 omitted much illustration on some points, which other gentlemen can 
 better supply. I should now close, without any further reference what- 
 ever to the influence of this bill on the fisheries, had not the topic been 
 so frequently and so elaborately pressed by others upon our considera- 
 tion, as to require one or two passing remarks. 
 
 In the first place, the bill says nothing, and meditates nothing, about 
 the fisheries, except by reducing the duty to benefit them, in common 
 with other consumers of imported salt. 
 
 In the next place, none of the three committees by whom this bill 
 has been recommended have ever uttered a syllable, or expressed a 
 wish, to affect the fisheries by it unfavorably. 
 
 Again : if frauds have been perpetrated in the fisheries, as repre- 
 sented by the senator from Maine, and also by some of my constitu- 
 ents, I have never named them as a reason for lessening the bounty ; 
 but trust, with him, they could be prevented by different statutory 
 regulations on licenses, and other subjects connected with that branch 
 of business. Nor is the present bill the least obstacle, as he supposed, 
 to a continuance of the present allowance to the fisheries. This bill 
 does not repeal the whole of the present duty, as the argument would 
 seem to imply, and therefore leave no ground for any allowance in 
 the character of a drawback ; but the bounty or allowance could as 
 well be predicted on the residue of the duty as upon the whole of it. 
 This allowance is not pretended by him to be limited to the exact 
 amount of the duty on the salt consumed ; else the repeal, whether 
 total or partial, of the duty and of the allowance together, pari passu, 
 could work no injury to the fisheries, as they would then have 
 remitted to them, in taking off the duty on salt, the precise sum they 
 now receive as a bounty. But the allowance is something more than 
 the mere duty; it is intended, and properly so, as in some degree 
 an encouragement and protection to an employment so profitable to 
 the nation, and so indispensable to its supply of seamen, both in peace 
 and war. It rests on broader and more national principles than 
 driving a hard bargain with the laborious fisherman about the mere 
 drawback of a duty of twenty cents per bushel on salt. It rests on 
 such liberal and statesman-like views as are disclosed in Mr. Jeffer- 
 son's Report on the Fisheries, in 1794. It rests on facts now exist- 
 ing, independent of any changes in the tariff, though first recognized 
 in the act imposing a duty on salt, and which act will still remain 
 in full force as to a duty of ten cents per bushel, and as to the present 
 allowance. It rests on considerations like these : that, even with all 
 the present allowance, our fishermen pursue their hardy and perilous 
 employment under a direct bounty of full a half-dollar less per ton 
 than the British fishermen ; under the inconveniences of going to a 
 greater distance to cure their fish ; under a smaller protecting duty at 
 home, against foreign fish ; under the disadvantages that British fish- 
 ermen pay no duty whatever on their salt ; and hence, from all these 
 causes, ours manifestly cannot compete at all, with less encourage- 
 
RELIEF OF THE SURVIVING OFFICERS OF THE REVOLUTION. 29 
 
 ment, or, with less, continue to furnish our population with their 
 cheap and healthy articles of food, as well as profitable products for 
 exportation. "Withdraw the present allowance, and you cut off, at 
 one blow, most of our annual exports of fish and oil, amounting, after 
 all the domestic consumption of those articles, even to a million and a 
 half of dollars. I say most of them ; for fish and fish oil, excluding 
 whale oil, constitute above two-thirds of all our annual exports from 
 the sea. In 1825, fish alone amounted to $1,078,773. Nor can 
 the country ever establish so good a nursery for its navy as by 
 encouraging and inuring some of its citizens in this way, in their 
 youth, to ocean scenes and ocean dangers, — to cast the line, and throw 
 the harpoon, under every latitude, and amid every peril. The prompt 
 and fearless patriotism of this class of men, during the late war, as 
 well as during our Revolution, furnished an ample return for every 
 arrearage of favor from the government. They will always richly 
 repay any continuance of favor. Nobody who knows their character 
 as I do will be unwilling to give his pledge, that, in any future hour 
 of national trial, they will again evince the same chivalrous devotion 
 to their country, and be ready, at all times, to pour out their blood, 
 like water, in defence of its glory and its rights.* 
 
 RELIEF OF THE SURVIVING^ OFFICERS OF THE REV- 
 
 OLUTION.f 
 
 It has become my duty, said Mr. Woodbury, as chairman of 
 the committee who reported this bill, to explain the origin and char- 
 acter of it. I regret that this duty has not devolved upon some abler 
 representative of the interests of the petitioners ; but I regret it the 
 less, as my colleagues on the committee possess every quality, of both 
 the head and heart, to advance those interests, and will, no doubt, 
 hereafter be seconded by an indulgent attention on the part of the 
 Senate. 
 
 Who, then, sir, are the venerable men that knock at your door? 
 and for what do they ask 1 They are not suppliants for mere favor 
 or charity, though we all know that nothing but the proud spirit 
 which helped to sustain them through the distresses of our Revolution 
 has withheld most of them from reliance for daily bread on the alms 
 provided by the present pension act. No, sir ! they come as peti- 
 
 * The duty was reduced. 
 
 t A speech delivered in the Senate of the United States, in 1828. There is another 
 speech on the same subject, but it is not embraced in this volume. 
 
 3* 
 
30 RELIEF OF THE SURVIVING OFFICERS OF THE REVOLUTION. 
 
 tioners for their rights. They come as the remnant of that gallant 
 hand, who enlisted your continental army, who disciplined its ranks, 
 who planned its enterprises, and led the way to victory and independ- 
 ence. Confiding in the plighted faith of Congress, given in the form 
 of a solemn compact, they adhered to your cause through evil report 
 and good report, till the great drama closed ; and they now ask only 
 that the faith so plighted may be redeemed. Amid the wrecks from 
 time and disease, during almost half a century, short of 250 now sur- 
 vive, out of 2480 who existed at the close of the war. Even this 
 small number is falling fast around us, as the leaves of autumn ; and 
 this very morning a gentleman before me has communicated the infor- 
 mation, that another of the most faithful among them has just passed 
 "that bourn whence no traveller returns." It behooves us, then, if 
 we now conclude, in our prosperity and greatness, to extend relief, 
 either from charity, gratitude, or justice, to do it quickly. 
 
 My great anxiety is, in the outset, to prevent any misapprehension 
 of the true grounds on which the appropriation is founded. Through- 
 out the whole inquiry, there is no disposition to censure the motives 
 or policy of the old Congress. They adopted such measures as the 
 exigencies and necessities of the times forced upon them ; and now, 
 when those exigencies have ceased, it is just, as well as generous, to 
 give such relief as the nature of the case may demand. 
 
 A very great obstacle to the success of this measure heretofore has 
 been a prevalent opinion that these petitioners are seeking compensa- 
 tion merely for losses sustained on the depreciation of continental 
 money, and certificates received for their monthly wages ; whereas, 
 from their first memorial, in A. D. 1810, to the present session, they 
 have invariably rested on the non-performance, by Congress, of a 
 distinct and independent contract. All the losses on their monthly 
 wages they bore in common, and are willing to forego in common, 
 with many in the walks of civil life, and with the brave soldiers under 
 their command. This is the plain and decisive reason why none but 
 officers are embraced in the present bill. The contract on which they 
 rely was made with the officers alone ; and gallant and unfortunate as 
 were the soldiers, the officers have endured, and will continue to 
 endure, without repining, still severer sufferings from the worthless 
 money and certificates received for their wages ; because those losses 
 were perhaps too large, and too general, in all departments of life, ever 
 to warrant the expectation, or practicability, of complete remuneration. 
 I have said severer sufferings on this account by the officers ; because 
 the money received for wages before A. D. 1780, worth only one dol- 
 lar in the hundred, was, to the officers, the only means to purchase 
 camp equipage and clothing, that were furnished to the soldiers out of 
 the public arsenals ; and because the soldier often received, besides, 
 liberal bounties, both at home and from Congress. 
 
 Let it, then, be distinctly understood, that, notwithstanding this dis- 
 parity against the officers, no such losses or depreciations form any 
 
BELIEF OF THE SURVIVING OFFICERS OF THE REVOLUTION. 31 
 
 part of the foundation for this bill. A moment's attention to the his- 
 tory of that period will show the true ground of the appropriation. 
 After this unequal pressure had continued nearly three years, — after 
 the officers had sustained their spirits, during that trying period, under 
 such disadvantages, by the force of those principles that led them at 
 first to join in the pledge to the cause of " their lives, their fortunes, 
 and their sacred honor," — after their private resources had become 
 nearly exhausted in supplying those wants which their country was 
 unable, rather than unwilling, to satisfy, — there arose a state of things 
 which led to certain proceedings by Congress in relation to half pay. 
 
 The prospect had nearly vanished that any honorable accommoda- 
 tion could be effected with the parent country. The contest seemed 
 likely to become more severe, and to be protracted for many years ; 
 and it was obvious that many of the officers, thus impoverished and 
 disheartened, must actually resign, in order to provide themselves with 
 decent clothing, and to maintain their families, and secure any subsist- 
 ence for advanced life, or that they must receive some assurance of 
 future indemnity, if they continued in service, and abandoned every- 
 thing else to sink or swim with the military destinies of their country. 
 
 It was then that the resolve of May 15th, 1778, granting half pay, 
 for only seven years, to all who continued in service till the close of 
 the war, was passed. 
 
 This short period of half pay was dictated rather by the inability of 
 Congress to provide a longer one than from an impression that it was, 
 in truth, sufficient, or in accordance with any similar system in the 
 armies of Europe. Hence, a committee, May 24th, 1779, reported a 
 resolution allowing half pay for life to the same class of officers, and 
 justly grounded it on the great risks they were called to encounter, — on 
 their great sufferings and sacrifices of youth, ease, health and fortune, 
 in the cause of their country. But the want of resources in Con- 
 gress induced them to postpone this subject, and, on the 17th of 
 August, 1779, to urge upon the respective States the expediency of 
 adopting such a resolution, and of pledging for its fulfilment their 
 State resources. The power of the States over those resources was 
 much more effective than that of the Confederation over the States. 
 But such were the general gloom and despondency of the times, that 
 not a single State, except Pennsylvania, complied with the recommend- 
 ation. The currency continued to depreciate more and more, daily : 
 the officers, in many instances, were utterly unable, by their whole 
 pay, to procure decent apparel ; treason had penetrated the camp in 
 the person of Arnold; Charleston had been surrendered, Lincoln 
 captured, Gates defeated at Camden, the Southern States overrun by 
 Cornwallis ; our soldiers had become discouraged, and the great military 
 leader of the Revolution had become convinced, and had urged, with 
 his usual energy, upon Congress, that the adoption of this resolution 
 was almost the only possible method of retaining the army together. 
 Under such appalling circumstances, Congress passed, on the 24th of 
 
32 BELIEF OF THE SURVIVING OFFICERS OF THE REVOLUTION. 
 
 October, A. D. 1780, the resolution which I will now take the liberty 
 to read : 
 
 " Resolved, That the officers who shall continue in the service to the end of the 
 war, shall also be entitled to half pay during life, to commence from the time of their 
 reduction." (1 U. S. Laws, 688.) 
 
 This, with one or two subsequent resolutions, explaining and modi- 
 fying its provisions as to particular persons, constitutes the great 
 foundation of the bill under consideration. The promise was most sol- 
 emnly and deliberately made ; the consideration for it was ample, and 
 most honorably performed by the officers ; and yet, on the part of 
 Congress, its stipulations have, in my opinion, never, to this clay, been 
 equitably fulfilled. As to the binding effect of the compact on Con- 
 gress, nobody can pretend to doubt. I shall, therefore, not waste a 
 single moment in the discussion of that point. But I admit that the 
 officers were first bound to perform the condition faithfully of serving 
 to the close of the war, however long or disastrous. Did they do it '? 
 History and tradition must convince all, that, through defeat as well as 
 victory, they clung to our fortunes to the uttermost moment of the 
 struggle. They were actuated by a spirit and intelligence the surest 
 guarantees of such fidelity. Most of them had investigated, and well 
 understood, the principles in dispute ; and, to defend them, had flown 
 to the field of battle on the first alarm of war, with all the ardor of a 
 Scottish gathering, at the summons of the fiery cross. And it is not 
 poetry, that one of my own relatives, an officer, long since no more, 
 when the alarm was given at Lexington, left for the tented field the 
 corpse of his father unburied : 
 
 " One look he cast upon the bier, 
 Dashed from his eye the gathering tear," 
 
 and hastened to devote his own life to the salvation of his country. In 
 the same duty, — in performing their part of the compact, to serve 
 faithfully to the close of the war, — these petitioners endured the frosts 
 of winter, often half sheltered, badly fed, badly clothed, and badly 
 paid. God forbid that I should exaggerate ! The naked truth is 
 stronger than any coloring of fancy. We have the authority of their 
 commander, that they were, at times, in such a condition as to be 
 unable and ashamed to receive their friends ; but never, I believe, loth 
 to face their enemies. Their paths were sometimes marked by their 
 blood; their courage and constancy tried by frequent alarms, by 
 ambuscade, and the pitched battle. But they never faltered; and 
 when, towards the close of the war, neglect on the part of Congress, 
 as to their monthly wages, might have justified, under most circum- 
 stances, disquiet and distrust; and when, at Newburg, they were 
 tempted with the insidious taunt, that if, relinquishing their arms and 
 retiring home with the promises made to them unfulfilled, they would 
 "go, starve and be forgotten;" yet they disbanded in peace, and 
 expressed their "unshaken confidence in the justice of Congress" 
 
RELIEF OF THE SURVIVING OFFICERS OF THE REVOLUTION. 33 
 
 Washington, himself, declared in substance, that by means of this 
 resolve the officers were inspired to make renewed exertions ; to feel a 
 security for themselves and families which enabled them to devote 
 every faculty to the common cause ; and that thus was an army kept 
 together which otherwise must have dissolved, and we probably have 
 been compelled to pass again under the yoke of colonial servitude. 
 
 For all this fidelity to the performance of their part of the com- 
 pact, the officers have been duly thanked by many Congresses, and 
 applauded by the world. They have occupied a conspicuous niche in 
 toasts, odes, and orations, and some of them have animated the can- 
 vas and breathed in marble. 
 
 But has the promise to them of half pay ever been either literally 
 or substantially fulfilled? That, sir, is the important question. I 
 answer, not literally, by any pretence, from any quarter. No half 
 pay, as such, has ever, for any length of time, been either paid or 
 provided for one of the petitioners. Almost as little, sir, can there 
 be a pretence that it has been substantially fulfilled. No kind of ful- 
 filment has been attempted, except in the commutation act, passed 
 March 22d, 1783. 
 
 That act grew out of objections, in some of the States, to the system 
 of half pay as a system, because not strictly republican in theory, and 
 because everything of a pension character had become odious, by its 
 abuse, in some governments, in the maintenance of hirelings who had 
 performed secret and disreputable services. 
 
 Some of the officers, being anxious to remove any formal objection, 
 petitioned Congress for a commutation or change in the mode of 
 indemnifying and rewarding them. No opposition had been made to 
 the amount or value of the half pay ; and, therefore, as appears in the 
 commutation act itself, the officers expected, if a change took place, a 
 full " equivalent " in value to the half pay for life. 
 
 [Mr. W. here read the act, from 1 United States Laws, 687.] 
 
 But, instead of such an equivalent, Congress gave, by that act, 
 what was far short of an equivalent, whether we regard the particular 
 ages at that time of these petitioners, or their average age with the 
 other officers, or the period they have actually since lived. Congress 
 gave only five years' full pay to the youngest in the line, and just as 
 much to the eldest, — treating the officer of twenty-five as not likely 
 to live any longer than him of seventy ; and subjecting the former to 
 take for his half pay, which he was entitled to for his whole life, of 
 probably thirty-five years, the same small sum bestowed on him not 
 likely to live over ten or fourteen years. 
 
 If we look to the average age of all the officers at that time, the 
 commutation was still inadequate. That age was probably not over 
 thirty ; none have pretended to consider it over thirty-five ; and, on 
 all observations in similar climates, and all calculations of annuity 
 tables, such persons' live3 would be likely to extend beyond thirty 
 
34 RELIEF OF THE SURVIVING OFFICERS OF THE REVOLUTION. 
 
 years ; and thus their half pay for life be, on an average, worth the 
 gross sum, in presently of at least seven years' full pay. Any gen- 
 tleman can test the general accuracy of these results, by a reference 
 to Price's Annuity Tables, and to Milne on Annuities. In England. 
 Sweden, and France, it will be seen that a person of thirty years of 
 age is ascertained to be likely to live thirty-four more ; and of thirty- 
 five years of age, to live about twenty-eight more. An annuity for 
 thirty-four years is worth a fraction more than fourteen times its 
 annual amount, if paid in a gross sum in advance; and one for 
 twenty-eight years, only a fraction less than fourteen times its annual 
 amount. So that seven years' full pay is as near a fair commutation 
 for the half pay for life, taking their average ages, as can well be 
 calculated, or as is necessary for the present inquiry. 
 
 Again : If we advert to the real facts, as since developed, these 
 petitioners, had the commutation act not passed, or not been at all 
 binding, would now receive twenty-two, instead of five years' full pay, 
 as they have survived, since the close of the war, over forty-four 
 years. 
 
 Congress, as if conscious that the pressure of the times had driven 
 them to propose a substitute for the half pay for life, not in any view 
 sufficient or equivalent, as regarded the younger officers, who alone 
 now survive and ask for redress, provided, in the commutation act, 
 not that each officer might accept or reject it at pleasure, but that it 
 should take effect if accepted within certain periods, not exceeding six 
 months, by majorities in the several lines of the army. The most 
 influential officers, in any line, are of course the elder and superior ones. 
 To these, as a general rule, five years' full pay was a fair equivalent ; 
 and, by their exertions, the commutation was accepted by majorities in 
 most of the fines, and no provision ever afterwards made for such 
 officers as were either absent or present, and dissenting. 
 
 No evidence can now be found, however, of any acceptance, even 
 by majorities, in any of the lines, till after the expiration of the six 
 months prescribed. But a report of the Secretary of War, dated 
 October 31, 1783 (8 Journals of Congress, 478), enumerates certain 
 lines and individuals that had then signified their acceptance. It 
 would be difficult, as might be expected, to find among the individuals 
 named one who still survives. Those then the youngest, and now 
 surviving, must have felt deeply the inequality proposed ; and if most 
 of them had not been absent on furlough, by a resolve of Congress, 
 after peace was expected, probably even majorities in the lines would 
 never have been obtained. The certificates were made out for all, 
 without application, and left with the agents ; no other provision was 
 made for those entitled to half pay, and it remained with the younger 
 officers to receive those certificates or nothing. 
 
 But it is most manifest that Congress had no legal right to take 
 away from a single officer his vested half pay for life, without giving 
 him a full equivalent ; or, to say the least, what the officer should 
 
RELIEF OF THE SURVIVING OFFICERS OF THE REVOLUTION. 35 
 
 freely and distinctly assent to, as a full equivalent. It would be con- 
 trary to the elementary principles of legislation and jurisprudence : 
 and a majority of the lines could no more bind the minority, on this 
 subject of private rights of property, than they could bind Congress, 
 or the States, on questions of politics. This point need not be 
 argued to men who, like those around me, have watched the discus- 
 sions and decisions in this country, the last quarter of a century. But 
 no such individual assent was asked here : it was, indeed, declared 
 to be useless for any minority of individuals to dissent ; the commuta- 
 tion not having been, in any view, a full equivalent, individual assent 
 cannot fairly be presumed. The subsequent taking of the certificates 
 was merely taking all that was provided, and all they could get, with- 
 out any pretence that they took it as a full and fair equivalent. And 
 hence it follows, that, on the lowest computation, two years' more full 
 pay are necessary to make anything like a substantial fulfilment of the 
 compact on the part of Congress. In truth, twenty years more would 
 be less than the petitioners could rightfully claim now, if the com- 
 mutation act had never passed, or if the position was clearly estab- 
 lished, that the commutation act, as to them, was under the circum- 
 stances entirely void. To say that such a transaction, resorted to 
 under the pressure of the times, and finding no apology except in the 
 severity and necessities of that pressure, should not be relieved against 
 when the pressure is over, and our means have become ample, is 
 to make a mockery of justice, and to profane every principle of good 
 faith. 
 
 But consider a little further the history of these proceedings, on 
 the supposition that the five years' full pay was an ample equivalent 
 to all. Was it either paid or secured to them in such manner as to 
 become anything like a substantial fulfilment of the promise ? Though 
 the act allowed Congress to give the officers money or securities, and 
 though these last might be in the form prescribed for other creditors, 
 yet the act contemplated giving them money or money's worth, else it 
 doubly violated the former engagement to give them half pay for life. 
 The very nature of half pay, or of any commutation for it, implies 
 that it should be actually paid, or so secured as to raise the money 
 whenever it becomes due. They were here intended as means for 
 immediate maintenance or business to those who, by peace, would be 
 thrown out of their accustomed employment and support. This is too 
 plain for further illustration ; and, in conformity with these views, 
 Congress forthwith effected a loan in Europe, and paid in money all 
 the foreign officers entitled to the commutation. But how were the 
 petitioners treated ? They did not obtain a dollar in money, and even 
 their certificates were not delivered till six or nine months after their 
 right to half pay accrued; and when received, so far from being 
 secured by pledges or requisitions rendering them valuable as money, 
 the officers could not obtain for them in the market over one-fifth of 
 their nominal amount. The receipts given for these certificates truly 
 
36 RELIEF OF THE SURVIVING OFFICERS OF THE REVOLUTION. 
 
 omitted to state that they were in full payment of either the com- 
 mutation or the half pay. By such means these petitioners, to supply 
 the then existing wants of themselves and families, which was the 
 legitimate object of both the half pay and its commutation, in fact 
 realized only one, instead of five years' full pay, or only two years' 
 half pay, instead of half pay for life. 
 
 If this was a substantial fulfilment of the promise to them, I think 
 it would be difficult to define what would have been a defective, de- 
 lusive and unsubstantial fulfilment. But it has been suggested that 
 the petitioners might all have retained their certificates till afterwards 
 funded, and in that event have escaped loss. Can gentlemen, however, 
 forget that the very design of half pay was to furnish food and raiment, 
 and not a fund to be deposited in bank for posterity? and that, 
 though the use of a portion of it, if all had been paid at once, might 
 have been postponed to a future period, yet their necessities utterly 
 forbade most of them from not resorting forthwith to a single year's 
 pay, which was the entire value of the whole certificate 1 It is another 
 part of the distressing history of this case, that if, on the contrary, 
 every officer had retained his certificate till funded, his loss on it 
 would have been very near one-third of its amount. But on this point 
 I shall not dwell, as its particulars are more recent and familiar. It 
 will suffice to call to your minds, that the provision made for the pay- 
 ment of these certificates in A. D. 1790 was not by money, nor 
 virtually to their full amount, but by opening a loan, payable in those 
 certificates, and a scrip of stock given for them on these terms : one 
 third of the principal was to draw no interest whatever for ten years : 
 and all the interest then due was to draw thereafter only three per 
 cent. Without going into any calculations of the value of different 
 kinds of stock, under different circumstances, it is obvious that such a 
 payment or security was not worth so much, by nearly a third, as the 
 money would have been worth, or as scrip would have been worth for 
 the whole then due on six per cent, interest. 
 
 It is true that this loan was, in form, voluntary ; but it is equally 
 true, that, as no other provision was made for payment, no alternative 
 remained but to accept the terms. Hence, if the officer sold his cer- 
 tificate from necessity, he obtained only one-fifth of the amount therein 
 promised ; or, if he retained it, he obtained only about two-thirds of 
 that amount. 
 
 What renders this circumstance still more striking, we ourselves have 
 in this way saved, and reduced our national debt below what it would 
 have been,' many millions of dollars, — from eighteen to fifteen, I believe, 
 — and yet, now, in our prosperity, hesitate to restore what was taken in 
 part from these very men, and when not from them, taken from others 
 on account of their speculations on these very men, and their associates 
 in arms. It was, at the time of the funding, thought just, and at- 
 tempted by some of our ablest statesmen, to provide some retribution 
 to the original holders of certificates for the losses that had been sus- 
 
RELIEF OF THE SURVIVING OFFICERS OF THE REVOLUTION. 37 
 
 tained on them — to provide in some way a partial restoration. But 
 the inherent difficulty of the subject, and the low state of our resources, 
 prevented us from completing any such arrangement, though we were 
 not prevented from saving to the government, out of those very cer- 
 tificates, and similar ones, ten times the amount now proposed for these 
 petitioners. 
 
 On this state of facts, then, I hold these conclusions : That what is 
 honest, and moral, and honorable, between debtor and creditor in 
 private life, is so in public life. That a creditor of the public should 
 be treated with at least equal, if not greater kindness, than the creditor 
 of an individual. That when the embarrassments of a debtor give rise 
 to a mode of payment altogether inadequate to what is justly due, and 
 this kind of payment is forced upon the creditor by the necessities of 
 either party, the debtor ought, when relieved from his embarrassments 
 or necessities, to make ample restitution. That it is the dictate of 
 every moral and honorable feeling to supply the deficiency ; and 
 especially should the debtor do this where the inadequacy was more 
 than four-fifths of the whole debt ; where the debtor, by a part of the 
 arrangement, saved millions to contribute to his present prosperity, 
 and where the debt itself was, as in the present case, the price of blood 
 lavished for the creditor, the wages of those sufferings and toils which 
 secured our present liberties, and fill the brightest page of glory in our 
 country's history. The great military leader of the Ke volution has 
 given his sanction to this measure, in the strongest terms, when, call- 
 ing to mind the lion hearts and eagle eyes that had surrounded and 
 sustained him in all his arduous trials, and reflecting that they, — not 
 soldiers by profession, nor adventurers, but citizens, with tender ties 
 of kindred and friendship, and with cheering prospects in civil life, — had 
 abandoned all to follow him, and to sink or swim with the sacred cause 
 in which he had enlisted, he invoked towards them the justice of his 
 country, and expressed the fullest confidence that " a country rescued 
 by their arms will never leave unpaid the debt of gratitude." 
 
 It is hot to be forgotten that a measure like this would remove a 
 stain from our history. Its moral influence on our population, in 
 future wars, — for wars we must expect, again and again, — its conso- 
 nance with those religious, as well as moral principles of perfect justice, 
 which, in a republic, are the anchor and salvation of all that is valu- 
 able ; its freedom, I trust, from political prejudice and party feeling, 
 — all strengthen the other reasons for its speedy adoption. 
 
 Nor have the imputations against it, as a local measure, been at all 
 well founded. What is right or just in regard to contracts, is right 
 without regard to the residence of individuals, whether in the east, the 
 west, or the south. But, independent of that consideration, these 
 venerable worthies, though once much more numerous at the north 
 than elsewhere, have since followed the enterprises of their children, 
 and pushed their own broken fortunes to every section of the Union. 
 It is impossible to obtain perfect accuracy as to their numbers and 
 
38 BELIEF OF THE SURVIVING OFFICERS OF THE REVOLUTION. 
 
 residence. But, by correspondence and verbal inquiries, it is ascer- 
 tained that four or five survive in New Hampshire ; from thirty to 
 thirty-five in Massachusetts and Maine ; five or six in Rhode Island ; 
 five in Vermont ; sixteen in Connecticut ; twenty in New York ; 
 twelve in New Jersey ; eighteen in Pennsylvania ; three in Delaware ; 
 twelve in Maryland ; thirty-three to thirty-eight in Virginia and Ken- 
 tucky ; ten to twelve in Ohio ; twelve or fifteen in the Carolinas, and 
 five or six in Georgia. As, by the annuity tables, something like 
 two hundred and fifty ought now to be alive, the computations have 
 been made on a medium of two hundred and thirty, between the num- 
 ber ascertained and the conjectural number. 
 
 The question, then, is of a general, public nature, and presents the 
 single point, whether, in the late language of an eloquent statesman of 
 New York, these veterans shall any longer remain " living monuments 
 of the neglect of their country." 
 
 All the foreign officers whose claims rested on the same resolve 
 were, as I have before stated, promptly paid in specie ; and their illus- 
 trious leader, Lafayette, by whose side these petitioners faced equal 
 toils and dangers, has been since loaded with both money and applause. 
 Even the tories, who deserted the American cause, and adhered to one 
 so much less holy and pure, have been fully and faithfully rewarded 
 by England; and it now remains with the Senate to decide, — not 
 whether the sum proposed shall be bestowed in mere charity, however 
 charity may bless both him that gives and him that takes, — nor in mere 
 gratitude, however sensible the petitioners may be to the influence of 
 either, — but, whether, let these considerations operate as they may, 
 the officers should be remunerated for their losses, on those broad prin- 
 ciples of eternal justice which are the cement of society, and which, 
 without a wound to their delicacy and honest pride, will, in that event, 
 prove the solace and staff of their declining years. 
 
 I shall detain the Senate no longer, except to offer a few remarks 
 on the computations on which the sum of $1,100,000 is proposed as 
 the proper one for filling the blank. Various estimates, on various 
 hypotheses, are annexed to the report in this case, and others will 
 doubtless occur to different gentlemen. But if any just one amounts 
 to about the sum proposed, no captious objection will, I trust, be 
 offered on account of any trifling difference. It is impossible, in such 
 cases, to attain perfect accuracy ; but the estimates are correct enough, 
 probably, for the present purpose. 
 
 The committee have proposed a sum in gross rather than a half 
 pay or annuity, because more appropriate to the circumstances of the 
 case, and because more acceptable, for the reasons that originally gave 
 rise to the commutation. 
 
 On the ground that these officers were, in 1783, justly entitled to 
 two years' more full pay, as a fair equivalent for half pay during life ; 
 and there being 230 of them of the rank supposed in the report, their 
 monthly pay would be about $30 each. This, for two years, would 
 
RELIEF OF THE SURVIVING OFFICERS OF THE REVOLUTION. 39 
 
 be $720 each, or $165,600 due to these petitioners, at the close of 
 the war, over and above what they then received certificates for. The 
 interest on that, for forty-four years, would be $437,184, which, 
 added to the principal, makes $602,784. 
 
 If to that be added what they lost on their certificates by depre- 
 ciation, which, at four-fifths, was $331,200, the sum, without any 
 interest on the depreciation, amounts to $933,984; or, with interest, 
 to more than a million and a half; or, if the depreciation be considered 
 seven-eighths, as it really was, the sum would be still larger. On 
 the other hand, if nothing be allowed for depreciation on the certifi- 
 cates, but one-third be considered as lost in funding, that one-third, 
 in A. D. 1791, would be about $204,240, and interest since would 
 swell it to $645,434, which, added to the two years' pay not received, 
 and interest on that pay, makes the whole $1,248,218. 
 
 Another view of the case, which seems to me the most technical, 
 and which avoids all difficulty about loss, either by depreciation 
 or funding, will lead to about the same result as to the amount. 
 It is this. On the ground that seven years' full pay was the smallest 
 sum which, in A. D. 1783, could be deemed a fair equivalent for the 
 half pay for life, then the petitioners got certificates for only five- 
 sevenths of their half pay ; or, in other words, five-sevenths of their 
 claim was extinguished and paid. The other two-sevenths, then, has 
 annually accrued since, and will continue to accrue while the petition- 
 ers survive. This two-sevenths being $51.42 per year to each offi- 
 cer, or $11,826 to these officers, would amount at this time to $520,- 
 344 ; and the interest accruing on it, during only thirty-five years, 
 would make it exceed the $1,100,000 proposed. The amount is 
 fairly reached by this view of the case, without a single cent for either 
 depreciation or loss in funding, and thus does not indirectly touch a 
 single fact or principle upon which a similar allowance could be made 
 to anybody besides these officers. Gallant, and meritorious, and 
 suffering, as were the soldiers, — and none could be more so, — worthy 
 and affectionate as may have been the surviving widows, and distin- 
 guished as may have been many of the officers' heirs, for filial and 
 generous devotion to smooth their declining years, — they all stand on 
 their own cases and merits. None of them have been referred to the 
 committee who reported this bill ; and they can all be provided for 
 otherwise, this session, or hereafter, if thought proper. Let the pres- 
 ent appropriation be tried first on its own grounds, and then, by sub- 
 sequent amendments of this bill, or by new bills, let an appropriation 
 for other classes of persons be also tried on its own grounds. All I 
 ask and entreat is, that if, either in strict law or in justice, whether 
 grounded upon the original defective commutation, the depreciation of 
 the certificates, or the loss in funding, any member is convinced that 
 the sum proposed to the officers is a fair one, that he will first con- 
 sider the case of the officers, and support this motion. If any think 
 a different sum more proper, I hope they will propose that sum in due 
 
40 RELIEF OF THE SURVIVING OFFICERS OF THE REVOLUTION. 
 
 time ; and thus let the sense of the Senate be fully expressed upon one 
 case at a time, and upon the only case now duly before us. In this 
 manner only can anything ever be accomplished. 
 
 The amount of the sum now proposed cannot be objected to on the 
 grounds that doubtless caused the losses and sufferings which we are 
 now seeking to redress. The country during the Revolution, and at 
 its close, would hardly have been unwilling to bestow twice the 
 amount, had its resources permitted. But now, such have been our 
 rapid advances in wealth and greatness, by means of the rights and 
 liberties the valor of these men contributed so largely to secure, that 
 the very public land they defended, if not won, yields every year to 
 our treasury more than the whole appropriation. One-twentieth of 
 our present annual revenue exceeds it. A fraction of the cost of the 
 public buildings, the expense of two or three ships-of-the-line, one- 
 tenth of what has been saved to our national debt in the funding 
 system, a tax of ten cents per head on our population only a single 
 twelvemonth, — either of them would remove all this reproach. 
 
 But, whatever might be the cost, I would say, in all practicable 
 cases, be just and fear not. Let no illiberal or evasive feeling blast 
 the hopes of these venerable patriots. Much longer delay will do this 
 as effectually as a hard-hearted refusal, since the remains of them are 
 almost daily going down to the city of silence. Either drive them, 
 then, at once from your doors, with taunts and in despair, or sanction 
 the claim. So far as regards my single self, before I would another 
 year endure the stigma of either injustice or ingratitude to men like 
 these, I would vote to stop every species of splendid missions, I would 
 cease to talk of Alleghany canals, I would let the capitol crumble to 
 atoms for want of appropriations, and introduce retrenchment from the 
 palace to the humblest door-keeper. 
 
 It has formerly been said, that if these officers are relieved, so must 
 be those of the late war. But, deserving as were these last, the cause 
 in which they fought required much inferior sacrifices. They were not 
 contending under the stigma of traitors, liable to the halter; they 
 were liberally and promptly paid ; and, whatever small depreciation 
 may have existed in the treasury notes taken for their monthly pay, it 
 was infinitely less than the losses sustained by these petitioners on 
 their monthly pay, and for which they neither ask nor expect relief. 
 
 One other consideration, and I will at this time trouble the Senate 
 no longer. The long lapse of time since the claim originated has been 
 objected formerly to its success. But what honest individual shelters 
 himself under a statute of limitation, if conscious that his promise has 
 not been substantially fulfilled 1 Under such circumstances, it is no 
 defence, either in the court of conscience or in a court of honor ; and 
 Congress have often shown their liberality in waiving it, where 
 expressly provided to bar an application. 
 
 Here no express bar has ever been provided. Before their first 
 application, the officers waited till A. D. 1810, when old age and 
 
JUDICIARY OF THE UNITED STATES. 41 
 
 infirmity rendered them more needy, and when many years of pros- 
 perity had rendered their country more able. However numerous, 
 and technical, and evasive, may have been the objections since inter- 
 posed, let it not be forgotten that, in performing their portion of the 
 compact, however neglected as to food or wages, they never were 
 heard to plead excuses or evasions, however appalling the danger, 
 whether roused by a midnight alarm or invited to join a forlorn hope. 
 
 Like others, too, it may be imputed to them, in derogation, that 
 they were " military chieftains." But if, as such, for a time, they 
 did, like others, nobly help "to fill the measure of their country's 
 glory," so, like others of that class, they have often distinguished 
 themselves in forums, cabinets and halls of legislation. 
 
 Whatever " honor and gratitude " they have yet received is deeply 
 engraven on their hearts ; but they now also need — and they ask 
 only because they need — the additional rewards of substantial justice. 
 
 It remains, sir, for us, whose rights they defended and saved, to say 
 whether they shall longer ask that justice in vain. . 
 
 JUDICIARY OF THE UNITED STATES.* 
 
 Mr. Woodbury offered the following motion : 
 
 '* That the Bill to extend the Judicial System be recommitted to the Committee on 
 the Judiciary, with instructions to report such amendments as will remove any exist- 
 ing grievance, without an increase of the number of judges of the Supreme Court." 
 
 He addressed the Senate as follows : The gentlemen near me, 
 sir, ask for my views in submitting the motion on your table. The 
 task is one I undertake with reluctance ; but, at the same time, one 
 from which I have no right to shrink, and which shall be discharged 
 with all practicable brevity. 
 
 The strong, the prominent feature of this bill is, in my eye, its 
 extraordinary increase of the number of judges of the Supreme Court. 
 Before yielding my approbation to such an increase, I feel anxious to 
 obtain further facts and principles in illustration of its necessity ; and 
 as the particular friends of the bill unquestionably think that abundant 
 reasons exist for so novel a measure, this motion must afford gratifi- 
 cation to them, and be received in the spirit of kindness, as it will 
 afford them the opportunity, doubtless desirable, to spread those 
 reasons before persons of less local knowledge concerning the region 
 of country whose grievances the bill is particularly designed to remove. 
 
 I am thus exposing myself to become a convert to their opinions, 
 rather than cherishing any vanity of my power to convert others. 
 
 * A speech on the Judiciary Bill, and against the increase of judges ; delivered in 
 the Senate of the United States, April 11, 1826. 
 
 4* 
 
42 JUDICIAEY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 It will be seen that the motion presents only a single point of 
 specific instruction as to the bill which may be prepared for their 
 relief ; leaving the committee to adopt, for our future consideration, 
 any efficient scheme whatever, which shall not enlarge the Supreme 
 Court. 
 
 If the motion should prevail, additional instructions, by other 
 motions, can be proposed by gentlemen who are friendly to particular 
 plans : such as the circuit plan, with the attendance of a judge of the 
 Supreme Court once a year; or such a plan, dispensing with his 
 attendance altogether ; or any other which the observation and reflec- 
 tion of those around me may have satisfied them is most eligible. 
 
 But, should this motion not prevail, then the consideration of any 
 of these plans would be useless ; and hence I desire to put to the 
 Senate the single, unembarrassed, and naked question, whether they 
 believe any exigency now exists which demands and justifies the 
 unprecedented increase of the Supreme Court to ten ? Has anything 
 been exhibited to us which renders such an increase necessary, proper, 
 or safe 1 
 
 In an attempt to obtain some certainty as to the operation of this 
 increase in the members of that court, and as to the real reasons 
 which exist for the increase, so that the Senate can act understand- 
 ingly upon the present motion, we shall not, it is hoped, be misled by 
 the title of the bill. The living principle of any measure lies deeper. 
 
 The title is merely "to extend the judicial system," and not to 
 alter or amend it : so the title to the act of February 13, 1801, was 
 to "provide for the more convenient organization of the courts," &c. 
 
 But as that, under the then condition of the country, was not long 
 found by the people to be very " convenient," so this will not be found 
 a mere extension of our judicial system to places where it never before 
 prevailed. The judicial system now in operation in all the nine States 
 covered by tins bill has been a part of the judicial system of the Union, 
 with the exception of about one year, ever since the first judiciary 
 act of A. D. 1789, to the present moment. Because we all know that, 
 for local duties, District Courts and Circuit Courts have ever been 
 this system, with the right of appeal, in certain cases, to the Supreme 
 Court ; and that the only difference, in different regions, has been 
 simply what now exists in some of these nine States, and in parts of 
 some Atlantic States, — namely, that in new and thinly-peopled 
 sections of country the Circuit Courts have been held by a district 
 judge alone. 
 
 But the proposed bill not only alters this system for local purposes, 
 by requiring the attendance of an additional judge at the Circuit 
 Court in regions of country not so populous as those where the judges 
 of the Supreme Court now attend, but it alters the system for general 
 purposes, by enlarging the Supreme Court itself one-half its whole 
 original number, by leaving its quorum so that contradictory decisions 
 may constantly be made without any change in the court itself, and 
 
JUDICIARY OF THE UNITED STATES. 43 
 
 by increasing it to as great an extent as a majority of its present 
 quorum, so that new results may possibly be produced in all its grand 
 supervising powers over each State, and over the whole Confederation. 
 
 It is thus that a principle lurks in the last effect of this great alter- 
 ation, which, in the opinion of many, should carry anxiety and dismay 
 into every heart; because, among other objections, hereafter to be 
 noticed, it places at the mercy of the legislative breath, in any moment 
 of over-heated excitement, all that is valuable in any constitutional 
 judgment on its records. We have only, as in this case, to add a 
 number to any court sufficient to balance a majority of its quorum, 
 and, by a union of feeling with the appointing power, secure judges 
 of certain desirable opinions, and any political or constitutional 
 decision can, in the next case which arises, be overturned. Every 
 security is thus prostrated. The system is not extended ; but is, in 
 principle, destroyed. For thus does this increase open an avenue to 
 a radical change in the highest functions of one great department 
 of our government ; and a department, too, of all others, the most 
 endangered by any change, because, in its very nature, designed for 
 .permanency, independence, and firmness, amidst those tempests which, 
 at times, convulse most of the elements of society. 
 
 Gentlemen must perceive that I speak only of the general tendency 
 and alarming character of such an increase, without reference to the 
 motives winch have now recommended it. They are, doubtless, pure. 
 But its propriety is to be tried by the reasons for it, and not by 
 motives. And, without stopping to trouble the House with any detail 
 as to further inconveniences, injuries, and dangers, from this extraor- 
 dinary increase in so important a department, let me ask, sir, what 
 are its justifications ? By whom is it called for ? Who has stood 
 forth and proclaimed that public sentiment throughout the Union has 
 demanded it? Whatever may be the jealousies and apprehensions 
 concerning the general course of decisions in that court, so eloquently 
 sketched by the chairman of the judiciary committee, who has shown 
 the loss of public confidence, the errors of opinion, or denial of justice, 
 by that court, which this great increase of its numbers is sought and 
 is adapted to correct ? No, sir. I undertake to aver that, so far as 
 this bill alters the Supreme Court itself, by that increase, and thus 
 affects its discharge of all its general duties as the supreme consti- 
 tutional court for the whole Confederacy, it is a bill entirely uncalled 
 for by the whole Confederacy, or perhaps by any part of it ; and, at 
 the same time, it is entirely unfitted to remove any actual grievance 
 which exists in the discharge, by that court, of those general duties. 
 
 The fallacy of the measure consists in this : This bill is to be 
 passed mainly for the removal of local evils, now existing in the west 
 and south-west. Such has been the argument. Thence come the 
 complaints. Why not, then, remove those evils, as my motion pro- 
 poses, without touching the Supreme Court ? Why not make the 
 remedy coextensive only with the disease ? I do not now consider the 
 
44 JUDICIARY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 delay in the Supreme Court itself, for I shall hereafter show that this 
 bill will not diminish any delay in the Supreme Court. But, as a 
 cure for a mere local disease, why should you begin to tamper with 
 parts of the system not disordered? You will thus jeopard, if not 
 sacrifice, the primary and most momentous duties of that court, for 
 the relief of some sectional inconvenience ; you will make the head 
 and heart tributary to one of the extremities ; and, for the gratification 
 of two or three millions of people in the inferior duties of our judiciary, 
 you will put in peril, not only the interest of the other seven or eight 
 millions, but the interest of the two or three millions — of the whole 
 Union, in all the paramount, original, and appellant powers of the great 
 judicial tribunal of the country. 
 
 Is it possible that the local evils which exist in the valley of the 
 Mississippi can be such as to justify so extraordinary a measure? 
 Where are the petitions and remonstrances on this subject from con- 
 ventions or legislatures ? Here is a bill, whose local operation reaches 
 nine States; but not more than one of that brilliant galaxy has 
 memorialized us for relief. The bar of a single city in Tennessee, and 
 the bar of some part of Ohio, have petitioned us ; but, however respect- 
 able these sources of complaint, is it all you would expect, if an actual 
 necessity existed for so important a bill ? 
 
 I shall not now discuss the abstract and metaphysical propriety of a 
 call for our legislation by a sovereign State; but I appeal to our 
 knowledge of human nature, and to human usages, if we should not, 
 probably, see different remonstrances, if the grievances were, in fact, 
 so wide-spread and acute as to require, for their removal, so unusual a 
 bill. But intelligent gentlemen on this floor have stated their impres- 
 sions as to the character and extent of those grievances. Their 
 statements are entitled to the utmost respect and consideration. 
 
 If I understand them, as now and heretofore disclosed, they are all 
 resolvable into a supposed want of equality between those nine States 
 and the rest of the Union in their judiciary. 
 
 And, without tracing all the Protean shapes which conjecture and 
 argument have assumed, I will frankly admit, that, if such' a want 
 of equality exists there as is so fatal to the administration of justice 
 as to require for its removal this large increase of the Supreme 
 Court, I earnestly pray that my motion may fail. For, without 
 vaporing about my regard for the west, — which those only can doubt 
 to whom I am unknown, — and without claiming any exclusive merit 
 for broad, statesman-like views, I would extend any proper relief as 
 readily to Missouri, — however western or small, and whether born 
 under a good or an evil star, — as to that Pilgrim State, whose arms, 
 literature, and arts and commerce, have crowded her history with 
 such proud trophies since the landing at Plymouth rock. 
 
 Proceeding, then, to analyze this general want of equality, it must, 
 if true, be found to consist either in a want of an equal representa- 
 tion on the bench of the Supreme Court, or in the want of an equal 
 
JUDICIARY OF THE UNITED STATES. 45 
 
 system of inferior courts, or more comprehensively in the want of an 
 equal attention to their unusual quantity of judicial business. 
 
 In an examination of their want of an equal representation on the 
 bench of the Supreme Court, I care not whether the increase be 
 asked because it is necessary to give them equality on the ground of 
 comparative population, on the ground of their number of States, on 
 the ground of wealth, on the ground of probable business, — as depend- 
 ing on any of those circumstances, — or on the ground of their diversi- 
 ties of local law, which last the chairman more particularly and elo- 
 quently urged as a reason for three new judges from the valley of the 
 Mississippi. 
 
 Some of these considerations have been suggested by some persons, 
 and others by other persons ; but they all are resolvable into a kind 
 of representation. 
 
 For the purpose of ascertaining the relative condition of the west 
 on this point, I cast away every shield and panoply as to the princi- 
 ple, and concede to the advocates of the bill that this representation, 
 based on any of those circumstances, is neither novel nor abominable. 
 
 A very easy and just test of their equality, so far as regards popu- 
 lation (and almost everything connected with the judiciary depends 
 on population, directly or indirectly), is the representation in Con- 
 gress. Examine this a single moment. All the States have two 
 hundred and thirteen representatives; and the present number of 
 judges who compose the Supreme Court being seven, the judicial 
 representation is only one judge to every thirty representatives. The 
 nine States included in this bill have one judge, reckoning the recent 
 vacancy in that quarter as filled, and only forty-seven representatives. 
 Hence, on this ground, they are not yet entitled to one more judge ; 
 and much less are they entitled to three more, until they have one 
 hundred and twenty representatives. The result is the same, if you 
 consider separately the six new States now destitute of any circuit or 
 supreme judges ; for they all have only twelve representatives, and, 
 of course, are not yet, on this ground, entitled to a single judge, while 
 the other three, having only thirty-five representatives, are now, on 
 the same hypothesis, fully represented. The great increase of judges, 
 therefore, contemplated by this bill, so far from being necessary and 
 equal towards the west, on this ground of judicial representation, is 
 grossly partial, unequal, and unjust. 
 
 There is no escape from this conclusion, by saying that the new 
 judges may, or should, be selected from other States than those 
 embraced in the bill ; for that would be an abandonment of either 
 the principle of representation on every ground, or of the very fact of 
 that want of an equality, which is now under examination. Nor is 
 there any escape by saying that these nine States have increased much 
 in population since the last census ; because the other States have 
 likewise increased, and though in a ratio not probably equal, yet more 
 equal than heretofore, and sufficient to prevent my former conclusion 
 
46 JUDICTAKY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 from being shaken. It was admitted, on Friday last, by the gentle- 
 man from Kentucky (Mr. Rowan), that two or three of the oldest 
 of these nine States had now become emigrating States ; and all of us 
 know that the tide of emigration into them from the East no longer 
 dashes over the Alleghanies as it once did. The swarms from the 
 northern hive now alight nearer home. Even in cities like New 
 York and Boston, and in many towns somewhat rural, like Dover and 
 Chelmsford, manufactures, no less than an improved agriculture, and 
 commerce, always vigilant, have worked their miracles ; and as rapid 
 an increase within the last seven years can be shown as in any vale 
 of the land of promise in the west. 
 
 But if the population of those nine States had, since the last cen- 
 sus, augmented one-half, and all the other States had remained sta- 
 tionary, it would justify, on this hypothesis of judicial representation, 
 an addition of only one judge ; and when these nine States are com- 
 pared with those north-east of Maryland, it would not justify the addi- 
 tion of even one. Those north-eastern States have now one hundred 
 and seventeen representatives, and only two judges of the Supreme 
 Court. Add to the nine western States twenty-three more repre- 
 sentatives for an increased population, and then, with seventy repre- 
 sentatives and one judge, they are not entitled, to even a single judge 
 more till they have one hundred and seventeen representatives. The 
 present bill, therefore, allowing four judges where a right exists to 
 only one, and leaving only two judges in States where a right exists 
 to four, proceeds on a new kind of equality as regards population, — 
 proceeds on a boasted species of legislation on broad national views 
 which it has been my misfortune not to comprehend. 
 
 But it has been suggested by another member of the judiciary 
 committee, — the ingenious gentleman from Maine, — that this great 
 increase of judges in that region is to favor or represent the small 
 States. If judges are to be created in analogy to the representation 
 in the Senate rather than the House of Representatives, then the bill 
 should provide at least one judge for each State ; or, if they are to be 
 created to represent State codes of local law, the same necessity exists 
 for a judge from each State. But this bill neither confers an equal 
 favor in this respect on each State, nor on each class of States. If a 
 class of small States are to have judges to aid them merely as small 
 States, — if the bill is an oblation or peace-offering to them, — then why 
 does that gentleman forget the East? — forget our own hearths and 
 altars, and the resting-place of our fathers' ashes ? 
 
 Are Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, Connecticut, 
 New Jersey, and Delaware, less deserving than the younger members 
 of the family ? And, if the small States are to be aided by any 
 measure, are those at the east, who are now destitute of any judge 
 of the Supreme Court, to be entirely overlooked ? A most striking 
 fact on this point is, that the present eastern circuit,, composed of 
 small States, save Massachusetts, has only one judge to twenty-seven 
 
JUDICIARY OF THE UNITED STATES. 47 
 
 representatives, when this bill gives to the small States, in the west 
 and south-west, one judge in one circuit to only four representatives, 
 and in another circuit to only five. A less number, in the whole of 
 each of those circuits, than what belongs to the little Spartan State 
 alone, one of whose sentinels, — unworthy, to be sure, — I am, stationed 
 in this citadel. Again: if the judicial representation, in order to 
 justify this increase of judges, is to be grounded, not on States, nor 
 on "men, high-minded men, 
 
 Who know their rights, 
 
 And, knowing, dare maintain," 
 
 then it must be grounded on wealth or territory. But this part of 
 the inquiry has been sufficiently extended, and, if pursued further, 
 may give rise to invidious feelings, which I, on my part, utterly dis- 
 claim. I prize no less highly than others the services and the chiv- 
 alry of the west ; and can see, without envy, in the mist of coming 
 time, their high destinies. But, if you look to the arts that sustain 
 or embellish Hfe, to private affluence or public institutions, to single 
 cities, or the numbers, capital, and power of States, the region of 
 country embraced by this bill will, surely, at this period of their 
 unrivalled growth, complain of no existing injustice towards them in 
 judicial representation, as based on wealth. Yet, as respects terri- 
 tory, — if that, independent of its population, wealth, and other circum- 
 stances, is to be the basis, I frankly concede that their present num- 
 ber of judges is unequal; though, at the same time, a larger number, 
 on this hypothesis, must not be created to represent or benefit men or 
 wealth, the causes of contracts, torts, and courts ; but, in some sec- 
 tions, mere earth and vegetation, without any controversy to be 
 settled, unless that of older time between the trees and the bramble. 
 
 I know that the friends of the bill cannot desire this increase of 
 judges on the last ground exclusively ; while I do not hesitate to con- 
 fess, that, in connection with the others, it is not to be lost sight of in 
 the frame and establishment of any judicial system. I have now done, 
 sir, with the consideration of a supposed want of equality, or due bal- 
 ance of power, in the west and south-west, on the bench of the 
 Supreme Court, as founded upon any principle of representation, 
 whether called representation or by some other name, imagined to be 
 less exceptionable in respect to a judiciary; a principle on whose 
 abstract correctness I say nothing, but whose operation I have exam- 
 ined, merely because it has been urged by others, in different shapes 
 and under different titles, as a plausible, and, indeed, unanswerable 
 argument in favor of the proposed increase of the Supreme Court. 
 
 Another ground for this increase, and what was styled, by the 
 chairman of the Judicial Committee, "a leading grievance," is a sup- 
 posed want of equality between the judicial system now in operation in 
 those nine States and that in operation elsewhere. To understand the 
 
48 JUDICIARY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 extent of this grievance, it will be indispensable to advert a moment to 
 their present system. It consists of a Circuit Court in the three older 
 and more populous States ; and in the other new and thinly-settled 
 States, a court by a district judge with circuit powers, and a right 
 in all to revise certain questions of law in the Supreme Court. What 
 is this but the same system which has ever prevailed in similar regions 
 of country, since the organization of our government 1 Indeed, as a 
 system, this can be complained of only in the six newest States ; and in 
 them the only inherent defect of the system is supposed to be the want 
 of a judge of the Supreme Court to attend the circuit, because their 
 District Courts are now held as others throughout the Union, and their 
 appeals, or writs of error, to the Supreme Court, in all cases, are, or 
 might be, made the same in substance as elsewhere, without any change 
 of the system itself. 
 
 A moment's attention to our judicial history may correct some 
 hasty impressions on this point. The very first judicial act, of Septem- 
 ber, A. D. 1789, included within its established circuits neither Maine 
 nor Kentucky. But did any person ever suppose that our fathers 
 thus intended to put their inhabitants to the ban of the empire 1 to 
 exclude them from the pale of our judiciary ? or to strip them of their 
 proportionate privileges 1 
 
 So far from it, that a district judge with circuit powers was then 
 created for them as a part of our local judicial system best adapted to 
 tracts of country newly and thinly settled ; and in similar regions this 
 has constantly been retained as the appropriate system, and, indeed, as 
 the only one that can be applied in such places, without giving to them 
 more judges, and a greater judicial expenditure, than they are entitled 
 to on any of those principles of equality so strongly urged by the friends 
 of this bill as the basis of all our institutions. Let me entreat the 
 Senate to reflect a moment longer on this consideration. Because, if 
 we trace down our judicial history, it will be seen that this part of our 
 system, now the cause of so severe complaint, was afterwards intro- 
 duced into all other places, beside Maine and Kentucky, where the 
 population and territory were similar, and retained not only during 
 their district and territorial condition, but, in many of them, long after 
 they became sovereign and independent States. 
 
 What is still more striking, three of the largest States in the Union, 
 in those portions of them in a physical condition similar to the six new 
 States in this bill, have resorted to this very district system ; and have 
 thus, according to the views of some, subjected large portions of their 
 population to ignominy, and placed in unequal jeopardy their property, 
 their liberties, and their lives. 
 
 To see how far this "leading grievance," as it has been called, can 
 justify tins great increase of judges, I do not shun a more particular 
 scrutiny, because I am seeking truth, and not victory. If it be such 
 a grievance, it is on the ground that the system is unlike the systems 
 which have existed in similar regions, or unlike the systems- which 
 
JUDICIARY OF THE UNITED STATES. 49 
 
 have existed in similar sovereign States, or unlike the systems else- 
 where, in its inherent excellence. 
 
 But it is not such a grievance on the first ground ; because we all 
 know, by the highest written evidence, that the system now in force in 
 these six States has always prevailed in other parts of the Union 
 similar to those six States in population and territory ; that it prevailed 
 in Maine over thirty years, in Kentucky eighteen years, in Ten- 
 nessee more than twelve years ; and, without further detail, has, for 
 some years past, prevailed in large sections of New York, Pennsyl- 
 vania, and Virginia. Nor is it such a grievance on the second ground. 
 For, whether that ground be assumed on the theory of the able chair- 
 man of the Judiciary Committee, that a Circuit Court, and judges of 
 the Supreme Court, are due to those six States on account of State 
 pride, — or, as suggested by others, are due as a badge of State 
 sovereignty, State uniformity, or some other indescribable State pre- 
 rogative, — then will our past history be found at war with this theory. 
 Because this precise system, saying nothing of these six new States, 
 long pervaded other entire independent States, as lofty in their politi- 
 cal opinions as the loftiest. 
 
 It was the system of the gallant Tennessee, as a State, from A. D. 
 1796 to A. D. 1807 ; of the giant Ohio, from her State birth till the 
 same era; and even of Kentucky, with all her chivalry and eagle vigi- 
 lance, from her admission into the Union, in A. D. 1793, till, after 
 fourteen years, she and her immediate neighbors had attained to that 
 population which might, on equal principles, justify their receipt of 
 more judges and more expenditure, and which might render the cir- 
 cuit system not altogether inappropriate to their increased density of 
 population, — a density of population, however, which, though then 
 perhaps too small for the system, and an extension of it, by altering 
 the numbers of the Supreme Court, not the most eligible remedy, yet 
 holding out no justification to this bill, because those three States then 
 averaged to the square mile nearly a third more population than these 
 six States now do. 
 
 When I speak of the present circuit system, with its present details, 
 as undesigned and unfitted for so sparse a population, I can furnish 
 no stronger illustration of the correctness of my ideas than the fact 
 that a judge cannot possibly attend the Supreme Court here long 
 enough to discharge, with promptitude and fidelity, all the business 
 here, and then travel, twice a year, over a circuit embracing a proper 
 number of people, in a country thinly populated, without becoming a 
 mere courier or Cossack. Hence, this very bill exhibits the strange 
 anomaly of an attempt to extend this system on what is called equal 
 principles, and yet giving to a population in the most eastern circuit, 
 large enough to have twenty-seven representatives in Congress, only 
 one circuit and one judge, and giving the tenth circuit and one judge 
 to a population only large enough to have four representatives. What 
 is still more decisive, giving to New York, Connecticut and Vermont, 
 5 
 
50 JUDICIARY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 with forty-five representatives, only one circuit and one judge, and to 
 Indiana, Illinois and Missouri, with only five representatives, one 
 circuit also and one judge ! How striking the unfitness of a system 
 which assigns to one judge the business of a population of about two 
 hundred thousand, and to another the business of about two millions ! 
 
 When admitted into the great family of the Union, it was not con- 
 sidered by the three oldest States in this bill, or by the other six 
 States, that the want of a circuit and a judge of the Supreme Court 
 was derogatory to their independence or humiliating to their dignity ; 
 else, then, if ever, would and should the tocsin of remonstrance have 
 been blown long and loud ; because then, if ever, on this ground of 
 State pride, did their honor and their rights require complaint ; then, 
 if ever, on this ground, was it a grievance and an ignominy. 
 
 No, sir. The truth then lay, as it now lies, deep in their physical 
 condition, and in the nature of the circuit system. I would be one of 
 the last to wound their just pride, or to withhold from them, in a 
 measure otherwise safe and judicious, any proportionate right ; but it 
 was always justly supposed that the primary duties of the Supreme 
 Court consisted in the discharge of its great appellate jurisdiction 
 here ; and that the local duties of the judiciary were subordinate to 
 those, and to be performed by local judges, aided by the Supreme 
 Court only as much as might be practicable, without any neglect or 
 sacrifice of their higher duties here. Hence, the judges of the 
 Supreme Court were not then required to go to the extremes of Maine 
 and Kentucky to discharge local duties ; hence, they have not since 
 been sent into other Territories or new States, which might call them 
 away too distant and too long for the proper despatch of the business 
 of paramount consequence in the Supreme Court itself. Hence, we 
 should not now, to remove any local grievance, make a hazardous 
 inroad on the numbers, character and security, of that august tribunal, 
 which is the palladium of all the States, which is consecrated by the 
 constitution, and all the best theories of free government, and in 
 whose supervisory duties all now enjoy an equal share, and for the 
 blushing honors of whose bench all now stand in equal competition. 
 
 The only remaining ground of complaint, concerning the system in 
 these six new States, is, that it is not in itself so excellent as the 
 system which prevails in the other States. But if it be as similar and 
 as good as their physical condition, the proportionate rights of all, and 
 the legitimate application of the circuit system, will permit, though not 
 perhaps the best in the abstract, or not the best for other conditions of 
 society, then the bill is on this point likewise unsupported. 
 
 That it is thus similar and good, we have already attempted to 
 show. Without a repetition of former remarks, may I be permitted to 
 suggest one or two additional considerations concerning this position ? 
 
 Let gentlemen advert to the judicial establishments in their 
 respective States, and tell me, where they possess counties new and 
 thinly settled, whether the terms and structure of their courts are not 
 
JUDICIARY OF THE UNITED STATES. 51 
 
 in these counties somewhat different ? — not subjecting their own 
 Supreme Courts to fluctuation and innovation, to make the system 
 identical in every county, but adapting their local system in some 
 degree to the physical condition of the people. I beseech the House, 
 also, not to take for granted that, under such a modified system, there 
 is in the system itself any obstacle to as good and as equal an admin- 
 istration of justice as the structure of human society and the relative 
 rights of each portion will permit. The questions of fact are all set- 
 tled, by similar juries ; and the questions of law, though decided in the 
 first instance by judges inferior in rank or number, are, or may be, car- 
 ried, by appeal or writ of error, to the same higher tribunal winch acts 
 for the whole. There is a difference, I admit ; but it is only a differ- 
 ence between the correctness of the district judge, — who is selected, on 
 the favorite theory of gentlemen, from his own district, with all the lex 
 loci and lex non scripta of his region of country, — and the correctness 
 of the circuit judge; and which difference, in all cases of any magnitude, 
 can be corrected by some additional expense and cost in appeals or 
 writs of error. 
 
 I concede that this additional expense and cost, though in a few cases 
 only, is still to be avoided, if it can be avoided on any equal principles, 
 and without danger to the great and general tribunals which dispense 
 justice to the whole. But surely no person can be so unreasonable as 
 to ask its removal in such a manner as to put those tribunals in jeop- 
 ardy, and to incur disproportionate expense to the whole Union, to remedy 
 inconveniences which all small populations on new and large territories 
 have always been accustomed to endure. 
 
 The argument might be urged, with much greater strength, to the 
 removal of every other inconvenience arising from the physical condi- 
 tion of any part of our country, — as the fewness of mechanics, bad- 
 ness of roads, small number of schools, and distance from markets, — 
 because these would only require a disproportionate share of our joint 
 funds, without, perhaps, putting at hazard any of our important insti- 
 tutions, like that of the Supreme Court. 
 
 So, as a mere badge of State uniformity or State pride, it might 
 more safely and forcibly be argued that as many light-houses and 
 custom-house officers should be provided for each State, without regard 
 to its commerce ; and, as respects the wisdom of the bill, on the ground 
 of mere equality in system, what planter, with two hundred acres of 
 land and ten workmen, would insist upon only using the spade system 
 of husbandry, because in and of itself most excellent, and because that 
 system had been found appropriate where a planter with two hundred 
 acres of land had one hundred workmen 1 
 
 All legislation is only an approximation to the theories of abstract 
 right and equality. It must be modified by an infinite number of cir- 
 cumstances. Every wise man, in common life, acts invariably accord- 
 ing to the diversity of means, interests and condition of himself and 
 
52 JUDICIARY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 those around him, and any different system of equality in legislation 
 is only the levelling, indiscriminate equality of a church-yard. 
 
 But if such an equality is to be pushed, at every sacrifice and danger, 
 in respect to a judicial system, this bill is a perfect felo-de-se, on that 
 hypothesis ; because, as before shown, it violates such an equality in 
 judicial representation as much as it enforces such an equality in 
 system. Nor is it any answer to this view of the subject, that the 
 executive may select the new judges from the north and east, when, 
 in the same breath, gentlemen argue that they are wanted on account 
 of their knowledge of local law in the west ; when by the bill they are 
 compelled to reside in the west ; when all their local duties are to be 
 performed there, and when we witness around us such splendid speci- 
 mens of western and south-western talent, that must be overlooked in 
 order to import into the rich valley of the Mississippi, from some 
 eastern manufactory, a cargo of foreign judges. 
 
 Again: if this system is to be extended to the six new States, 
 because most excellent, without regard to the effect of such an exten- 
 sion on the Supreme Court itself, and without regard to population or 
 expense, then why not extend it to every part of the Union now des- 
 titute of it? When gentlemen talk of equality and broad American 
 grounds, — when they, with indignation and justice, disdain sectional 
 views and favoritism, — why create new circuits for the people in these 
 new States, and not at the same time create them for more than three 
 times as many people, now destitute of such circuits, in western New 
 York, Pennsylvania and Virginia? Is not this straining at a gnat, 
 and swallowing a camel ? For, if the circuit system of itself be superior, 
 and therefore, without regard to other circumstances, is to be extended 
 to the west and south-west, for the safety and advantage of about half 
 a million of people now destitute, then surely a million and a half of 
 people in the three great Atlantic States are equally entitled to its 
 securities and blessings. Are not the lives and liberties of any of the 
 constituents of the chairman as much endangered now, by a trial before 
 one judge, as he feelingly described those of the people of Illinois to 
 be ? Is not this as cogent a reason for a change, a speedy and radical 
 change, in Pennsylvania as in Alabama ? And though the honorable 
 chairman might recollect that life is constantly tried in England before 
 one judge, whose system has been so much eulogized, and also that it 
 can be so tried, under our present system, in any part of the Union, in 
 the absence of the circuit judge, — and that the jury in such trials, pass- 
 ing on both the law and the facts, are the great safeguard of the citizen, 
 — yet, admitting that a change in this respect is indispensable, it should 
 be made in the old as well as the new States ; because, reversing his 
 own language, can it be questioned that life, liberty and property, are 
 as valuable in the old as in the new States ? It is no answer to this 
 reasoning, that Circuit Courts now exist in some parts of Pennsylvania 
 or Virginia ; for those courts no more secure and benefit the lives, 
 liberties and property, of the other parts, than they benefit the people 
 
JUDICIARY OF THE UNITED STATES. 53 
 
 of Missouri. So, if other modes of relief can be suggested for all these 
 old States, other modes can also be suggested for all the new States. 
 So, if the old States have not petitioned for relief on this ground, 
 neither have the new ones. 
 
 Carry the argument one step further. Why not, on this ground, 
 extend the circuits to the Territories 1 Are not their inhabitants flesh 
 of our flesh ? Are they not Americans ? Are not their properties, 
 lives and liberties, as .valuable to them — to use again the words of the 
 chairman — as ours are to us ? Have they not men as competent for 
 judges of the Supreme Court, when one of them is now spoken of as 
 a prominent candidate 1 Shall they not enjoy equal protection, and a 
 judicial system of equal excellence? Thus, pursuing an abstract 
 theory to all its legitimate consequences, its fallacy, when applied 
 without any regard to the different conditions, rights and duties, of all, 
 becomes most manifest. 
 
 One more ground was mentioned, by the chairman, as a justification 
 for this increase of the judges of the Supreme Court, which, since the 
 debate on Friday last, as to the union of Ohio and Kentucky in one 
 circuit, will probably not be much relied on. 
 
 It was that these judges were wanted on account of the peculiar and 
 extraordinary mass of judicial business in the west and south-west. 
 If this mass of business in fact existed, it might be answered that we 
 have, as already shown, devoted an equal and proportionate number 
 of judges and judicial expenditure to its discharge. But, as I am one 
 of the last persons to withhold relief where actual grievances exist, or 
 to begrudge to any quarter of the Confederacy any expense, any num- 
 ber of judges, or any kind of system, safe to the whole Confederacy, 
 and necessary to perform the business properly and permanently 
 devolving on our courts, I will detain the House a moment to ascer- 
 tain how the truth is as to this supposed mass of business, and to 
 ascertain how necessary and safe for its discharge may be this proposed 
 increase of judges on the bench of the Supreme Court. Here I con- 
 fide implicitly in the local knowledge of gentlemen from those nine 
 States, as to the character and amount of the business. I will stand 
 on the utmost verge of courtesy, and take the highest estimate of one 
 of the warmest friends of the bill. 
 
 That estimate gives to Louisiana and Illinois eighty actions each 
 per year ; to Alabama, sixty ; to Indiana and Mississippi, forty each ; 
 and to Missouri, thirty. These are the six States without the circuit 
 system, and will first be considered. The largest of them, on the 
 highest supposition, brings but eighty actions a year into our courts ; 
 and this, at the liberal portion of one-third for trial, which is as many 
 as the chairman himself supposed, last Friday, in the other States, 
 would leave on the most crowded dockets nearly two weeks for each 
 trial. If this be an extraordinary mass of business, it surely is an 
 extraordinary small mass for any one court in any section of the 
 Union; and so far from rendering necessary more judges to des- 
 5* 
 
54 JUDICIARY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 patch it, would hardly keep the mould and cobwebs from gathering 
 over the present judges. As regards, then, the whole six States, all 
 who have not now a circuit, and the attendance of a judge of the 
 Supreme Court, the increase of judges, on account of the mass of busi- 
 ness, is entirely useless. The bill, as respects them, on this account, 
 rests upon sand. 
 
 Mark, then, sir, the conclusion as to the other three States. Though 
 they now have a circuit, and the attendance of a judge of the Supreme 
 Court, yet we are to create three more circuits and three more judges, 
 on account of a mass of business, which, if it exist at all, must exist in 
 those three States alone. 
 
 Again: we are to create some of these circuits and judges in 
 Alabama or Missouri, for example, when the business itself exists only 
 in Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee. Or, to show distinctly the charac- 
 ter of the bill on this hypothesis, we are, on account of a pressure of 
 business solely in the present seventh circuit, to create three new 
 judges and new circuits, and yet, by this very bill, not assign to the 
 States within that circuit the whole labors of one additional judge. I 
 appeal to the bill itself, on this point, as conclusive. Ohio and Ken- 
 tucky now form one circuit, and one additional judge is to do the busi- 
 ness, not only of Tennessee, but Alabama. It was settled here, no 
 longer since than last Friday, and by almost an unanimous vote, and 
 on the statements of the very friends of the bill, that no pressure of 
 business existed there which required any more additional labor. 
 
 The business, though nominally large, was said to be of such a 
 character that the decision of one cause frequently governed the dispo- 
 sition of fifty more. Much of the accumulation on the dockets had, 
 in some of the States, arisen from transient causes, — such as the ill- 
 ness of a judge, the sudden operation of some statute of limitation, the 
 enactment of some relief system, the difficulties between rival courts, 
 the suits growing out of the United States Bank controversy, and 
 various other causes, which need not be enumerated, and on the 
 merits of which I offer no opinion whatever, — but all of which estab- 
 lished, beyond doubt, that the accumulation of business was temporary, 
 and that their dockets would soon diminish to one or two hundred cases 
 each. 
 
 The western gentlemen also admitted, with their usual frankness, 
 and manliness, that most of this business was that where our courts 
 have concurrent, and not exclusive jurisdiction ; where suitors might 
 enter the State courts with it, but prefer the United States courts. 
 
 Reasoning a priori, every lawyer would have arrived at the same 
 conclusion ; because the business of exclusive jurisdiction, such as relates 
 to custom-house bonds, salvage, seizures for breaches of the revenue 
 laws, libels for seamen's wages, &c, must, on account of our com- 
 merce, exist in a greater proportion on the eastern than the western 
 side of the Alleghanies. And yet, the courts of the former seldom 
 exhibit a docket of more than one or two hundred actions. 
 
JUDICIARY OF THE UNITED STATES. 55 
 
 The cases of concurrent jurisdiction, though less numerous in the 
 extreme east than in the west, are still frequent, on account of disputes 
 as to land owned by non-residents, and on account of numerous debts 
 due to the non-resident merchant-kings of the New England metropolis. 
 But almost every action of this kind there enters the State courts. 
 It will doubtless enter the State courts in the west more frequently as 
 their institutions grow older ; and it could not be asked, without an ill 
 grace, that we should make great and permanent changes in our judi- 
 ciary to transact a description of business not wisely confided to it in the 
 first instance, — as most forcibly shown by the chairman of that com- 
 mittee, — not in analogy to the correlative powers of the other depart- 
 ments of our general government, and not connected with those mari- 
 time questions, those disputes between States, those controversies under 
 the acts of Congress, those difficulties in respect to the agents of for- 
 eign nations, and those supervisory powers over constitutional construc- 
 tions, which would seem to form the only legitimate employment of a 
 federal judiciary. 
 
 When we reflect for a moment, and find, also, that this accumula- 
 tion of business is confined to only two or three States, is artificial and 
 transient in its character, and that, even now, the plaintiffs, who are 
 always shrewd enough concerning their own interests, select our courts 
 in preference to the State courts, for business which they might prose- 
 cute in either, we surely cannot be justified in still greater comity, at 
 a large increase of expense, and in a manner producing a radical and 
 alarming change in the quorum, members, and operations, of the 
 Supreme Court itself. I forbear to dwell longer on those general 
 grounds which have at different times, and by different persons, been 
 adduced for this great increase of judges. 
 
 After a consideration of them with that care and impartiality which 
 the importance of the subject demands, will any person avow that they 
 exhibit a grievance which requires for its removal this extraordinary 
 remedy ? Whatever may be the disorder, is this the safest specific 1 
 A few other circumstances connected with this proposed remedy must 
 not be overlooked. It can conduce but little to the despatch of busi- 
 ness in the seventh circuit. That despatch, after all which has or can 
 be said, is probably the desideratum there now the most urgent and 
 momentous. But, whether the business be concurrent and transient, 
 or otherwise, — be it better performed than in the State courts, or not, — 
 be the call for this bill from creditors and great land-owners, or from the 
 debtor and hardy pioneer, who, by its operation, will be dragged into 
 courts more distant and expensive than their own tribunals, — yet all 
 its new circuits and judges are insufficient materially to promote 
 despatch, without a division of some of the western districts. Another 
 bill on your table, reported by the judiciary committee, to establish 
 another district in Kentucky, is, on this point;, perfect demonstration. 
 Every lawyer knows that the creation of twenty new circuits can in no 
 degree affect the district docket; and it can only indirectly affect the 
 
56 JUDICIABY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 circuit docket, because even now the Circuit Court at each term can 
 continue any desirable length of time, as the district judge can hold it 
 after the necessary departure of the circuit judge. Without dividing 
 a district, then, no greater despatch is obtained, except indirectly, 
 unless two judges, present the whole term, can transact more business 
 than one judge. This is neither true in theory nor practice, 
 
 If the last bill, creating a new district and new district judge in 
 Kentucky, should alone pass, and that judge be clothed with circuit 
 powers, it seems to me that the great root of every actual grievance 
 from the accumulation -of business would be removed. Nor would it 
 seem altogether decorous for either of the States in that circuit to 
 insist that such a remedy was oppressive or mortifying, to taunt such a 
 judge with the title of Land Commissioner, and brand such a system 
 as derogatory to their State pride, when it is the identical system now 
 in force in three of the oldest and largest members of the Union, and 
 is not deemed derogatory to the pride of such States as the Ancient 
 Dominion, as the rich inheritance of Penn, and as what may be, for 
 aught I know, both the Rome and Carthage of our Confederacy. 
 
 It appears to me to have been an error of opinion, or in facts, for 
 the chairman of the committee, in the history of our various judicial 
 changes, painted by him in such glowing colors, to suppose that some 
 precedent existed for this great increase of the Supreme Court. The 
 first change in our judiciary, in A. D. 1793, when the attendance of 
 two judges of the Supreme Court twice a year, in each of the then 
 existing circuits, was found too laborious, lessened their circuit duties, 
 rather than increased the number of judges. Nor was the remedy 
 adopted in A. D. 1801 like the present bill. That, he himself dis- 
 claims, with abhorrence. Nor, in the great judicial revolution of A. 
 D. 1802, was the number of judges increased ; and, though in A. D. 
 1807 one was added to the bench, and, as I think, incautiously, yet 
 the addition did not, like this, either alter the quorum of the court, or 
 double its original numbers ; and thus did not, in and of itself, jeopard 
 all its important decisions, and lay the axe at the root of all its boasted 
 independence. I wish to be distinctly understood on this point. In 
 A. D. 1807, the old quorum was four. If three judges agreed in a 
 decision, it was final ; because, if one of the four dissented, and both his 
 absent brethren agreed with him in opinion, they were not a majority, 
 so as to be able to reverse the decision in any like case. This reversal 
 could happen in only one event, after the addition of one judge in A. 
 D. 1807. But now, if four of the new quorum agree in a decision, it 
 has a double, yea, more than quadruple chance of reversal ; because, 
 if any two who agreed in the first decision be absent, and their places 
 be supplied by any two of those absent, the decision can be overruled. 
 This great addition, also, of a number equal to a majority of the old 
 quorum, is an addition of just enough to reverse any past decision, if 
 in ordinary contingencies only a quorum attended, and the appointing 
 and legislative power now wished to reverse the principle of any such 
 
JUDICIARY OF THE UNITED STATES. 57 
 
 decision. But such could not be the effect or tendency of the addition 
 in A. D. 180T. Where, then, is the precedent? And how danger- 
 ous, and, indeed, fatal, may be the operation of the present increase, 
 — of the present contagious example ! But something more of this 
 hereafter. 
 
 The chairman of the committee undertook to vindicate this great 
 increase on another ground, which is by no means to be overlooked, — 
 a ground connected with the general duties of the Supreme Court 
 itself, — by insisting that it would tend to remove the great delay which 
 now attends their administration of justice in the apartment below us. 
 Tins would be an object worthy of some great and general change, if 
 it could not otherwise be accomplished. Dignus vindice nodus. 
 Because it would mitigate or remove an evil not sectional, but national, 
 — an evil affecting the whole twenty-four States, as well as these nine ; 
 — affecting the Supreme Court, not in some of its local duties, but in 
 the exercise of its high original and appellate powers, — powers more 
 peculiarly devolved on it by the constitution than any circuit ones, 
 and powers of infinitely more consequence to this whole Confederacy 
 than those ever before devolved upon any judicial tribunal in the annals 
 of history. If the judges are not allowed leisure for these duties, the 
 head and heart of the system are palsied, and objects only secondary 
 are made paramount to primary ones. 
 
 But, notwithstanding the chairman calls the delay here "a great 
 and growing evil," and deserving speedy removal, and justifies this 
 bill, as tending to effect that object, yet a little consideration must 
 convince every person that his expectations are delusive. He observed 
 that the new circuits will enable the judges to attend here earlier, and 
 thus a longer session can be held. But the new circuits manifestly 
 cannot affect, in this respect, only a single judge of the present court ; 
 and his attendance here earlier could just as easily be caused by alter- 
 ing the session in his circuit, and without this great addition to the 
 Supreme Court, as with this addition. Again : the earlier session of a 
 month is not provided for in this bill, but in another ; and the passage 
 of that bill alone will produce all the effect which this earlier session 
 of a month can produce. Indeed, it will produce more effect on the 
 delay, without the present bill, than with it ; because the chairman, in 
 another part of his remarks, has properly argued that the circuit sys- 
 tem in the six new States will, doubtless, occasion many more appeals 
 to the Supreme Court than are now taken, on account of the division 
 in opinion between the judges. Thus, of course, must it increase the 
 docket of the Supreme Court. 
 
 Under these circumstances, a little calculation upon admitted facts 
 must show the total ineflicacy of a session only a month longer in the 
 year to discharge all the business which will occupy the docket of the 
 Supreme Court under the present bill. The number of actions on that 
 docket has lately ranged from one hundred and eighty to one hundred 
 and ninety. Only from forty to sixty are annually disposed of. This, 
 
58 JUDICIARY OE THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 in the present sessions of about six weeks, makes the inevitable delay 
 about three years. 
 
 If the business of that court was stationary, an addition of four 
 weeks to the term would not remove the delay under four or five 
 years. But if, increasing in the natural increase of population, wealth 
 and territory, or if increased by only three causes per year, from each 
 of the six new States, by means of the change of system as before men- 
 tioned, more than the whole four weeks will be consumed in the additional 
 business ; and what is called by the chairman, even now, a great and 
 growing evil, and by the celebrated memorial of the Nashville bar, even 
 now, "a great delay," will become, by this increase of circuits and 
 judges, a still greater delay, a still greater evil. " A great delay," 
 sir, not in the business of a single circuit, like the seventh, but in the 
 business of the whole federation; — "a great delay," a violation of 
 magna charta, not in litigations of subordinate interest, but in contro- 
 versies large enough to come up hither from the extremes of the 
 Union, and momentous to individual rights, or controlling in their 
 defined orbits States otherwise sovereign; — " a great delay," perad- 
 venture, at times, to deform the moral sublimity of one of the grandest 
 scenes in a government of laws and not of men, by producing the 
 entire ruin of some humble suitor, 
 
 " Some village Hampden, who, with dauntless breast, 
 The little tyrant of his fields withstood," 
 
 or who, in a just reliance on his contract or his vested rights, has dared 
 to hold at bay not merely private oppression, or the mightiest member 
 of our Confederacy, but the Confederacy itself 
 
 Again, sir: this increase of judges will, on another principle, tend to 
 inflame, rather than lessen, this " growing evil." Because, on the true 
 theory of a single judicial body, during a single session, it will not be 
 pretended that five of the judges can examine one cause while the other 
 five examine another; or that ten can hear more causes, read more cases, 
 or be oftener convinced, within a term, than seven can. On the con- 
 trary, all theory and experience so conclusively show that a larger body 
 of this kind will act slower, I shall not stop to fatigue the Senate with 
 further illustrations upon this point. 
 
 Another objection to this increase of judges is its tendency to lessen 
 the ability of their decisions. 
 
 On this subject I am not disposed to be captious, and to disagree 
 from the chairman in his position, that a greater number of judges might 
 introduce upon the bench a more thorough knowledge^ a greater num- 
 ber of our codes of State law. But I do deny that any remedy comports 
 with this ground of increase, unless one judge is selected from each 
 State in the Union, so that the peculiarities of each may be thus 
 understood ; or, unless the peculiarities of local law in the east and 
 north are as fully represented and understood on the bench as those of 
 the west and south-west. 
 
JUDICIARY OF THE UNITED STATES. 59 
 
 But as to the knowledge of general jurisprudence, which is alone 
 brought to the decision of three-fourths of the causes, and is a sine qua 
 7ion in the examination and decision of all, it surely is not likely to be 
 increased on any bench, after a selection of four or five persons most 
 distinguished for legal attainments. Such is the structure of different 
 minds, such their habits, associates, and exertions, that in any given 
 circle, whether embracing a County, State, or Confederacy of States, 
 the very highest in intellectual power in any profession are few in 
 number, and a marked discrimination, after selecting a very few, can 
 be drawn by all. 
 
 After such a selection for any bench, every additional member is an 
 injury, rather than an aid, to the mass of professional science, because 
 a portion of the time of those more highly gifted must be diverted to 
 the instruction and conviction of those who are inferior. 
 
 While I am willing to admit, that, on this reasoning, no precise num- 
 ber for a court can be fixed, as unerringly the best, under all circum- 
 stances, yet it will, on reference to our own recollection of different 
 judicial bodies, satisfy us that an increase of them beyond three or four 
 is not likely, in most cases, to increase the intellectual strength of the 
 whole body. 
 
 But the increase operates in a still different manner on the members 
 of a court, so as, I trust, to convince all of its injurious tendency upon 
 the general ability of each of the members ; and is, therefore, not to be 
 made beyond the most usual, approved, and safe number for a judicial 
 body, unless some separate extraordinary advantage is to be obtained by 
 it, sufficient to counterbalance all the incidental and obvious evils from 
 such an increase. 
 
 The operation of which I now speak is upon the industry, fidelity, 
 and, if I may be pardoned a more comprehensive word, the responsi- 
 bility, of each judge. A single judge, undoubtedly, like a single 
 executive, insures the highest exertions on his part, and gives to the 
 public over him the strongest control. But if the number be 
 increased to only two, so as to remedy a failure of justice, in his 
 absence, from illness or accident, they may disagree, and thus cause a 
 still further failure ; and hence three is often preferred, or even four, 
 on account of its requiring a greater proportion of the whole to form a 
 quorum, and on account of its insuring a decision when only a quorum 
 is present and one disagrees, which cannot happen with a quorum of 
 three. To attain objects so important, and not on account of any 
 quaintness as to any particular number, responsibility has been in some 
 degree diminished by increasing the court beyond one member, but 
 still taking care not to go beyond those objects, and to make four 
 judges the extreme number in the courts of common law, in that 
 country whence we derive most of our institutions. When you exceed 
 four, you must require express legislation as to the quorum, or the unan- 
 imity of more than a majority in any decision ; else a door is opened to 
 contradictory decisions in the same court, without any change in the 
 
60 JUDICIARY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 members of it, or in the opinions of any member. Thus, in five, the 
 quorum being three, two of them may decide one way to-day, and to- 
 morrow the two absentees, attending and uniting with the dissentient, 
 may decide directly the other way ; and every addition to the numbers 
 of the court, as ably shown by the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. 
 Tazewell), increases, in a most alarming progression, this danger, and 
 also diminishes the general responsibility of each judge. If you cannot 
 by legislation require as a quorum more than a majority of any court, 
 as contended by the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Mills), or 
 if you refuse to do it, as on Friday last, either circumstance fur- 
 nishes a most conclusive argument against any further increase of the 
 judges. 
 
 Gentlemen have talked of the Court of Exchequer Chamber as a 
 precedent for as large a number as ten, without incurring danger. But 
 almost all the duties of that court are consultory and advisory on ques- 
 tions adjourned from other courts, and on which the judgments are 
 entered by those other courts. Moreover, the judges of that court are 
 not commissioned as ten judges of that court esprit du corps, but still 
 continue as judges of distinct courts of only four in number, and acting 
 in the Exchequer Chamber together but seldom, and with no leaning 
 or dependence on each other as a whole body, so as to weaken their 
 responsibility as members of their separate courts. 
 
 Concerning the House of Lords, also, so often cited as a precedent 
 for a large number without danger, the analogy entirely fails, because 
 that House acts by legislative rules in the making and the reversal of 
 its decisions, — is a body legislative in the tenure of its office, legislative 
 in its accountability, and altogether aristocratical in its whole organiza- 
 tion. Are we to be urged to create a similar body in this republic ? 
 and to believe, as Lord Anglesey once argued, that because "the 
 Lords were judices nati" and not " under salary," they were "there- 
 fore in reason the freer judges " ? "At this inimitable piece of 
 lordly reasoning, it is said the Commons were weak enough to be 
 vexed beyond measure." So of the New York Court of Errors, 
 referred to by the chairman so emphatically as a precedent. That 
 court also acts by legislative rules, and thus is not exposed to the dif- 
 ficulties, as to a quorum and fluctuating decisions, which are incident to 
 a large body solely judicial. The tenure of its office is also legislative, 
 so as to give a different hold over their responsibility ; and at the same 
 time their salaries are small, and subject to reduction. 
 
 I shall dwell but a moment on the analysis of the injurious effect 
 upon each member of a large increase of the number of any collective 
 body. One of the committee (Mr. Holmes) has partially admitted 
 this effect. Any single labor, to be performed jointly by ten (and so 
 must be performed judicial duties in the Supreme Court), naturally 
 appears to impose less upon each than if it was to be performed by 
 seven. Each one, also, in his conduct, stands out in less bold relief to 
 the public eye. Each is, from the well-known frailty of man, inclined 
 
JUDICIARY OF THE UNITED STATES. 61 
 
 to think he may nod with greater safety while so many others watch. 
 Do we not daily witness this, in some degree, in every large legislative 
 body 1 Subjects from particular quarters of country — subjects con- 
 nected with particular professions and tastes — intrusted almost 
 exclusively to particular members 1 This is human nature ; and we 
 can as easily escape from ourselves as escape from its influence, though 
 under much greater checks and responsibilities as legislators than as 
 judges. 
 
 Again : admitting that in theory each person, in a large as well as 
 smaller body, is equally subjected by law to censure or punishment, 
 yet it is settled, even to a proverb, that a large body, either from a 
 consciousness of its increased power, or from a parasite propensity to 
 lean on others, or from any other causes, which I cannot now stop to 
 suggest, will at times adopt measures at which a smaller body of their 
 own number would blush. 
 
 But the tendency of this great increase in the number of judges 
 of the Supreme Court ought to excite peculiar caution and alarm, 
 under our present constitution. Because, under that, beside the 
 smallness of number properly and customarily belonging to a judicial 
 body, we have retained no check whatever upon judicial officers, 
 except in impeachment : this, in our virtuous state of society, is, as 
 the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Johnson) cited from Mr. Jef- 
 ferson, a mere scare-crow ; and in respect to judicial science, industry, 
 and talent, never was intended to operate at all, and always must 
 prove entirely visionary. 
 
 Other governments have generally provided other stimulants and 
 securities for these qualities. Securities against an undue devotion 
 to the power which creates, feeds, and alone can advance higher, the 
 judges ; securities against incapacity, ignorance, and dotage, in judges. 
 In six of our State constitutions, they are provided by making the 
 judges eligible for only a term of years ; in ten of them, they are 
 provided by making them liable to removal by address, as is done in 
 England ; and in almost all of them are they provided by making 
 their salaries subject to reduction, as is also the case in England. 
 
 These remarks are not made because I admire less than others lofty 
 sentiments of judicial independence. I do not say, with two or three 
 other gentlemen on Friday last, that I am willing to alter the tenure 
 of judicial office. But I do say, that, with the views of those gentle- 
 men, it is difficult to comprehend how they can consent, by increasing 
 the judges, to make still weaker our present checks, and to diminish 
 a responsibility which they now consider too small. 
 
 No, sir ; I make these remarks because, in securing judicial inde- 
 pendence by a tenure of office virtually for life, by salaries large and 
 undiminishable, and by exemption from removal on address, we have 
 palpably gone beyond all ancient precedent or any modern example 
 among transatlantic nations; and in such a new, if not hazardous 
 experiment, I will not consent to go still further, and transcend any 
 6 
 
62 JUDICIARY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 precedent, in any age or nation, by making a body, exclusively judicial, 
 as large as ten, with no other checks or responsibility than are now 
 devolved upon our Supreme Court. Gentlemen seem to forget the 
 checks, securities, and responsibilities, of the large bodies to which 
 they refer ; and I now propose to them, frankly, that if they will cite 
 to me a single body, solely judicial, and under no other checks and 
 responsibilities than our Supreme Court, — whether in republics, 
 monarchies, or despotisms, — that I will, at once, withdraw my motion. 
 No, sir : we are launching our bark upon an unknown sea ; we are 
 making an experiment, and, I fear, a rash one, in our highest judicial 
 tribunal, merely to remove a local grievance; we seem — I hope I may 
 be pardoned the expression — almost sporting with the momentous sub- 
 ject of judicial responsibility. 
 
 We knowingly and coolly proceed to lessen it, while avowing that it 
 is already too small. I had always supposed, sir, that one essential 
 feature in a republic was extreme caution, lest those who receive 
 power should forget right. That its governing principle was checks, 
 constant checks, and eternal vigilance. And, although I am ready to 
 admit, that, with no constitutional or external restraint or stimulant 
 whatever, some men may be so happily formed, and so singularly 
 endowed, as to continue, while in office, to improve all their original 
 excellences ; yet, in the sagacious language of a recently deceased 
 emperor, they can only be called "a happy accident." The argu- 
 ment, if pushed to its legitimate extent, would justify us in abolishing 
 all checks, and in throwing everything, with unlimited confidence, and 
 in the true spirit of despotism, into the iron hands of power. 
 
 Place a judge in such a condition, and though, in the range of 
 possibility or chance, he may continue to exercise equal diligence 
 and fidelity, yet all experience and reasoning render it probable that 
 his attention will be less general, and his energies less highly excited ; 
 that, in truth, he will be likely to degenerate, and, by being placed in a 
 body legislative in number, but without legislative checks and excite- 
 ments, he will naturally become, not, to be sure, in our state of society, 
 so livid a curse as Jeffries, but a political partisan of the power which 
 made and maintains him ; a parasite for secretaryships and foreign 
 embassies ; or, if of a less busy temper, an idle dotard, or a servile 
 ipse dixit to some ambitious associate. What is here anticipation, is 
 now history of a similar officer of a similar temperament. " He minds 
 his ease, and lets things go how they will ; if he can have his eight 
 thousand dollars per annum, and a game at 1' ombre, he is well." 
 
 Again : such an increase will not only tend to change the charac- 
 ter of the individuals, but of the whole body. It will become a body 
 of a legislative rather than judicial character, like the House of Lords 
 and New York Court of Errors, without any redeeming legislative 
 check and security, such as exist in those tribunals. 
 
 By the increased numerical force and more widely diffused per- 
 sonal influence of such a court, their decisions will acquire weight, 
 
JUDICIARY OF THE UNITED STATES. 63 
 
 not so much in proportion to their interest, learning, accuracy, and 
 strength (and which we have shown will probably be diminished), as 
 in proportion to the great number, rank, and individual popularity, of 
 the members. Thus shall we impart to a court, which some of the 
 committee have already pronounced too powerful, an additional and 
 at the same time most dangerous power, in a tribunal so little amenable 
 to the scrutiny of public opinion, and of the coordinate departments of 
 government. Reflect a minute on the probable consequences of such 
 a measure. It will tend to mar one of the greatest beauties in judicial 
 decision — their reliance upon mind, and mind alone, for success. 
 Next, it will tend to sap the very foundation of all just confidence in 
 lofty judicial integrity, by opening a door to that lamentable state, 
 when judgments of a grand judiciary of the Union may be considered 
 as mere sectional questions, settled on eastern or western votes, 
 according to the majority on the bench from either quarter ; questions 
 settled only for a season, as party victories or political expedients ; and 
 questions settled with such diminished science, research, and vigor, in 
 the judgments themselves, as in some instances to be obeyed only 
 because their authors exercise command over the prison and the gal- 
 lows. 
 
 Especially, in a government of laws, is it to be discountenanced that 
 any municipal body should be made so large as to confer on their 
 doings a popularity derived from numbers and personal rank, without 
 imposing on that body rigid and efficient responsibility ; and least of 
 all should be made so large any judicial body, and particularly one 
 like the Supreme Court, where causes so delicate and momentous 
 yearly come to judgment, — where the parties in interest, sometimes 
 empires within themselves, cannot and should not be satisfied with 
 anything short of the fullest scrutiny, the widest range of study, the 
 sternest impartiality, the most elevated talents, all converged upon the 
 questions in controversy, and then judgments pronounced, which, by 
 their inherent excellence alone, may be destined to live, like much of 
 the civil and common law, long after their authors have mouldered 
 from memory. Thus, to be sure, they may operate more slowly and 
 with les3 eclat; but, in the end, if they deserve it, triumphantly, 
 like the silent labors of many master-minds in correcting the abuses- 
 of government, and in freeing from restraints and monopolies the 
 commerce of the world. Thus, alone, too, may some of their adjudi- 
 cations chance to become parts of the living and speaking law of every 
 free people, and to accord well with that still wider and higher law, of 
 which Hooker says, " all things in heaven and earth do her homage; 
 the very least as feeling her care, and the very greatest not exempt 
 from her power." 
 
 Another mischief, in this great increase of the judges, is, that, 
 should experience require a return to the former, or a less number, 
 under the adoption of some different system, you never can, by mere 
 legislation, remove judges of the Supreme Court from office. I speak 
 
64 JUDICIARY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 now of the most prevalent doctrine on this point. But you have no 
 power to remove them by address ; their office is not for a term of 
 years ; they are not incapacitated at any advanced age ; and nothing, 
 therefore, will be able to displace them, but the grim tyrant who 
 dethrones all. The gentleman on the committee from Maine does, 
 consequently, with great propriety, admit that this increase is an 
 experiment. How long should we pause upon the danger and magni- 
 tude of a similar experiment in the executive department, which, in 
 its structure and nature, is most kindred to the judiciary ? A propo- 
 sition to double the number of the executive would not only require 
 an entire change in the constitution, but what patient reflection and 
 long deliberation ! But now, in the judicial department, designed for 
 the greatest stability, a similar change is to be completed in the hurry 
 of a single session ; and with no useful effect from it, even in anticipa- 
 tion, but the removal of a grievance in the local administration of 
 justice in a single section of country. This removal can be effected 
 by other remedies, which have the sanction of experience, and are 
 entirely free from danger ; and yet, can gentlemen still insist upon 
 this experiment, so contrary to all experience, and so beset with the 
 most imminent dangers 1 
 
 The immediate consequence of adding to the Supreme Court, at 
 once, a number equal to one-half its original number, and equal to the 
 whole now necessary to pronounce any decision, and all this addition 
 to be made from one section of the country, it is not for me, at this 
 time, to prophesy. But nobody can be so purblind as not to see the 
 fatal example thus set to future Congresses, and to the different States 
 in our Union. Do gentlemen believe that, hereafter, equally plausible 
 apologies cannot be found for a further increase 1 They exist, even 
 now, in the east and north, for a still larger increase. Because, pass 
 this bill, and they are entitled to seven more judges, on some of the 
 equal principles advanced in support of this. Moreover, these apolo- 
 gies will multiply in numberless grounds in every section, if we now 
 pass this bill, and hereafter push into practice the boasted expansive- 
 ness of the principle it enforces. Mark the progress of it. At the 
 end of the first eighteen years of our government, to remove a local 
 grievance, we add a single judge to the bench of the Supreme Court ; 
 at the end of the next eighteen years, we are called on to add three 
 more; and, pursuing this course and ratio, at the end of the next 
 eighteen years, our Supreme Court will consist of nineteen judges ; 
 and, in only thirty-four years beyond that time, of one hundred and 
 twenty-seven judges. 
 
 Whether we shall then have reached a point to be stopped by the 
 fear of patronage or expense in so splendid a system, or whether we 
 then shall have reached a point of practical inconvenience, will depend 
 altogether upon the fashionable opinions of the age, on new judicial 
 theories, on plausible apologies, on analogies and exigencies. It may 
 then be justly said, as now, that the court is not so large as the 
 
JUDICIARY OF THE UNITED STATES. ()5 
 
 English House of Lords. Pardon me, sir ; we shall never, in such a 
 career, reach a point of fear or practical inconvenience, in the opinions 
 of any quarter of our Confederacy which may hereafter wish to 
 engraft some species of new fruit upon the old stock. Certainly not, 
 with power and influence in any profligate hands, that might seek 
 hereafter to raze to its foundation any principle consecrated by their 
 records. 
 
 I am not to be misunderstood : I speak solely of the tendency of 
 this principle, and of the use which may be made of it, under the 
 sanction of our precedent, when, at some ill-starred crisis, the ivinds 
 blow and the tvaves beat ; and not of the objects or motives which 
 now, in a political calm, may actuate any friend of the present bill. 
 
 I regret that the nature of the subject has forced me to make any 
 sectional allusions or examinations, with a view to ascertain the extent 
 and character of the sectional grievances the bill proposes to remedy. 
 It has been painful. But I am not accustomed to shrink from what 
 appears to me a duty ; and feel conscious that no honorable mind — no 
 person who knows my real feelings and opinions towards the regions 
 to be affected by the local operation of this bill — will suspect or impute 
 to me, towards them, anything short of the highest respect and the 
 kindest wishes. 
 
 If the passage of the other bill on your table, creating another 
 disti'ict in the seventh circuit, will not remove all their local griev- 
 ances, I am anxious that two new districts may be formed, with cir- 
 cuit powers ; and then the Supreme Court would remain untouched 
 and unendangered. 
 
 If this will not satisfy the just wishes and claims of the six new 
 States, I am willing to go further, and adopt any reasonable plan 
 placing the whole Union, in all respects, as to judicial system, on the 
 most perfect equality ; taking care, however, not to include in their 
 plan any addition to the Supreme Court. 
 
 But I have not embarrassed this motion with the details of any such 
 system, lest the force and bearing of the general principle and opera- 
 tion of this projected increase of judges of the Supreme Court might 
 be lost sight of in details alone. Yet, that the Senate may not be in 
 doubt as to my particular views concerning such a system, I will 
 merely suggest that, with only our present number of judges in the 
 Supreme Court, and the whole Union divided into seven circuits, with 
 new districts whenever necessary, a most perfect equality would be 
 caused, as to the system in the whole Union, in the three old Atlantic 
 States, as well as in the six new States ; and this enlargement of the 
 circuits would be in analogy to former changes, including Vermont, 
 Rhode Island, North Carolina, and Maine. 
 
 If to the district judges in each district were given circuit powers, 
 all the business could be transacted with despatch, and with the 
 addition of neither a host of circuit judges nor judges of the Supreme 
 Court. 
 
 6* 
 
66 JUDICIARY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 Once a year only the judge of the Supreme Court might attend in 
 each circuit, to sharpen their faculties and increase their knowledge of 
 local law, by aiding the district judge at nisi prius, and, at the same 
 time, if thought best, to act as an intermediate tribunal, on law ques- 
 tions, between the district judge and the Supreme Court. The district 
 judges are now competent to these duties, or should be made so ; the 
 law even now devolving these duties on them, in the absence of the 
 judge of the Supreme Court. 
 
 But a most important advantage in such a system would be what is 
 suggested by the Nashville memorial, and what most imperiously 
 demands consideration in any system, that it leaves to the judges of the 
 Supreme Court ample time for a grave and thorough and prompt 
 discharge of all their cardinal duties, as the great balance-wheel of the 
 whole Confederacy. 
 
 " Were the Circuit Courts held in each State or District but once a year, this would 
 enable the judges of the Supreme Court to hold their sessions for a much longer 
 period of time, to complete the business before them. The inconvenience of having 
 but one circuit a year would be much less than that arising from the great delay 
 which now exists in the disposition of causes in the Supreme Court." — JYashville 
 Memorial — Congressional Register, Ap. 75. 
 
 But this project is merely a hint en passarit. I am not tenacious 
 of any detail in any change which shall be necessary and well adapted 
 to remove all the existing grievances, if it shall not, at the same time, 
 make any dangerous inroad upon the Supreme Court itself, or create 
 a host of unnecessary judges at a time when, I sincerely believe, we 
 have ample judicial material, if duly distributed, for all the legitimate 
 business of our Federal Courts, without any increase whatever of 
 judges, except, perhaps, one or two new district ones in the Seventh 
 Court. 
 
 Under these views, I had intended to offer some further remarks 
 against this great increase of judges, on the general ground of its useless 
 multiplication of offices, its useless increase of executive patronage, 
 and its useless addition to our present vast expenditures. Not losing 
 sight, in these remarks, however, of the important consideration, that 
 we are now ten millions of people instead of three, twenty-four States 
 instead of thirteen, with a territory doubled, and a revenue trebled. 
 
 But I cannot permit myself, at this time, to weary longer the 
 patience of the Senate. I have invoked their attention to what I deem 
 the fatal tendency of the present measure, in the manner my sense of 
 duty has enjoined ; and if my warnings, like those of Cassandra, should 
 be disregarded, I shall only add, that, for the welfare of my country, 
 they will not, I hope, like hers, prove true. 
 
MISSION TO PANAMA. 67 
 
 MISSION TO PANAMA.* 
 
 I OWE some apology for the violation of an injunction of silence, 
 which circumstances had imposed upon me, in respect to the merits 
 of the proposed mission to Panama. I had, from the first perusal of 
 the documents, entertained but one opinion concerning its probable 
 danger and impolicy. The able report of the Committee on Foreign 
 Affairs, against its expediency, remained unanswered. An early 
 decision of the question seemed a favorite object with almost every 
 member; and, therefore, I had supposed that little benefit would 
 result from debate, until some gentleman, of a different opinion about 
 the mission, should attempt to shake the premises or conclusions of that 
 report. Nobody had made this attempt, till the worthy member from 
 Rhode Island, yesterday, entered the field of argument. Such a version 
 of the documents was then given, and some such principles of action 
 avowed, as tended to alarm my mind about the accuracy of its previous 
 convictions. Last evening, therefore, I devoted a few hours to the 
 re-perusal of the President's confidential communications, under a fixed 
 determination to renounce, as far as possible, every prepossession, and 
 follow, in my vote, whithersoever their facts and principles should 
 direct. For, I must confess that I never could acquiesce in the doc- 
 trine avowed by the ingenious gentleman before mentioned, that he 
 was not obliged to vote for the resolution on your table, although una- 
 ble to designate any error in the statements or reasonings of the report 
 on which the resolution rests. Will he inform us why we are endowed 
 with reason, unless it is to be our guide in action ? I must know him 
 too well to believe, for a moment, he could intend to countenance the 
 slavish position, that we, of course, should vote against any resolution 
 not conformable to executive recommendation. But his mistake, prob- 
 ably, consisted in this : conclusions which affirm facts contrary to all our 
 experience, — as that no external matter exists, though we are hourly 
 striking our feet and hands against external substances, — may well be 
 doubted, however ingenious the reasoning, because, the facts them- 
 selves being contradicted by indubitable testimony, there must be 
 some error in the data or inferences leading to such conclusions. But 
 the resolution, that it is not now expedient to send ministers to Pana- 
 ma, is not pretended to affirm any fact thus contradicted. So, con- 
 clusions which prostrate all distinctions between virtue and vice may 
 well justify us in doubting some of the statements or reasoning which 
 produce them, because they embody what is palpably contrary to the 
 moral law written on the hearts of all. But no one pretends that the 
 
 * Substance of a speech, delivered in the Senate of the United States, March 1st, 
 1826, on the following resolution, reported by the Committee on Foreign Affairs. 
 
 "Resolved, That it is not expedient, at this time, for the United States to send any 
 ministers to the Congress of American Nations, assembled at Panama." 
 
68 MISSION TO PANAMA. 
 
 resolution now uncier consideration possesses such a character ; and, 
 consequently, like most propositions in legislation and politics, it must 
 be assented to, unless some one can discover and describe a fallacy in 
 the grounds upon winch it has been vindicated. 
 
 The gentleman from Rhode Island seemed to possess a presenti- 
 ment that no real discovery of that kind could be made, else no apol- 
 ogy would exist for his resort to a doctrine so novel in a deliberative 
 assembly, so abhorrent to every feeling of rational and independent 
 beings. But I concede that he afterwards undertook to maintain that 
 this Congress at Panama was merely for the purpose of negotiating 
 treaties ; that it was to be a transient, unorganized assembly ; that it 
 would be destitute of any sovereign powers, and that its objects were 
 altogether peaceful. If this had been successfully maintained, many 
 of the positions in the report would still remain unanswered. But 
 others would, surely, be shaken ; and hence it becomes important to 
 ascertain, as accurately as may be, the real character of the Panama 
 Congress. It is manifest that this must be done without any regard 
 to its name as a " Congress," or to the title of its members as " plen- 
 ipotentiaries," on both of which so great stress has been laid. For 
 the word " Congress" is so equivocal as to be applicable either to a 
 body, in point of power, like our old " Congress" of A. D. 1775, or 
 like our present " Congress," now in session, or like the " Congress" 
 of Verona. And the word " plenipotentiaries" — meaning only per- 
 sons with full power to do what is assigned to them — is elastic 
 enough to include delegates for any objects whatever. Indeed, our 
 own cabinet seem to have considered it as mere India-rubber, or else 
 to have entertained no definite notions whatever on the subject ; since, 
 in the documents before us, they have called the persons to be sent 
 to this Congress by no less than six distinct titles. In one place, 
 "envoys extraordinary;" in another, "ministers plenipotentiary;" 
 another, "diplomatic agents;" another, "commissioners;" another, 
 "deputies," and in another, "representatives." — (See President's 
 nomination, December 26, 1825; Clay to Obregon, November 30, 
 1825, page 8 and 9, documents; Clay's Report, December 20, 1825, 
 page 4.*) 
 
 But the origin, object, actual power, and essential character, of the 
 assembly at Panama, — called by whatever name, or its members by 
 whatever title, — appear, in some degree, in the documents before us ; 
 and, far as may be, I admit, must be settled by the treaties which 
 created it, by the correspondence of the States interested, and by the 
 official declarations of our own cabinet. And when my friend from 
 South Carolina adverted to pamphlets, manifestoes, and reviews, upon 
 this point, it was only to exhibit more in detail what is essentially 
 disclosed in the confidential communications now before us. 
 
 * The documents referred to, and the pages, are those as printed originally and 
 confidentially by the Senate. 
 
MISSION TO PANAMA. 69 
 
 In a consideration of this question, I have not been surprised to 
 find that different gentlemen should fall into the ancient mistake of 
 the two dervises, about the true color of a column, painted and seen 
 differently on different sides of the column. Because, an inquiry into 
 the papers will show that probably this Congress will possess some 
 powers only temporary and some perpetual, some peaceful and some 
 belligerent, some limited and some sovereign; and, viewed in this 
 double capacity, amphibious, hermaphrodite, and not designed for 
 either of the above purposes exclusively, many discrepancies of opin- 
 ion may be reconciled, and the nature and consequences of the mission 
 will be better understood. 
 
 Thus, the permanency and the present belligerent character of the 
 Congress at Panama can hardly admit of a doubt, when we advert to 
 the treaties before us. By them, it was not to be a sudden and tran- 
 sient assembly, because it was provided for as early as July 6th, 1822, 
 by a treaty between Colombia and Peru, and without the slightest 
 intimation that it was ever to be dissolved. (See that treaty, in doc- 
 ument, page 27.) Again : to rebut any such inference, it is to be 
 assembled under what is there called " a compact of perpetual union, 
 league, and confederation (Article 2d) ; and of this ' perpetual 
 union ' the Congress of Panama is to be the great focus and organ. 
 Its main objects not only demonstrate this, but characterize its dura- 
 tion to be 'perpetual,' both in peace and in war;" because it is to be 
 "a council in the great conflicts, as a rallying-point in the common 
 dangers, as a faithful interpreter of their public treaties, when diffi- 
 culties occur, and as an umpire and conciliator in their disputes and 
 differences." (3d Article.) 
 
 How can gentlemen, then, talk of this as a mere collection, or Con- 
 gress of Plenipotentiaries, to negotiate a treaty of peace, of partition, 
 or commerce, like the Congress of Utrecht or "Verona, and then to 
 dissolve forever? No. Their duties are to interpret, rather than 
 make treaties ; to adjudge upon their internal disputes, and not to 
 form new codifications on national law; to be "a council" and " ral- 
 lying-point" in their present common "dangers," and common war 
 for "independence," and not a meeting of mere diplomatic agents to 
 adjust imposts on tonnage, or disputed questions of the "extent of 
 blockades." 
 
 Such duties give to the assembly, formed under such a "perpetual" 
 league, as lasting a character as belongs to any judicial or political 
 tribunal on earth ; because such duties cannot cease to find it employ- 
 ment till the passions and opinions of mankind cease to differ, under 
 some new millennium, or till, by some new compact, the league and 
 its representative assembly are expressly altered or dissolved. Of a 
 similar character, in many respects, have been the origin, progress, 
 and power, of other associations, — such as our Confederation of A. D. 
 17 74, the union of the Swiss Cantons, the Hanseatic League, and the 
 Amphictyonic Council of Greece. 
 
TO MISSION TO PANAMA. 
 
 The progress of this " perpetual confederation," and of the Con- 
 gress under it, since July 1822, confirms these conclusions concern- 
 ing the duration of the latter ; because, October 21, A. D. 1822, it 
 was extended, by a similar treaty, to Chili (doc. p. 28) ; March 15, 
 A. D. 1825, to Guatemala, and September 20, A. D. 1825, to Mexico 
 (doc. pp. 28, 35, 39). In each of them is the confederation expressed 
 to be "perpetual," and in each of them is the Congress provided for 
 under similar language as to its powers and duties. In some, it is 
 expressed that the confederation and Congress are to be enlarged till 
 they embrace "all the States of America formerly Spanish;" and, in 
 others, they seem intended to embrace all the "American States." 
 The former limitation as to the States to be included was probably 
 the original and true one, on account of the common origin, common 
 language, common sufferings, and common war for the same objects, 
 of the ci-devant Spanish provinces. Hence, we, as Anglo-American, 
 and of a different origin, language, and condition, were never invited 
 or consulted till last spring, more than four years after the project 
 was started (Canas' letter, November 14, 1825, page 10), and about 
 three years after the first treaty for the organization of the Congress 
 was signed. Even then, the invitation came not till about the time of 
 the sailing of a French fleet, feared to be destined to the occupation 
 of Cuba (Clay to Brown, October 25, 1825, page 58 ; and Clay to 
 Poinsett, Nov. 9, 1825) ; and even then was it doubted "whether it 
 would, or would not, be agreeable to the United States to receive such 
 an invitation" (Mr. Clay, Dec. 20, 1825, page 3) ; and, even to the 
 present day, the invitation has not been extended to us by all the 
 parties to the league. 
 
 Still the Senate are vilified for not joining to despatch, post haste, 
 our plenipotentiaries to form a part of this " perpetual" Congress, — 
 a Congress, also, of such novel, and, we shall soon see, of such dan- 
 gerous powers ; and where, among other States, solely Spanish, we 
 come into the fold, if at all, not by the door, or till after the eleventh 
 hour, or by request of all the parties concerned. Under circumstances, 
 also, when most of the delay has been to obtain information, not yet 
 full as is desirable, an official attempt seems to be made to lash us into 
 greater speed ; and the dangers, the faction, and impropriety of the 
 delay, are reiterated in every form and region, when, since these very 
 nominations were laid on our table, and as late as January, 1826, the 
 President of Mexico has publicly and officially announced to the world, 
 that, though a Spanish State, and a solemn party to this perpetual 
 league and Congress by treaty, their plenipotentiaries had not yet 
 started, but might be expected to be "at sea, on their way, in the 
 course of the present month." 
 
 But, to return to the character of the Congress at Panama : it will 
 appear from these documents, not only that most of its duties, and con- 
 sequently its duration, are permanent or "perpetual," but many of 
 its objects are clearly belligerent. This position leads to consequences 
 
MISSION TO PANAMA. 71 
 
 entirely independent of its character in other particulars ; because, 
 whether its members be mere common envoys or not, — whether its 
 continuance be long or short, — still, if its leading objects are belliger- 
 ent, and must impart an inseparable belligerent character to the assem- 
 bly, no neutral nation, however well disposed, is able to form a compo- 
 nent part of that assembly, without endangering its neutral condition. 
 
 I have been utterly astonished, that any gentleman could read these 
 documents, and still contend that this was not a belligerent Congress. 
 "What ! a Congress originating with those engaged in war, — confined 
 for years, in its incipient stages, to those only who are engaged in war, — 
 to be convened within the territories of those engaged in war, — and hav- 
 ing for its main objects, as again and again repeated, the triumphant 
 prosecution of that very war, — and yet a Congress in no degree bellig- 
 erent, and perfectly safe for neutrals to unite in? To remove all 
 question on this point, I will furnish gentlemen with evidence, till the 
 most sceptical ought, I think, to be satisfied. Thus, in the treaty 
 with Chili (Art. 394, p. 23), it is stipulated, that this Congress of 
 Panama shall fix their respective contingents or quotas of "sea and 
 land forces" during the present war with Spain, and shall form "a 
 rallying-point in common danger." By the treaty with Peru (Pre- 
 amble and third Article, page 38), the cardinal object is said to be to 
 " maintain in common the cause of their independence ;" and this Con- 
 gress is agreed to be, as before, "a rallying-point in their common 
 dangers." The treaty with Mexico is similar, they being " confeder- 
 ate forever in peace and war," and this Congress their " point of union 
 in common danger." By the treaty with Guatemala, their design is 
 avowed to be "to identify their principles and interests in peace and 
 war" (Preamble, page 30) ; "to repel any attack or invasion from the 
 enemies of either" (2d Art.) ; and further, " that the objects contem- 
 plated by the preceding articles may be carried into effect, the Repub- 
 lic of Colombia engages to aid the United Provinces of Central Amer- 
 ica with that amount of its disposable naval and land forces which 
 shall be determined by the Congress of Plenipotentiaries to be men- 
 tioned hereafter," &c. (Art. 3 and 4), and which is afterwards men- 
 tioned as the Congress "at the Isthmus of Panama" (Art. 19th). I 
 would respectfully inquire, if gentlemen can point me to a parallel, in 
 the records of history, of a neutral joining with "confederate belliger- 
 ents," in a Congress like this? As this point has been principally 
 combated, I may be indulged in a little further examination of the 
 opinion which the parties themselves — who best understand their own 
 affairs — have expressed in other documents, concerning the paramount 
 belligerent object and character of this Congress. 
 
 The government of Colombia was the prime mover in this "perpet- 
 ual league," and in its "common council" in the great conflict ; and 
 since our present session commenced, her vice-president has officially 
 announced that "in Panama the plenipotentiaries of the new States 
 of America are assembling to ratify, in the most solemn manner, our 
 
72 MISSION TO PANAMA. 
 
 common determination to maintain and defend our national liberty 
 and independence against the attempts of its enemies." Is it, then, 
 a mere occasional Congress of ambassadors, with no belligerent views 1 
 When our old Congress convened for similar purposes, would any 
 European neutral, if invited, have deemed it safe to form a component 
 part of such a Congress ? 
 
 Again : Mr. Salazar, at the head of the legation from that govern- 
 ment (Letter Nov. 2d, 1825, p. 6), formally classes the subjects for 
 discussion there into those "belligerent" and those "neutral;" and 
 Mr. Obregon, of the Mexican legation (Letter Nov. 3, 1825, p. 4), 
 admits that "other matters" than what concern us as neutrals are 
 there to be canvassed, and that they grow out " of the actual position 
 of the new powers ;" or, in language without any diplomatic nourish, 
 that they grew out of a state of war. 
 
 Mr. Canas, from the government of Central America, is, if possible, 
 still more explicit, and describes it as "a general Congress of their 
 representatives at some central point, which might consider upon and 
 adopt the best plan for defending the new States of the New World 
 from foreign aggression (Letter Nov. 11, 1825, p. 11). And 
 again : "a general Congress, to be formed for the purposes of pre- 
 serving the territorial integrity, and firmly establishing the absolute 
 i?idependence, of each of the American republics." If these are not 
 belligerent objects, I am unable to comprehend the force of language. 
 The President and the Secretary of State have both entertained similar 
 opinions ; or where was the necessity to enter so many caveats and pro- 
 testations against our wish to compromit our neutrality by joining the 
 Congress ? How could our neutrality come in question, if there were 
 to be no belligerent deliberations in it ? If there were to be no belliger- 
 ent deliberations there, how could the former person say, in his mes- 
 sage, December 26, 1825 (p. 1), that we are "not expected to take 
 part in any deliberations of a belligerent character" ? How could 
 Mr. Clay, December 20, 1825 (p. 3), observe, that we were not 
 desired "to take part in such of the deliberations of the proposed 
 Congress as might relate to the prosecution of the present war," if no 
 such deliberations were to be held in the proposed Congress ? 
 
 A Congress, then, springing from a state of war, to be composed, as 
 is said by the President of Colombia, of " confederate belligerents," — 
 " confederate forever in peace and war," according to their league, and 
 convened chiefly to fix their contingents of troops, and, among some 
 permanent peaceful objects, to impart greater effect to their common 
 resistance to a common enemy, and so concentrate, by a great common 
 "council," all their energies and sacrifices, so as best to advance the 
 cause of their common independence, — I ask, if we, however desirous 
 of neutrality, can form a component, and, it is said, prominent part in 
 such an "august assembly," without extreme hazard to the happy 
 peace and flourishing commerce we now enjoy? Are there precedents 
 for this course on our part? And is it safe, judicious, discreet? Is 
 
MISSION TO PANAMA. 73 
 
 the prospect of benefit more than commensurate with the danger? 
 Would it not be a little more prudent, flagrante bello, and while these 
 new Spanish States probably have on hand sufficient business of their 
 own for employment, — would it not be wiser to defer, till peace, the 
 manufacture of new national law, new modes of commerce, and new 
 changes in Roman Catholic faith and practice ? I repose the most 
 entire confidence in the assertions of our own cabinet, concerning their 
 wishes not to break our present neutrality. 
 
 But the inquiry again recurs, Can those wishes be carried into 
 effect, if we become a component part of such an assembly ? As a 
 mere Congress of Plenipotentiaries, it is a unit, and not divisible. It 
 is not two Congresses, but one Congress ; and if but one Congress, and 
 the objects and origin of that chiefly belligerent, then what becomes of 
 the professed neutrality of one of its voluntary members? If the 
 minority wear a white rose and the majority a red one, does the Con- 
 gress become any the less a war Congress ? Can any kind of assem- 
 bly, where all the parties are previously apprized that the majority 
 will engage in belligerent objects, be exempt, in any of its component 
 parts, from joint political accountability ? Gentlemen may call it 
 what they please, — a Congress, Convention, Confederacy, or Caucus, 
 — and can it assume, both at one and the same time, a belligerent and 
 neutral form towards a single third power ? Can it be treated abroad 
 as a belligerent every forenoon sitting, and as a neutral every after- 
 noon ? A Congress subject to the laws of war with closed doors, but 
 exempt from them with open doors? How, too, are its officers — 
 quasi combatants or non-combatants ? How are its printers ? How 
 are its incidental expenses divided into belligerent and neutral 
 columns ? Are there two modes of protecting the safety of its mem- 
 bers, and the independence of its deliberations, according as they may 
 be differently engaged in belligerent or neutral duties ? 
 
 But I will not tax your indulgence by pursuing these inquiries 
 further, or I could ask, in another view, whether our mere presence at 
 such an assembly, knowing beforehand its hostile objects, and uniting 
 with them on a hostile soil, though disclaiming to join beyond certain 
 of their deliberations, and dividing those as you may, would not alone 
 be likely to give a " political importance" (as Mr. Salazar calls it, 
 page 8) to those Spanish States in their belligerent attitude, which 
 might be construed into aid and comfort ; and which, if given by a 
 subject to an enemy, whether amounting to treason or not, would sub- 
 ject him to troublesome scrutinies ; and which, when given by one 
 State to another, cannot be very far from a violation of the spirit of 
 neutrality ? But I hasten to other considerations. All my remarks, 
 thus far, have proceeded on the hypothesis, that our actual intentions, 
 in joining this Congress, were in every respect commendable — were 
 entirely pacific, and in no degree connected with "the prosecution of 
 the present war ;" or, as Mr. Clay again expresses it (28th Decem- 
 ber, 1825, page 3), "with councils for deliberating on the means of 
 7 
 
74 MISSION TO PANAMA. 
 
 its further prosecution." Are all our intentions so, in point of fact? 
 I trust we are not to be deceived by any chaff scattered over this sub- 
 ject by the wiles of foreign diplomacy, or to deceive ourselves by any 
 general professions, and loose protestations, not warranted by our acts. 
 Foreign powers cannot be thus blinded ; nor can the American people 
 long be hoodwinked in this way into any "pledges," or " secret" alli- 
 ances of " cooperation" with other nations, in support of any new-born 
 theories, or any experimental principles, not conformable to our ancient 
 policy and our true interests. 
 
 I aver, then, that, by the documents before us, whatever may be the 
 verbiage on either side as to neutrality, the real object, as disclosed 
 on the side of Spanish America, in alluring us to this Congress at 
 Panama, is to involve us, in the end, in the prosecution of the present 
 war. I will attempt to show, that she either believes, or pretends, 
 that we have already given a pledge to join her in its prosecution in a 
 certain contingency ; that she never invited us to unite in the Congress 
 till about the time when she professed to believe that contingency 
 would soon happen; and that, in all her correspondence as to the 
 objects of our attendance, she thrusts forward into the first rank the 
 discussions as to the mode of redeeming that pledge, and of rendering 
 effectual our '-cooperation" with her upon that ground. I will 
 attempt to show, also, that a part of our cabinet must thus understand 
 her ; and that, if we now confirm this mission for such an object, we 
 do, by the very mission itself, bind ourselves, in a certain contingency, 
 to future hostilities, unless we are willing to be branded as mere 
 boasters and brawlers, who do not intend, in the end, to redeem our 
 plighted faith. 
 
 In support of these positions, Mr. Obregon, in his letter of Novem- 
 ber 3, 1825, page 4, states, as the reason for inviting us to the Con- 
 gress of Panama, that, tl in the meeting of it, it was thought proper, 
 by the government of the subscriber, that the United States of 
 America, by means of their commissioners, should constitute and take 
 part, as being so much interested in the first and principal object upon 
 which the Congress would be engaged." What is that object? Let 
 the same gentleman answer: "The resistance or opposition to the 
 interference of any neutral nation in the question and war of 
 independence between the new powers of the continent and Spain." 
 He adds, that this subject "the late administration pointed out, 
 and characterized as being of general interest to the continent." 
 He proceeds, upon this point, in language too explicit for misunder- 
 standing: "The government of the undersigned apprehends that, as 
 the powers of America are of accord as to resistance, it behooves 
 them to discuss the means of giving to that resistance all possible 
 force, that the evil may be met, if it cannot be avoided ; and the only 
 means of accomplishing this object is by a previous concert as to the 
 mode in which each of them shall lend its cooperation" &c. The 
 opposition to colonization in America by the European powers will be 
 
MISSION TO PANAMA. 75 
 
 another of the questions which may be discussed, and which is in a like 
 predicament with the foregoing. The two principal objects, therefore, 
 which we are invited to discuss there, are the peaceful question of 
 "resistance" to the interference of any other neutral nation in their 
 present war, and of "resistance" "to colonization in America" by 
 any European power; and there to settle "the means of giving to that 
 resistance all possible force" or, in other words, there to agree, by 
 "a previous concert, as to the mode in which each of them shall lend 
 its cooperation." Cooperation! — how, or when? Of course, by 
 money, troops, or vessels of war, whenever Naples, for example, may 
 choose to aid Spain in her present contest ; or whenever Sweden, for 
 instance, may choose to purchase from her Cuba or Porto Rico. 
 
 There is no mistake, on this point, as to the gist or essence of the 
 mission. I care not for any formal flourishes concerning neutrality. 
 Nations look to deeds, not words. What are the deeds to be done 
 there? and in pursuance of what is done there? Mr. Salazar, 
 like Mr. Obregon (November 2, 1825, p. 7), says: "The manner in 
 which all colonization of European powers on the American continent 
 shall be resisted, and their interference in the present contest between 
 Spain and her former colonies prevented, are other points of great 
 interest," to be discussed by us at Panama. "Were it proper, an 
 eventual alliance, in case these events should occur, — which is within 
 the range of possibilities, — and the treaty, of which no use should be 
 made until the casus fwderis should happen, to remain secret" &c, 
 would be "different means to secure the same ends," &c. "The 
 conferences held on this subject being confidential" &c, are we, then, 
 so readily to slide into the snares of artful diplomacy ? And are we, 
 by this mission, to form an "eventual alliance to maintain principles 
 which have never yet been avowed but by one department of our 
 government, and which alliance is to be kept "secret" from the people 
 and States whom we represent? Is it to be locked up here as " con- 
 fidential," till the casus foederis happens, and then our government 
 branded as perfidious, unless they join in the war ? What is a mere 
 adoption of the mission, but an assent to this dangerous doctrine, that 
 we are now pledged, and are willing to remain pledged, in certain 
 events, to take part in this foreign war ; a war on the despotic princi- 
 ple of maintaining countries more remote from us than Europe itself 
 in a balance of power ; a war on the reprobate principle — the princi- 
 ple contradicted by all the practice and professions of our early admin- 
 istrations — of interference in the internal concerns, transfers, colo- 
 nizations, and controversies, of other nations. 
 
 Nor is this view of the nature and tendency of these principles 
 confined to the Spanish States. The executive department of this 
 government must entertain similar notions, and is now virtually call- 
 ing upon the other departments to oppose or reject them. The Presi- 
 dent himself merely speaks of "an agreement between all the parties 
 represented at the meeting" at Panama on these points (Message, 
 
76 MISSION TO PANAMA. 
 
 Dec. 26, 1725). But the Secretary of State, to Mr. Poinsett, Oct. 
 25, 1825 (p. 57), says : " No longer than about three months ago, 
 when an invasion, by France, of the island of Cuba, was believed at 
 Mexico, the United Mexican government promptly called on the gov- 
 ernment of the United States, through you, to fulfil the memorable 
 pledge of the President of the United States, in his message to Con- 
 gress of December, A. D. 1823 ; what they would have done, had the 
 contingency happened, may be inferred from a despatch to the Amer- 
 ican minister at Paris," &c. Then follows that despatch, dated Oct. 
 25, 1825, in which he deliberately avows that "we could not 
 consent to the occupation of those islands by any other European 
 power than Spain, under any contingency whatever." The same 
 sentiment is repeated to Mr. Middleton, Dec. 26, 1825 (p. 47) : 
 " We cannot allow a transfer of the island (of Cuba) to any European 
 power." Has it, indeed, come to this, that we are to tell the autocrat 
 of fifty millions he has not the same right to take a transfer of Porto 
 Rico as we had to take a transfer of Florida ? Is this republicanism, 
 equal rights, and received national law, — or is it some marvellous dis- 
 covery of the present age ? And are we prepared, by this mission, to 
 back up by a war the menace to France, that in no contingency whatever 
 shall she be allowed to occupy Cuba, although she buy it of Spain, by as 
 fair and as honest a treaty as that by which we purchased Louisiana 
 of France herself? 
 
 Are these the doctrines of the American Congress or of the Ameri- 
 can people, — or do they savor of the Holy Alliance? Permit me 
 again to repeat, that there is no mistake on these points. We act 
 with our eyes open, and with the naked principle exhibited in so many 
 different postures, and in such bold relief, that if the mission is once 
 sent to enter into measures to enforce it, the die is cast forever, unless 
 we prove perfidious and treasonable when the contingency occurs. Mr. 
 Poinsett, 28th Sept., 1825 (p. 54), removes all doubt on the other 
 point also; because, he says, "the United States had pledged themselves 
 not to permit any other power to interfere either with their (Spanish 
 American) independence, or form of government ; and that, as, in 
 the event of such an attempt being made by the powers of Europe, we 
 should be compelled to take the most active and efficient part, and to 
 bear the brunt of the contest, it was not just that we should be placed 
 on a less favorable footing than the other republics of America, whose 
 existence we were ready to support at such hazards." 
 
 Eut the United States, as a government, have not yet pledged 
 themselves to any such entangling and despotic principle, in respect 
 to any other nation whatever. They have not yet agreed to "bear 
 the brunt of the contest," in any foreign war ; nor support, at " such 
 hazards," "the independence or form of government" of any nation 
 or state, except our own nation and those of the States composing our 
 own Confederacy. Any such " agreement" w T ould violate the consti- 
 tution, and plunge us into a vortex of new coalitions and confederacies, 
 
MISSION TO PANAMA. 77 
 
 abhorrent to every feeling and maxim of our venerated fathers. Avow- 
 als of such principles, whether made by Mr. Monroe or others, are 
 very justly, on one occasion, styled by the secretary " uncalculating 
 declarations." (Letter to Mr. Poinsett, p. 56.) But, after time to 
 calculate and consider, let me ask, in the name of all which is sacred 
 and holy, will gentlemen still pronounce a mission pacific, and safe, 
 and expedient, whose confessed and leading object is, to discuss "the 
 means of giving" "all possible force" to our "cooperation" in such 
 principles'? and to settle the mode of that "cooperation," when we 
 are called on "to bear the brunt of the contest," — to settle how many 
 of our gallant sons are to find ignoble graves under the tropical sun 
 of Guatemala, if some petty Hessian prince should hire a regiment of 
 infantry to Spain ? or how many of our fearless seamen are to be 
 sacrificed, to prevent other nations from taking possession of Cuba or 
 Porto Rico, in the same manner we ourselves took possession of Lou- 
 isiana and Florida ? 
 
 Where, also, is the crisis, where the emergency, to justify such 
 an extraordinary measure 7 " Why quit our own, to stand on foreign 
 ground?" Why join our fortunes in any case, — much less in an 
 useless war with powers of another origin, another tongue, another 
 faith 1 Have Ave become incompetent to our self-defence ? Are we 
 in need of foreign "councils," and foreign "deliberations," to manage 
 our own concerns ■? Or are we so moon-struck, or so little employed 
 at home, as, — in the eloquent language of our President, on another 
 occasion, when the sentiments expressed found a response in every 
 patriot heart, — as to wander abroad in search of foreign monsters to 
 destroy ? Speaking of America, and her foreign policy, he observed : 
 " She has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even 
 when the conflict has been for principles to which she clings as to the 
 last vital drop which visits the heart." "Whenever the standard of 
 freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will 
 her heart, her benedictions, and her prayers be. But she goes not 
 abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to 
 the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vin- 
 dicator only of her own." (Adams' Oration, 4th July, 1821.) This 
 is the first time that the legislative department of our government has 
 ever been distinctly appealed to for its sanction to the new notions 
 thus ably denounced by him ; and if we now approve the Panama 
 Congress, whose chief object is to enforce them, we at once adopt and 
 approve the principle, that Spain has not, by such alliances as national 
 law warrants, and as were formed, on both sides, in our own Revolu- 
 tion, any right to attempt to reconquer and recolonize South America; 
 and, further, that she has not, by such sales as national law warrants, 
 and as we ourselves have partaken, any right to transfer Cuba or 
 Porto Rico to any European power with whom she can agree upon 
 the purchase-money ; and that these unprecedented and unjust posi- 
 tions we are willing to maintain at any sacrifice of blood and treasure. 
 7* 
 
78 MISSION TO PANAMA. 
 
 These questions have no concern with our former recognition of the 
 independence of South America, any more than with our recognition 
 of the government of Spain, under her Cortes. That recognition was 
 doubtless proper and friendly ; but every sciolist in jurisprudence 
 must know, that it has imposed no obligation on us to fight with her 
 for that independence, any more than our recognition of Napoleon 
 bound us to fight with him for the throne of the Bourbons. 
 
 A mission, therefore, for these avowed objects on our part, and with 
 such avowed expectations on their part, seems not only adverse to all 
 the theory and practice of this government, but it is a mission which, 
 in all human probability, must ere long terminate in open hostilities. 
 These hostilities are made to depend on only one of two contin- 
 gencies, which are monthly expected to occur. Negotiations for 
 mediations, &c, have postponed more active measures. But the great 
 pacificator of the eastern continent, even when living, gave us no just 
 expectation of peace, except in their submission ; and now, when dead, 
 the shadows, and darkness, and storms, that seem to rest over the suc- 
 cession, exclude, at least, all better hopes. Spain, too, by the corre- 
 spondence before us, has signified her most fixed and unalterable resolve 
 never to remit exertions, in any reverses, however desperate, to sub- 
 due her provinces. (See Mr. Everett's Letters, ^ — 27th April, 1825, 
 and 25th September, 1825, and October 20, 1825.) In this crisis, 
 new efforts and new arrangements are highly probable, and are to be 
 daily expected. 
 
 And the moment a Russian frigate may enter the harbor of Havana 
 to take possession of her forts, under such a contract as that by which 
 we once entered New Orleans, that moment we are to say, by the 
 principles of this mission, that the United States have become obliged 
 to embark in the existing war. Or, the moment a German soldier is 
 landed in Paraguay or Peru, to aid Spain in the subjugation of any 
 of her provinces, we are to say, by the principle of this mission, that 
 the United States, unless false to every tie of honor, and recreant to 
 redeem their plighted faith, will march her sons over equinoctial sands 
 and frozen cliffs, more distant than Europe itself, to perish in this 
 American crusade for Holy Alliances. 
 
 But, to dwell no longer on these points, by which, already, I fear, 
 the patience of the House has been too severely taxed, it is said that 
 other objects exist in the< mission, which are highly desirable, and per- 
 haps a full counterpoise to all danger. It is urged that we shall 
 increase the friendly regard between sister republics. What, sir ! is 
 there, in such a regard, any counterpoise to war ? to the destruction 
 of our commerce, and the sacrifice of our seamen and soldiery 3 Or, 
 if we blink the contest, and, when the crisis comes, in one of the con- 
 tingencies before named, if we skulk behind protestations, and procla- 
 mations, and diplomacy, will that increase fraternal amity? — or, rather, 
 will it not, after the present deliberate recognition of the supposed 
 pledge, excite hate the most unquenchable ? Will it be "a token of 
 
MISSION TO PANAMA. 79 
 
 respect to them," to seek to delay longer their threatened invasion of 
 Cuba, which our cabinet can see no "justifiable ground" to oppose 
 by force, though they can see such ground thus to oppose any peace- 
 able transfer of it to any European power 1 or to protest and rail 
 against their supposed principles of arming, in that invasion, a vast 
 slave population against their masters, and of reacting all the bloody 
 scenes of St. Domingo, so near our southern border 1 (Clay to Mid- 
 dleton, Dec. 26, 1825.) 
 
 Will they consider it among our "good offices," if we lecture them, 
 in the language of the President, about their ' ' religious bigotry and 
 oppression" ? (Message, Dec. 25, 1825.) " Some of the southern 
 nations are, even yet, so far under the dominion of prejudice, that they 
 have incorporated with their political constitutions an exclusive church, 
 without toleration of any other than the dominant sect. The abandon- 
 ment of this last badge of religious bigotry and oppression may be 
 pressed," &c. As I understand it, the very faith of those nations is 
 exclusive ; and are we about to undertake missions to alter the reli- 
 gious faith of other nations about "an exclusive church," and partic- 
 ularly of a nation a large portion of whose officers are priests of this 
 very faith ? 
 
 How many missions and missionaries must we despatch to effect this 
 object, even if we limit our benevolence to those nations, whether 
 American, European, Asiatic, or African, with whom we enjoy com- 
 mercial intercourse, and who retain the " prejudice, bigotry, and 
 oppression," of an "exclusive church" ? On this principle, my own 
 native State, for aught I know, will next be blessed with a mission, 
 either, from us, to reform its "bigotry and oppression," or, in return, 
 from the Panama Congress ; for, by express prohibitions in her consti- 
 tution, not a single Catholic, — much less Jew, Mahometan, or Deist, 
 — is eligible to either her House of Representatives, her Senate, or her 
 executive chair; — indeed, no person, unless he be of the " Protestant 
 religion." But it is no more a practical oppression there, than their 
 "exclusive church" is in South America; the Catholics with us, and 
 the Protestants with them, being almost unknown, and never molested, 
 with us, in their worship or political rights. 
 
 Again : it is said that our interests can be promoted, at the Congress 
 of Panama, by commercial discussions. But, with the most important 
 of the States there represented, we now enjoy treaties placing us on 
 the most friendly footing. And, if the other deputies should come 
 there empowered to negotiate on these points, — of which I see no evi- 
 dence in these documents, — we are not so likely to succeed, when so 
 greatly outnumbered, and in the midst of so much other more urgent 
 business, as at the separate court of each power. 
 
 Much alarm has been professed, lest England would join the Con- 
 gress, and forestall us in some advantages in trade. But the spirit of 
 her constitution, and the disciplined judgment of her statesmen, have 
 kept her out of the Holy Alliance ; and would equally restrain her, I 
 
80 MISSION TO PANAMA. 
 
 trust, from uniting in this, had she been invited. Further, we have 
 the authority of Mr. Clay himself for saying (Letter to Mr. Poinsett, 
 p. 57), "that such an invitation has been given to no European 
 power ; and it ought not to have been given to this, if it is not to be 
 considered as one of the American nations." Every treaty and docu- 
 ment before us expressly limits the Congress either to the nations 
 ci-devant Spanish, or, at the furthest, to the nations of the American 
 continent. 
 
 As far as the Congress goes, not embracing every nation here any 
 more than the Holy Alliance embraces every nation in Europe, it is 
 to be deemed the " Continental System of America" (Canas' Letter, 
 Nov. 11, 1826) ; and I trust the freest nations here, like the freest 
 nations there (such as England and Sweden), will not be beguiled into 
 it, under any fallacious notions, that intermeddling and force, as to the 
 concerns of other States, are any more holy on one continent than on 
 the other. 
 
 No less questionable is the expectation that such a mission will 
 terminate in any improvement in the codes of national or maritime 
 law. 
 
 In the midst of an inveterate and bloody war, and while devising 
 measures to consolidate their independence, and impart greater vigor 
 to their arms, the chance is a sorry one, and the leisure scanty, for 
 adjusting these complicated objects of peace. 
 
 We, also, should be a humble minority in number, in the discussion 
 of every principle of this kind ; and should not be very likely to per- 
 suade persons educated in the bigotry and despotism of Spanish prin- 
 ciples to think like the descendants of the " sea-girt isle," who, for 
 ages, have breathed so different an atmosphere, in law, politics and 
 commerce. 
 
 If there can be named a single controverted question, on these 
 points, where the interests of those States would not induce them at 
 once to join us by an ordinary negotiation at their own courts, I 
 frankly avow that, with all my prejudices against England, as the 
 oppressor of our fathers, and the recent enemy of ourselves, I would 
 prefer to abide by the enlightened opinions of her jurists in the dis- 
 cussion and adjustment of it — men who have grown up under a free 
 press, jury trial, representative legislation, a habeas corpus, and an 
 independent judiciary — than to abide by the decision of Spain, or any 
 limb of Spain in either hemisphere. Nobody can exult more highly 
 than myself in the prospect of the independence of the ci-devant 
 Spanish provinces ; but there must expire some generations more, ere 
 their education, laws and habits, will so radically change as to con- 
 vert them into safe arbitrators for nations like ourselves. Neither can 
 they be safe counsellors beyond their immediate interests. They are 
 not, in general, of a like origin, a like religion, a like language, a like 
 system of laws ; and whatever disputed questions of national law are to 
 be changed or adjusted, in which their interests do not already incline 
 
MISSION TO PANAMA. 81 
 
 them towards our views, it will, in my opinion, be much wiser to trust 
 to the silent and gradual operation of a free press, of books, of 
 increasing civilization and commerce, than to debating assemblies, in 
 which they constitute the majority, and have other subjects at stake, 
 far more momentous and urgent. And who ever heard of a nation 
 being at once convinced, against its interest, by the plea of a lawyer, 
 or the argument of a diplomatic agent 1 
 
 Again : it has been suggested, by the gentleman from Rhode Island, 
 that it may be useful to have this mission approved, so that the envoys 
 may watch " contingencies." I did suppose that our present large 
 foreign corps in South America — and one of them at Colombia, in the 
 very neighborhood of this Congress — might be sufficient to watch " con- 
 tingencies." Or, if we must have some person at the very place of 
 meeting, that a mere agent, without public credentials, and paid from 
 the contingent fund, would be an Argus much more safe, as well as 
 successful, in watching "contingencies." One incalculable advantage 
 from such a course would be, the impossibility of thus implicating us 
 in the character or measures of the Congress, and the freedom we 
 should still enjoy as to embarking in the present war voluntarily, on 
 the occurrence of any of the circumstances already commented on. 
 But a still further advantage would be, that our course, by keeping 
 quietly at home, or sending only such an agent, till we have further 
 light on the organization, objects, and general character of this Con- 
 gress, would not expose us to any censure on constitutional grounds, 
 or on grounds of rash and expensive adventure, upon any project 
 dangerous and impracticable. 
 
 For, I ask gentlemen, and entreat a reply, whether they are now 
 able to tell us the whole mode of proceeding, and the binding effect 
 intended to be given to such proceeding in this Congress. 
 
 One has said it was to be a mere ordinary Congress of Plenipoten- 
 tiaries, simply, with full powers to negotiate on certain points. 
 Another has conjectured that it would be a Congress like the old 
 Provincial Congress ; and that our delegates would form a component 
 part of it, and be bound as other delegates on the subjects intrusted 
 to the Congress. Another, seeing the difficulties of either of these 
 hypotheses on the documents before us, has insisted, that whatever 
 may be the true character of the Congress itself, we were not to form 
 a component part of it; but merely to despatch our representatives to 
 reside near it, and negotiate with its agents, as foreign ministers nego- 
 tiate with our agents here. Some of these views have been presented 
 in debate, and others in conversation. But doubts and difficulties 
 insuperable seem to attend either of them. We have already shown, 
 by numerous and clear quotations from the treaties and other docu- 
 ments, that, so far from being an ordinary Congress of mere diplomatic 
 agents, to last a few months or years, and then be dissolved, some of 
 its duties are perpetual, and are judicial, rather than diplomatic ; and 
 that it has ever been destined to be the perpetual head, "council," 
 
82 MISSION TO PANAMA. 
 
 and rallying-point, of an association of States, under a "perpetual 
 league." These, and other circumstances, strengthen the second con- 
 jecture before named, of its resemblance to our old Congress ; because, 
 like that, it is convened under a " confederation" of independent 
 States. It is convened under a similar contest for liberty, and with a 
 similar view to concentrate their hostile efforts in promotion of the 
 common cause. Like that, the votes of each State are equal but by 
 means of their representatives being equal in number ; and the place of 
 meeting is subject to be changed by a majority of the States (Doc, 
 p. 33). The names given to these representatives, we have before 
 seen, are various, and exhaust almost the whole vocabulary as to 
 agents with delegated power ; and consequently settle nothing as to 
 their specific authority. But, like our old Congress, they are to have 
 "rules" of proceeding (Obregon's Letter, p. 5), and a regular "organ- 
 ization" (Mr. Clay, p. 4), and " mode of action" (do.), and to be thus 
 formed into an "assembly," and with all these things "distinctly 
 arranged prior to the opening of its deliberations " (do.); else they 
 can never proceed in these "deliberations," — collect and register their 
 "votes," — have their judgments, as "umpires" in disputes, recorded, 
 and the "quota of troops" between the "confederates" adjusted. It 
 is true that, in some respects, their power seems greater than that of our 
 old Congress, and in some it is manifestly less ; though neither of them 
 are permitted to encroach on the separate sovereignty and internal police 
 of the States forming the confederation, and represented in the Congress. 
 
 But, while all this is very well and proper for those "confederate 
 belligerents," and is just such a Congress as would be expected among 
 them alone, and such as was for three years confined even in theory to 
 them alone, as before explained, it is very apparent, to every reflecting 
 mind, that we cannot form a component part of it, by any clause of 
 power conferred on us in our constitution. That we can join in no 
 other permanent political assembly, without a new charter from our 
 own States ; that the interpretation of our treaties cannot by us be 
 transferred to a distant tribunal of Spanish deputies ; and that we must 
 continue the umpire of our own disputes, and the head of our own 
 Confederacy, until the people and States of this Union consent to min- 
 gle their fortunes with other confederacies, to be lost in this great swarm 
 of Spanish American States, — to become a single satellite to a larger 
 planet, and with no more power in the great Continental Confederacy 
 of all the American nations than Peru or Guatemala. 
 
 Nor can it be tolerated, for a moment, that they will admit us into 
 such a Congress as a component part, unless we are to be bound in com- 
 mon by their decisions ; but I admit, that after such a Congress is formed, 
 it may be considered such a government or federal State that we could 
 despatch ambassadors to it in the usual way, and to treat with it on usual 
 subjects for negotiation ; and this brings us to the last conjecture, as 
 to the manner in which our envoys are to go and act at Panama. 
 
 This hypothesis would accord very happily with the usage of nations, 
 
MISSION TO PANAMA. 83 
 
 in despatcliing ministers to our old Congress, after our independence 
 ■was acknowledged, only it happens unluckily that such ministers 
 cannot take part in the deliberations, of any kind, of such a Congress ; 
 and that our ministers at Panama are again and again said to be 
 intended "to take part in those questions" there to be discussed 
 (Obregon's Letter, p. 4), "and in the meeting" of which Congress, 
 "that the United States of America, by means of their commissioners, 
 should constitute and take part." (Ditto.) They are also to have 
 "persons to represent them in this assembly" (Salazar's Letter, p. 
 8); and how else can it be "a general Congress of the American 
 Republics"? (Canas' Letter, p. 11.) And if our ministers are to 
 be seen only in the galleries or lobbies, like other foreign ministers, 
 what becomes of the splendid illusion sported before our eyes, that we 
 are to form the head of this great Continental Confederacy, and play 
 in its "council" the Nestor, Agamemnon, or Ulysses, or all of them 
 at once? In this view of it, likewise, how can our ministers be 
 deputed to a Congress or Confederacy, with whom, as a quasi State, 
 they are to negotiate, until that Congress is organized? Even since 
 the nominations on your table were made, we have heard that the depu- 
 ties from Mexico had not started ; and no information has yet been 
 received of its being organized at all, for any purpose whatever. Why 
 this haste to plunge into new experiments and unforeseen dangers? 
 Nor in this last view of the mission, if there be in any other, does there 
 yet exist any protection for our ministers, any guaranty for our national 
 honor. If they enter a corner of the territory of Colombia, it is not 
 under a commission to the Colombian government ; and we have no 
 treaty stipulation, like all the other confederates, as to the persons of 
 our representatives at the Congress. (See all the treaties in docu- 
 ments.) For aught which appears, they may be imprisoned for debts, 
 or prosecuted for torts ; and the sufferings, and claims, and remon- 
 strances, of other Spanish victims like Richard Meade, may longer 
 inflame this nation, and burthen our journals. 
 
 In fine, under none of those delusive expectations as to certain ill- 
 defined and unattainable objects, at the imminent hazard of our neu- 
 trality, or with a view to redeem pledges which this government, as 
 a government, have never yet given, and, I trust, never will give, in 
 defiance of all the policy and injunctions of our wisest statesmen, and 
 which pledges tend directly to war, — I hope we never shall be incau- 
 tiously allured into any kind of alliance or connection with this non- 
 descript Congress at Panama. 
 
 If our constitution had not become almost a mere nose of wax, I 
 should add that, if the Congress be a permanent confederacy, for any 
 political objects whatever, common to its members, we cannot become a 
 component part of it without transcending our constitutional powers ; 
 or if we are not to form a component part, but merely have ministers 
 resident near it, that the confederacy must be organized, before, by any 
 construction of our constitutional powers, a commission can run to it. 
 
84 MISSION TO PANAMA. 
 
 The other idea, that they might be deputed to a Congress at large, 
 of mere plenipotentiaries, to negotiate treaties of commerce, or peace, 
 or limits, and then disperse, — and that they could so be deputed, with- 
 out any guaranty, by treaty or otherwise, for their persons, and without 
 any legal provision of any kind for the creation of such deputies, 
 — though in some degree questionable, may be correct in the abstract, 
 for aught I shall now stop to inquire. But, in point of fact, it is not 
 correct, from these documents, that the Congress at Panama is a body 
 of this description ; but, as before shown, it is a Congress formed under 
 a perpetual league, with perpetual duties, — and those duties, some 
 belligerent and some peaceful, some political, and some judicial and 
 municipal, and no more to be joined with in deliberation by a mere 
 envoy, and a neutral envoy with customary powers, than we are to 
 be joined with in deliberation by any of the plenipotentiaries, however 
 respectable, who are deputed hither. 
 
 Under all these circumstances, it is, in my opinion, the solemn duty 
 of the Senate not to advise this mission : the solemn duty of this nation, 
 under such doubt and peril, not to try, while we are well, to be better. 
 I would wait, in patience, till at last we obtained that more specific 
 information about the powers, and character, and objects of the Con- 
 gress, wliich the President himself at first considered indispensable 
 (doc, p. 4) ; and which information, to the extent desired, the Secre- 
 tary frankly admits has never yet been obtained. (Letter, Nov. 30, 
 1825, p. 10.) 
 
 Peace will doubtless arrive as soon as those belligerent powers will 
 enjoy leisure to engage with utility in any peaceful improvements with 
 us, — Inter arma silent leges ; and it seems to me the dictate of 
 prudence now to remain contentedly at home, without embarking in 
 any new experiments of diplomacy, or of coalitions with " confederate 
 belligerents ; " to pay off, as fast as possible, the debts of former wars ; 
 to husband our resources ; to encourage our States in the cultivation 
 of the arts, of manufactures, and of agriculture ; to give due protection 
 to commerce, and retain for our motto, "Honest friendship with all 
 nations, — entangling alliances with none" Numerous other consider- 
 ations press upon my mind, in connection with this mission ; but I do 
 not choose to fatigue an attention which has been so kindly indulged to 
 me, by repeating what has before been expressed with so much elo- 
 quence by the gentleman from South Carolina, or by pressing ad- 
 ditional points, which other members will doubtless enforce better, at 
 some more seasonable hour. 
 
 Under these convictions, sir, as to the principles of the mission, I 
 am prepared to vote against it in every shape ; and seek no higher 
 vindication for my conduct than the consciousness of having formed 
 those convictions after full research and patient reflection. 
 
( UNIVERSITY ) 
 \ n or .,V/ 
 
 SURVEY AND SALE OF PUBLIC LANDS. 85 
 
 SURVEY AND SALE OF PUBLIC LANDS.* 
 
 Perhaps I could best repay the kind indulgence of the Senate 
 yesterday, in adjourning so early to accommodate me, by an entire 
 silence to-day. But it was my lot — possibly my misfortune — to 
 offer an amendment to the resolution which has occasioned such a 
 long, and, in some respects, unpleasant debate. The amendment was 
 offered in that spirit of kindness towards the west which I had rather 
 practise than merely profess ; and, after opinions on the subject had 
 become controverted, it was offered with a view to elicit fully the real 
 disposition felt in this body concerning the surveys and sales of the 
 public lands. The unexpected motion to postpone both the resolution 
 and the amendment evidently tends to defeat a distinct expression of 
 opinion upon either, and has opened the door to a course of argument, 
 and a latitude of discussion, I believe, someAvhat unprecedented. It 
 seems to have metamorphosed the Senate, not only into a committee 
 of the whole on the state of the Union, but on the state of the Union 
 in all time, past, present, and to come. So be it, if gentlemen please. 
 This is not alluded to in the spirit of rebuke against either side, as 
 every senator, in such cases, is doubtless at liberty to pursue the dictates 
 of his own judgment, and is doubtless able to vindicate his own course 
 to his constituents and his country. 
 
 But, in one view, this wide range of discussion has proved a subject 
 of deep regret to me, individually, as it has led gentlemen into remarks 
 on the amendment, and on matters and things in general, some of 
 which bore personally on myself, and on that portion of my constituents 
 with whom I had the pleasure to act in the late presidential election. 
 Those remarks, if unnoticed, may lead to a misapprehension of our 
 real opinions on questions of public moment, — which opinions I disdain 
 to conceal, so far as regards myself, — and to imputations on those 
 constituents utterly derogatory and utterly unmerited, — imputations 
 about which I cared little, if flung, in the scavenger slang of the day, on 
 myself alone, because I have long been inured to them from certain 
 quarters, like all other men in the east who refuse to bow the knee 
 there to certain political dagons ; but imputations against which, when 
 gravely made by conscript fathers, and extended to a large body of my 
 constituents, I feel it my duty to defend them, here and elsewhere, 
 now and henceforth, while I have power left to defend anything. 
 
 But let us first advert a moment to the amendment offered by me to 
 
 * A speech on Mr. Foote's resolution, proposing an inquiry into the expediency of 
 abolishing the office of Surveyor General of Public Lands, and for discontinuing 
 further surveys until those already in market shall have been disposed of; and which 
 Mr. W. had moved to amend, so as to inquire into the expediency of extending more 
 rapidly the surveys, and hastening the sales of the publio lands. Delivered in the 
 Senate of the United States, February 23, 1830. This was the only instance of 
 indulgence, while in the United States Senate, in comments on party politics; and, in 
 this case, it was in self-defence. 
 
 8 
 
86 SURVEY AND SALE OE PUBLIC LANDS. 
 
 this resolution, and my opinions on its subject-matter. The amend- 
 ment has been treated by some in debate, and roundly asserted in the 
 numerous libels that issue from the epistolary mints in this city, — 
 those manufactories so exorbitantly protected, — to be, in substance, a 
 proposition to give away the whole public domain of the Union. 
 Whereas, in truth, it contemplates nothing beyond an inquiry for that 
 light and information so earnestly urged by others, — a mere inquiry, 
 in a less exceptionable, less questionable shape, into the expediency of 
 making a more rapid survey and sale of the public lands. 
 
 The reasons for that inquiry have before been stated, and need not 
 be repeated, except to observe that they rest on the facts of increasing 
 competition in the sales of land by other governments on our northern 
 and south-western frontiers ; the vast quantities yet to be surveyed and 
 sold by ourselves ; and our duties to the new States equally, in respect 
 to the survey, sale, and settlement, of our untaxed domain, within their 
 respective boundaries. To discharge such duties, — to give a wider 
 sphere for choice to the enterprising yeomanry from the east and the 
 Middle States, as well as the west, — to obtain sooner the means for 
 extinguishing the public debt, that great mill-stone on the neck of 
 every popular government, — all will admit to be legitimate objects ; and 
 an amendment seeking these objects could not but tend to fulfil with 
 promptitude the condition on which most of these lands were originally 
 and generously ceded to the Union. This is the whole length, breadth, 
 and depth, of the amendment. But when we travel beyond the amend- 
 ment and the resolution, to speculate on what has been done and what 
 shall be done with these lands in future time, after paying the public 
 debt, then these lands become the apple of discord, — then we open a 
 Pandora's box of fears, jealousies, and fierce collisions. On this point 
 I have heretofore said nothing, in this discussion; and should say 
 nothing now, had not my views on the disposition of these lands been 
 misrepresented, and some of my votes at former sessions perhaps mis- 
 understood. 
 
 By the terms of the grants, I had always supposed that, as all lands 
 north of the Ohio were expressly obtained "for the common benefit 
 and support of the Union," as Congress had resolved they " shall 
 be disposed of for the common benefit of the United States," and as 
 the residue of our lands was purchased by our common funds, no doubt 
 could exist that they must be used and granted only in a way to be 
 beneficial to the whole. All sales of them, even at reduced prices, and 
 whether to States or individuals, would always, in my opinion, be thus 
 beneficial, if competition was open to all ; because all would participate 
 in the purchase-money obtained, and all could embark in the purchase 
 itself. The hardy and enterprising yeomanry of the east and the 
 Middle States, who seem almost entirely to have been forgotten in this 
 debate, would then find constantly opened to the ambition of themselves 
 and their sons the benefit of lands at prices within their frugal means, 
 and under democratic institutions of their own choice ; and every valley 
 
SURVEY AND SALE OF PUBLIC LANDS. 87 
 
 and river of the west would in part become, as many of them are now, 
 vocal with New England tongues, and would in part be improved and 
 gladdened by New England industry. So, a division of the lands 
 among all the States, who are as joint proprietors, whether divided for 
 specified or general objects, would seem to me a disposition of them for 
 the " common benefit;" but whether it would ever, in other respects, 
 be a judicious disposition of them, considering the new relations and 
 dependency it might create between the General Government and the 
 States, is a grave question, not now material to me to discuss. On 
 our claim and title to these lands, the State I partly represent has 
 expressed a similar and decisive opinion, and one from which I have 
 yet seen no sufficient reason to dissent. 
 
 " Forasmuch, therefore, as the property and jurisdiction of the soil were acquired 
 by the common means of all, it is contended that the public lands, whether acquired 
 by purchase, by force, or by acts or deeds of cession from individual States, are the 
 common property of the Union, and ought to inure to the common use and benefit of 
 all the States in just proportions, and not to the use and benefit of any particular 
 State or States, to the exclusion of the others ; and that any partial appropriation of 
 them, for State purposes, ' is a violation of the spirit of our national compact, as well 
 as the principles of justice and sound policy.' " — JViles* Reg. p. 391. Res. of N. H. 
 Leg., Jan. 22, 1821. 
 
 And further : 
 
 " That each of the United States has an equal right to participate in the benefit of 
 the public lands, as the common property of the Union." 
 
 Those who passed that resolution sought no injustice or inequality 
 towards the new States. The democracy of New Hampshire, neither 
 then nor now, any more than in the last war, would refuse any aid or 
 relief to the west within the permission of the constitution ; they could, 
 neither in peace or hostility, taunt her when distressed, nor mock 
 when her calamity cometh. Grateful for the sympathies and kindnesses 
 shown them, in this debate, from some of the west as well as the south, 
 I presume they stand ready now, as ever, to make any modification in 
 the system of the public lands, or in the prices, the surveys, or the 
 sales, which can prove useful to the new States, and, at the same time, 
 not prove unequal or unjust to the old States, nor conflict with the 
 condition of the original cessions, or the specific powers of the General 
 Government over the common property of the Union. They stand 
 ready to do this, also, because it is right ; and not to form new, or 
 perfect old alliances, since they seek no alliances with the south, the 
 west, or the centre, but those of mutual respect, mutual courtesy, and 
 mutual benefits, according to the provisions of the constitution. 
 
 Such a division of the lands as the New Hampshire resolution 
 approves, without reference to other notions concerning what has 
 before been granted for education, and to the other consideration 
 before named, would, to every unjaundiced eye, seem to keep up the 
 symmetry of our political system as a confederation, and not a con- 
 
55 SURVEY AND SALE OF PUBLIC LANDS. 
 
 solidation, of States ; and hence would keep up an adherence to their 
 mutual rights, as States, in the whole public property. Any such 
 disposition of them, if effected speedily, would likewise relieve Con- 
 gress from a subject of legislation most burthensome, invidious, and 
 vexatious. Whether our bills be four hundred or four thousand, on 
 that subject, they certainly engross much time, and subject us to vast 
 expenditures. Either a sale or division would bring relief. The west 
 would be double gainers by either, as they would get an equal share 
 in the division, and a speedy power of taxation over the whole. 
 
 But the contrary course, of a yearly scramble for scraps of these 
 lands, — sometimes for roads, sometimes for canals, sometimes for asy- 
 lums, and sometimes for colleges, — seems to me anything but a dispo- 
 sition for the "common benefit," and seems likely to prove an endless 
 source of favoritism, jealousies, and corrupt combinations. If the 
 lands do not all, in time, become thus wasted and frittered away, for 
 little of good to any quarter, they surely will be disposed of very 
 unequally, — they will excite dissatisfaction in the States not made 
 donees, rather than tend to the "support of the Union," and they 
 will be appropriated to objects not, in my opinion, specified in the 
 constitution as within the cognizance of the Government of the 
 Union. 
 
 The test adopted by some gentlemen, in voting for a grant to a road, 
 canal, or college, — that, if it be a good to the place where located, 
 it is a good to a part of the whole, and thus a good to the whole, — 
 seems to me a very convenient argument to support a donation, in any 
 place, to any object, however limited, if the object be only beneficial 
 in any degree ; and the whole domain, certainly, might thus be taken 
 off our hands in a single week. To contend, also, that the lands may 
 be given to such objects in small quantities, and may not at once be 
 given to one, or a few, or all the States themselves, in large quanti- 
 ties, seems to me a suicidal position, and to make a distinction without 
 a difference. 
 
 Not examining the particular kind of sales the government can 
 make for the common benefit, — such as grants to the new States for 
 schools, receiving virtual compensation therefor, by having the rest 
 of the land freed from taxation, — I merely lay down what I suppose 
 to be the general principle. 
 
 On that principle, no reasoning has been offered which convinces, 
 me that lands can be legally appropriated to any object for which we 
 might not legally appropriate money. The lands are as much the 
 property of the Union as its money in the treasury. The cessions 
 and purchases of them were as much for the benefit of all as the 
 collection of the money. The constitution, as well as common sense, 
 seems to me to recognize no difference ; and if the money can only be 
 appropriated to specified objects, it follows that the land can only be 
 so appropriated. Within those specified objects, I have ever been, 
 and ever shall be, as ready to give lands or money to the west as 
 
SURVEY AND SALE OF PUBLIC LANDS. 89 
 
 the east ; but beyond them, I never have been ready to give either 
 to either. Towards certain enumerated objects, Congress have 
 authority to devote the common funds, — the land or the money, — 
 because those objects were supposed to be better managed under their 
 control than under that of the States ; but the care of the other objects 
 is reserved to the States themselves, and can only be promoted by the 
 common funds, in a return or division of those funds to the proprietors, 
 to be expended as they may deem judicious. 
 
 The whole debate on these points goes to satisfy my mind of the 
 correctness of that construction of the constitution which holds no 
 grants of money or lands valid, unless to advance some of the enu- 
 merated objects intrusted to Congress. When we once depart from 
 that great landmark, on the appropriation of lands or money, and 
 wander into indefinite notions of " common good," or of the " general 
 welfare," we are, in my opinion, at sea without compass or rudder ; 
 and in a government of acknowledged limitations, we put everything 
 at the caprice of a fluctuating majority here, — pronouncing that to be 
 for the general welfare to-day, which to-morrow may be denounced as 
 a general curse. Were the government not limited, this broad discre- 
 tion would, of course, be necessary and right. But here every grant 
 of power is defined. Many powers are not ceded to the General Gov- 
 ernment, but are expressly withheld to the States and people ; and no 
 right is, in my opinion, given to promote the "general welfare" by 
 granting money or lands, but in the exercise of the specific powers 
 granted, and in the modes prescribed by the constitution. 
 
 Such limitations on power are admitted by all to be the great glory 
 of a written constitution ; and, since the Magna Charta at Runny- 
 mede, can never be long violated with impunity, among any of Saxon 
 descent. 
 
 The General Government is well known to have been created chiefly 
 for limited objects connected with commerce and foreign intercourse ; 
 and so far from being unlimited in its jurisdiction, extent, or means, 
 was based on express and jealous specifications, and designed not for 
 the prostration, but the preservation, of State rights and State govern- 
 ments, for most of the great purposes of political society. Without 
 going further, at this time and on this occasion, into the argument, 
 legal or constitutional, upon the broad and the strict constructions, I 
 shall content myself with some references to the political bearing of 
 these constructions on the public lands, and on the great topics of con- 
 troversy introduced into this debate, and to some signal authorities in 
 favor of my views, found in the records of the General Government, 
 and of the State which I have the honor in part to represent. A 
 State whose instructions I shall not, like the senator from Maine, 
 refuse to obey, nor deny to be my only earthly " lord and master" 
 rather than the individual " idol or image" of which he spoke so 
 reverently. 
 
 We all know that, early as 1794, the division commenced in Con- 
 8* 
 
90 SURVEY AND SALE OF PUBLIC LANDS. 
 
 gress, between the advocates of extended constructive powers in the 
 General Government, especially in its executive department, and the 
 advocates of State rights, and of restricted views on constitutional 
 powers. 
 
 In relation to Jay's treaty, and the questions connected with it, the 
 lines began to be distinctly marked; and the head of the present admin- 
 istration was found, as the author of the Declaration of our Independ- 
 ence was found, among the firm opposers of indefinite constructive 
 powers ; and the vote of the former, on the retirement of the first 
 President, so often appealed to and misrepresented, in the late canvass, 
 by his opposers, appears to have been predicated entirely upon part of 
 the policy and measures then pursued, bearing on these views of the 
 constitution. He has repeated his former opinions, in his message at 
 the opening of this Congress, by warning us not " to undermine the 
 whole system by a resort to overstrained constructions" and by 
 warning us against u all encroachments upon the legitimate sphere 
 of State sovereignty." The same course of division among our lead- 
 ing statesmen was evinced in the debate on the foreign intercourse 
 bill, in 1798 ; and the distinguished agent on the north-eastern bound- 
 ary, now in this country, then, as since, bent the whole force of his 
 acute and profound mind to show the evil tendency of such an admin- 
 istration of the General Government. The alien and sedition laws, soon 
 after, brought the hostile parties to a crisis ; and then the strong rea- 
 soning of Mr. Madison, in the Virginia resolutions of 1798, and the 
 acute mind of Mr. Jefferson, in those of Kentucky, and the whole 
 influence of their democratic coadjutors throughout the Union, were 
 concentrated against those alarming doctrines, and their fatal prac- 
 tical consequences. One of the Virginia resolutions was in these 
 words : 
 
 "That this Assembly doth explicitly and peremptorily declare, that it views the 
 powers of the Federal Government as resulting from the compact to which the States 
 are parties, as limited by the plain sense and intention of the instrument constituting 
 that compact, as no further valid than they are authorized by the grants enumerated 
 in that compact ; and that, in case of a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise 
 of other powers, not granted by the said compact, the States who are parties thereto 
 have the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose, for arresting the progress of the 
 evil, and for maintaining, within their respective limits, the authorities, rights, and 
 liberties, appertaining to them." — Virg. Res., p. 4. 
 
 Another resolution is in these words : 
 
 " That the General Assembly doth also express its deep regret, that a spirit has, in 
 sundry instances, been manifested by the Federal Government, to enlarge its power 
 by the forced constructions of the constitutional charter which defines them ; and that 
 indications have appeared of a design to expound certain general phrases (which, 
 having been copied from the very limited grant of powers in the former articles of 
 confederation, were the less liable to be misconstrued) so as to destroy the meaning 
 and effect of the particular enumeration, which necessarily explains and limits the 
 general phrases, and so as to consolidate the States, by degrees, into one sovereignty, 
 the obvious tendency and inevitable result of which would be, to transform the pres- 
 ent republican system of the United States into an absolute, or, at best, a mixed 
 monarchy." — Virg. Res., p. 9. 
 
SURVEY AND SALE OF PUBLIC LANDS. 91 
 
 Mr. Jefferson, in his letters, has followed up the same ideas ; and 
 never parted, till he parted with life itself, from this democratic view 
 of the constitutional compact. 
 
 " You will have learned that an act for internal improvement, after passing both 
 Houses, was negatived by the President. The act was founded, avowedly, on the 
 principle that the phrase in the constitution which authorizes Congress * to lay taxes, 
 to pay debts, and provide for the general welfare,' was an extension of the powers 
 specifically enumerated to whatever would promote the general welfare ; and this, 
 you know, was the federal doctrine. Whereas, our tenet ever was, — and, indeed, it 
 is almost the only landmark which now divides the federalists from the republicans, 
 — that Congress had not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but were 
 restrained to those specifically enumerated ; and that, as it was never meant they 
 should provide for that welfare but by the exercise of the enumerated powers, so it 
 could not have been meant they should raise money for purposes which the enumera- 
 tion did not place under their action : consequently, that the specification of powers 
 is a limitation of the purposes for which they may raise money." — 4 Jeff. Works, 
 306. 
 
 Other remarks of his, in like terms, have been before cited, and need 
 not be repeated. 
 
 They were opinions which then endeared him to a majority of the 
 Union, and in 1800 effected the first great political revolution in the 
 administration of our General Government. They were the views of 
 his talented successor, in after times as well as in 1798, as evinced in 
 numberless of his public acts ; and they, in substance, remained the 
 views of his second successor, — at least, during his first term of office. 
 They long constituted, everywhere, the watch-word of democracy. 
 With many, they always have remained the strongest test of political 
 orthodoxy. Such was Mr. Jefferson's own remark, late as 1819. 
 (4 Jeff, 306.) And though, in after and more recent days, some 
 departures may have been witnessed in our ranks from these doc- 
 trines, yet they have in general been apparent and local, rather than 
 real and general departures from the doctrines themselves, and have 
 existed rather in a difference of opinion, in particular applications of 
 those doctrines, and in a difference about details, than about funda- 
 mental views on the true mode of construing the constitution. Some 
 have been misrepresented on this head ; and none, I believe, sir, more 
 than yourself. These differences have been rather " the clouds that 
 hang on Freedom's jealous brow," than any palpable darkness, or any 
 desertion of the great principles contended for by the democracy of the 
 Union in the great revolution of 1800. Some differences, and honest 
 differences, may, and doubtless do exist, on this point, in all parties ; 
 but I am now speaking of this as one basis of the change in adminis- 
 tration at that era, and as one of the doctrines of the party at large, 
 as a party, which effected the change. That the opinions of New 
 Hampshire have coincided with the views, whenever her politics have 
 been democratic, and that I, on them, as on the subject of the public 
 lands, am representing truly these sentiments of her democracy, and 
 not as a Jiidas, so courteously insinuated more than once, is easily 
 demonstrable by a reference, not to namphlets or newspapers, forgot- 
 
92 SURVEY AND SALE OF PUBLIC LANDS. 
 
 ten or fresh, but to her legislative records. While that State contin- 
 ued under the control of men opposed to Mr. Jefferson, and of prin- 
 ciples so fatal to his predecessor, — while her representatives here were 
 voting for Aaron Burr, — she, as would naturally be expected, voted 
 against the doctrines of the Virginia resolutions. 
 
 •But when politically she became regenerate, and moved in harmony 
 with the majority of her sister planets, in the democratic system, — 
 when the tendencies and progress of the opposite doctrines — doctrines 
 urged so often and so strenuously by that gentleman's (Mr. Holmes) 
 "matchless spirit of the west," and under his lead, — when those 
 tendencies began to alarm the watchful, and call forth deliberate and 
 decisive expressions of State opinions on questions so dear to the purity 
 of the constitution, — New Hampshire came out, in both her executive 
 and legislative departments, against the favorite views of that " matchless 
 spirit." She came out with directness and independence, as sovereign 
 States ought to come out, on all great emergencies. She showed her 
 disregard, as a State, of men, — whether southern or eastern, whether 
 politicians or judges, in high places or low, — who, in her opinion, had 
 attempted to seduce the people of the Union, by gradual and stealthy 
 attacks, into the same enlarged and constructive views of the constitu- 
 tion which the revolution of 1800 had openly exposed and defeated. 
 
 Her executive, in June, 1822, declared (see 21 Niles' Register) 
 that : 
 
 " The measures of the National Government are justly regarded as subjects of great 
 interest to the people ; but they become more peculiarly of this character, when 
 believed to be founded on doubtful or erroneous constructions of the constitution, 
 tending to an extension of their own powers. When a case of this kind occurs, or 
 even if it appears probable that it is about to happen, it becomes the duty of the Leg- 
 islatures of the individual States to adopt such constitutional measures as may tend 
 to correct the error, or avert the evil." 
 
 " The constitution gives to Congress the power ' to lay and collect taxes, duties, 
 imposts, and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defence and general 
 welfare of the United States,' and immediately proceeds to define and vest the spe- 
 cific powers which were deemed necessary to effect these objects. Amongst these it is 
 thought none can be found, which, on any known principles of construction, can 
 authorize Congress to expend the public resources in mere objects of internal im- 
 provement. The power to impose taxes, to pay the debts and provide for the common 
 defence and general welfare, seems to have been construed as a specific grant of 
 power to Congress to do any act, or adopt and carry into effect any and every meas- 
 ure, without restriction, which it might suppose would conduce to the general wel- 
 fare. This construction is believed to be wholly unwarranted." 
 
 " When we advert to the great caution with which the powers vested by the con- 
 stitution were defined and guarded by that distinguished body of men by whom it 
 was framed, we find it impossible to believe the indefinite phrase ' to provide 
 for the common defence and general welfare,' in the connection in which it is, to be 
 susceptible of that broad and sweeping construction, which must of necessity merge 
 in it, and render utterly superfluous, every special grant of power in that instrument. 
 A power to provide for the general welfare, without restriction or limitation, is, in 
 fact, a power to do whatever those who are invested with it choose to consider pro- 
 motive of those objects. This is, in truth, the power of a despotism, and can have no 
 place in a free government, the first principle of which is, that the powers delegated 
 to rulers shall be distinctly and clearly defined and limited." 
 
 " At times this is so obvious that they are seen to possess the effrontery to endeavor 
 to influence public opinion, by boldly affecting to hold up to scorn every measure 
 
SURVEY AND SALE OF PUBLIC LANDS. 93 
 
 having for its object the collection of a wasteful misuse of the public resources, as 
 unbecoming national dignity, as if it were possible that real national dignity and 
 respectability could acknowledge any connection with profusion and extravagance." 
 
 For expressing such opinions, that executive was then rebuked by 
 the worshippers of enlarged powers, as the same class of persons now 
 taunt any principles or measures leading to reform, or any men who 
 may advocate reform. Here, in the capital of the Union, it was 
 sneeringly said, "The Hercules approaches who is to cleanse the 
 xlugean stable." (National Intelligencer, June, 1822.) The advo- 
 cates of reform wore then, as now, a theme of daily ridicule, and held 
 up for the "slow unmoving finger of scorn to point at." But the 
 Legislature of New Hampshire responded to the executive in an able 
 report, and concluded with the following memorable resolutions, with 
 scarcely a dissenting vote : 
 
 " 1. Resolved, That, in the opinion of this House, the constitution of the United 
 States has not vested in Congress the right to adopt and execute, at the national 
 expense, a system of internal improvements. 
 
 " 2. Resolved, That, in the opinion of this House, it is not essential so to amend the 
 constitution of the United States as to give the power to Congress to make roads, 
 bridges and canals." 
 
 She thus evinced, on this point, her democracy, and her jealous 
 attachment to State rights ; and this, not only by a decision against the 
 enlarged powers being already reposed in the General Government, 
 but declaring it "not essential" they should be placed there. She 
 believed it dangerous to the welfare and independence of the States 
 either to give these powers to the General Government by construction 
 or express grant ; and the former mode was only the more alarming, as 
 it united usurpation and encroachment on State rights with the exer- 
 cise of a power that she believed tended directly to a consolidation of 
 the government. 
 
 Gentlemen may describe the exercise of such powers as beneficent 
 and splendid, and picture a government with them as having all the 
 "pomp, pride, and circumstance," of Kussian or Assyrian greatness. 
 The gentleman from Maine (Mr. Holmes) may again, as in the 
 Panama debate, paint his present martyr, then his "matchless spirit 
 of the west," sighing for such a "gorgeous kingdom," — "all the 
 natives of this vast continent to be arrayed" together for "the great 
 occasion," — and the whole, "the magnificent scheme of the favorite, 
 the genius, the master spirit of the west." (2d Reg. Deb., 270.) 
 Others may reverse the picture, and describe a government without 
 these powers as too much trammelled in its movements, as ' ' palsied 
 by the will of its constituents," as too "rigid in its expenditures," and 
 certainly as too plain and republican in its institutions, for those who 
 talk of their political "lord and master," in the person of their Presi- 
 dents. But nothing seems clearer to me than that one is the only 
 true government to preserve and perpetuate a mere confederacy of 
 
94 SURVEY AND SALE OF PUBLIC LANDS. 
 
 independent and democratic sovereignties ; and the other, by whatever 
 name baptized, is a government tending to consolidation — to consoli- 
 dation, not of the Union, but of all political powers in the Union. 
 The difference does not consist so much in words as in things ; not in 
 professions, but in effects : the one tending to a republican confedera- 
 tion; the other, in the language of the Virginia resolutions, to a 
 practical " monarchy." 
 
 The Virginia resolutions, page 13, say, further : 
 
 "Whether the exposition of the general phrases here combated would not, by- 
 degrees, consolidate the States into one sovereignty, is a question concerning which 
 the committee can perceive little room for difference of opinion. To consolidate the 
 States into one sovereignty, nothing more can be wanted than to supersede their 
 respective sovereignties, in the cases reserved to them, by extending the sovereignty of 
 the United States to all cases of the ' general welfare,' — that is to say, to all cases 
 whatever." 
 
 Grant that a different opinion on this construction has now, and ever 
 has had, from Hamilton, Ames, and the elder Adams, honest and 
 able advocates ; yet the tendencies of it, whether to consolidation and 
 monarchy or not, have been, and are still, matter of fair argument and 
 just criticism. In that view, and in the importance of this construc- 
 tion to the present mode of making donations of the public lands, and 
 to a just judgment on the imputations cast on myself and my constitu- 
 ents, as having little claims to real democracy, I have attempted to 
 vindicate my own notions, and those of my own State, without a 
 detailed collection of the reasoning on the abstract question, and with- 
 out any strictures on the motives of those who differ from me. A 
 word more, and I dismiss this consideration. 
 
 Who is so blind as not to see, in the approaching condition of our 
 government, on the extinguishment of the national debt, and with our 
 present enormous duties retained, creating a vast surplus revenue of 
 ten or fifteen millions of dollars, — who does not see a cause of new and 
 most fearful apprehension to the States, if all that surplus, as well as 
 all the public lands, can and shall be employed, under the General 
 Government, in objects that government may think conducive to ' ' the 
 common good," or "general welfare"? Who does not see a door 
 opened to favoritism and corruption, which may let in irretrievable 
 ruin to sound political justice and equality, and overwhelm every 
 vestige of State independence % Who does not see, — I care not in 
 whose hands administered, — I say the same in a majority as when in 
 a minority, — I say the same under this as under the last administra- 
 tion, — who does not see a power never contemplated at the formation 
 of the constitution, and which can never be exercised, under our 
 present political system, without tainting to the core both those who 
 exercise and those who feel it 1 Do I say this because hostile to 
 internal improvements fl No ! but because hostile to the degeneracy, 
 if not the ruin, of our Confederacy; and because I would advance 
 internal improvements at the expense of the States and individuals, 
 
SURVEY AND SALE OF PUBLIC LANDS. 95 
 
 and not at the expense of the Union. I would do it the only way they 
 can ever be advanced with safety and usefulness, according to the 
 resolution of New Hampshire, before read, and in those cases only in 
 which individuals and States can see their private and local interest to 
 be so much promoted by these improvements as to warrant the under- 
 takings by themselves. 
 
 Has it, then, come to this, under such a government, — that one of 
 the parties cannot, in any way, interpose and correct its ruinous tenden- 
 cies, and its insidious constructions, when the great exigencies of the 
 country demand it 1 I think there has been more apparent than real 
 difference on this point, in the present debate. Most must admit that 
 they can interfere in some way. So said the fathers of democracy in 
 '98, so said the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions, and so do those 
 say whom I represent. They can interpose in various ways. My 
 theory on this subject may vary more in form than substance from 
 other gentlemen's ; but, as each speaks for himself on this floor, I may 
 be permitted to state briefly it is this : That the parties to the consti- 
 tution are the agents of the people and the States placed in the Gen- 
 eral Government, on the one hand, and the agents of the people placed 
 in their State Governments, on the other hand ; and that the people, 
 separated from all their agents, are only the great primary power and 
 foundation of the whole, never acting as one whole upon or about the 
 constitution, either legislatively, executively, or judicially ; but acting 
 on it in those forms, or any others, only by their agents in the States 
 and in the General Government. Yet the people themselves are still 
 a power behind the throne greater than the throne itself: and intrench 
 yourselves as you may, to the teeth, in parchments and constructions, 
 they, by their agents, in convention in the States, can abolish every 
 institution, political or civil, of the Union, or of their respective States. 
 
 The parties, then, in collision as to the extent of the powers given by 
 the constitution of the Union, are seldom the people with their agents 
 of either class, and never so any length of time, without a sufficient 
 redress ; but the opposing parties are generally, on the one hand, the 
 agents of the people and the States under that constitution, and, on 
 the other hand, their agents under the State constitutions. I say the 
 agents of the people and States in the General Government, as the 
 States are technically represented here in the Senate, and may always 
 technically and solely choose all the electors of the executive branch. 
 The former agents, acting in the administration of the General Gov- 
 ernment, caused it, properly enough, in common parlance, to be called 
 the General Government ; and the latter agents, acting in the States, 
 are called a State Government. The State Government is the gov- 
 ernment which is primary and indispensable. The people, as such, 
 unless in a revolutionary condition, cannot cast a single vote, hold a 
 single town-meeting, or lay out a rod of ordinary highway, except 
 through State power and State agency. I shall not repeat what 
 reasoning and illustration the gentlemen from Kentucky (Mr. 
 
96 SURVEY AND SALE OF PUBLIC LANDS. 
 
 Rowan) and South Carolina (Mr. Hayne) have adduced, in proof 
 of these views, but merely cite a clause in the Virginia resolutions 
 of J 98, to show that these views, whether right or wrong, were the 
 views of the fathers of the democratic party ; and if I err, I err with 
 the Platos and Socrates' of my political faith. (Virg. Res., p. 8.) 
 
 " The other position involved in this branch of the resolution, namely, c that the 
 States are not parties to the constitution or compact,' is, in the judgment of the com- 
 mittee, equally free from objection. It is, indeed, true that the term ' States ' is some- 
 times used in a vague sense, and sometimes in different senses, according to the sub- 
 ject to which it is applied. Thus, it sometimes means the separate sections occupied 
 by the political societies within each ; sometimes, the particular governments estab- 
 lished by those societies ; sometimes, those societies as organized into those particular 
 governments ; and lastly, it means the people composing those political societies, in 
 their highest political sovereign capacity. Although it might be wished that the per- 
 fection of language admitted less diversity in the signification of the same words, yet 
 little inconveniency is produced by it, where the true sense can be collected with cer- 
 tainty from the different applications. In the present instance, whatever different 
 constructions of the term * States,' in the resolution, may have been entertained, all 
 will at least concur in that last mentioned ; because, in that sense the constitution was 
 submitted to the * States,' in that sense the ' States ' ratified it, and in that sense of 
 the term ' States ' they are consequently parties to the compact from which the 
 powers of the Federal Government result." 
 
 The States, then, being one party, is it to be contended that still the 
 other party, the General Government, may adopt any extended con- 
 struction of the powers granted under the constitution, without any 
 efficient right on the part of the States to murmur, remonstrate, alter, 
 or resist ? Certainly not, I should think, on either side of the debate. 
 But how far can they go, and " where shall their proud waves be 
 stayed " ? The opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States, a 
 tribunal appointed, organized, and accountable only to one party to the 
 government and to the decision, is urged on us to be the great final 
 balance-wheel of the whole machinery. But, if the States be another 
 party to the compact, it is manifest that, on ordinary principles of 
 compact, they have the same right as the opposite party, or its agents, 
 to decide on the extent of the compact. This is conceded between two 
 parties, in the case of treaties, and in the case of ordinary bargains 
 and conventions ; and it cannot be denied here, admitting we have 
 shown the States to be one party, unless both the parties have 
 expressly agreed upon some tribunal intermediate, as an umpire or 
 judge, to decide irrevocably this kind of diiferences between the 
 parties to the constitution. On the other hand, I understand it to be 
 argued that the Supreme Court has been agreed on as such a tribunal. 
 But the Supreme Court of the United States would not be likely to 
 be so agreed on, reasoning a priori ; because its members are all 
 appointed by, and answerable to, only one of the parties ; and, indeed, 
 go to form a portion of one of the parties, being mere agents of the 
 General Government. The amendments of the constitution, reserving 
 rights and powers to the States or people, would be nugatory, a mere 
 mockery, if the suicidal grant was made to the Supreme Court, to the 
 
SURVEY AND SALE OF PUBLIC LANDS. 97 
 
 mere agents of one party, to decide finally and forever on the extent 
 of all their own powers. The reasoning for this grant, therefore, 
 appears to me argumentum ad absurdum, as clear as any axiom in 
 Euclid. But on this head I am anxious not to be misapprehended, 
 and am willing to resort to the words of the charter itself, to see what 
 the legitimate powers of that court purport to be in deciding such 
 controversies. 
 
 From the very fact of there being two parties in the Federal Gov- 
 ernment, it would seem a necessary inference that the agents of each 
 party, on proper occasions, must be allowed, and are required by an 
 official oath, to conform to the constitution, and to decide on the extent 
 of its provisions, so far as is necessary for the expression of their own 
 views, and for the performance of their own duties. This being, to my 
 mind, the rationale of the case, I look on the express words of the 
 constitution as conforming to it, by limiting the grant of judicial juris- 
 diction to the Supreme Court, both by the constitution and by the acts 
 of Congress, to specific enumerated objects. In the same way there 
 are limited grants of judicial jurisdiction to State courts, under most 
 of the State constitutions. When cases present themselves within 
 these grants, the judges, whether of the State or United States, must 
 decide, and enforce their decision with such means as are confided to 
 them by the laws and the constitutions. But, when questions arise 
 not confided to the judiciary of the States or United States, the officers 
 concerned in those questions must themselves decide them ; and, in the 
 end, must pursue such course as their views of the constitution dictate. 
 In such instances they have the same authority to make this decision 
 as the Supreme Court itself has in other instances. 
 
 Thus the Virginia resolutions, page 18, say : 
 
 " However true, therefore, it may be, that the judicial department is, in all ques- 
 tions submitted to it by the forms of the constitution, to decide in the last resort, this 
 resort must necessarily be deemed the last in relation to the authorities of the other 
 departments of the government; not in relation to the rights of the parties to the 
 constitutional compact, from which the judicial, as well as the other departments, hold 
 their delegated trusts. On any other hypothesis, the delegation of judicial power 
 would annul the authority delegating it ; and the concurrence of this department with 
 the others, in usurped powers, might subvert forever, and beyond the possible reach 
 of any rightful remedy, the very constitution which all were instituted to preserve." 
 
 Thus Mr. Jefferson says : 
 
 M They contain the true principles of the revolution of 1800 : for that was as real a 
 revolution in the principles of our government as that of 1776 was in its form, — not 
 effected, indeed, by the sword, as that, but by the rational and peaceable instrument 
 of reform, the suffrage of the people. The nation declared its will, by dismissing 
 functionaries of one principle, and electing those of another, in the two branches, the 
 executive and legislative, submitted to their election. Over the judiciary department 
 the constitution had deprived them of their control. That, therefore, has continued 
 the reprobated system; and although new matter has been occasionally incorporated 
 into the old, yet the leaven of the old mass seems to assimilate to itself the new; and, 
 after twenty years' confirmation of the federal system by the voice of the nation, 
 
 9 
 
98 SURVEY AND SALE OF PUBLIC LANDS. 
 
 declared through the medium of elections, we find the judiciary, on every occasion, 
 still driving us into consolidation. 
 
 "In denying the right they usurp, of exclusively explaining the constitution, I go 
 further than you do, if I understand rightly your quotation, from the Federalist, of an 
 opinion that * the judiciary is the last resort, in relation to the other departments of 
 the government, but not in relation to the rights of the parties to the compact under 
 which the judiciary is derived.' If this opinion be sound, then, indeed, is our consti- 
 tution a complete felo-de-se. For, intending to establish three departments, coor- 
 dinate and independent, that they might check and balance one another, it has given, 
 according to this opinion, to one of them alone the right to prescribe rules for the 
 government of the others, and to that one, too, which is unelected by, and independ- 
 ent of, the nation. For experience has already shown that the impeachment it has 
 provided is not even a scare-crow; that such opinions as the one you combat, sent 
 cautiously out, as you observe also, by detachment, — not belonging to the case often, 
 but sought for out of it, as if to rally the public opinion beforehand to their views, 
 and to indicate the line they are to walk in, — have been so quietly passed over as never 
 to have excited animadversion, even in a speech of any one of the body intrusted with 
 impeachment. The constitution, on this hypothesis, is- a mere thing of wax in the 
 hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please. 
 It should be remembered, as an axiom of eternal truth, in politics, that whatever 
 power, in any government, is independent, is absolute also ; in theory only, at first, 
 while the spirit of the people is up, but in practice as fast as that relaxes. Independ- 
 ence can be trusted nowhere but with the people in mass. They are inherently inde- 
 pendent of all but moral law. My construction of the constitution is very different 
 from that you quote. It is, that each department is truly independent of the others, 
 and has an equal right to decide for itself what is the meaning of the constitution in 
 the cases submitted to its action, and especially where it is to act ultimately, and 
 without appeal." 
 
 In confirmation of this, almost every eastern constitution author- 
 izes the departments of the government, not judicial, to call on the 
 judges for aid and advice merely, in questions of difficulty; still 
 leaving those departments to act finally on their own matured inform- 
 ation, and their own responsibility. But all the difficulty does not 
 arise here. Suppose the State agents, judicial or otherwise, decide 
 wrong in the opinion of the people, or the agents of the General Gov- 
 ernment decide wrong in the opinion of the people, on subjects admit- 
 ted to be within their jurisdiction, — is there, first, no remedy for the 
 people 1 Are they not supreme ? 
 
 As I before remarked, the people, in their omnipotence, if the 
 case excite them enough, can, and will, in such event, always apply a 
 most sovereign remedy ; — sometimes reach the disease by changing the 
 agents who have misbehaved ; at other times, when unable, by the ten- 
 ure of office, as in case of the judges generally, to reach that class of 
 agents by new elections, they can, by conventions, alter or abolish their 
 whole system of government, and the whole course of decisions under 
 them, and improve or create anew whatever may have been objection- 
 able. This is a doctrine neither revolutionary nor leading to anarchy, 
 but rational and democratic, and lies at the foundation of all popular 
 governments. But granting this, the argument still holds that, though 
 the people can effect a change, yet the States, one of the parties to 
 the compact, cannot reach or correct what they may deem an erro- 
 neous decision, by the agents of the other party, on the powers given 
 by the compact, and especially that they cannot reach or correct an 
 
SURVEY AND SALE OF PUBLIC LANDS. 99 
 
 erroneous decision made by the Supreme Court of the Union. Again : 
 it may be answered, reasoning a priori, that if this be true, it is deeply 
 to be lamented, as the people seldom act unitedly or efficiently, except 
 through their State agents — those agents who come so frequently and 
 so directly from among the people themselves. If this be true, it is 
 quite certain that the Supreme Court might, if so disposed, proceed, 
 case by case, from year to year, on one subject and another, in this 
 and that section of the Union, to give constructions to the constitution, 
 tending slowly, but inevitably, to a consolidation of the government, and 
 to the utter prostration of State rights ; and yet the people, as a peo- 
 ple, would not widely and at once become enough excited to interpose 
 in their primary authority, and stay or correct such encroachments. 
 If this be true, any Supreme Court, entertaining political views hostile 
 to those of a majority of the people, would be able, in time, by cautious 
 approaches, not exciting general and deep alarm, to defeat the majority, 
 to render the reservations to the States and people a mere brutum 
 fulmen, turn the doctrine of State rights into a jest, and ride tri- 
 umphantly over all probable and feasible opposition. 
 
 There is wanting in me no respect to the members of our Supreme 
 Court, which their great personal worth deserves ; but I would inquire 
 if, from the case of Marbury and Madison, in 1801, down to that of 
 the Bank and McCulloch, in 1821, there has not been evinced on that 
 bench a manifest and sleepless opposition, in all cases of a political 
 bearing, to the strict construction of the constitution adopted by the 
 democracy of the Union in the great revolution of 1800? I say 
 nothing now against the honesty or legal correctness of their views, in 
 adopting such a construction. I speak only of the matter of fact, and 
 of its political tendency ; and I ask if, while the people, through their 
 democratic agents in the Legislatures of the State and General Gov- 
 ernments, have been, in the main, adhering to one construction, — a 
 strict and rigid construction, — if their judicial agents in the General 
 Government have not been, with a constancy and silence like the 
 approaches of death, adhering to a different construction ; thus sliding 
 onwards to consolidation, — thus giving a diseased enlargement to the 
 powers of the General Government, and throwing chains over State 
 rights — chains never dreamed of at the formation of the General 
 Government? What says Mr. Jefferson on this head? (4 Jefferson's 
 Works, p. 337.) 
 
 " But it is not from this branch of government we have most to fear. Taxes and 
 short elections will keep them right. . The judiciary of the United States is the subtle 
 corps of sappers and miners constantly working under ground, to undermine the 
 foundations of our confederated fabric. They are construing our constitution, from a 
 coordination of a general and special government, to a general and supreme one 
 alone. This will lay all things at their feet; and they are too well versed in English 
 law to forget the maxim, * boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem.' " 
 
 No institution, in this free country, is above just criticism and fair 
 discussion, in regard to its political views, and the political consequences 
 
100 SURVEY AND SALE OF PUBLIC LANDS. 
 
 of its proceedings. Hence, in the States and everywhere, the field of 
 inquiry and comment is, and should be, open to all ; and a sacredness 
 from this would render any institution a despotism. What, then, let 
 me ask, — what have been the illustrations of the bearing of the decisions 
 of that court upon State rights, in particular cases ? At one time, 
 has not Georgia been prostrated by a decision, in a case feigned or real, 
 between Fletcher and Peck 1 At another, Pennsylvania humbled, in 
 the case of Olmstead's executors ? At another, Ohio and Maryland 
 subdued, in the case of McCulloch and the Bank 1 At another, New 
 York herself set at defiance, in the steamboat controversy? And last, 
 if not least, New Hampshire vanquished, in the case of Dartmouth 
 College? These decisions may, or may not, have been legally right — 
 that is not my present inquiry ; but who is not struck with the differ- 
 ence between the progress and effect of these decisions, and what was 
 witnessed in the earlier days of the republic ? When Massachusetts, 
 in the height of her glory, was threatened to be brought to the bar of 
 that court for trial, she, in the person of Hancock, set on foot a remon- 
 strance, and a proposed amendment of the constitution, which her great 
 influence carried throughout the Union, — an amendment exempting a 
 sovereign State there, in certain cases, from the humiliation of a trial 
 and sentence. Even this amendment, so plausible on its face, has, 
 since 1801, been almost wholly evaded in practice, by suing the agents 
 of a State, instead of the State itself. So, again, before 1801, when 
 Virginia, in her might and chivalry, took the field against the "alien 
 and sedition laws," and against the decision of the Supreme Court on 
 their constitutionality, an alteration of the constitution, to be sure, did 
 not follow, but an alteration in the administration and the laws did fol- 
 low : and she effected the political revolution which suffered those laws 
 to expire without a renewal, and will probably prevent their reenact- 
 ment until democracy itself shall have become a forgotten tale. I 
 shall enumerate no other cases, nor detain the Senate by a moment's 
 inquiry into the correctness of any of these decisions ; though it may 
 be observed that my own State, on an attempt to obtain her political 
 approbation of the decisions in the cases of Ohio and Maryland, and 
 on the principles therein involved, postponed indefinitely the resolution 
 on that subject, by the following vote in one branch of her Legisla- 
 ture : 
 
 June 24th, 1821, the Senate voted, seven to five, to postpone indef- 
 initely this, among others : 
 
 "Resolved, That, in the opinion of this Legislature, the proceedings in the Circuit 
 Court of the United States for the District of Ohio, in the before-mentioned report 
 stated, do not violate either the letter or the spirit of the 11th article of the amend- 
 ments of the constitution of the United States, nor constitute any just cause of com- 
 plaint." 
 
 The only time she ever expressed any opinion, as a State, hostile to 
 my views concerning the powers of the General Government and its 
 
SURVEY AND SALE OF PUBLIC LANDS. 101 
 
 judiciary, was in rejecting the Virginia resolutions, at an era in her 
 politics when, having just cast her votes for the elder Adams, she 
 might naturally be expected to be hostile to the democratic principles 
 of those resolutions. 
 
 It will thus be seen how the powers of the General Government have 
 been gradually brought, through one of its departments, to bear on the 
 States; and how the decisions of that department have gradually 
 tended to the dangerous enlargement of those powers. This subject 
 has been adverted to, not for the purpose of questioning the constitu- 
 tional competency of that court so to decide, when it thinks best, but 
 to ask whether no way exists for the States, when opposed to the polit- 
 ical bearing of those constructions, — when opposed to such a political 
 operation of the constitution, — to check or control the influence of 
 such a course of decisions : and if any way does not exist, whether the 
 government is not likely soon to end in consolidation, and whether our 
 future Presidents and Vice-presidents, without reference to any signs 
 of the times about a new alliance, are not, as more than once intimated 
 in this discussion, from the west and east (Barton and Holmes), to 
 be lifted hereafter from that bench to preside over the new destinies of 
 a consolidated government. My own answer to some of these inquiries 
 is, firstly, that, by the States, as States, the erroneous decision of the 
 legislative and executive departments of the General Government can 
 generally be corrected by changing, in the State Legislatures and at the 
 ballot-boxes, the agents here who made those decisions. This has been 
 the ordinary remedy, in ordinary cases. Another class of decisions, 
 and especially those by the judiciary, when the judges are not remov- 
 able by the people, or the States, or Congress, as those of the Supreme 
 Court are not, can be corrected sometimes by the States, as States, 
 through public expressions of opinion in their Legislatures, acting by 
 their intrinsic reasoning and force on the agents who made those decis- 
 ions, and inducing them to revise and alter their doctrines in future. 
 It would not be derogatory to any court, to listen to any expressions 
 of opinion, and any arguments, such as those contained in the Virginia 
 resolutions of 1798, in the resolutions of South Carolina on the tariff, 
 or in the executive message, resolutions, and report, of the Legislature 
 of New Hampshire, in 1822, on the constructive powers claimed for 
 the General Government. When all these modes fail, another and 
 decisive resort, on the part of the States, is to amendments of the 
 constitution, by the safe and large majority of three-fourths. The 
 acknowledged power of the States, by their resolutions and concert in 
 this way, to effect any changes, limitations, or corrections, shows 
 clearly that in them the real sovereignty between the two governments 
 is placed by the constitution, and in them the final, paramount suprem- 
 acy resides. They can alter this constitution, but we here cannot 
 alter their constitutions. We, then, are the servants, and they the, 
 master. On the contrary, whatever others may hold, I do not hold 
 that any certain redress beyond this, on the part of any State, can be 
 9* 
 
102 SURVEY AND SALE OF PUBLIC LANDS. 
 
 interposed against such decisions of the Supreme Court as are followed 
 by legal process, unless that State resorts, successfully, to force against 
 force, in conflict with the federal agents. It is admitted by me, how- 
 ever, that a State may resolve,-^- may express her convictions on the 
 nullity or unconstitutionality of a law or decision of the General Gov- 
 ernment. These doings may work a change through public opinion, 
 or lead to a cooperation of three-fourths of the sister States, to correct 
 the errors by amendments of the constitution. But whenever the 
 enforcement of the law or decision comes within the scope of the 
 acknowledged jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, and can be accom- 
 plished by legal process, I see no way in which that court can be con- 
 trolled, except by moral and intellectual appeals to the hearts and 
 heads of her judges, or by amendments to the constitution, or by the 
 deplorable and deprecated remedy of physical force. This latter resort 
 I do not understand any gentleman here to approve, until all other 
 resorts fail ; and, even then, only in a case where the evil suffered is 
 extreme and palpable, and, indeed, more intolerable and dangerous 
 than the dissolution of the government itself. 
 
 Such was the doctrine of Jefferson and Madison. (Virg. Res., 
 p. 18.) 
 
 "The resolution has accordingly guarded against any misapprehension of its 
 object, by expressly requiring for such an interposition * the case of a deliberate, 
 palpable, and dangerous ' breach of the constitution, by the exercise of powers not 
 granted by it. It must be a case, not of a light and transient nature, but of a 
 nature dangerous to the great purposes for which the constitution was established. 
 It must be a case, moreover, not obscure or doubtful in its construction, but plain 
 and palpable. Lastly : it must be a case not resulting from a partial consideration 
 or hasty determination, but a case stamped with a final consideration and deliberate 
 adherence." 
 
 Beyond their views I trust no member of this Confederacy will ever 
 feel either the necessity or inclination to advance, and thus put in 
 jeopardy that Union which we all profess so highly to prize. Most of 
 the States, as States, in most of the exigencies that have arisen under 
 the constitution, though all other efforts failed, have thought it better 
 still to suffer — 
 
 "to bear the ills we have, 
 Than fly to others that we know not of." 
 
 How far the official authorized State acts under Pennsylvania, in 
 the case of Olmstead, and the same authorized State acts in Massachu- 
 setts, in withholding the militia from the General Government, — and 
 of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, as States, assem- 
 bling by their delegates in the Hartford Convention, in a time of war, 
 and with such objects as the late chief magistrate imputed to them in 
 1828, and the present chief magistrate recognized in his letter to Mr. 
 Monroe in 1816, — how far these were exceptions from their history 
 to the obedience of the States, as States, to the laws and constitution, I 
 see not now any pleasure, or profit, or necessity, in inquiring. Every 
 
SURVEY AND SALE OF PUBLIC LANDS. 103 
 
 sovereign State who has decided, or who may decide, on forcible col- 
 lision, decides for herself, though she manifestly does it under a high 
 responsibility to her people and the Union; and, of -course, must con- 
 sent to be judged upon, however harshly, by public opinion, and be 
 willing to abide on her course the decision made by the scrutiny of 
 argument and time. 
 
 Having stated some of my deliberate views on the interest of the 
 States in the public lands, and on the power of Congress in the dis- 
 posal of them, and having attempted to fortify those views by my 
 opinions on the just construction of the constitution, as regards the 
 power of Congress to appropriate either land or money, I have next 
 hastily adverted to the rights of the States and the people to control 
 Congress and the Federal Judiciary, when disposed to place a con- 
 struction on those powers not in accordance with the opinion of the 
 States and the people. 
 
 Under these limitations of the constitution, as expounded by the 
 State I represent, and by myself, I here profess, on this unpleasant 
 controversy between parts of the west and the east, that I am willing 
 to go, on all subjects connected with the public lands, into equal and 
 useful reform, in our present system of either surveys or sales. But, 
 I am frank to confess, I have uniformly voted against appropriations 
 for general surveys for roads and canals, and against donations of land 
 or money towards roads and canals, unless so far as our express con- 
 tract requires, in relation to the Cumberland road and the extension 
 of it; or, unless the roads were military, or situated in territories 
 owned by the United States. Other gentlemen have doubtless done 
 the same, for the same reasons, whether from the south or east ; and 
 it is a mistake evinced by our own records, to suppose that all, or even 
 a majority of the east, have uniformly gone in favor of these objects. 
 On other subjects, the case may be very different in respect to the 
 vote of the east or the south, arising from local prejudices, or politi- 
 cal opinions ; but on that question enough has been said by other gen- 
 tlemen, and enough shown by documents and records, to render fur- 
 ther comment useless, and to throw some additional light and interest 
 upon the political and party history of this country, the last fifty 
 years. A further reason for refraining upon these subjects is, that 
 the strictures made here, unfavorable to the east, concerning these 
 subjects, have expressly, repeatedly, and from all quarters, excepted 
 the democracy of the east ; and hence I see no occasion for myself, as 
 one of that democracy, to enter into that part of the discussion, for 
 either inquiry or vindication. If any other political party than the 
 democracy in the east has been attacked, and has felt aggrieved, — if 
 the peace party in the late war has met with undue severity, — they, 
 if not their associates, will speak for themselves. But this much I 
 will add on the graduation bill of my friend from Missouri (Mr. 
 Benton), and on his good name: I cannot agree with the gentleman 
 from Maine (Mr. Holmes), that they have never come to the knowl- 
 
104 SURVEY AND SALE OF PUBLIC LANDS. 
 
 edge of my constituents; but, on the contrary, however they may 
 doubt the expediency of parts of that bill, they stand ready at all 
 times, and on all occasions, so far as that democracy is represented by 
 me, to pay due homage to the vigorous intellect of its author, and to 
 his indefatigable and faithful services on this floor, not only to the 
 west, but to the country at large, upon almost every great question 
 agitated here since my personal acquaintance with this body. What- 
 ever others in the east may profess, I do not contend that every 
 western measure, whether for internal improvement or different 
 objects, has been indebted for its success to eastern votes; and I 
 appeal to no alliances, new or old, in confirmation or in consequence 
 of it. Nor do I ask, like one of the gentlemen from Maine (Mr. 
 S Prague), one vote against the west to be judged by the motive and 
 not its effects, another by its effects and not the motive, — one by 
 the aid received of a minority from the east of the Hudson, and 
 another by a minority north-east of the Potomac. I, for one, put 
 forth no such claims or arguments, but frankly avow, though generally 
 supporting the western measures before named, I have, in other cases, 
 voted against the west, as I have against the south, the Middle States, 
 and the east itself. But I have done it on principles of equal right, 
 of general justice, and devotion to my official oath; and on no princi- 
 ples of peculiar favoritism to either, except as I might know better 
 and love dearer the interests and welfare of my immediate constitu- 
 ents. However scoffed for hearing New England blood called in 
 question, and holding silence, I claim no exemption from that frailty 
 of predilection towards my native soil, which, if frailty it be, may be 
 thought to lean on virtue's side. 
 
 " Breathes there a man with soul so dead, 
 Who never to himself hath said, 
 This is my own, my native land ?" 
 
 The examination which has accompanied this debate will not show, 
 I believe, that the west has, in truth, been more benefited by differ- 
 ent constitutional opinions than she would be by those of a strict and 
 democratic character. All the political kindnesses which can be 
 accorded to the west, on these last principles of construction, by such 
 of the democracy of the east as entertain them, always have been, and, 
 I am confident, always will be, granted with cheerfulness. Thus, for 
 one, I have voted for improvement of her lake harbors and of her 
 navigable rivers, because the power of imposing tonnage duties and 
 imposts, by which such improvements can alone be generally accom- 
 plished, is expressly granted to Congress, coupled with the power to 
 regulate commerce; for the relief of her actual settlers on the 
 public lands, many of whom are hardy and honest emigrants from the 
 east, who, flying from the blasts of misfortune there, have sought an 
 asylum for all they hold dear in the bosom of the mighty west ; for 
 the extinguishment of Indian titles, because we too have once had 
 
SURVEY AND SALE OF PUBLIC LANDS. 105 
 
 such savage neighbors, and often seen our dwellings in a blaze, and 
 our wives and infants perish, under their bloody and barbarous war- 
 fare; for remunerations against Indian depredations, because those 
 also our early settlers in the east endured frequently, and frequently 
 beheld in a single night the total wreck, the smoking ruins, of years 
 ' of honest and patient industry. Lastly, I have voted for military 
 and territorial roads, and stand ready to vote for lowering the prices 
 of the public lands. But, on some other questions, I have not gone, 
 and cannot go, with the west, any more than they can always go with 
 us. In fine, whenever, under constitutional limitations, I could confer 
 a benefit on the new States, I have heretofore attempted, and will in 
 future attempt it, as heartily as to confer one on Pennsylvania or 
 South Carolina ; but beyond those limitations I trust that no honor- 
 able statesman from beyond the mountains — and I know that none of 
 the chivalry there who fought with the democracy of the east in the late 
 war for free trade and sailors' rights — can, for a moment, wish me to 
 go, or for a moment can question the sincerity of this avowal in their 
 behalf, or the genuine devotion to the durable welfare of the west 
 cherished by the democracy I represent. It has not been questioned, 
 in this debate, by my friend on the right or the left (Mr. Benton 
 and Mr. Hayne), but both have eloquently bestowed on that democ- 
 racy the praises it richly deserved, and which praises tend to bless 
 both the giver and receiver. That democracy has the ties, the sym- 
 pathies, and the affections of the heart, arising from common sufferings 
 and sacrifices, besides the political brotherhood of a common tongue, 
 faith, and institutions, to bind them to the west with stronger ties 
 than any temporary alliances, for purposes whether party or personal. 
 Whether the same ties of the heart can exist between the west and 
 the opponents of that democracy in the east, the peace party in war, 
 who refused relief and succor to the bleeding west, it is for any 
 representatives of those opponents to show. In fine, sir, if the gov- 
 ernment, on those principles of strict construction of the constitution, 
 cannot be prosperously administered, it requires no spirit of prophecy 
 to foresee, that, in a few brief years, in a new crisis approaching, 
 and before indicated, it must, as a confederation, probably cease to 
 be administered at all. It will, in my judgment, become a govern- 
 ment of usurped, alarming, undefined powers ; and the sacred rights 
 of the States will become overshadowed in total eclipse. When that 
 catastrophe more nearly approaches, unless the great parties to the 
 government shall arouse and in some way interfere and rescue it from 
 consolidation, it will follow, as darkness does the day, that the 
 government ends like all republics of olden times, either in anarchy 
 or despotism. 
 
 On some accounts, sir, it would give me most unfeigned pleasure, 
 could I close my remarks here. But, for an adherence to what I con- 
 sider democratic doctrines, on these and other points of controversy, 
 and for an adherence to such men, wherever resident, as practise those 
 
106 SURVEY AND SALE OF PUBLIC LANDS. 
 
 doctrines through evil and through good report, it has been the lot of 
 a class of people in the east, for the last third of a century, to be 
 stigmatized by all the opprobrious epithets and insinuations which, in 
 different stages of this debate, have been accumulated on such of them 
 as support the present administration. 
 
 On one hand here, these last have been alluded to as if mere worship- 
 pers of a rising sun, and for that manufactured into democrats dyed 
 in the wool, from the very doors of the Hartford Convention. On 
 another hand, jeered as if democratic only for the adherence to south- 
 ern men, and taunted as being small in number and diminutive in 
 importance. On another hand, stigmatized as Judases and apostates 
 from the true New England faith ; and, in fine, loudly denounced, 
 in common with all the supporters of the present administration, as 
 a heterogeneous mass of renegadoes from all parties, with no common 
 bond of principle or feeling, and doomed soon to become an easy con- 
 quest to the courteous and the modest opponents of what is called 
 this cruel administration. Though one of the supporters of this 
 administration, still, Mr. President, nothing short of a strong sense of 
 peculiar duty on this occasion could have compelled me to take any 
 part in answering such angry criminations. They seem only the 
 escape of the steam from a high-pressure engine, fitted for an eight 
 years' voyage ; but the vessel having unexpectedly been compelled to 
 stop its wheels at the end of four years, thus lets off its heated vapor 
 in the midst of its career. I consider the debate, however, in this 
 respect, if in no other, as somewhat fortunate, since it may prevent 
 any injury by the bursting of the boilers. But, sir, averse as I am 
 to party bitterness, — and the whole Senate can bear me witness that, 
 unless in self-defence, I never make either sectional, party, or per- 
 sonal imputations, - — and little regardful as I am of abuse, when heaped 
 only on myself, — for I have long since learned to let my life, rather 
 than my language, answer personal slander, — yet I stand in such a 
 relation to those friends of this administration, in my own State, as to 
 render it unmanly and dishonorable to permit any imputations on 
 them, from however high sources, to pass unnoticed. Much less will 
 I permit them so to pass, when showered upon us chiefly, not by the 
 south, or the west, or the Middle States, but by persons some of 
 whom claim to be the only lineal sons of the east itself, and the 
 real Simon Pures of all that is democratic, and all that is New Eng- 
 land; persons, also, who vauntingly march to the attack here, with 
 eleven thence against the administration to one in its favor, willing to 
 repel the aggression, and sustain the cause of its eastern supporters. 
 But this, I suppose, is another specimen of that magnanimity and true 
 greatness which, when in a minority, always talks of lifting its quad- 
 rant to the sun, and of forgetting and forgiving by-gone sfrifes, by- 
 gone parties, by-gone oppositions; but which, in a majority, directs 
 its vision and its wrath to the smallest light that twinkles. Let me ask, 
 then, more in sorrow than in anger, why are these aggressions 
 
SURVEY AND SALE OF PUBLIC LANDS. 107 
 
 made on us, Mr. President 1 Have any provocations been given for 
 an attack by eastern men on that part of the democracy of the east 
 which supports the present administration? Had a syllable been 
 uttered here, by any of that democracy, against any of their former 
 brethren, whether or not intimating they were now in other ranks, or 
 in other alliances'? Had aught been said from the east reproaching 
 any of them as Swiss troops, coming from or going to the peace party 
 in war 1 On the contrary, not only the eastern friends of this admin- 
 istration, but the whole democratic party in the east, whether oppos- 
 ers or supporters of this administration, had been studiously, in the 
 whole charge, excepted from any censure flung by any gentleman on 
 the east itself, or on the excesses of its federalism, during the late war. 
 Thus my friend on the left (Mr. Benton) explicitly said, he flung 
 no reproach or complaint on the eastern democracy ; and we have the 
 printed as well as spoken declarations of my friend on the right (Mr. 
 Hayne) to the same effect, and in a strain of the highest, if not most 
 merited eulogy. He said : 
 
 " God forbid, sir, that he should charge the people of Massachusetts with partici- 
 pating in these sentiments. The south and the west had then their friends, — men 
 who stood by their country, though encompassed all around by their enemies : the 
 senator from Massachusetts (Mr. Silsbee) was one of them ; the senator from Con- 
 necticut (Mr. Foot) was another ; and there were others now on this floor. The sen- 
 timents I have read were the sentiments of a party, embracing the political associates 
 of the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Webster)." 
 
 Again : to exempt, with specific certainty, the democratic party at 
 large, as well as the people of Massachusetts not in concert with the 
 peace party, he (Mr. Hayne) said : 
 
 " Mr. President : I wish it to be distinctly understood, that all the remarks I have 
 made on this subject are intended to be exclusively applied to a party, which I 
 have described as the * Peace party of New England,' embracing the political asso- 
 ciates of the senator from Massachusetts, — a party which controlled the operations of 
 that State during the embargo and war, and who are justly chargeable with all the 
 measures I have justly reprobated. Sir, nothing has been further from my thoughts 
 than to impeach the character or conduct of the people of New England. For their 
 steady habits, and hardy virtues, I trust I entertain a becoming respect. I fully sub- 
 scribe to the truth of the description (given before the Revolution, by one whose praise 
 is the highest eulogy), 'that the perseverance of Holland, the activity of France, and 
 the dexterous and firm sagac ity of English enterprise,' have been more than equalled 
 by this 'recent people.' Hardy, enterprising, sagacious, industrious and moral, the 
 people of New England, of the present day, are worthy of their ancestors. Still less, 
 Mr. President, has it been my intention to say anything that could be construed into 
 a want of respect for that party, who, trampling on all narrow, sectional feelings, 
 have been true to their principles in the worst of times, — I mean the democracy of New 
 England. Sir, I will declare that, highly as I appreciate the democracy of the south, 
 I consider even higher praise to be due to the democracy of New England, who have 
 maintained their principles ' through good and through evil report,' — who, at every 
 period of our national history, have stood up manfully for ' their country, their whole 
 country, and nothing but their country.' In the great political revolution of '98, 
 they were found united with the democracy of the south, marching under the banner 
 of the constitution, led on by the patriarch of liberty, in search of the land of politi- 
 cal promise, which they lived not only to behold, but to possess and to enjoy. Again, 
 sir, in the darkest and gloomiest period of the war, when our country stood single- 
 
108 SUKVEY AND SALE OF PUBLIC LANDS. 
 
 handed against * the conqueror of the conquerors of the world,' — when all about and 
 around them was dark and dreary, disastrous and discouraging, — they stood, a Spar- 
 tan band, in that narrow pass where the honor of their country was to be defended, 
 or to find its grave. And in the last great struggle, involving, as we believe, the 
 very existence of the principle of popular sovereignty, where were the democracy of 
 New England ? Where they always have been found, sir, struggling side by side 
 with their brethren of the south and the west for popular rights, and assisting in that 
 glorious triumph by which the man of the people was elevated to the highest office in 
 their gift." 
 
 Thus has he so ably and eloquently poured upon our democracy 
 every commendation they deserve, and for which he is entitled to most 
 grateful thanks, both from them and myself; and thus the naked truth 
 puts to rest the attempts since made to pervert his remarks into a sec- 
 tional attack on the whole east, and to excite improper and unfounded 
 prejudice against the south and west, as if they had put " the whole 
 east to the ban of the empire" 
 
 But, in truth, the sectional attempts to inflame public sentiment 
 will appear to have come from the east itself, if not from some of that 
 party there which alone was censured ; and the injunctions of Wash- 
 ington against such sectional appeals, which have been read us, might 
 well furnish admonitions against the course pursued by those on my 
 right, who have read them (Mr. Noble and Mr. Holmes). 
 
 " One of the expedients of party to acquire influence within particular districts is 
 to misrepresent the opinions and aims of other districts. You cannot shield your- 
 selves too much against the jealousies and heart-burnings which spring from those 
 misrepresentations ; they tend to render alien to each other those who ought to be 
 bound together by fraternal affection." — 5 Marshall's Wash., 300. 
 
 With a charge, then, against only the leaders of the peace party in 
 war, what have we seen in reply 1 Not an avowed defence of that 
 party which alone was assailed, and which, by its representation here, 
 commenced the assault on my friend upon the right, by taunts against 
 the south ; but we have invocations to forgetfulness, we have protest- 
 ations and disclaimers. Not the lions of democracy rousing when not 
 attacked ; but the real game pursued rousing as it feels the huntsman 
 in the chase, and seeking to infuse alarm into all within its influence, 
 and all starting aside, from anger or mortification, that the democ- 
 racy was not also attacked, to fasten upon our throats, with all the 
 bitterness of our most virulent defamers, for the last third of a 
 century. 
 
 I cherish, sir, quite too much self-respect, and too great personal 
 regard for that portion of the federalism of this Union which has 
 been honest, consistent and faithful to the country, however much we 
 may differ in our political views, ever to cast on any of its number 
 personal or party strictures, beyond what is necessarily involved in 
 settling historical facts, and in defence of myself and my constituents. 
 But I shall endeavor, with all the decorum so exciting a subject per- 
 mits, to show, if God spares me strength, that the imputations before 
 enumerated, come whence they may, are the worst kind of revilings, 
 
SURVEY VND SALE OF PUBLIC LANDS. 109 
 
 from a very ancient school of politics in the east ; and that they are 
 just as unfounded now, as the atrocious slanders were, which have 
 been uttered by heated partisans against this same democracy, in every 
 great political struggle for the last thirty years. It matters not who 
 utters them, — whether some of the authors have always claimed to 
 support republicanism, as opposed to federalism, or some have never 
 so claimed, — or whether some of them, during the whole administra- 
 tion of the writer of the Declaration of Independence, marched together, 
 shoulder to shoulder, in opposition to that administration, as they now 
 march in opposition to this, or not. But the scoffs themselves have 
 internal evidence of their character, which no professions can rebut ; 
 they smell of a lamp, they spring from a school, not to be mistaken. 
 Whoever unites in these scoffs cannot complain, if judged by the 
 maxim, noscitur a sociis. They are the old lessons of an old school. 
 The stain and brand can no more be torn off, than Hercules could tear 
 off the poisoned robe of Nessus. 
 
 Under the lead, then, which all have witnessed, that part of the 
 democracy of the east friendly to the present administration have first 
 been kindly reminded that they are a new manufacture ; and next, that 
 their democracy chiefly consists in their adherence to southern men and 
 southern measures. How novel and how true are these taunts, will be 
 seen in a moment, by " setting history right." 
 
 Had gentlemen forgotten that the seeds of division were sown in the 
 east early as 1791, and that whoever then rose above sectional views, 
 and pursued an independent and democratic course on public measures, 
 was jeered at by some, in the language once applied to Hancock, — he 
 "is with the Yorkers and Southern bashaws " 1 Repeated from the 
 same quarter in 1798, against the intrepid Langdon, — that he was 
 " a slave, an apostate to the south;" because he was averse to the 
 principles and policy of the then administration, and rose against it, 
 and above sectional clamor and Massachusetts dictation, supposing 
 that New Hampshire "was, and of right ought to be," as independ- 
 ent of her, as of Georgia or Kentucky, and that any other course by 
 her delegates here would indeed be apostasy, — degrading apostasy 
 from democratic principles, and all those holy and inspiring sentiments 
 of pride and patriotism which ought to govern a free and sovereign 
 State, and any delegates worthy of a free and sovereign State. Echoed 
 again, in 1808, against the last President, when professing democracy, 
 and moulded into every variety of bitterness, — and, perad venture, from 
 some of the same lips now repeating the sarcasms against us, — that he 
 was seduced by the south, and was a Judas and traitor to New 
 England, because he denounced what he called " narrow" and " sec- 
 tional" schemes in the east, tending to disunion and treason. Reech- 
 oed, in 1812, against one of your distinguished predecessors in that 
 chair, the revolutionary veteran Gerry, and many others in favor of 
 that war, by stigmatizing them as "white slaves of the south;" because, 
 in a crisis of great perplexity and peril, they stood by their brethren 
 10 
 
110 SURVEY AND SALE OF PUBLIC LANDS, 
 
 of the south, the Middle States, and the west, in attempts to vindicate 
 our country's rights, and "pluck up drowning honor by the locks," 
 rather than standing by the mere leaders of a party in the east, who 
 cried out then, as now, that the whole of New England was put to 
 the ban of the empire. 
 
 Few can be ignorant how often, within the last four years, the same 
 kind of taunts has been reiterated against all those who, in the late 
 presidential canvass at the east, supported the present executive. 
 Coming this very morning, and in my hand, in a paper now under the 
 banner of National Republicanism, but during that war under the 
 five-striped flag, is the very repetition, for the ten-thousandth time, of 
 one of these same groundless scoffs : 
 
 " If New Hampshire chooses to send Representatives who can thus desert the best 
 interests of their constituents, and become the white slaves of the South, she must 
 blame herself." 
 
 The ear-mark of this attack on a part of my constituents is, there- 
 fore, too large and long, not to show at once its true origin and char- 
 acter, and to prove anew how much easier it is to alter names than 
 things. 
 
 The inconsistency of these sneers, from such quarters, will also be 
 apparent, when we set our history right, by finding that these same 
 authors of them have voted for southern candidates nearly if not quite 
 as often as the democrats, and always when their party success could 
 be promoted by it; because, omitting 1789 and 1793, when all united 
 for a southern man, they appear to have voted for one as President in 
 1804, 1808, 1816, and 1820. 
 
 The smallness of the number, and the diminutive importance, of the 
 supporters of this administration in the east, constitute another mag- 
 nanimous taunt from the same source, against the genuineness of their 
 democracy ; as if, when history is set right, the present executive did 
 not obtain more votes in New England than did Mr. Jefferson in 1800, 
 and, with the exception of one State, more than Mr. Madison did in 
 1812. We are accustomed, in the east, sir, to new trials for correct- 
 ing mistakes. New Hampshire, as a State, since the late election, 
 has already changed her delegation in the other House, so as to be 
 entirely in favor of this administration. And has not Maine herself, 
 beside an electoral vote for it, sent an equal number there in its sup- 
 port ? On this, I think, her democrats have some little claim to respect, 
 in point of numbers, however charged with apostasy ; and I may be 
 pardoned in the guess, that, from the signs of the times there, they 
 will at least try to show a majority in favor of this administration, 
 sooner than the present delegation from Maine here shall succeed in 
 obtaining all the Maine and Massachusetts claims for the misconduct 
 of their peace party in the late war. 
 
 The resemblance between the political character of the opposition 
 and administration parties in 1798, 1812, and 1828, would seem to 
 
SURVEY AND SALE OF PUBLIC LANDS. Ill 
 
 give us some further title to old-fashioned democracy. The same dem- 
 ocratic States, with one or two exceptions only, are found at each era, 
 side by side, in favor of Jefferson, Madison, and the hero of Orleans. 
 On one side, Virginia and Pennsylvania, Carolina and Georgia, Ten- 
 nessee and Kentucky ; — on the other, Delaware and Massachusetts, 
 Connecticut, and divided Maryland. The same distinguished states- 
 men of the first era, who survive, and who were honored by every 
 species of abuse, from the most malignant of their enemies, — those 
 republican statesmen of 1798, the Livingstons, the Macons, the Smiths, 
 the Randolphs, and the Gileses, — are again found acting and stigmatized 
 with the humble democrats of the east, who support the present admin- 
 istration. Yes, sir, when that gentleman (Mr. Livingston), little 
 more than a year since, — not in old " by-gone days" of virulence, — 
 was defeated in an election to the other House, one of the first papers 
 at the " head-quarters of good principles" that hoisted the new banner 
 of National Republicanism exulted that he "was consigned to the 
 tomb of all the Capulets;" and further added, " When we recollect that 
 Mr. Livingston is an old sinner, and that we are inflicting punishment 
 for the back-sliding of thirty years, we may safely say he falls unwept, 
 unhonored." 
 
 Little did they then expect his Anteean vigor, in rising from that fall, 
 would so soon restore him to the councils of his country, as the repre- 
 sentative of a sovereign State, rather than of a single district. And 
 little did they heed, as in "by-gone days," the base injustice they 
 were perpetrating towards one, of whom it is no flattery to say, he 
 is as a civilian, no less than a politician, an ornament both to that 
 State and his country, if not to our race. Accessions have, of course, 
 been made from other ranks, to swell the increased majority of 1828 
 over those of 1800 and 1812 ; but they have been, I trust, accessions 
 of principle, and not of bargain ; and if such accessions, then they 
 will endure, flourish and bear good fruit, long as the original stock 
 upon which they have been engrafted. But if they have not been 
 from principle, who regrets how soon they may be severed from the 
 stock 1 
 
 Whether the same doctrines, in the main, are also not now advocated 
 by us and by the opposition, as were advocated by the administration 
 of 1801 and by its opposition, is of too common notoriety, and has 
 been too fully shown, in the progress of this debate, to need much fur- 
 ther illustration. On the part of the administration, abused as it has 
 been, — or, at least, on the part of its supporters in the east, whose 
 claims to democracy have been so modestly challenged, — I venture with 
 frankness to assert, that there is, in general, the same adherence to a 
 strict construction of the constitution, and to the reserved rights and 
 sovereignties of the States, as under Jefferson ; the same acquiescence 
 in instructions by State Legislatures ; the same desire for reform and 
 economy; the same abhorrence of implied and doubtful powers, 
 whether over the press, the deliberations of this body, or the industry 
 
112 SURVEY AND SALE OF PUBLIC LANDS. 
 
 and free trade of the country. On the contrary, on the part of the 
 opposition, there are, and have been, the same scoffs at reform and 
 economy ; the same denial of the right of instruction in the States 
 to their senators ; the same struggle for enlarged constructions of 
 the constitution; a refusal "to be palsied by the "will of our constit- 
 uents ; " implied powers carried to the greatest extent, in assuming 
 to accept, in the recess, invitations to Panama, and in claiming the 
 right, in that recess, without the consent of the Senate, to appoint 
 ministers on such an expensive and hazardous mission ; and, finally, 
 certain movements of a "specific" character, bearing on the press, 
 not quite in coincidence with a bill introduced here, the same day, by 
 my friend from New Jersey (Mr. Dickerson), to refund a fine col- 
 lected under the sedition law of 1798. 
 
 This attitude of a party now in a majority, disclaiming implied and 
 enlarged powers in the legislative as well as the executive branches, is 
 a most cheering sign of the times for the safety of our liberties, and 
 is an attitude worthy imitation in all governments, especially by all 
 republican magistrates, in all future times. I say nothing against the 
 past administration as men, for some of them possess my entire respect; 
 but I am speaking of some of the political measures they, or their 
 friends, have proposed and approved. If any part of the democracy 
 of the east, friendly to this administration, were once in favor of the 
 late chief magistrate, and sincerely intended to support his adminis- 
 tration, because, as they believed, he had become united with that 
 democracy and inclined to enforce its principles, — and many of them 
 honestly did so intend and believe; — if any of them, in " by-gone 
 years," vindicated him against attacks from the same political school 
 whence we ourselves are now assailed, and, like the present President, 
 in the letters here cited against him, to Mr. Monroe, did think well 
 of the talents and patriotism of that chief magistrate, the world will 
 see, when the history of the east is set right, where, and on what 
 side, has been any change of principle. 
 
 They will see whether the treachery and apostasy so often insinu- 
 ated here and elsewhere, and formerly applied by the same political 
 school, in the same way, to that very chief magistrate, do not now, if 
 applicable at all, if courteous and just to anybody, more properly 
 apply to the course of that magistrate, and of his administration, than 
 to those democrats in the east who continued faithfully to cling to the 
 platform of democratic principles. What verdict, on this point, have 
 all the democratic States in the Union, standing together in 1798, 
 1812, and in 1828, almost unanimously returned? Is it not that the 
 past administration, in many respects, departed from the principles of 
 democracy ? And what verdict has New Hampshire herself, within the 
 last year, returned : — that those who were sent hither by democratic 
 votes, and to defend democratic principles, and who abided by those 
 principles, to the hazard of both popularity and office, — that they were 
 faithful among the faithless, and their course to be approved ? or that 
 
SURVEY AND SALE OF PUBLIC LANDS. 113 
 
 the desertion, if it existed at all, was on the side of that part of her 
 delegation in the other House, who, for adhering to all men and 
 measures indiscriminately of that administration, have been permitted 
 to retire to private life ? 
 
 One only of that delegation — a man whose stern democracy never 
 quailed or bent to any fellow-man — has, for that, been borne back 
 here triumphantly by the suffrages of the people ; proving again, what 
 is and always should be a proud excellence in a free government, that, 
 however the waves of faction or sectional prejudice may, for a time ; 
 dash against a consistent and faithful representative, 
 
 " An honest man is still an unmoved rock, 
 Washed whiter, but not shaken, by the shock." 
 
 Gentlemen know but little of that democracy, if they suppose their 
 object is to go themselves, or to have their representatives go, for mere 
 men rather than measures : that they are slaves enough, or ever have 
 been, or ever will be, to bend the servile knee to any " lord or master" 
 but the supreme Lord of all ; or to acknowledge any such in office as 
 intimated, except their constituents and their State. You do them 
 foul injustice and reproach, if you believe that democracy has not the 
 justice and patriotism to uphold those who uphold their country ; and 
 if ever misled, for a time, by local prejudice or personal regard, that 
 they will ever long go for men, unless those men go for their cause, — 
 ever long go for any slavish and monarchical doctrine of unlimited 
 devotion to particular individuals, or particular dynasties. These 
 principles, I am proud and thankful for the opportunity to say, in 
 behalf of my faithful constituents, — whose attachment, when I forget, 
 may my God forget me ! — these principles belong to that part of the 
 New Hampshire democracy which supports this calumniated adminis- 
 tration. But whether they are the principles of that kind of National 
 Republicanism, in Maine and Massachusetts, which opposes this 
 administration, the world has enjoyed an opportunity of judging in the 
 course of this debate. 
 
 The country will thus be able to set right the history of the east in 
 the late presidential canvass ; and I repeat, that it is only in self- 
 defence, and in vindication of a large portion of my constituents and 
 myself, thus attacked on this floor, for their want of real democracy, 
 in supporting the present administration, that I could have overcome 
 my repugnance, in this assembly, to make any allusions to those fierce 
 party struggles that have so often raged among the modern Spartans 
 and Athenians of the rocky east. 
 
 My mind is recalled to one other direction given, in this debate, to 
 the history, merits, and glories of the east, entirely at war with the 
 real worth of that democracy. 
 
 Yielding, as I cheerfully do, and always shall, due praise to politi- 
 cal opponents, yet I can never consent that all the excellences and 
 applause bestowed on the east by gentlemen from that or other regions, 
 10* 
 
114 SURVEY AND SALE OF PUBLIC LANDS. 
 
 shall at once be assumed and appropriated, as if exclusively belonging 
 to the opponents of that vilified democracy, — to the peace party in 
 war. Thus we see that, when nobody has been attacked from any 
 other quarter except those opponents, every change of eulogy has been 
 rung in reply, as if the eulogy was all deserved, all won, and all to be 
 monopolized, by only those who were attacked, — by only those oppo- 
 nents. Little did my friend from South Carolina (Mr. Hayne) 
 think his prophecy would so soon be apparently verified, when he spoke 
 of what might be done by some future biographer of one of the mem- 
 bers of the Hartford Convention. "I doubt not," said he, "it will 
 be found quite easy to prove that the peace party in Massachusetts 
 were the only defenders of their country during the war, and actually 
 achieved our victories by land and sea." Have gentlemen not been 
 pursuing here a constant course of argument tending, in fact, what- 
 ever may have been the intent, to something very like a confirmation 
 of this prediction ? 
 
 Thus, when members of the Hartford Convention are assailed, there 
 is, in reply, a flourish of trumpet after trumpet in defence of those 
 who stood by the country, and who, in fact, resisted that convention, 
 and denounced, as loudly as has been denounced here, its leaders and 
 its doctrines, — thus creating an impression that that convention stood 
 by their country, or that those who resisted that convention had been 
 assailed. Is this course of reply one of the means referred to by 
 Washington for converting any party charge or excitement into a 
 sectional shape? Thus, again, if schemes for disunion, and for a 
 northern confederacy, are charged home upon the leaders of a party 
 in the east, before the Hartford Convention, and before the embargo, 
 on the authority of assertions by the late President, cited by the 
 gentlemen on my right and left, then we have, in reply, eulogies on 
 eastern bravery and fidelity, as if belonging exclusively to those 
 implicated in the above schemes. Some doubts, to be sure, on the 
 constitutionality of purchasing Louisiana, and some charges of corrup- 
 tion in purchasing it, are reintimated, perhaps from the same quarter 
 that repeated those charges twenty years since, and which have been 
 so fully proved to be groundless, from the recent account of that 
 purchase by the Abbe Marbois ; and, in conclusion, we have again 
 the sectional attempt to make the whole east believe, when the peace 
 party in the east was alone assailed, that the whole east has now, 
 in this hall, been put to the ban of the empire. 
 
 As a further specimen, the Senate, in answer to charges against the 
 patriotism of the peace party in the late war, have again and again 
 been invited to look at the glories of Bunker Hill, and Bennington, 
 and Saratoga, and Monmouth, — as if these glories had been denied or 
 attacked ; and, provided they had, as if the democracy of the east, 
 which supported the late war, and those of them which support the 
 present administration, had no part or lot in those sanguinary conflicts. 
 As if the gallant Pierce, who now presides over my native State, and 
 
SURVEY AND SALE OF PUBLIC LANDS. 115 
 
 the brave Stark, of the same neighborhood, who fought by the side of 
 his immortal father, so singularly eulogized in this very debate, — as if 
 the intrepid Hall, who trod in blood on the deck of the Ranger, as 
 lieutenant to Paul Jones, — all were not now living monuments, in New 
 Hampshire, of the part which some of 'the distinguished survivors of the 
 Revolution take among the democracy of the east, in rallying round the 
 present executive of the Union. If you turn there to the whole muster- 
 roll of the survivors in that contest, you will find the proportion of 
 them as large, entertaining the same political views with their heroic 
 officers. The peace party in the Revolution — for there was also a 
 peace party in that ivar — might, with just as much propriety, claim 
 all the honor of the victories of the Revolution. Just as well as the 
 peace party of the last war, might they seek to engross all the credit 
 of those victories from that part of the democracy of the east who 
 survived to mingle in the political contest in favor of either Mr. Jeffer- 
 son's, Mr. Madison's, or the present administration. So, again, from 
 the same quarter, in answer to censures bestowed only on the peace 
 party in the east, we are invited to gaze on the brilliant achievements 
 of the bloody 9th, the 21st, and 11th regiments, in 1814 ; and in 
 exultation against those attacking only what the gentleman from Maine 
 (Mr. Holmes) then pronounced "treasonable" opposition to that war, 
 we are informed of the prowess, chivalry, and descent from New Eng- 
 land loins, of those who, in fact, put all in jeopardy to support that war. 
 
 Did it never occur to gentlemen that history would be set right, and 
 that those regiments and their brave officers — their Ripleys, their 
 Millers, their McNeils, and their Weekses — all these last natives of the 
 scoffed New Hampshire — would be known to have sprung chiefly from 
 the democracy of the east ? and that all of these before-named officers, 
 with perhaps a single exception, are decided supporters of this abused 
 administration ? 
 
 On the contrary, lofty as were the principles and deeds of all the 
 wliigs of the Revolution in the east, yet, on all hands, it must be con- 
 fessed that, during the late war, the patriotism of the leaders of a party 
 there took a most unfortunate direction. While those taunted heroes 
 of those brave regiments, — taunted then, as most of them now are, 
 with being slaves to the south, and apostates from New England 
 principles, — while they, I say, were flying to the then derided flag of 
 our Union, and were pouring out their blood at Bridgewater and Chip- 
 pewa in defence of their country's rights, the leaders of the " peace 
 party in war" were seen flying to far different scenes at Hartford, and 
 pouring out from their pulpits, presses, and legislative assemblies, 
 anathemas against the administration, the war, and all their supporters. 
 Sorry I am to say it, sir, except to " put history right" in our defence, 
 — not the mere maniacs of the party, as intimated by the gentleman on 
 my left (Mr. Sprague), were engaged in this unfortunate display of 
 this new species of patriotism. But, with the leaders in their pulpit 
 services and opinions, were found some, at least, of their confiding con- 
 
116 SURVEY AND SALE OF PUBLIC LANDS. 
 
 gregations. With the delegates of three sovereign States, and parts 
 of two others, at Hartford, were found, in principle, some constituents 
 to elect them. With eloquent representatives and senators here, were 
 found to support them, at home at least, a party, a whole party, and 
 nothing but a party. On this occasion what I say is not to be misun- 
 derstood, however much it may be misrepresented. When, in self- 
 defence, I allude to a certain party and its acts in the east, about the 
 period of that war, far be it from me to include all of them, or of those, 
 in other quarters of the Union, who had borne the same party name. 
 
 It is well known, in the history of this country, that, having lived 
 under a limited monarchy till the Revolution, not only then, but in the 
 formation of our State and general constitutions, some honest diversity 
 of opinion existed as to the extent and limits of power safely to be 
 intrusted in the hands of the people's agents. Without dwelling on 
 the titles which should be given to the one side for asking large power 
 and much confidence in office-holders, and to the other for granting 
 only small power and limited confidence, it is sufficient to notice that 
 this division, coupled with other matter, from time to time, connected 
 and incidental, separated the whole country into opposing parties, — 
 parties, too, which, not then being chiefly sectional, were useful, rather 
 than injurious, in rousing vigilance, and in preserving unimpaired the 
 reserved powers of the people and the States. But, as some more 
 exciting and more local topics of difference occurred, — an eastern chief 
 magistrate being removed from office, under complaints and remon- 
 strances as doleful and violent as any heard here on account of more 
 recent removals, and his place being supplied by a southern successor, 
 and a vast addition being soon made, under that successor, to our 
 southern territory, and expected also to be made thereby to any pecu- 
 liar southern influence which might prevail in the administration of our 
 government, — these general parties, so far as respected one of them, 
 gradually assumed almost an entire sectional character ; and, contrary 
 to the injunctions of Washington, so often urged on our consideration 
 in this debate, its leaders began to drag into the controversy every 
 sectional interest and prejudice that nestle closest round the heart of 
 erring man. 
 
 The attempts, which two of the distinguished members of that party 
 have recently averred were soon after made, for separating the Union, 
 had a poor apology in any belief that the purchase of Louisiana was 
 unconstitutional, as one of their then number, now on this floor, seems 
 still to hold; and must have been, from the account of those members, 
 of a mere rash and sectional character ; and, I have no doubt, met with 
 no approbation among many of the honest disciples of that party, even 
 in the east, or among few, if any of them, south of the Hudson. These 
 last had no motives to cherish such local and pernicious views. The 
 embargo, non-intercourse, and war, which soon and successively fol- 
 lowed, pressed with extreme severity on the Eastern States, and gave 
 the leaders of the party, having thus become separated, by sectional 
 
SURVEY AND SALE OF PUBLIC LANDS. 117 
 
 views, from their brethren elsewhere, an opportunity to appeal still 
 more strongly to sectional prejudices, and to renew, or begin for the 
 first time, as the truth may be, a course of opposition to the General 
 Government, violent in language, disorganizing in measures, and, 
 whether aiming or not at a northern confederacy, certainly ending in 
 the Hartford Convention. A course of opposition which, to say the 
 least, was anything but practising the lessons of Washington, 
 anything but real national republicanism, anything but respect for 
 the constituted authorities, anything but eulogy on the great minds 
 and patriotic hearts then sent to cheer and to bless us in the prose- 
 cution of that glorious war, — anything but devotion to our country, 
 our whole country, and nothing but our country. Whoever took the 
 lead then, in that course of opposition, in or out of Congress, — who- 
 ever is attacked by the south or the west for taking such lead, — I, for 
 one, protest that the whole east, as a section, is not to be involved in 
 the defence ; and that its democracy, so far as represented by me, has 
 neither been implicated in the attack, nor seen any occasion for angry 
 retort. The whole controversy, so far as regards my friend to the 
 right (Mr. Hayne), has been shown, by a reference to his remarks, 
 to have arisen from strictures by him solely on the peace party in the 
 late war, and the violent movements of its leaders in that course of 
 opposition; leaders and movements then officially, and as strongly 
 as here now, denounced by a large minority in the east itself, as hav- 
 ing been "exclusively British," and by which leaders and movements 
 the late executive has publicly repeated that a separation of the 
 Union ivas openly stimulated. Thus will it be seen how different a 
 character this course of opposition, both before and during the war, had 
 given to that party in the east, in respect to its attachment to the 
 Union, and its patriotism at large, from what justly belonged to the 
 same nominal party elsewhere. It is by setting history right, in 
 this way, that proper discriminations can be made between nominal 
 federalists in and out of the east, and even between those in the east 
 itself who led, and those who were misled or betrayed, by sectional 
 violence. 
 
 If gentlemen please, I, for one, have so little party bitterness, on 
 merely old party grounds, as to be willing to go, in meeting their invi- 
 tations to forgetfulness of by-gone acrimony and party feuds, more 
 than half way, and to take the epoch of the late war as the period of 
 amnesty, beyond which, like the era of Richard I. for other purposes, 
 the memory of man runneth not about parties, except as connected 
 with historical facts and constitutional principles bearing on the present 
 administration of the State and the General Governments. But I 
 never can go for any abandonment or compromise of those principles. 
 
 Still another concession will I make, in justice to the yeomanry of 
 the east, many of whom, in the late war, were deluded into opposition 
 by what Mr. Jefferson called " the Marats, the Dantons, and Robes- 
 pierres, of Massachusetts." (4 Jefferson's Notes, 210.) 
 
118 SURVEY AND SALE OF PUBLIC LANDS. 
 
 The same sectional attempts were, by that class of leaders, then 
 brought to bear on their honest hearts and warm heads, which were 
 made to bear on them in the late canvass, and are now continued, with 
 a view to prejudice them against the south, and to seduce them into a 
 belief that the whole of New England is proscribed, and that the real 
 interests of the two regions are hostile, rather than united as closely 
 as the interests and inclinations of married life. Is it strange, then, 
 that the large mass, even of the peace party, should thus have been 
 misled for a time, by those leaders, clerical or political, in whom they 
 had been accustomed to place implicit confidence? And that they 
 should fallaciously appear, as if with deliberation, giving sanction to 
 those violent party acts, instigated by the mere leaders 1 — such as 
 official refusals, when our hearths and altars were invaded, to place the 
 militia under the officers of the Union for defence ; such as legislative 
 exhortations against loans and enlistments ; public votes and speeches 
 in Congress against raising additional troops for protection ; motions 
 here, at one time, to impeach Mr. Jefferson, and threats, at another, 
 that Mr. Madison deserved a halter. Yet, with a similar lead to what 
 then led, we are told, again and again, in defence to attacks on this 
 violent course of opposition, about New England patriotism, and New 
 England respect for order and regular government, — as if these virtues 
 belonged to those alone who required a defence, and as if that class 
 of politicians possessed all, effected all, and were all in all ! As if, 
 for a moment's illustration, the soldier's bones that moulder on our 
 Niagara frontier were those of patriotic volunteers from the Massa- 
 chusetts remonstrants, whom the gentleman on my right then fear- 
 lessly charged with taking the enemy's ground, supporting his 
 claims, and justifying his aggressions ; as if the saving loans in 
 aid of that glorious struggle came from those who pronounced the 
 struggle unjust and murderous ; and as if our sailors, who " pulled 
 down the flag of the Guerriere and Peacock," were those who deemed 
 it immoral and irreligious to rejoice at our naval victories ! Not 
 such as the last, — not such aid, nor such defenders, — did that crisis 
 need. 
 
 JVbn tali auxilio nee defensoribus istis 
 Tempus eget. 
 
 Far be it from me to utter or feel a single sentiment of unkindness 
 to one individual who did not participate in those measures of oppo- 
 sition ; and much less to any one who did participate, from honest con- 
 victions they were right, and who still has the frankness and magnan- 
 imity to avow it, and to award full justice to the abused democracy of 
 the east. Such thought and acted for themselves like freemen, and 
 disdain to shrink from their responsibility for it. But that those of the 
 democracy of the east, friendly to the present administration, and who 
 bore a full share in all the perils, sufferings, and glories, of that war, 
 should now be sneered at, as witnessed here, is what none, who sin- 
 
SURVEY AND SALE OF PUBLIC LANDS. 119 
 
 cerely sympathized with them in that conflict, and have partaken with 
 them in fidelity to principle since, could be guilty of without blushing 
 blood, or could in others listen to without indignation and abhorrence. 
 It is, then, I trust, distinctly understood, that I have cast no strictures 
 on federalists, even in the east, except those who, after war was 
 declared, still opposed their own government and its measures ; and, 
 according to Governor Eustis, thus occasioned double sacrifice of life 
 and treasure, while the citizens of other States were exercising 
 their utmost energies against the common enemy. Even many of 
 those I would censure only as misguided and unfortunate politicians, — 
 men who, from sectional clamor, were made to believe that the whole 
 east was put to the ban of the empire, — who trusted too far to the 
 groundless assertions by those who have been here called [by Mr. 
 Sprague] the bedlamites of the party. Thus it happened, undoubt- 
 edly, that so many grave legislators, holy priests at the altar, and other 
 seigniors of the land, both in public and in private life, were deluded 
 to join in that violent opposition. 
 
 This alone can account for the Hartford Convention, as a solemn, 
 deliberate, and official act, by the Legislatures of three sovereign 
 States, and by primary meetings in the federal portions of two others, 
 at a moment when the foreign enemy had his foot planted on our 
 sacred soil, and when, with a different commander in the eastern 
 department, some of its members might, we are told, have had a dif- 
 ferent trial from what has yet been held on them. Eor withholding 
 the militia from the General Government, as another official act in 
 which the judiciary and executive ceremoniously united, and which has 
 since been justly denounced, by one of their own executives, as with- 
 holding from the government the constitutional means of defence. 
 For the exhortations against enlistments, against joining the stars and 
 stripes of their country, over which we have had such eloquent eulo- 
 gies, as another of those cold-blooded official acts, instigated by Hotspur 
 leaders. The Massachusetts Legislature, in June, 1812, say, "If 
 your sons must be torn from you by conscription, consign them to the 
 care of God ; but let there be no volunteers." The loans, on which 
 gentlemen dwell with such complacency, as evidence of eastern patri- 
 otism, were also as violently denounced by the leaders; and came 
 mostly from that abused democracy, one of whom, a principal lender, 
 my near and dear relative, still survives in that Cumberland district 
 so justly denominated the star in the east, to see flung upon him, as 
 a supporter of this administration, the sarcasm of being a new-made 
 democrat, from near the doors of the Hartford Convention. The patri- 
 otism of such supporters of this administration, among the democracy 
 of the east, — and, I thank Heaven, there are many of them, — took 
 rather a different direction from the unfortunate one pursued by the 
 violent opposers of that war. Their patriotism was not, early as 1806, 
 to ridicule Mr. Jefferson for his pacific war by proclamations, though 
 losing thousands by French and British decrees ; was not to denounce 
 
120 SURVEY AND SALE OF PUBLIC LANDS. 
 
 and violently resist the embargo as unconstitutional, and charge the 
 President with French influence and falsehood in recommending it, 
 though their remaining vessels were rotting at their wharves; was not 
 to vote, speak, and write, in constant hostility to the war and the meas- 
 ures for its success, though their funds and their industry were forced 
 out of customary employment. But it was, — if not 
 
 " Above all Greek, above all Roman fame," — 
 
 it was the patriotism of the noblest days of the noblest of our race. 
 Though scoffed at as slaves to the south, by persons now professing 
 to deprecate sectional jealousies, it was, to devote all to their country, 
 to enter the alarm-list themselves for the defence of the seaboard, 
 to advocate enlistments, to lend their remaining and impaired for- 
 tunes to the cause ; and, in fine, for the salvation of all those great 
 principles of civil liberty their fathers had bled to secure, intrepidly to 
 meet the domestic enemy at the polls, and send their sons on the ocean, 
 the lakes, and the land, to meet the foreign enemy at the cannon's 
 mouth. From the history of all republics, they knew that God had 
 preserved liberty only to vigilance and valor. They, therefore, braved 
 the lion in his den. They rose as their country rose, and fell only as 
 her prospects fell. The victories of the common enemy were a true 
 barometer, in every year, of the victories and hopes of the conflicting 
 parties at home. I was then of an age, sir, to feel such things some- 
 what deeply, and hence I may speak of them too earnestly. But this 
 much can with safety be asserted, that the political war at home was 
 but little less arduous and exciting than the foreign one abroad. That 
 democracy, though a minority then, as now, in every State in the east, 
 save one, — though abused then, as now, and buffeted, both in private 
 and public life, by their opposers, — had, and still have, thank God ! some 
 knowledge of their rights, and " knowing, dare maintain them." In 
 the darkest hour of that war, when civil butchery was in some places 
 threatened, — when schemes of disunion were supposed to be maturing, 
 and, according to my friend here (Mr. Grundy), " moral treason" 
 stalked abroad, — when the ardent yeoman sometimes slept with his 
 fire-arms at his pillow, — when his sons were absent as volunteers at 
 Chippewa and Plattsburg, on the lakes and the ocean, — then the 
 members of that democracy who were at home fought and endured the 
 moral and political warfare hardly paralleled ; — the proscription and 
 persecution of private life, the shameless attacks of the press, the 
 insults of heated partisans, the anathemas of the pulpit ; and, minor- 
 ity as they were, they fearlessly faced the apologist of the common 
 enemy and the libeller of their own government, whether in the courts 
 of justice, the halls of legislation, or in those primary meetings of the 
 thousand town democracies which cover our granite hills. 
 
 Grant that individuals of the party opposed to Mr. Jefferson and 
 Madison did not unite in what the former calls, in Massachusetts, cc the 
 
SURVEY AND SALE OF PUBLIC LANDS. 121 
 
 parricide crimes and treasons of the late tear" but went gallantly 
 for their country, when in peril. They have earned to themselves 
 laurels which they richly deserve to wear, and which Heaven forbid I 
 should attempt to soil. They relinquished opposition when the com- 
 mon enemy approached, and stood by their country, and their whole 
 country ; and did not lend a helping hand to those sectional excitements 
 that often belittle and dishonor the politics of New England. By such 
 excitements, groundlessly defaming the democracy of the east and of 
 other parts of the Union, has the glory departed from her Israel, more 
 than by any change of relative population and territory. But if the 
 violent leaders of the eastern opposition to the war then, as since, 
 constantly poured out on the democracy of that section the uncourteous 
 epithets of Jacobins and Judases, and styled them, as the whole admin- 
 istration has been styled in this debate, a motley collection of the frag- 
 ments of all parties, with no common bond of principle, and held 
 together by a mere rope of sand, — if these abusers then, as now, 
 made very modest claims to all the talents, order, and religion, — I stand 
 not here to retort in kind ; but courteously to seek justice for myself 
 and my political friends from unfounded imputations, and to say, with 
 sober-mindedness and charity, that, leaving our opponents to the enjoy- 
 ment of all their real worth, — which, in many respects, I freely admit 
 to be enviable, — yet I do contend that, in private or public life, there 
 is no ground for discrimination in their favor against that much vilified 
 democracy, in all the hardy and heroic virtues which have distin- 
 guished New England, if not more highly, yet in common with the 
 Middle States and the south, since the Puritan and merchant adven- 
 turers first landed at Plymouth Rock and Strawberry Bank, — virtues 
 deeply founded as her hills, and pure as her mountain streams. No 
 ground for discrimination against that democracy, in either correct 
 morals, tireless industry, or unsleeping enterprise ; — no ground for 
 discrimination in doing their full share to build up the fisheries, extend 
 commerce, and scatter plenty o'er a sterile soil, — to erect and pre- 
 serve all the Doric, if not Corinthian columns, of our whole social 
 edifice in the east ; and in doing more than their full share, because 
 their political principles did not forbid them to take a share with their 
 brethren of the other States, in bearing the flag of victory, whether 
 over land or ocean, in the Revolution or the late war. 
 
 They have always met the struggle with firmness, and, in common 
 with other parts of the Union, with entire devotion, in times of peril 
 to the common cause, of their lives, their fortune, and their sacred 
 honor. They never halted between two opinions, when the wolf icas 
 on the walk — when the enemy was on our soil. They had, and still 
 have, quite too much of the Roman, not to endure embargoes and 
 wars, and even death, for their country, whether on their own sea- 
 board or on a distant and savage frontier, when that country and its 
 honor call for the sacrifice. This they have shown by deeds, not 
 words ; and this, I will give my pledge, they will always show, when 
 
122 SURVEY AND SALE OF PUBLIC LANDS. 
 
 occasion demands. But, once for all, I will repeat, that that democracy 
 make, and have made, no pledges to men, independent of their meas- 
 ures ; and that, so far as represented by me, they will offer or seek no 
 new alliances, and consent to none. They have made no old alliances, 
 and consent to none, whether with the west or the south, except the 
 general alliance of all, in the bonds of the Union. They will neither 
 cajole, nor flatter, nor bargain. Those of New Hampshire would 
 fain stand among the other States, as a peer among peers, a sovereign 
 among sovereigns, an equal among equals ; recognizing the rights of 
 no mere man from the east to tender or pledge them, either to make 
 or unmake Presidents — to pull down or build up administrations. 
 
 They mean to go where democratic principles go — palman ferat 
 qui meruit ; and when these principles disappear, they mean to halt. 
 Such were the views that led their young men, in the late war, to succor 
 the bleeding west ; and in their cause, as well as that of their coun- 
 try at large, to moisten with their blood the fields of Tippecanoe and 
 the forests of Brownstown ; — while from the ranks of a different party 
 in that war, however prodigal in professions of friendship now to the 
 west, not a drum was heard — not a gun was fired. These views, 
 in peace, likewise, have led them to aid to populate, and protect from 
 the savage, the smiling valleys of the Ohio and Mississippi ; and these 
 will always lead them, whether there or at home in the east, cheerfully 
 to unite in every measure they believe constitutional, for the relief 
 or improvement of those who have suffered with them in the common 
 cause. 
 
 Can it be doubted that the same feelings would not lead them to 
 assist, in the same way, either the Middle States or the south, in the 
 embarrassments of their industry and trade, or in their utmost need, 
 by invasion or war? 
 
 On the exciting topic of slavery, as connected with the south, and 
 introduced into this debate, it is true they have honest and deep-rooted 
 opinions. But this Congress knows, and the Union knows, that, 
 averse as the democracy of the east are to slavery, and aiding as they 
 have, within only about the last half-century, to abolish it all over 
 New England, and anxious as they are for its extirpation from the 
 whole country, yet, never have they joined, and never will join, in 
 the sectional tirade against the south as "black States." They are 
 convinced that there, as in the east half a century ago, slavery must 
 be left to be regulated by the domestic opinions of each sovereign 
 State itself, founded on its own better knowledge of its own climate, 
 productions, industry, and social policy; and that any great change in 
 the civil institutions of a State must, to be wise, useful, and perma- 
 nent, always be cautiously considered, and gradually commenced. 
 
 They cherish, also, I am satisfied, the same kindly feeling towards 
 the south, on the subject of the tariff, that they do, and have done, 
 towards the west, on subjects deeply affecting the interests and pros- 
 perity of the west. Instead of laughing at the calamities of the south, 
 
SURVEY AND SALE OF PUBLIC LANDS. 123 
 
 and mocking their complaints, God knows we have had of late sufficient 
 reasons at the east to make us feel, in common suffering, common 
 sympathies ; and to cast about, if possible, for the consideration of any 
 measures likely to bring relief and harmony. The very executive 
 who signed the last tariff bill officially declared it " in its details not 
 acceptable to the great interests of any portion of the Union, — not 
 even to the interests which it was specially intended to subserve" 
 (See President's Message, Dec. 1828.) 
 
 Among the merchants and manufacturers, the wide and desolating 
 failures at the east, since that declaration, have more than verified 
 the evils naturally to be anticipated from a bill of that character. 
 The present executive, also, has declared, that " some of its provi- 
 sions require modification" (See President's Message, 1829.) 
 
 The gentleman before me (Mr. Silsbee) can testify that nothing 
 like a parallel to those failures has occurred in the east for a quarter 
 of a century. How much of this deep distress there has been caused 
 by our present unequal tariff, I and my constituents, I am satisfied, 
 wish to inquire, — not from hostility to the protecting principle, as 
 an incident to raising revenue, or as countervailing legislation against 
 oppressive foreign measures, or, in some cases, as a means of prepar- 
 ation in peace for the wants of war, — on that point most of us har- 
 monize, — but to see whether any just and equal legislation requires, 
 in profound peace, and with a prosperous revenue, that the people of 
 New Hampshire alone should pay more than their State tax yearly as 
 a duty on salt, — on a single article of the first necessity in life ; 
 should pay over one hundred per cent, tax on molasses, and other 
 great necessaries; and should be taxed most expensively for every 
 nail driven in a farmer's door, every bolt in a vessel, every yard of 
 canvas spread on the ocean, and every pound of sugar, coffee, or tea, 
 that brings comfort to the domestic fireside. We wish to inquire 
 whether this is to be persisted in, after the impost will not be needed 
 for either revenue or protection, but merely to enable this or any other 
 administration to dole out sops or bribes to win States that hold the 
 balance of political power, or who give signs of insubordination to the 
 powers that be. We do not wish to attempt anything but equal jus- 
 tice between the three great branches of industry : but agree with the 
 executive of New Hampshire, in 1822 : 
 
 " No policy can be more obviously unsound than that of creating manufactures, 
 unconnected with national defence, or important to national interests, at the public 
 expense, to be permanently supported by the same means. However disguised such 
 procedure might be, it would be, in its effects, the imposition of a perpetual tax upon 
 the productive branches of national industry, to be applied to the support of an 
 unproductive one." — 19th JViles' Register, p. 2G2. 
 
 We never can agree that eight-tenths of our population, as farmers, 
 are not entitled to. full consideration in tariff legislation ; and that our 
 Old-fashioned fisheries and navigation are to be sent to sea adrift, with- 
 
124 SURVEY AND SALE OF PUBLIC LANDS. 
 
 out their due proportion of favor and protection. We have lords of 
 the soil, as well as lords of the spindle; and I, for one, though friendly 
 to a moderate and equal tariff, on the principles before named, can 
 never consent that the self-styled American system shall be confined 
 in its bounties to spinning-jennies alone, and exclude, as worthless 
 and undeserving, our agriculture and our commerce. Much less can 
 I consent that the American system shall be converted into a hobby- 
 horse, on which any aspirant whatever may ride into political power. 
 " 111- vaulting ambition doth o'erleap itself." And the notions of a 
 distinguished member (Mr. Webster) of the other House, in 1824, 
 on American industry, have ever met with my entire approbation. 
 
 "Gentlemen tell us they are in favor of domestic industry ; — so am I. They 
 would give it protection ; — so would I. But, then, all domestic industry is not confined 
 to manufactures. The employments of agriculture, commerce and navigation, are all 
 branches of the same domestic industry ; they all furnish employment for American 
 capital and American labor. And when the question is, whether new duties shall be 
 laid, for the purpose of giving further encouragement to particular manufactures, 
 every reasonable man must ask himself both whether the proposed new encourage- 
 ment be necessary, and whether it can be given without injustice to other branches 
 of industry."— 2Uh Niles' Register, p. 412. 
 
 Entertaining such notions on these topics, I must be pardoned if, 
 as one of the majority, I decline to accept the invitation of the gentle- 
 man on my right, from Missouri (Mr. Barton), to stand on his new 
 political platform, whether of nine or thirty-nine articles of opposition 
 to the present administration. Without claiming for this administra- 
 tion infallibility, I still believe its general course of policy democratic 
 and constitutional ; and my friend from Louisiana can inform him or 
 the gentleman from Maine of as severe Jeremiads for the loss of office 
 in 1801 as now, — can inform him that, in the principle of rotation 
 in office for even political motives, this policy only follows up the doc- 
 trines of the great revolution of 1800, — and that, since, it has, in 
 practice, had the sanction of the people and the States in every quar- 
 ter of the Union. Even in Maine, " without respect to sex, age or 
 condition," to use its senator's language, when parties are strongly 
 divided, the same policy has been pushed through, to the removal of 
 doorkeepers. 
 
 It is the true republican doctrine. A rotation first made by the 
 people themselves in the highest office in the land, — the chief execu- 
 tive of the Union, — and made for political cause, for probata as well 
 as allegata, according to the verdict returned ; — does not the same 
 cause affect most of the active deputies and subordinates, as well as the 
 principal 1 Whatever disappointment and suffering by removal some 
 individuals may sustain, deserving and receiving in many respects my 
 private sympathy, yet they knew the legal tenure of their offices, 
 and, if violent partisans, should disdain to hold them under men and 
 an administration they have wantonly calumniated. Hence, the agents 
 of the people cannot fear the cry of cruelty, persecution or Ne?*oism, 
 
SURVEY AND SALE OF PUBLIC LANDS. 125 
 
 when following calmly the example set by the people themselves ; — 
 when, at the worst, if the power of removal be discreetly exercised, 
 doing no injury to the public, but to "change one good man for 
 another good one," — and when teaching to many the salutary lesson 
 in a republic, that office-holders have no property in their offices, and 
 that liability to removal tends to increase industry and fidelity. Nor 
 need those agents dread the discussion of the constitutionality of the 
 exercise of a power of removal which was legislatively recognized by 
 the very first Congress under the constitution, — was then advocated 
 by the framers of that constitution, and has been practised on, at pleas- 
 ure, by every executive, from Washington to the present chief magis- 
 trate. The extent of the exercise has been left to the discretion and 
 policy of that branch of the government whose duty it is " to see the 
 laws faithfully executed ;" and if it was less under one and more under 
 another administration, it has always been influenced by the state of 
 that administration, whether coming in as opposed or hostile to their 
 predecessors, and whether in a minority or a majority, so as to be able 
 to accomplish their wishes. The other doctrine is the doctrine of 
 minorities ; and, if correct, the tenure of all office might as well be 
 changed to life, and our government become in name, as in practice, 
 a monarchy. Then, in earnest, well might we accept the proposition 
 of the gentleman to go over to the minority for greater tranquillity, 
 and, as in other monarchies and despotisms, see how admirably minor- 
 ities can govern. One accidental instance of such a government, by 
 way of illustration, may possibly have been given us this session, in 
 respect to the printing of the public documents ; and, I must confess, 
 it has not diminished my aversion to such kinds of governments, and 
 especially to their practical doctrines on public economy. If the 
 gentleman from Missouri, on my right (Mr. Barton), seeks by such 
 measures to pull down this administration, he may not find it so 
 11 downhill a business" as he represented the pulling down admin- 
 istrations in this country usually to be. Perhaps it would be well, 
 before further taunts of this kind are repeated, to set history right, and 
 to recollect that pulling down administrations in this country has never 
 proved quite so easy and downhill a business as seems to be supposed, 
 when the administrations have been democratic. Not a very downhill 
 concern when it was attempted on either Mr. Jefferson's, Madison's 
 or Monroe's administrations; — but rather easier, to be sure, — rather 
 more of a downhill concern, — in the two " four-year" administrations 
 in this country, suspected, at least, of no very great devotion to some 
 of the leading principles of democracy. I shall neither vaunt nor 
 prophesy, but only express a doubt that, if the present administration 
 may yet be as easily pulled down, it will not be pulled down by such 
 measures as the printing resolution, nor exactly by such politicians as 
 now lead in the attack on that administration. If beaten ever in that 
 way for a few days, the friends of it probably have Antaean vigor 
 enough to rise stronger from the fall. If the administration, relying 
 11* 
 
126 STATE OF THE NATIONAL TREASURY. 
 
 upon its real friends, and on the true principles of democracy, is still 
 occasionally beaten, whether in fact, or only on paper and in party 
 credulity, the opposition may find it "will not long stay beaten ; and 
 this " downhill business" may prove an uphill job to the undertakers. 
 At least, if this administration is ever, by such leaders and in this 
 way, rolled to the bottom of the hill, I may, as a Yankee, be allowed 
 to guess that those leaders, like Sisyphus, will find it must speedily 
 be rolled back again. 
 
 I have thus finished, Mr. President, what my sense of duty, pain- 
 fully in some respects, has urged me to say on this occasion ; and if, 
 in the cause of my political friends, I may have flung myself on the 
 spears of my enemies to perish, I shall be content to perish in a cause 
 which my heart loves and my judgment approves. 
 
 STATE OF THE NATIONAL TREASURY. 
 
 I am opposed to this motion.* I would not waste the public money 
 in printing and disseminating among the people extra copies of a 
 report, which, from some cause or other, has unfortunately fallen into 
 many errors, both as to facts and principles. They are errors too, sir, 
 neither small in magnitude nor unimportant to the main business of 
 this extraordinary session, at which are recommended measures most 
 dangerous to the relations now existing between the States and the 
 General Government, as well as to the future liberties of the Ameri- 
 can people. 
 
 I shall proceed to point out some of them, fearlessly ; but not from 
 any captious spirit, or any unfriendly feeling. On the contrary, the 
 task of fault-finding is to me very painful, if not ungracious, and will 
 be carried no further than is necessary to the discharge of a public 
 duty ; and a duty from which the suggestions or threats that I shall 
 be answered, will not deter me a single moment. It is my desire to 
 be replied to, as full and free discussion, rather than stifling debate, is 
 the life-blood of liberty ; and, if my opinions in respect to the mistaken 
 contents of this report are wrong, I am anxious they should be 
 exposed. I seek light, and not grounds for censure. 
 
 Once for all, likewise, let me tell gentlemen on the opposite side, I 
 am not going to dwell on mere clerical errors in adding up numbers, 
 — much of which, in a department with two or three hundred clerks 
 and nine or ten bureaus, must, of necessity, be done by subordinates. 
 
 * A speech on the motion of Mr. Clay, of Kentucky, to print one thousand five 
 hundred copies of the Report of the Secretary of the Treasury (Mr. Ewing) on the 
 Finances ; delivered in the Senate of the United States, June 16, 1841. 
 
STATE OF THE NATIONAL TREASURY. 127 
 
 On the contrary, I shall endeavor to exercise a liberal charity ; 
 though a former Secretary of that department has not always met 
 with similar indulgence from those opposed to him, but has been rep- 
 resented before the country as muddy-headed, a blunderer, and a 
 blockhead, on account of language misquoted, and which he never 
 used ; and an appropriation proposed to send him to school to learn 
 arithmetic, because one of his clerks omitted a figure, or the printer 
 mistook a figure in the manuscript. 
 
 In relation to another grievous charge, that former fiscal statements 
 had sometimes been obscure, — a charge quite as often made against 
 Hamilton himself, in his day, — did it never occur to the imagination 
 of such croakers that part of the obscurity might exist in their own 
 brains, and happen either from ignorance or inattention to such a 
 complicated and difficult subject 1 
 
 I will not, therefore, even try to imitate any of this kind of extraor- 
 dinary courtesy exhibited by them, but will say what is true con- 
 cerning most errors of that description : they are at times inevitable, 
 in such numerous details devolved on others ; and that the present 
 Secretary will be censured by me only when his material results are 
 wrong, his leading principles wrong, or his impressions are negli- 
 gently communicated to others, and are thus doing wrong. For 
 instance, in the outset, I would observe, that, in the Senate copy of 
 this report, a statement appears that the outstanding appropriations on 
 the 4th of March, when the present administration came into power, 
 were thirty-three millions and a fraction. But, in truth, his own items 
 amount to quite a million more. Now, this is probably a mistake in 
 addition only. Again : his item for civil and diplomatic expenses, in 
 reaching that aggregate, is in this copy six millions and a fraction, 
 while in the copy printed by the House of Representatives it is quite 
 a million less. This may charitably be presumed a mistake in copy- 
 ing. Again : he twice states, in the Senate copy, the receipts in the 
 first two months of this year from the United States Bank as being 
 over seventeen thousand, whereas they could not, in truth, be but once, 
 and are but once, added up. 
 
 I should feel as if losing some self-respect to run off in a train of 
 severe invective in regard to these errors. I am for higher game. 
 It would be only a great many such errors that would justly tend to 
 detract from the weight of the whole report, so far as they' indicated 
 haste, much inadvertence, or little attention to accuracy, either in the 
 head or limbs of the department. 
 
 Another apology, in one sense of the word, is due for both the 
 Secretary and President, on account of their being somewhat new and 
 inexperienced in office; though it certainly would behoove them, 
 under such circumstances, to exercise unusual vigilance to avoid 
 errors, and not, like the Secretary, to travel almost out of the road, 
 and go into certain uncalled-for calculations of receipts and expendi- 
 tures for a quarter of a century, for no possible object, which I can 
 
128 STATE OF THE NATIONAL TREASURY. 
 
 divine, except the partisan one of casting reproach on his immediate 
 predecessors. If he had leisure for this, it might perhaps have been 
 quite as usefully devoted to making his figures and calculations, in 
 respect to the great objects of this session, a little more accurate than 
 I shall feel compelled soon to show them to be. 
 
 Indeed, some charity might still be due on another account : that 
 is, the manner in which their friends represent them to have been 
 interrupted and incommoded by the irruption of Vandal hordes of 
 office-seekers, coming from that disinterested party which so abhors 
 the doctrine that to the victors belong the spoils. They are repre- 
 sented as more voracious for office than the most famished harpies, and 
 to have helped destroy already one President, and, if not made of iron, 
 will embitter the life of his successor. If this account be true, both 
 the President and Secretary require some forgiveness for financial 
 mistakes, particularly as their position may impose other employments 
 on them, and not very consistent with close attention to financial 
 details, and not very different from what Lord Bolingbroke writes to 
 Sir William Wyndham was the situation of his party and cabinet, 
 when it came into power. He says : 
 
 " The principal spring of our actions was to have the government of the State in 
 our hands ; that our principal views were the conservation of this power ; great 
 employments to ourselves, and great opportunities of rewarding those who have helped 
 to raise us, and of harming those who stood in opposition to us." 
 
 It will be proper often, on this occasion, to advert to the message, to 
 see whether it throws any new light on the report, where obscure or 
 doubtful, — if it be possible for a document to be of that character 
 which has been so much commended by its friends for accuracy, and 
 what they classically term "intelligibility," and being "understand- 
 able." 
 
 But the President seems, in such statements, to be peculiarly 
 entitled to indulgence ; because, as a general rule, he must obtain his 
 details and conclusions on fiscal matters from the appropriate organ, 
 which is the treasury department; and he refers expressly to "the 
 report of the Secretary of the Treasury" for his data. (p. 3.) 
 
 The President, however, may well be considered responsible for any 
 mistaken general principle he urges on these matters, but no further. 
 And to that extent, in a few instances, I shall be obliged to question 
 at least his political orthodoxy on some points, in the course of this 
 unpleasant discussion. 
 
 In making a scrutiny of this report, and the fiscal parts of the mes- 
 sage, the public time shall not be wasted by me on what is not vitally 
 essential to the whole object, end and aim, of this extraordinary 
 session. 
 
 Why, then, are we now deliberating here, at this most busy and inter- 
 esting season of the year 1 The country is breathless with expectation 
 to see with some certainty the appalling cause. Why have we been 
 
STATE OF THE NATIONAL TREASURY. 129 
 
 summoned from our ploughs, our professional pursuits, our hearths, 
 and our altars, except on account of some unexpected and astounding 
 difficulty, either in the finances or our foreign relations, menacing 
 ruin or war ? If moneyed matters stood on the 17th of March — the 
 date of the call — as they did on the 1st of that month, why did not 
 Congress provide for an extra session, if one was deemed necessary? 
 Why was not one moved in that body, and the reasons for it assigned 1 
 But no. When none had been even proposed in Congress, and two 
 days after the celebrated panic instructions to the Attorney General 
 in McLeod's case, there bursts suddenly on the American world the 
 proclamation for this session. How happened this ? Had the timor- 
 ous feeling which some have supposed dictated those instructions not 
 subsided? And was Congress to be summoned in reality on that 
 account, but in appearance on account of fiscal difficulties then or soon 
 apprehended ? Did this administration tremble lest our old oppressors, 
 who had long before murdered our peaceful citizens, and burnt our 
 property, should suddenly make war on us, instead of we on them ? 
 and that, after they had avowed and justified the barbarous outrage, 
 and the executive had stipulated to do all in its power to comply with 
 their imperious wishes ? Did it hasten to call this session for relief 
 and advice, after first agreeing to give up one of the offenders as 
 soon as practicable, and not merely to protect him as a hostage or 
 prisoner of war 1 Did it tamely engage to surrender the gasconading 
 culprit, without first receiving explanation or atonement, — either 
 indemnity for the past or security for the future 1 
 
 Sir, the ashes of John Hancock and Samuel Adams, could they 
 have heard the proposition in the stillness of their tombs, would have 
 started to life with indignant remonstrance. 
 
 But if this, or any other extraordinary cause, except the finances, 
 then existed, and was the chief cause, and has since passed away, it 
 W T ould have been manly and proper, if deemed competent, to have 
 revoked the summons for the session, or it would be well now to close 
 it by an early adjournment. But if there was then some fiscal diffi- 
 culty, of sufficient magnitude alone to justify all this inconvenience of 
 forcing six or seven States into premature elections, virtually disfran- 
 chising two States that have not been able yet to make elections, and 
 imposing an expense on the treasury of more than half a million of 
 dollars, then let us see what it was. There was, to be sure, one 
 appalling discovery, about that important era, in connection with the 
 treasury department ; but I believe that all the evils connected with 
 it were overcome before nightfall, and that without the help of any 
 extraordinary session of Congress. The President, it is understood, 
 believing, from some contemptible spy, that some of the old officers 
 were committing errors in passing an account, resorted to the very 
 novel and military measure of stopping, by his simple Jiat, the whole 
 operations of that department. The sub-treasury, as well as the set- 
 tlement of accounts, came to a dead halt, without the help of the bill of 
 
130 STATE OF THE NATIONAL TREASURY. 
 
 repeal from the senator from Kentucky ; and an act for which General 
 Jackson would have been assailed throughout the Union, and impeached 
 here, — an act to suspend all the fiscal laws, instead of seeing that they 
 be executed, — was so soon found to be unnecessary, illegal, and uncon- 
 stitutional, as to be revoked early, and the origin of it not now pre- 
 tended to be one of those "weighty matters" which have led to this 
 early meeting. 
 
 What, then, were those matters " principally pertaining (as the 
 proclamation says) to the finances and revenue of the country"? 
 Was it some monstrous "arrearage of forty millions" that should 
 be immediately discharged, and about which the rumors and grave 
 calculations had puzzled some great financial brains, in and out of Con- 
 gress, for several months previous 1 None, none. Even now, after 
 three-quarters of a year in possession of the books and files, it is 
 admitted by the Secretary that there was then a balance on hand, of 
 money and other resources, amply sufficient to meet all arrearages 
 then or since existing. And here I must express my obligations 
 personally to the Secretary for having now made public, officially, the 
 important fact that more money was found to be on hand the 4th of 
 March than was estimated by his predecessor. This appeared, also, 
 clearly, either from those old books, which seemed so very obscure 
 last winter to the financial talents of some senators, or from those 
 notable new books which were opened, and, by some whig magic, were 
 to detect all kinds of embezzlement and villany. 
 
 By table B, annexed to this report, it seems that from fifty to 
 seventy thousand dollars more money was likewise ascertained to be 
 in the treasury than the accounts required. Gratifying result, cer- 
 tainly ! — a most commendable kind of defalcation, after all the 
 calumnious rumors as to high peculations bruited over the country 
 then and since. 
 
 Next let me inquire if there was any deficit on the 17th of March, 
 when this session was summoned ? 
 
 I invite any gentleman on the Committee of Finance to point it out, 
 if stated in the report. There is none. None whatever. 
 
 Was there any deficit on the 30th of May — the day we met? 
 None. But the Secretary and President admit two to three millions 
 of available resources on hand, besides the accruing revenue. 
 
 Is there any deficit now ? Far from it. I ask once more, then, 
 why we are convened at an extraordinary season, and at great incon- 
 venience and* cost? It is, forsooth, that the Secretary guesses or 
 estimates that, by the 1st of September, there will be some deficit, 
 and, by the close of the year, a further small addition to it ; and, con- 
 sequently, that it might be prudent to provide for them some months 
 in advance. Concede this mode of arguing to be right, if the deficit 
 was certain, yet a session not so early by two months could have been 
 soon enough to remove the evil, and allowed longer time to complete 
 elections. Besides this, the supposed deficit then, or at the close of 
 
STATE OF THE NATIONAL TREASURY. 131 
 
 the year, is entirely uncertain. It is dependent upon an under estimate 
 of some receipts, and on a system of premature expenditures of exist- 
 ing appropriations, as well as an over estimate of others, to bring it 
 about, and an addition to them of new appropriations, not yet sanc- 
 tioned by Congress. 
 
 Whether this deficit, then, is likely to happen under existing appro- 
 priations, is a matter of sheer conjecture, and as to which we have not 
 every light which was to be expected in a communication which looks 
 so lucid to its friends as this report. When the Secretary had facts 
 as to the past three months, concerning both their receipts and expend- 
 itures, he gives us not a syllable in relation to them. But where he 
 had no facts in relation to the next three months, he gives us many 
 hypothetical calculations and guesses, without communicating to us 
 either the experience of the past to rectify estimates of the future, 
 or the grounds of what appears to be one of the most extraordinary 
 attempts ever made to form a deficit on paper which ought not to 
 happen. 
 
 I do not mean to be understood by this, that it will not in reality 
 happen ; because a deficit can always be made on a distant day, when 
 the balance on hand is small, and it can easily be accomplished by 
 pushing prematurely and lavishly every possible expenditure, by 
 making hasty contracts, and by giving large advances to disbursing 
 agents. But the great inquiry, in examining whether this early session 
 is necessary, must be — Could not a deficit well and easily have been 
 avoided, not only in September, but even till the usual period of the 
 session of Congress, and thus the country have been saved all the cost, 
 inconvenience, and other evils, incident to the present meeting ? I 
 undertake to say that, on the Secretary's own showing, no deficit would 
 exist under any appropriations made before we were summoned, or 
 even now, except to the extent of one or two millions of dollars, instead 
 of more than five millions, as he computes it. Because, in order to 
 conjure up his large deficit, he has to add, for appropriations not yet 
 made, the expenses of this very session, and which must, of course, 
 be justified by a deficit existing independent of it, if at all. He has 
 to add, also, other new appropriations, amounting with this to more 
 than three millions of dollars. In this last way, also, it must be seen, 
 there is no trouble, on any occasion, whenever a deficit is wanted, to fix 
 the time at some distance, and call an intermediate session, and make 
 new appropriations enough to produce the deficit desired. 
 
 In this way, a deficit for thirteen or thirty millions can as easily be 
 estimated and produced as one of five millions, like that on this occa- 
 sion. The Secretary may be entirely innocent of any such views, and 
 may carelessly be pushed into this by the importunities and plausibil- 
 ities of others professing laudable objects. But if you calculate his 
 supposed deficit on only existing appropriations, it dwindles to about 
 two millions on its face ; and, as I shall attempt to show hereafter, if 
 deducting further manifest excesses in expenditure, and adding mani- 
 
132 STATE OF THE NATIONAL TREASURY. 
 
 fest deficiences in receipts, there would be no deficit whatever, but a 
 balance of from one to two millions in the treasury on the 1st of Sep- 
 tember. To be sure, as before remarked, this balance can be defeated ; 
 but I will demonstrate that, if the expenditures have, since the 4th of 
 March, and shall, till the 1st of September, be kept down to the usual 
 and proper amount on the whole existing appropriations, it would not 
 be probable, and hardly possible, to make a deficit. 
 
 As difficult would it be found, also, to make one for the whole year. 
 And I go into this, because some gentlemen may argue that it is not 
 now too soon to provide for one likely to happen at any time before 
 the year closes. Grant, then, for the sake of the present examination, 
 that this last reasoning is plausible ; and yet it will be found, on a little 
 scrutiny of the report, that there is no more likelihood of any deficit 
 for the year than for the next three months, unless, as before remarked 
 in respect to that, the Secretary produces it by unjustifiably large 
 expenditures on existing appropriations, or we, ourselves, hereafter 
 produce it, by our new and additional appropriations. 
 
 But before entering into a critical examination of the character and 
 amount of these supposed deficits hereafter, — none having yet occurred, 
 as both the report and message admit, — let us inquire a moment 
 whether any debt has occurred which is due, so as to have required 
 this early session. And, if so, what is its real amount under all the 
 exaggerations which have been circulated in stump speeches, and in 
 Congress, also, as well as mentioned in some parts of this grave official 
 document. I ask for proofs of the amount of the debt. 
 
 Gentlemen here must know well the difference between a debt and 
 a deficit, though they have often been loosely or designedly confounded 
 elsewhere. Thus, there may be a debt, but no deficit, because the 
 debt is not yet due or payable. Of course, it cannot help to make a 
 deficit, till it become payable ; and there can be no necessity for con- 
 vening Congress to pro vide. for it till it becomes due, or nearly due. 
 Much less is it necessary to call an extraordinary session, when no 
 change as to the amount or character of the debt existing before the 
 adjournment of the last Congress, or on the 4th of March, has taken 
 place since. 
 
 I aver that it is not pretended by the Secretary, in the introductory 
 portion of his report, that there was any debt then payable, whether 
 temporary or permanent, which he did not possess ample means to dis- 
 charge. What debt there was consisted of treasury notes, equalling, 
 in old and new, from five to six millions ; and of these not a dollar was 
 then payable and demanded, which had not been paid. If there had 
 been, he possessed, in order to discharge them, nearly six millions of 
 means in money, and authority to issue other notes. 
 
 Nor were many of them to become payable by the 17th of March, 
 when we were summoned, nor by the 30th of May, when we met. 
 He had more means than were sufficient to discharge all which were 
 due and presented, even before this session began, and to pay all other 
 
STATE OF THE NATIONAL TREASURY. 133 
 
 expenses, and have left over two millions of resources, besides the accru- 
 ing revenue. 
 
 Thus, in the 4th page (edition by the House), he says that, late as 
 the " 1st of June," he had funds in the treasury, as per statement C, 
 $644,361.16 ; and a power to issue treasury notes, authorized by the 
 act of 15th of February, 1841, $1,505,943.91. These constitute 
 existing means equal to $2,150,305.07. 
 
 There is no pretence, therefore, of any mere debt then due, which 
 required tins early call of Congress. The Secretary himself denies 
 and refutes any such position, in his first statements ; and as to any 
 debts which might exist and fall due next year, it would have been in 
 full season to provide for them at the regular session. Accordingly, 
 the first syllable we hear in the report about a debt due is at the 
 bottom of the third page, where he so very intelligibly, as to the amount 
 of it for the year 1841, speaks of treasury notes "receivable for public 
 dues in the present year, or payable in 1842," and, by means of more 
 than six millions of those, he adds, " making an aggregate of debts 
 and deficit to be provided for, in this and the ensuing year, of $12,- 
 088,215.18." This is very clear, I suppose, to his friends on the 
 other side of the House, as to the amount of the debt falling due in 
 1841. If so, how much is it ? Will any gentleman favor us with 
 the amount 1 None. Why ? Because, in truth, it does not appear 
 that a dollar of it is a debt due in 1841. It is confessedly an aggre- 
 gate made up, not of debts, but of debt and deficit together ; and not 
 of debt for 1841, but of debt and deficit for "this and the ensuing 
 year." When you analyze it, little doubt can exist, from the other 
 details given, that most of that part of it consisting of debt does not 
 fall due till 1842, and could then be early enough provided for, if not 
 extinguished before, by the accruing revenue. This meeting of Con- 
 gress, then, as necessary to provide for a debt due now, or even in 
 September, is delusive. This reason offered for it by its friends makes 
 it suicidal — a felo de se. But I am willing to admit that afterwards 
 in the report, bearing on this point of some debt due in 1841, the 
 Secretary talks so as to throw more mystery over it. Whether he 
 does this through carelessness or otherwise, the Senate must in the 
 end judge. At the close of the fourth page, when on the previous 
 page he had expressly admitted that the deficit for the whole year was 
 only about six millions, — or, in his own words, " leaving unprovided 
 for, of the demands for the present year, the sum of $6,000,941.14," — 
 he observes, that he makes "an aggregate" of deficit, for only the next 
 three months, of more than nine millions. This is very extraordinary 
 on its face, — that the deficit in a quarter of a year should be nine mil- 
 lions, or greater than in the whole year ! But it may be possible. He 
 next adds a remark "as to the mode of providing for the above deficit, 
 together with the residue of the existing public debt." He thus admits 
 and recognizes, as he did on the other page, the distinction between 
 deficit and debt, and proceeds at once to a computation of receipts 
 12 
 
134 STATE OF THE NATIONAL TREASURY. 
 
 and expenditures since 1816, and more especially of the last four 
 years, for no justifiable object connected with this session, or with the 
 fiscal deficit and debt he was considering, unless it was to show a still 
 further or larger deficit or debt. Accordingly, in his conclusions, 
 after the comparison is made, he adds, as to the last four years, that 
 "there appears an excess of expenditure, over the current revenue, 
 of $31,310,014.20." Then, after some words in brackets, he imme- 
 diately says, "Thus, and to this extent, within the last four years, 
 were the expenditures pushed beyond the amount of the revenue." 
 He speaks next and further, of being " burthened with a debt incurred 
 in time of peace," about augmenting " that debt" of its being an 
 "increasing national debt," and of taking "effectual measures to 
 prevent its further augmentation." 
 
 Now, I ask gentlemen, for information, if he is not understood, by 
 some of them here, to mean, by the debt, the thirty-one millions and 
 more he had just been speaking of, as an excess of expenditures by the 
 past administration? That sum immediately precedes, and with the nine 
 millions deficit in the three months, just before named, would hold up 
 to the country the whole of the colossal debt, or " arrearages of forty 
 millions" about which his party had said and sung so much during 
 the preceding six months. 
 
 If all his friends do not so understand him, — and his report is praised 
 by them, as being very " understandable ," — let me tell them that 
 many of their political faith do so understand him, and are now, on the 
 wings of the press, wafting to every hill and valley in this widely 
 extended country that this identical thirty-one millions is the debt 
 created by the past administration. They say that Mr. Ewing so 
 declares it to be, that this is what he recommends to be funded, and 
 hence this, and the nine millions supposed deficit, would make all the 
 mammoth forty millions which had been so often predicted. 
 
 This morning, — from several such allegations in his own partisan 
 press, — one of his ardent friends, an editor of long and high standing, 
 as well as education, and recently a State senator, sends to me this 
 printed notice of this part of the Treasury report : 
 
 "From the 1st of January, 1837, to the 4th of March, 1841, there appears an 
 excess of expenditures over current revenue of THIRTY-ONE MILLION, THREE 
 HUNDRED AND TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS." 
 
 Then, after a few further remarks, he adds : 
 
 " This is the national debt, — the legacy of Van Burenism. Mr. Ewing calls it 
 so rightly. He recommends that it he funded." 
 
 It is remarkable, that soon afterwards, in the report, is a separate 
 head, entitled " public debt" and under it are a page or two of obser- 
 vations ; but in no part of them does he state the amount of the public 
 debt, except as to be inferred from this thirty-one millions ; and the 
 readers of this " readable" document, as his friends call it, are flung 
 
STATE OF THE NATIONAL TREASURY. 135 
 
 back to this thirty-one millions as the true amount, which they say he 
 recommends to be funded. At least, his own political partisans out of 
 Congress say that is the true amount, as they understand him, and as 
 they, no less than he, were doubtless very anxious to have verified. 
 Then, again, says another of the modern whig presses, this very week, 
 referring to this very report : 
 
 " There appears to be a deficiency of revenue of about $11,000,000, and a debt of 
 $31,000,000, which may be augmented at the close of the year." 
 
 So, once more : 
 
 " Again : if we are to be relieved of the existing debt of $40,000,000, there should 
 be a further augmentation to the revenue of some millions, for the purpose of gradu- 
 ally clearing off that incumbrance." 
 
 And another : 
 
 " §W We wish to confine the thoughts of all our readers to one great point, this 
 week, — the condition of the United States Treasury, and the amount of Mr. Van 
 Buren's national debt, his legacy to the people — more than thirty-one millions." 
 
 Another, going down even to Mr. Ewing's cents, says : 
 
 '* Keep it before the people, — that it is now officially announced, that the 
 national debt incurred by Mr. Van Buren, during the four years of his administra- 
 tion, amounts to thirty-one millions, three hundred and ten thousand, fourteen 
 dollars and twenty cents." 
 
 But enough, out of a myriad of such blunders. This, then, is the 
 place, and proper occasion, to correct these scandalous errors, derived 
 from this very document, by the Secretary's own friends. I will 
 endeavor to set history right on this point, before I sit down. These 
 statements as to the contents of the report must be either true or false. 
 I ask, then, first, will Mr. Ewing's supporters on this floor admit that 
 a single one of these statements, made by his and their friends, is true ? 
 On the contrary, must they not declare that their own friends, led into 
 error by the Secretary himself, are publishing the foulest misrepresent- 
 ations of the truth !■ If they so declare, then let me ask, what a 
 beautiful illustration this collision and contradiction in their own ranks 
 furnish of the boasted clearness and accuracy of this report ! for, if the 
 debt already created be not thirty-one millions, according to Mr. 
 Ewing's views, as understood out of Congress, it must be only about 
 six millions, as that is the only other sum, in any other portion of 
 the report, referred to by him as the amount of the debt. It would, 
 then, follow, first, that this document had been drawn up with such 
 special care and clearness as to cause an impression among his own 
 party different from the truth in the enormous amount of near twenty- 
 five millions of dollars ! This, too, in a matter most vital to our 
 present meeting, deliberation and action, — the amount of the public 
 debt which we are really requested to have funded. It is, too, if a 
 
136 STATE OF THE NATIONAL TREASURY. 
 
 mistake, and not intended to exhibit the thirty-one millions as a debt, 
 a mistake which has led some of his friends to believe that all the color- 
 ing, exaggerations, and calumny, against the past administration, for 
 having created a debt of thirty to forty millions, was now discovered, 
 and proved by official data, to be true as the Gospel of Christ, instead 
 of being false as the Alcoran. 
 
 But, on the supposition that the Secretary possibly did mean to con- 
 vey the idea, and does convey it clearly, as many of his party allege, 
 that the thirty-one millions is the debt inherited from the past admin- 
 istration, and to be now "funded" let us examine, for a moment, the 
 base and shallow pretences for such an idea. We shall, at least, do 
 one benefit by it, if successful. We shall force his friends here to 
 admit that there is no such debt, and that, for political purposes, a vile 
 and monstrous exaggeration has been resorted to by their own party. 
 
 If this thirty-one millions be a debt, to whom, then, are we to issue 
 the scrip or certificates of stock, when it is funded, under the funding 
 schemes of the new dynasty 1 Of the whole amount, one item of near 
 nine millions is money collected chiefly from the United States Bank, 
 on account of the capital we formerly owned there. Is this nine mil- 
 lions a debt we owe, when we have merely collected that amount from 
 our creditors ? If so, to whom do we owe it, and why ? With a 
 change in our political dynasty friendly to a United States Bank, are 
 we to be called on to refund to that bank all our capital we have col- 
 lected, and thus generously to aid that distressed and unfortunate 
 corporation, as we propose to aid most of the rest of creation, though 
 pretended by our opponents that we ourselves, the General Govern- 
 ment, have been left in the most pitiable and embarrassed condition 1 
 
 This is one of the greatest humbugs in this age of humbugs, to pre- 
 tend that a dollar of this nine millions is a debt we owe to anybody, or 
 which should be funded. 
 
 The thirty-one millions is, then, reduced to twenty-two. But, mixed 
 up in another item of about seventeen millions, is a balance of money 
 of near eight millions, which was in the treasury on the first of Jan- 
 uary, 1837, which has been expended, as it should be, on objects 
 directed by Congress. Is that a debt 1 If so, to whom 1 Who shall 
 have the stock for it ? This is quite too ridiculous for argument, — that 
 we are to fund and pay as' a debt, to some unknown somebody, seven 
 millions of dollars, which belonged to ourselves, and for which we do 
 not now owe, and never did owe, a cent ! 
 
 This leaves only fifteen millions, or not half of the mighty thirty- 
 one. But, of that fifteen, over nine millions is confessedly the fourth 
 instalment. Is that a debt we owe 1 A debt for what 1 What prop- 
 erty did we get for it ; and from whom 1 No. It will do to talk at 
 ale-houses and political log-cabins about our owing the States this last 
 nine millions. But it is a little too much for a Secretary of the 
 Treasury to countenance such an idea, — a Secretary who had the sol- 
 emn laws of the twenty-six States before him, and their receipts, 
 
STATE OF THE NATIONAL TREASURY. 137 
 
 showing that all the instalments were to be considered as money 
 belonging still to the United States, and not to the States. That, 
 instead of owing them the fourth instalment, as a debt, they owed us 
 all the three others, and were liable, and had engaged to return them 
 whenever required. That the transaction was expressly and deliber- 
 ately agreed to be a mere deposit temporarily, to be returned when 
 needed, and not even a gift outright, and much less a debt owing by 
 us. Much less could it even be pretended, by any intelligent financier, 
 that the United States, by using the fourth instalment, their own 
 money, and for their own public purposes, thereby incurred any debt 
 to the States. 
 
 All of the whole thirty-one millions, as a debt, then, after deduct- 
 ing this, dwindles to between four and six millions. 
 
 The inflated balloon, so large with party gas, thus pricked, collapses, 
 and leaves nothing but the comparatively small amount of debt named 
 in another portion of the report, and there named as not due now, but 
 in the ensuing year. 
 
 What a miserable abortion or pretence there is, then, in all this 
 thirty-one millions, for any debt now due, so as to justify this early 
 session ! This scrutiny shows also the carelessness, and originality, at 
 least, of a fiscal officer having a whole head of his report devoted to 
 the " public debt," and yet, in no part of the information given under 
 that head, stating the amount of this public debt. Was ever such wis- 
 dom exhibited before ? And I now ask any gentleman, on the other 
 side, to inform me, from any part of his report, how much public debt 
 the Secretary means to state has been caused by the appropriations 
 under the past administration ; and how much by new appropriations, 
 and his new "Fiscal Bank" scheme, under the present administration? 
 
 But one or two minutes longer as to this large item of thirty-one 
 millions. Why was it dragged in so awkwardly in respect to this 
 session, unless it was meant to convey an impression to cursory readers 
 that a debt to this extent had been created by the past administration '? 
 It had some object. Was it, then, the mere partisan object of holding 
 up the preceding administration as extravagant and odious ? If so, I 
 am ready to prove, from official documents in the Secretary's own 
 office, that he was conveying an impression which he knew, or was 
 bound to know, to be utterly groundless. 
 
 Thus, in document No. 497, of the Senate, at the twenty-fifth 
 Congress, second session, it is reported from the treasury depart- 
 ment, that the appropriations made by Congress exceeded those asked 
 in the annual estimates over nineteen millions, and in 1837 they 
 exceeded them over seventeen millions, making an aggregate of thirty- 
 six millions of excess. Now, none of those passed in 1837 had been 
 made or expended on the 1st of January, 1837, and probably none of 
 the former ones, being made mostly in July previous, had been 
 expended beyond the sum of four or five millions. There was, then, 
 imposed on this four years, from 1837 to 1841, outstanding appro- 
 12* 
 
138 STATE OF THE NATIONAL TREASURY. 
 
 priations, beyond the estimates, equal to this whole thirty-one millions, 
 and which, though it or its predecessor never called for them, it was 
 compelled by Congress to expend beyond the ordinary appropriations 
 called for and outstanding. Yet to spend this excess is now imputed 
 to it as extravagance and waste, by some of the very persons in the 
 opposition who were foremost and eager to break down the treasury 
 with them. 
 
 Again : by another document, No. 450 of the Senate, twenty-sixth 
 Congress, first session, it appears, that in these four years more 
 extraordinary and temporary appropriations were required by Congress 
 to be expended than was the average of the two previous presidential 
 terms by the whole amount of this thirty-one millions, and quite 
 forty-six millions more than in the presidential term of the younger 
 Adams. Yet it is now charged upon Mr. Van Buren and his friends, 
 by those who moved and advocated many of those extra and tem- 
 porary appropriations, that the balance of only thirty-one millions of 
 excess in his expenditures over the receipts is evidence of his want of 
 economy. A want of economy for a balance against him of thirty-one 
 millions, when they compelled him to expend quite forty-six millions 
 more than were imposed on their own administration. 
 
 Nor was this period "a time of peace," as the Secretary states; 
 but it was burdened with one of the most expensive and bloody Indian 
 wars that has ever ravaged our frontier. 
 
 Again : look at the other side, to the receipts in this period, from 
 1837 to 1840. The executive cannot increase or diminish the receipts, 
 except sometimes from lands, by many or few advertisements. But 
 Congress can. In those years the tariff had become lessened by Con- 
 gress itself, under a biennial reduction. Was the past administration 
 culpable for that, when the measure originated before it came into 
 power ? Over forty millions of revenue, which would otherwise have 
 accrued, had also been relinquished and reduced by the alteration in 
 the tariff of 1832 and 1833. Added to this, the Secretary has seized 
 on a period for his comparison when most extraordinary revulsions 
 had begun in the commercial world, lessening, and almost entirely for 
 a time paralyzing, all revenue. Was this very period picked out on 
 that very account 1 Had the Secretary intended to draw a fair com- 
 parison of the receipts and expenditures, after a great civil revolution, 
 like the accession of General Jackson in 1829, or a great event in the 
 monetary concerns of the country, like the removal of the deposites in 
 1833, it would have been natural and proper to take these dates, and 
 not 1837. Those two eras of ruin, in the view of most gentlemen on 
 the other side, were a sort of Hegira in their political chronology, and 
 the results would have been useful; but they would not have answered 
 the purpose of conveying to the world an impression of great compar- 
 ative expense over the receipts, and hence of great supposed wasteful- 
 ness. Thus, by document No. 212, Senate, 25th Congress, 3d 
 session, and the annual reports since in the finances, it can be seen 
 
STATE OF THE NATIONAL TREASURY. 139 
 
 that from 1829 to 1840, when the country was ruined by General 
 Jackson and Mr. Van Buren, the receipts exceeded the expendi- 
 tures, instead of the reverse, by quite fourteen millions of dollars ; 
 and from 1833 to 1840, by quite three millions ; and from 1829 to 
 1837, by forty millions. Again : if gentlemen would devolve on 
 1837 the money then on hand, since deposited with the States to the 
 extent of twenty-eight millions, and the balance of near seven millions 
 left beside in the treasury, as well as devolve on 1837 all the excess- 
 ive outstanding appropriations made in 1836-7, above what the 
 estimates called for, this alone would not only square the accounts, 
 but leave seven millions balance in favor of the past administration. 
 Such and so groundless are some of the obsolete charges now 
 vamped up and newly varnished by the Secretary against his prede- 
 cessors. 
 
 I take great pleasure in finding, that in the financial parts of the 
 President's message, he has too much tact to allude at all to this 
 thirty-one millions. He does not treat of its extraordinary items as a 
 debt, or deficit, or evidence of extravagance. But he should have 
 done it, were they either of the former. He knew better, and he did 
 better. He, too, shows the judgment and good sense to extract 
 nothing about this four millions surplus from "the report of the 
 Secretary of the Treasury" to which he expressly refers us (p. 30) 
 as having seen, and as furnishing the data of his own fiscal exhibits. 
 
 But gentlemen may argue that, in another portion of the report, it 
 is shown that over thirty-three millions of appropriations were out- 
 standing on the 4th of March, and that this is prima facie evidence, 
 either of a great debt- to near that amount, or of great arrearages. 
 Such sage arguments have heretofore been used to reach similar con- 
 clusions by our opponents, and they are likely to be again. Even the 
 report seems to give some countenance to such an impression, by 
 swelling the aggregate of appropriations by the addition of all the 
 treasury notes, and giving no explanations how short a time the great 
 mass of these outstanding appropriations had been passed. It is there- 
 fore necessary to scrutinize them a single moment. First, then, 
 including only the appropriations for ordinary expenditures, exclusive 
 of any debt or treasury notes, which is the customary mode of stating 
 outstanding appropriations, and the aggregate was only about twenty- 
 eight millions, instead of thirty-three millions. 
 
 Again : it is a recorded fact, in an exhibit published by an officer 
 of this body, and which I hold in my hand, that near eighteen millions 
 and a third of those twenty-eight had been appropriated, or become 
 chargeable, during the recent session, at the heel of it, and most of 
 them within even three days of the 4th of March. 
 
 Yet, without any such explanation, they are sent out to the world, 
 by Mr. Ewing, in a form calculated to create an impression with many 
 that the whole thirty-three millions were old arrearages, or old debts, 
 or evidence of one of them. But, on a scrutiny, it appears that only 
 
140 STATE OF THE NATIONAL TREASURY. 
 
 from nine to ten millions of the whole thirty-three then remained as 
 old appropriations, exclusive of treasury notes, which is no larger a 
 sum than the Secretary proposes to leave at the end of the present 
 year. Nor, on the other hand, is nine millions any larger, if so large 
 a sum, as it has been customary for a long time to have outstanding 
 at the end of the year. Nor is it evidence of a dollar of debt 
 or arrearage. 
 
 Thus vanishes another of the wretched fabrics for an existing debt 
 or arrearage of thirty-three or forty millions. Indeed, the out- 
 standing appropriations at the end of a year have at times been as 
 high as fifteen or sixteen millions, without usually including anything 
 for the debt. They have been so in 1836 and 1837, but by 1839 
 were reduced to about thirteen millions, and last year, at the close of 
 it, were not far from twelve millions. Part of the reduction has been 
 always caused by carrying some of them to the surplus fund, and one 
 year from two to three millions. But, independent of that, the Secre- 
 tary now, by his estimates, would reduce them at once three or four 
 millions, independent of the surplus fund, and by large expenditures 
 alone, being thus nearly three or four millions more than it has been 
 usual to reduce them in that way. 
 
 This is without any explanations, and hence inscrutable on any 
 common principle. But one other fallacious position on this topic in 
 the report, and I have done with the supposed debt. It has been and 
 may be again argued, that at least the sixteen millions and a fraction, 
 estimated as a deficit by the Secretary at the close of the year, must 
 and should be regarded virtually as a debt of the past administration ; 
 and hence, if the debt was not forty millions, or thirty-one or thirty- 
 three, — handed over, in their language, as " the legacy of Van Buren- 
 ism" to the present administration on the 4th of March, — it was 
 at least sixteen millions. But will gentlemen use their eyes and com- 
 mon sense a moment, on this point ? Let us examine the items of this 
 $16,088,215.18, which the Secretary computes to be an " estimated 
 deficit," with such apparent exactness as to go down even to cents — 
 to eighteen cents in a mere estimate, and that one involving the sum 
 of sixteen millions. I do not object to great exactness in past expend- 
 itures, which, of course, are known, and can, and perhaps may. 
 properly enough, in fiscal exhibits, be stated in cents, when they 
 exist. But this pretension to such minute accuracy in an estimated 
 deficit is a little too bad; and more especially in a document so 
 abounding in large errors and numerous discrepancies in its estimates 
 and statements, even to the extent of several millions. But the 
 Secretary may be entitled to some indulgence, on this score of using 
 cents in his estimates, on account of the example probably set him by 
 the estimates for civil foreign intercourse, &c, some of them coming 
 from his superior officer in the State department, and, for aught I 
 know, the consequence of the well-known vigilance and care in money 
 matters which distinguish the Secretaries, whether upper or under, 
 
STATE OF THE NATIONAL TREASURY. 141 
 
 in that department. Of the items which constitute this sixteen mil- 
 lions, the last one, of four millions, has never yet been even appro- 
 priated, and is, of course, not due as a debt to anybody. 
 
 It is merely four millions which the Secretary wishes to have author- 
 ized as a surplus in the treasury, and which, of course, on the repeal 
 of the sub-treasury, which he recommends, and which gentlemen have 
 already voted for, is to be placed in the broken State banks, to be 
 loaned and banked on without interest to us ; and this at our expense, 
 as we shall be obliged to borrow it for them, and pay interest on the 
 loan, or it will be placed in the same way, and for the same purpose, 
 in the new " fiscal" or treasury or government bank, at the fancied 
 idea of which our opponents last year had such horrors. 
 
 But what a shallow pretence it is, that this four millions, or any part 
 of it, is now, or was last March, a debt ! Deduct it, and the twelve 
 millions remaining is the sum formerly referred to, about six of which 
 the Secretary admits not to be a debt due last March, or even in this 
 year ; and the other six is half of it, at least, as I shall soon explain 
 in detail, manufactured from new and additional appropriations now 
 requested, but which had not passed last March, nor do they even 
 now exist, except on paper, and in imagination and hope. 
 
 The other three, without now dwelling on other particulars, are 
 more than all counterbalanced by the over-estimate of expenditures 
 under existing appropriations. Thus, in brief, for example, the new 
 and permanent appropriations for this year were, as before explained, 
 but eighteen millions and a third, and, by a table annexed to the Sec- 
 retary's own report, were under that sum. On this amount the 
 expenditures, by the practice and usage for almost all time since this 
 government began, would be such as to leave, at the end of the year, 
 about the same amount unexpended as is spent of the old or former 
 appropriation. In this way, the whole expenditure in any year nearly 
 equals just about the aggregate of the new and permanent appropria- 
 tions. 
 
 The Secretary, then, ought to spend, for the current service in 1841, 
 only about eighteen to nineteen millions, when he proposes to spend 
 for it over twenty-three millions, or an excess of four to five millions, 
 and considerably beyond all which remains of the computed debt or 
 deficit of sixteen millions. 
 
 If, to cover some contingencies and fluctuations, the expenditure 
 might go to twenty millions, and that be deemed the maximum, and 
 which was the maximum in the annual report last December, the 
 excess proposed by the Secretary would still be more than three mil- 
 lions, and alone would absorb all the balance of the sixteen. 
 
 I concede, however, that by pushing the expenditures hastily and 
 inconsiderately, in every quarter of the country, to aid this object or 
 that, — this or that individual, — and that by making large and prema- 
 ture advances, the expenditures may, in truth, be thus inflamed or 
 augmented. But I do say, that if this should unfortunately prove to 
 
142 STATE OF THE NATIONAL TREASURY. 
 
 be the result, it will grow out of a departure from long usages, and, I 
 fear, be a violation of what is due to the public interests, more especially 
 in the straitened condition of our fiscal affairs. 
 
 Thus, then, disappears all pretence of any debt due this year, 
 beyond our means under the aggregate of sixteen millions. What, 
 then, is the real debt already created 1 What part of it is to fall due 
 this year, and what the next ? And what amount of additional debt does 
 the new administration recommend to be created, for its own appropri- 
 ations and bank capital, the present year ? Seriously is this informa- 
 tion desired, — and will any of the Committee of Ways and Means give 
 it to me ? No : either they cannot ascertain it satisfactorily from the 
 report, or the results would not be very flattering to the comparison, as 
 to economy and extravagance, between the two administrations. 
 
 Will they include for this administration the Secretary's new sur- 
 plus of four millions 1 Will they include the fourth instalment, or 
 not, and borrow, or not, nine or ten millions for that which the Sec- 
 retary, in his new bank project, says, most unadvisedly and erro- 
 neously has already been '-appropriated"? Will they include six 
 milhons more, which he recommends unconditionally, to aid in estab- 
 lishing the capital of a new national bank 1 and five millions more still, 
 in case individuals do not subscribe enough? Will they include three 
 milhons more, for what they give away from the public lands to the 
 States? and three more, for their new appropriations for the war 
 department, extra session, and census ? 
 
 This is a very modest aggregate of debt apparently requested, equal- 
 ling at least thirty milhons, connected with measures of the new reform 
 and economical administration ; while, for the past extravagant admin- 
 istration, there should not be, at the utmost, both this and the next 
 year, but from four to six millions. 
 
 Now, am I right in these inferences from the report itself, — and how 
 much of this saving and reforming policy will Congress approve ? That 
 is the important inquiry. What did the President, too, think should 
 be authorized, for all these purposes ? And what aggregate do either 
 of them, in reality, mean you shall fund for all these purposes ? The 
 country is faint with expectation to know something certain and intel- 
 ligible of the views of their highest officers on such a momentous meas- 
 ure to them and their children, — a measure which certainly tends, 
 however designed, to mortgage, to British capitalists, their workshops, 
 farms, and firesides, for ages, and render us all mere hewers of ivood 
 and drawers of water to our ancient oppressors. 
 
 On the contrary, that I am right in respect to the delusive preju- 
 dice which has been got up against the past administration for a debt 
 of forty milhons, or even thirty, or twenty, or ten, another course of 
 reasoning, and a little exercise of plain, practical sense, will demon- 
 strate. A nation is like an individual, in these respects. What is the 
 debt of any man, on any given day ? It must be the amount of admit- 
 ted claims which others hold against him, unsatisfied. But others held 
 
STATE OF THE NATIONAL TREASURY. 143 
 
 against the United States, on the first of this year, only about four and 
 a half millions due of treasury notes ; and on the 4th of March, only 
 between five and six millions, and a considerable portion of this not 
 payable till another year. This is the whole mystery and wonder, in a 
 nutshell. Before this year ends, the debt on the existing appropria- 
 tions is more likely to be reduced than increased ; because, of the 
 appropriations outstanding, there were several millions less, instead of 
 more, than in several years immediately prior, and the expenses under 
 them were satisfied as fully as usual, or your table would have been 
 loaded with the clamorous complaints of creditors asking relief. This 
 is the unvarnished tale — the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but 
 the truth. Stump orators and legislators can talk themselves hoarse 
 as to details, and not change a figure of this result upon general data, 
 intelligible to the most common capacity. 
 
 Much has been said of the enormous payments made to redeem 
 treasury notes. But that is evidence of ample means, if as many new 
 notes are not issued, and not of extravagance, in any case, if the new 
 issues do not go far beyond the amount redeemed. Thus, in the last 
 four years, if mingling, like the Secretary, the redemption of treasury 
 notes with common expenses, and thus increasing the apparent extrav- 
 agance several millions, anybody could and would have made that 
 administration appear to have spent thirty or forty millions more than 
 it really did. And yet, in the whole period, up to the 1st of January, 
 it did not owe an amount of treasury notes, for the whole time, more 
 than about four and a half millions. The aggregate has been swollen 
 merely by the issue of new ones for old ones, in most cases without 
 increasing the real expenses, or the real debt. 
 
 Stripping off party disguises and ignorant misconceptions, such are 
 believed to be the true views of this interesting subject, — a subject 
 which, in this respect, is made the theme of the grossest carelessness, 
 if not mistake ; and which, by bad juxtaposition of statements, by 
 omissions and mystification, has led the Secretary's own friends, all 
 over the country, to quote him as authority for the flagrant calumny 
 on his predecessors, that they have left the treasury burdened with a 
 debt of thirty-one millions, at least, if not forty; when, in other 
 places, he is found to admit that it is only about six millions, and most 
 of that not due till next year, — all of it temporary, and all of it likely 
 to have been extinguished before December, if the conduct of the 
 United States Bank, since the 1st of January last, had not been such, 
 and with such developments, as to cover large portions of the country 
 with ruin, paralyze business, injure American credit, for a time, at 
 home and abroad, and thus reduce largely our revenue from foreign 
 commerce. 
 
 I shall next proceed to inquire into the estimates and calculations, 
 in detail, by which the Secretary arrives at the conclusion of a large 
 deficit for the year, and then for the ensuing three months, which it 
 was necessary to provide for in so early and extraordinary a manner. 
 
144 STATE OF THE NATIONAL TREASURY. 
 
 And, first, let me ask if there be no important omissions in the report 
 of what is useful to decide correctly in this inquiry, and which ought 
 to be supplied before printing extra copies of it, or acting on its recom- 
 mendations? It omits entirely the statement of the actual receipts and 
 expenditures of the past three months, which were facts and certain, 
 and bearing directly on the opinions that should be formed of the next 
 three, while it computes a deficit for the next three, in mere estimates, 
 or conjectures, which are entirely uncertain. It next omits any state- 
 ment, substantive and separate, of the whole computed expenditures 
 under existing appropriations, exclusive of the debt, either for the 
 whole of the year 1841, or for the part of it after our opponents came 
 into power on the 4th of March, or for the ensuing three months. 
 These statements would have been natural, and would have removed 
 much doubt that now exists, in this document, on some of these import- 
 ant points. Equally useful and desirable would it have been to see 
 a statement of the amount of debt which he supposes would be due, 
 under existing appropriations, at the end of the next three months and 
 at the end of the year ; as, also, in conformity to opinions just ex- 
 pressed by me, the amount which he has recommended to be created 
 this year, under new appropriations yet to be passed, whether for the 
 ordinary session, or for capital to a fiscal bank, or any other object. 
 
 Why have all these important results been left uncomputed, and 
 either entirely omitted, or so mixed up and confused with other matter 
 that it would puzzle a sphinx to unriddle them to the satisfaction of 
 every one, even of our opponents 1 If it does not, will any of them, or 
 any one of the Committee of Ways and Means, now state to me what 
 they suppose his opinions to be on either of these points, either judging 
 from the report, or from personal communication? They are data 
 much needed to facilitate forming a judgment on the correctness of 
 some of his other computations. None can give them. 
 
 Let us, then, examine what we have got on the amount of those 
 supposed deficits, and see what appears to be its character, — whether 
 fully reliable, or otherwise. Are all the sums on which his calcula- 
 tions rest stated accurately by him and the President, — the latter, of 
 course, taking his data from the former ? Are there no material mis- 
 takes appearing on the face of the report and message, in matters con- 
 nected with the deficit, as well as some of the general estimates and 
 general conclusions ? I speak not now of the mistakes, perhaps, in 
 addition, or in printing, of quite a million in two places, nor of sums 
 repeated and doubled ; for such mistakes, as before remarked, may be 
 entirely clerical, or typographical, and are not to be treated with harsh- 
 ness. But how is it as to other and material errors, that cannot, in 
 the nature of things, have any such apology, and that bear directly on 
 the examination before us? Thus, in the first place (2d page), the 
 Secretary gives the balance of money on hand which he started with 
 on the 4th of March, and which is one of his means to prevent a 
 deficit. He states it at $572,718 ; but, on the third page, he states it 
 
STATE OF THE NATIONAL TREASURY. 145 
 
 at $646,803, or a difference of $74,085; while he gives the balance 
 to the President, who says (3d page) that he gets it "from the report 
 of the Secretary of the Treasury" at a third amount, different still, 
 viz., $645,000. 
 
 Some explanation can perhaps be attempted for some of the differ- 
 ences, but it will be rather difficult to show that each of the three dif- 
 ferent balances, and all of them, can be correct. Certainly one of 
 them, which is said to be taken from the Secretary's report, is not in 
 the report now ; and it cannot be pretended that any of them relate to 
 different times, as each expressly refers to the 4th day of March. 
 
 Again : the Secretary makes the deficit for this year — a most im- 
 portant inquiry — to be $6,000,941, while the President has a state- 
 ment to show it to be $11,406,000, or a difference of $5,406,059. 
 These, also, refer to the same date or period. But if this error be 
 admitted, and an explanation be offered that the President meant to 
 include the debt not due till another year, but created in 1841, and 
 omitted to be properly described, then this will be only exchanging one 
 error for another, because the Secretary pronounces that debt and 
 deficit to be $12,088,215, which is still a difference of $682,215 from 
 the President. The items of the President, also, on this point, pre- 
 sent still a third error, as they show a deficit of only $9,540,000, includ- 
 ing treasury notes, or his difference from his aggregate statement of 
 $1,866,000. Of this, I can imagine no explanation, which does not 
 end in a new difference or blunder. The Secretary says, again, that 
 there will be required, from the 1st of June to the 31st of August, 
 " for the payment of treasury notes which will fall due within that 
 time, and the interest thereon, about $2,756,900." This is one of 
 the essential items to create his deficit. But the President, in his 
 message, under date of the 1st of June, and of course covering exactly 
 the same period to a day, says, " There will fall due, within the next 
 three months, treasury notes of the issues of 1840, including interest, 
 about $2,850,000." This makes a discrepancy of $93,100. There 
 is no mistake in additions, or by clerks, and no different dates, but the 
 same period embraced explicitly in both statements. 
 
 Again : the Secretary estimates the expenses for the next three 
 months — a most material point — at $11,151,693, while the Presi- 
 dent is led to make them $11,340,000 ; and he explicitly adopts the 
 same three months, from the 1st of June to the last of August. This 
 is a difference of $188,307; and he makes another and second error 
 here, in stating or putting his items together, of quite $96,000, as those 
 stated equal only $11,244,000. I can divine no possible explanation 
 for this, as it relates to expenditures, and not to receipts. The next and 
 last mistake, in figures, on the face of the report and message, which I 
 shall notice, is in the aggregate of the imputed deficit at the end of 
 those three months, — the great object of our extraordinary call, and 
 where accuracy was most eminently desirable. The Secretary calls it 
 $5,251,388, while the President states it at $4,845,000, or a differ- 
 13 
 
146 STATE OF THE NATIONAL TREASURY. 
 
 ence of $406,388; and there is also another difference between his 
 items and his sum total, of $45,000. Now, I admit that here, and 
 here for the first and only time, the President, as to the means on 
 hand, speaks of the 28th of May, thus referring as to his balance and 
 the amount of treasury notes on hand, when the Secretary refers to 
 the 1st of June. But if we examine the items, and an allowance be 
 made for that difference, it only plunges them into another error of 
 $92,207, totally inexplicable. It leads, likewise, to the detection of 
 still a third mistake, under this head, in the estimates of receipts for 
 those three months. Both refer, then, to the same period and dates 
 exactly; and yet the Secretary's receipts are $50,000 less than those 
 stated by the President. 
 
 But I will pursue this scrutiny no further, though there be still 
 other differences of some thousands of dollars, between their statement 
 of the amount of treasury notes to be redeemed after the 4th of 
 March and between the body of the report and the table annexed. 
 Enough has been disclosed to show, what is my chief object in the 
 exposure at all, how great haste and inattention have, from some 
 cause or other, attended the preparation of this report, or the most 
 material points in it, and attended the communication of the Secretary's 
 results to the President as the data for the financial statements of the 
 latter. This cutting down, and cutting up, and cutting aside, so much 
 from the facts in figures, is cutting rather a poor figure. Certain it 
 is, that all these contradictory results cannot be correct. The Senate 
 will hardly be surprised, after this list of errors, and discrepancies, 
 and contradictions, — many of them alone equalling in amount the 
 whole State taxes of several States for several years, — to find that 
 the Secretary appears also to have omitted separately, if not entirely, 
 in his exhibit for the three months, the further expenses which the 
 President includes separately for the census, amounting to $294,000, 
 and for the year, both that and the expenses of this session ; making 
 an aggregate of $644,000. On the other hand, also, the President 
 seems to have omitted separately, both in his statement for the three 
 months as well as the year, the expenses for this session, which the 
 Secretary includes separately for the three months, but omits wholly 
 for the year. This amounts to another error of $350,000 in the 
 message. 
 
 Of course, no improper design in this is imputed, though the topic 
 of an extra session was doubtless a sore and an unpleasant one to the 
 President, more especially as it is likely, in reality, to cost over half a 
 million, and was not the offspring of his deliberations. 
 
 But the matter is alluded to merely as another illustration of the 
 precipitancy and want of care evinced in reaching their important 
 financial results, connected with the great objects of action at this 
 session. 
 
 Is it probable, after this, that those results themselves are accurate, 
 or anything approaching infallibility ? 
 
STATE OF THE NATIONAL TREASURY. 147 
 
 Is it not likely that the same or similar errors may have crept into 
 these great results themselves, and the computations leading to them? 
 But let us try and see the truth in the data — imperfect and ques- 
 tionable as they are — which have been placed before us. 
 
 In the first place, we will take the Secretary's " estimated deficit," 
 as he calls it, for the whole year. 
 
 Now, one of the most important items in this, to swell it doubtfully, 
 is the last one, being four millions of dollars for a surplus in the treas- 
 ury. Can it be possible that the Secretary supposed we should blindly 
 consider this a deficit, when the item is not a debt due to anybody, nor 
 even an appropriation existing, but merely a sum which it would, in 
 his opinion, be convenient to have on deposit in his new fiscal bank, to 
 be used by it, without interest, at our expense ? I shall not here enter 
 into the wisdom of his recommendation, as it is enough to say, on this 
 occasion, that the four millions is neither a debt nor a deficit that 
 required this session to be held, and probably never will be one. We 
 fall back, then, on the Secretary's previous "debt and deficit, to be 
 provided for in this and the ensuing year, of $12,088,215." In 
 the outset, as to this, it is admitted by him that $6,087,274 of the 
 aggregate does not fall due till the ensuing year ; and, consequently, 
 no occasion existed for an extraordinary session now to fund it, or pro- 
 vide for its discharge. But, beside this, it is manifest that, if the tem- 
 porary debt of about six millions, not due till next year, is all created 
 this year, by issuing so many new treasury notes, it will be to pay 
 off, among other charges before included in his aggregate for the next 
 ten months after the 4th of March, nearly five millions of old treasury 
 notes. Then, if you add the amount of the new notes to the debt or 
 charges, you should subtract the old ones, which are nearly as great. 
 We cannot owe for both at one and the same time. The balance 
 remaining, then, being $6,000,941, is the only deficit which probably 
 will exist at all, and certainly all which he considers as likely to press 
 on the present year. The first fact noticeable in that is the incorpo- 
 ration into it of new appropriations asked for the war department, 
 equalling $2,521,336. These may never be appropriated by Congress, 
 and of course were no deficit in March last, nor are they now, nor 
 need they have been the present year ; and hence, in the present 
 inquiry, should be deducted. This would leave less than three mil- 
 lions and a half. 
 
 Now, without dwelling on small matters, in swelling or inflating the 
 estimated expenses of the year, under existing appropriations for the 
 public service, independent of the redemption of treasury notes, I 
 state, with confidence, that the Secretary has assumed an expenditure 
 of the year higher than is usual in the new and permanent appropria- 
 tions chargeable to this year, by quite four millions and a half. This 
 is a million more than all which is left of his computed deficit for the 
 year. 
 
 Thus the expenditures in any year will, as before remarked, gen- 
 
148 STATE OF THE NATIONAL TREASURY. 
 
 erally fall short, rather than exceed, the aggregate of new and perma- 
 nent appropriations for that year. I have traced them back for six 
 or seven years, and the results are of that character, in the table before 
 me, with only one exception. Again : in these volumes before me are 
 the estimated expenditures of 1824, selected at random, and the 
 estimated appropriations to be made, with the addition of the perma- 
 nent ones, and the difference between them is only a few thousand dol- 
 lars; and so near do they usually approach, that the estimate of 
 expenditures, excluding the debt, was for a time identical, unless in 
 some extraordinary event, that was explained, with what was computed 
 to be the amount of the new and permanent appropriations. But has 
 the Secretary, in estimating so as to find a deficit at the end of the 
 year, respected, in the slightest degree, this guide of experience for 
 half a century? No, sir ; but, on the contrary, he has computed his 
 expenditures under the existing appropriations, exclusive of the debt, 
 at quite four and a half millions more than the amount of the new and 
 permanent appropriations, that have become chargeable in 1841. 
 There is no escape from this conclusion, and the force of it. Allow- 
 ance may be made for some contingencies, and for some postponed 
 appropriations from 1840 to 1841, under which one-fourth of a million 
 more might otherwise have been expended in 1840. But they would 
 not all materially swell the expenses much, if any, beyond twenty mil- 
 lions ; and if they are pushed beyond that, as they may be, by has- 
 tening public works prematurely, or crowding sail in every section, at 
 the request of this friend and that, in or out of Congress, and for all 
 kinds of purposes, — getting out yearly as much public money as pos- 
 sible, by advances into the hands of contractors and disbursing agents, 
 who place the money in favorite banks near, — then, I say, the deficit 
 will be caused unnecessarily. It will be forced, whatever may be the 
 impulse or motives, and will and should furnish no justification for 
 complaint of the past administration on account of it, or a resort to 
 this extraordinary session to provide for it. 
 
 It will, also, under this reform administration, increase the expend- 
 itures, under existing appropriations, three millions beyond the maxi- 
 mum intended by the last one ; and, if we give the other new ones 
 asked, will increase them six millions more, and, adding the debt the 
 Secretary proposes to create for his surplus and new bank, will swell 
 them to twenty-four millions higher than even that six. 
 
 But if twenty or twenty-one millions should be expended under any 
 peculiar though unexplained circumstances in the year, which is one 
 and a half to two and a half millions more than is justified by the 
 experience of fifty years, the estimate is some millions too high, and 
 there would still be no deficit, because the Secretary has included 
 among his expenditures, to reduce treasury notes, an item of $1,110,- 
 611, with interest, equalling about $66,000, which notes are not due 
 till next year ; and so far from its being probable, as the Secretary 
 supposes, that they may be paid in for duties prematurely, and before 
 
STATE OF THE NATIONAL TREASURY. 149 
 
 due, the reverse is true, looking to the condition of the money market, 
 so ver y easy, and the demand for these notes as an investment, so very 
 great. They are worth here a quarter to three-fourths per cent, 
 more than specie. But we have, in his own experience, a fact that 
 these are not likely to be paid in, under such circumstances, because 
 his own monthly return for the first of June exhibits but $80,000 
 paid in, of near four millions which had been issuing during the last 
 three months. Thus, his own records prove that, in the ratio of this 
 amount, not two hundred thousand dollars of the whole would proba- 
 bly straggle into the custom-houses and land offices till the next year, 
 when they became due. Near a quarter of a million more in his 
 aggregate, looking at the monthly return at the beginning of this 
 year, is out and lost, or hoarded, or in circulation as currency, which, 
 with the interest he has computed on them, will probably not consti- 
 tute a charge the present year. Several thousand dollars of the issues 
 even in the last war of 1812 are still out ; so that, after making these 
 deductions, and adding to his means the balance in the mint, which 
 can be resorted to when necessary, and the additional sum due from 
 banks for interest, &c, being about $150,000 more, and, gentlemen 
 will see, that instead of a deficit, a very considerable balance would be 
 in the treasury, without adding near a million from duties and lands, 
 which the Secretary has probably under-estimated. To that, how- 
 ever, we will advert more, soon. But the Secretary would, under 
 this economical administration, defeat all this, and spend twenty-six 
 millions in 1841, when the past extravagant administration proposed 
 to expend only twenty millions, at the utmost. The past administra- 
 tion was, in and out of Congress, and by candidates for very high 
 offices, assailed as wastefully expending forty to fifty millions a year, 
 when, in reality, it never expended, in the usual and true meaning of 
 the term, excluding trusts, more than between thirty- two and thirty- 
 three millions ; and reduced the expenses, from that amount, as low as 
 twenty-three millions. Yet, those who belied them, in this respect, 
 over the whole country, instead of reducing them to the eighteen 
 or twenty we proposed, or the thirteen they promised, are now trying 
 to run them up to more than twice this last amount, by pushing rap- 
 idly all expenditures, and making enormous new appropriations, and 
 by asking leave to incur a debt beside, on their own account and for 
 their own schemes, exceeding twenty-four millions more. 
 
 Indeed, the senator from Kentucky, in a memorial that he presented 
 from Georgia, a few days ago, endorsed and approved its views, where 
 the expenditures heretofore yearly were again exaggerated to forty or 
 fifty millions ; when, in truth, they never nominally reached even 
 forty, nor really, excluding trusts, ever reached thirty-three millions ; 
 and when, as just observed, they had become reduced, in 1840, to only 
 twenty-three millions, and in 1841 were intended to be not above 
 twenty millions. 
 
 The Georgia memorial, become important only by that senator's 
 13* 
 
150 STATE OF THE NATIONAL TREASURY. 
 
 approval of its contents, asked to have them reduced to thirteen or 
 fifteen millions. 
 
 Now, are this report and its recommendations the first illustration 
 of the sincerity in our opponents, as to such a reduction ] Is it to he 
 effected, as the report recommends, by augmenting our expenses to 
 ten or twelve millions beyond even the fifteen which is to be their 
 maximum 1 Is this their mode of fulfilling such promises to the 
 people 1 But enough of this, at present. 
 
 I pass on then, sir, to the only other and most material deficit, esti- 
 mated, for the next three months, by the President, at $4,845,000, 
 and by the Secretary, at $5,251,888. This is the great point upon 
 which the session, in a financial view, is to be vindicated or fail. If 
 either of those amounts was likely to be needed as early as September, 
 in the usual administration of the treasury, in frugal and vigilant 
 attention to prevent such a calamity, rather than to hasten it, then I 
 admit that the public faith ought to be protected, and proper measures 
 be seasonably adopted for that purpose. But this should not be 
 allowed unnecessarily, and especially after Congress had just been in 
 session, and provided all it deemed proper to be expended, and no new 
 facts or disclosures, material to this question, had been made since 
 their adjournment. Much can be accomplished, to prevent unneces- 
 sary advances and premature expenditures, by attention to this sub- 
 ject in the head of the department, whose imperious duty it is to guard 
 well the public treasure against being called out before needed, or in a 
 manner apparently inconsiderate, precipitant and dangerous ; and when 
 he entertains doubts on these points, to state them, if required, to pre- 
 vent waste, — to have the moral courage to remonstrate in the proper 
 quarter. 
 
 In reaching the result that a large deficit must happen by Septem- 
 ber, it is, by this time, I think, deemed possible, if not probable, that 
 the Secretary may have fallen into some mistakes, from Ins wishes 
 and anxiety to find some apology for our early meeting. He natu- 
 rally would feel inclined, when any plausible data existed, to increase 
 the expected amount of expenses, and lessen the expected amount of 
 receipts. This, we have already seen, would be characteristic. 
 
 In examining the grounds of his supposed deficit for the next three 
 months, as bearing on the necessity for our early call here, and for 
 funding and making a national debt in consequence, and of a high 
 tariff, — some of the most important measures submitted for our action, 
 — it is proper to be accurate as possible. The result, if showing a real 
 deficit of five to six millions, is the great pivot of the present session. 
 If showing none, we certainly ought not to have been now called from 
 our homes, and might usefully adjourn to-morrow. What, then, was 
 likely to be the deficit, when we were summoned, or when we met ? 
 Many would infer, from the report and the message, that it was near 
 five millions of dollars. The President says, — " Leaving a probable 
 deficit, on the 1st of September next, of about $4,845,000. ;J The 
 
STATE OF THE NATIONAL TREASURY. 151 
 
 Secretary says, — " Leaving a deficit of $5,251,388.30." In this 
 difference or disagreement, of more than four hundred thousand dollars, 
 it will be courteous and liberal to consider it between them ; first, at 
 the President's estimate, and then at the Secretary's. 
 
 But it will be observed, in the outset, that this is not the deficit 
 which has occurred, or is likely to occur, under existing appropria- 
 tions ; but it is one which those officers expect to have, if you will 
 authorize further new expenditures, and also, according to the Secre- 
 tary, insert among them, to make a deficit to justify an extra session, 
 the expenses expected to be incurred by holding that very session. 
 
 Let us, then, deduct, first, from the $4,845,000, all the new appro- 
 priations not yet made, but which the Secretary asks you to make. 
 The census is estimated at $294,000, the extra session at $350,000, 
 and the wants of the war department at $2,521,336. These make 
 $3,165,336, and would leave $1,679,664. 
 
 If it be said that it is not clear, from the message, nor even the lucid 
 report, that the new war department expenses are included, then I say 
 that the expenses estimated for the war department, under old appro- 
 priations alone, are quite this amount too high. They are, in the 
 Secretary's report, estimated at $4,591,098, which would be at the 
 rate of $18,364,392 per year, for that department alone; when they 
 should not be over ten or eleven millions. So the President's expend- 
 iture of $8,100,000 for "the current service" in those three months 
 would be equally too high, as it would be at the rate, for the current 
 service alone, of more than $32,000,000 for the year. 
 
 It is immaterial, therefore, as to the result, which hypothesis is the 
 true one, under the want of certainty that exists. 
 
 Deducting this amount of appropriations not yet made, or a mani- 
 fest over-estimate of expenditure under the existing appropriations for 
 the current service, and the whole deficit on the face of the report 
 dwindles down, as before stated, to only $1,679,664. But the Secre- 
 tary admits that the treasury notes to be redeemed are not so high as 
 the President states them to be by $93,100 ; deduct that, and there 
 is left only $1,586,564. 
 
 I shall next proceed to show that, by inadvertence, the Secretary 
 has himself probably computed the old treasury notes that will be 
 redeemed in the next three months too high by quite a million of 
 dollars. 
 
 Thus, by the monthly report, published on the 1st instant, the 
 aggregate of treasury notes out and issued under the old acts, and not 
 the present one, was $3,981,000. Of these we have before shown 
 that there were issued, between the 1st of January and the 4th of 
 March, and of course not falling due in the next three months, near 
 $1,110,000. It appears, also, from another part of the Secretary's 
 report, that of these were issued, between the 4th of March and the 
 30th, under the old law, about $413,000. We have before estimated, 
 and stated facts in the actual returns as evidence of it, that at least 
 
152 STATE OF THE NATIONAL TREASURY. 
 
 one-fourth of a million of these are old notes, lost and in circulation, 
 which will probably not be presented for payment at all in 1841. 
 This, without interest, would be near $240,000. It further appears, 
 from the monthly statements in last September, October, November, 
 December, and January, that in the last four months of the last year 
 there were issued, which will not fall due till after the 1st of Septem- 
 ber, 1841, treasury notes equal to $670,000. Now, supposing these 
 all to remain out till due, as is probable, and the whole, with those 
 not likely to be presented, constitutes an aggregate of $2,433,000, 
 which will not, on their face, be payable and presented in the next 
 three months. Deduct this from all the old notes out on the 1st of 
 June, and it would leave but $1,548,000, and interest on the sum, 
 about $90,000, to be redeemed in the next three months, instead of 
 $2,850,000, including interest. 
 
 The error of the Secretary has probably arisen from supposing that 
 most of those issued in the corresponding months in 1840 were still 
 out, when it is likely that, in the pressure for money last fall and 
 winter, when the United States Bank was pursuing its extraordinary 
 course towards New York, many of the treasury notes before issued 
 were paid in for duties. Add interest on the above amount, and 
 allowing beside near $200,000 for any contingencies as to other notes 
 being paid in prematurely, &c. &c, and the million excess is prob- 
 able, and, if deducted from the residue of the deficit, leaves of the 
 whole but $586,574. But when we advert next to the estimated 
 receipts for the next three months, it immediately appears that those 
 from customs are estimated below the Secretary's own average, for 
 the last ten months of 1841, quite $600,000, and the lands quite 
 $50,000. 
 
 Correcting this error on his own data, — and we know that July is to 
 be one of the largest months in this year for receipts from duties, in 
 consequence of the very large imports, in January, on three and six 
 months' credit, and that very large quantities of land are advertised to 
 be sold in June, — and the whole estimated deficit has disappeared, and 
 a balance would be left in the treasury of $63,426. 
 
 If, from the circumstances just mentioned, the receipts be increased 
 near half a million higher, which is probable, for the three months, 
 from lands and duties, and there be collected, as might be, $150,000 
 more from banks than is estimated in these three months, and the bal- 
 ance in the treasury on the 1st of September would be near three- 
 fourths of a million. 
 
 From another part of the report it appears that there would be in 
 the mint, besides, which could be used if found necessary, $180,199 ; 
 and we know that the actual receipts at this date, on the first of June, 
 not then returned to the department, which are afterwards returned, 
 and can be used, will be usually $100,000 to $150,000 more, or 
 enough to make $300,000. These last items amount to nearly as 
 much as the deficit of the Secretary exceeds that of the President. So 
 
STATE OF THE NATIONAL TREASURY. 153 
 
 that, taking either as the correct ground of calculation, there would, 
 under these expenditures, be no deficit whatever, but, in the Presi- 
 dent's aggregate, a balance on hand of more than a million of dollars, 
 and in the Secretary's, of near three-fourths of a million. 
 
 To be sure, as before intimated, this balance can be prevented from 
 accruing, if the executive departments, and those under them, push 
 expenditures faster than is usual or legitimate, — and they probably have 
 been pushed so, during the last three months, — or if we authorize, at 
 this session, the new expenditures desired, by means of new appropri- 
 ations. But such a result as a deficit of five or six millions is other- 
 wise not likely, and hardly possible, by the first of September, unless 
 the receipts are kept down below what is natural, by not advertising 
 lands for sale, or by further measures checking still more our foreign 
 commerce, and destroying what is left, since the United States Bank 
 explosion, of our foreign credit. Indeed, the receipts for the next three 
 months, as well as for the year, have been estimated by me but a little 
 higher than by the Secretary himself. That little, I think, he ought, 
 in only ordinary liberality, to concede, under all the circumstances. 
 
 Thus he omits near $200,000 interest due from banks, and about 
 $80,000 due from the United States Bank. This last, it seems, by 
 an answer to our new call, is now to be nullified by some new account, 
 trumped up since the 4th of March, and the restoration, I suppose, 
 of new principles, which the Secretary, in another place, dwells on 
 with such complacency. He may collect neither of these, if he pleases 
 not to do his duty ; but they are all due, and should be estimated and 
 collected, unless Congress otherwise directs. 
 
 He also estimates the receipts from customs, during the whole year, 
 nearly five millions less than the most intelligent merchants, collectors, 
 and subordinate officers in the treasury, did last December, provided 
 the banks resumed, and business took half the magical impulse which 
 many of the politicians of the country predicted. 
 
 But I concede that they did not resume, except to a limited extent ; 
 and that most of those resuming soon after suspended again, and have 
 been so dependent on the United States Bank of Pennsylvania, and so 
 injured by her malconduct, as, with that, to blast, in some measure, 
 the reviving prospects of trade, growing out of the laws of trade, and 
 not political elections, and to destroy much of our credit abroad, which 
 existed last December. Some allowances were suggested, in the annual 
 report in December last, as proper to be made, in case of the banks not 
 resuming, though sanguine politicians professed to believe that the 
 election alone of a new President would, at all events, act like elec- 
 tricity on commerce, and swell our business and revenue to the highest 
 pitch. 
 
 One of them, and no careless or circumscribed observer, said : 
 
 " The fact of his election ( William Henry Harrison) alone, without reference to 
 the measures of his administration, will powerfully contribute to the security and 
 happiness of the people. It will bring assurance of the cessation of that long series 
 
154 STATE OF THE NATIONAL TREASURY. 
 
 of disastrous experiments which have so greatly afflicted the people. CONFIDENCE 
 will IMMEDIATELY REVIVE, credit will be restored, active business will return, 
 PRICES of products will RISE ; and the people will feel and know that, instead 
 of their servants being occupied in devising measures for their ruin and destruction, 
 they will be assiduously employed in promoting their welfare uad prosperity." — 
 Speech of Henry Clay, at Hanover, July 10, 1840. 
 
 Similar political prophecies were numerous. But the election came, 
 virtually, in November and December, but without any of the revival 
 in prices the public had previously been led to expect, and none of the 
 new impulses to commerce, from political events, which had been so 
 confidently predicted. 
 
 The increase of importations would have occurred in January, from 
 the great laws of trade, whoever had been elected President ; and it 
 would have been checked again in February, as it was, whoever was 
 or was to be President, by the same great laws, violated, as they 
 were, through the conduct of the United States Bank, spreading ruin, 
 for a time, among many in great classes in both hemispheres. Disap- 
 pointed by the election in its promised fruits, and likely to be dese- 
 crated as false prophets, it was next pretended that it was necessary 
 to have actual possession of office in all its ramifications before a mil- 
 lennium in these matters was to be complete. Then even the sanguine 
 hopes, as to imports, cherished in December, would be exceeded. That, 
 too, has come ; offices innumerable have been seized on as the spoils of 
 victory, and yet prices and business are somewhat obstinate about 
 changing for the better ; and now it is new measures, new legislation, 
 which is to swell the tide of glory, and work the great reform and 
 revival. Where political quackery is to end, on these topics, remains 
 to be seen ; but as the measures of relief can now be adopted to any 
 extent desired, — as not only the election has been consummated near 
 half a year ; the conquered trophies of office enjoyed for near a quarter 
 of a year ; all the alleged leaks in the treasury, it is to be presumed, 
 stopped ; all defaults prevented ; and those magical Sibylline new books 
 opened, which were to effect such miracles in finance, — I think the 
 Secretary might be a little more generous in respect to his estimate of 
 receipts for the next three months, as well as the rest of the year. 
 The President is kind enough to anticipate a revival of prosperity, 
 though omitting to increase the revenue any on account of it ; and the 
 Secretary should assuredly allow from half a million to a million more 
 in this year for receipts, if he believes a tithe of the predictions of 
 those around him, as to the sudden and wondrous increase of prices 
 and business which their mere advent to power, and, beside this, their 
 wise measures, were to produce. If this increase do not forthwith 
 come, it certainly will not be for the want of political poAver to remove 
 any political objections, and for want of political nostrums in abun- 
 dance to cure all kinds of evils. But it will rather be because the 
 United States Bank, like the dying whale or leviathan, has. in its death- 
 flurry, wounded or destroyed most of the credit and business of a large 
 
STATE OF THE NATIONAL TREASURY. 155 
 
 part of the country. It must be that the gambling speculations, and 
 gross over- trading and over-banking, which have led to her ruin, have 
 been too deeply seated, too corrupting, and too much intermingled in 
 the whole pursuits of our people, either to have been caused by the 
 politics of one President being democratic, or to be cured by those of 
 another being federal. 
 
 By the time of the next meeting of this body, we shall be able to 
 see whether the present additional patent medicines, now proposed for 
 relief of all kinds, are successful, or are to be followed by some new 
 political panacea, and the political millennium to come which is again 
 and again postponed, notwithstanding all the confident whig prophecies 
 to the contrary. 
 
 I have done with the expenditures and receipts, with deficits and 
 debts, and next will advert to the measures of relief proposed to get 
 rid of any deposits or debts, which the Secretary calculates to exist in 
 such inflated, exaggerated amounts. 
 
 The General Government, the States, and the people, are all rep- 
 resented, by him and by the President, to be in a most suffering condi- 
 tion ; and, not contented to administer advice to the patient placed in 
 their charge by the constitution, viz., the General Government, they 
 embrace in their benevolent plans all the disorders of the State Gov- 
 ernments, and all the ills which flesh is heir to among the people at 
 large. Some brief views on their extended system of legislating for 
 almost everybody and everything, — on the character and propriety of 
 these extraordinary measures of relief, — and I shall relieve the Senate 
 from any further attention to me on this occasion. 
 
 The first prominent feature in the relief proposed is to magnify its 
 extent and importance in all possible ways ; like many physicians, who 
 never attempt to cure the smallest scratch or slightest fever, without 
 seeking to persuade the patient and his friends that lock-jaws, chole- 
 ras, and all other horrors, have been escaped, by resorting to their 
 skill and aid. 
 
 The next is, when the General Government is represented to be 
 embarrassed, and overloaded with monstrous debts and deficits, to 
 begin and take from it three millions of its present resources. Not to 
 take from it a surplus, — relieve it of an incumbrance; but, while 
 debilitated, as they say, struggling with exhaustion, to bleed it three 
 millions more. 
 
 Not satisfied with this, the next wise proposition is to take from it 
 even nine millions more, and to give it to those States who are at this 
 moment indebted to it over twenty-eight millions, and who, so far 
 from having any claim to this nine millions as a debt due, are bound, 
 in law and common honesty, and by their plighted faith, to pay us 
 back, in this exigency, the whole of that twenty-eight millions. This 
 giving away of twelve millions by us, when represented to be much in 
 debt, that should be paid, — this " new way of paying old debts," — is 
 one so sagacious and profound as never to have occurred to the author 
 
156 STATE OF THE NATIONAL TREASURY. 
 
 of the play under that title. It is left to the present administration, 
 as one of its glories, to have made the great discovery. 
 
 The next unique or peculiar feature in the measures proposed is to 
 grow rich by banking on borrowed capital. This is the sovereign 
 remedy, and proposed and elaborated in supplemental reports, with 
 much gravity, notwithstanding the monuments of ruin now standing 
 before us, from similar quack experiments, in Michigan, in Mississippi, 
 and, it is to be feared, in several other States ; and which identical kind 
 of effort to grow rich in a new way has brought on them most of the 
 evils we are advised to help remove by precisely the same kind of 
 hazardous and ruinous experiment. 
 
 Another feature running through the whole of these rare schemes 
 is, that we are to raise the wind, not for one alone, but for the whole 
 of them at first, by means of the boasted modern credit system. Not 
 by any present surplus, for they pretend there is a deficiency ; not by 
 retaining all our present revenues, for many of those they propose to 
 give away ; not by reducing our expenditures, for those they recom- 
 mend to increase ; but by overloading this already embarrassed gov- 
 ernment, as they call it, and this already ruined people, as they pre- 
 tend, and all their posterity for ages, with an immense permanent 
 national debt, in a period of profound peace with all foreign nations. 
 
 Yes, one of the most striking elements in these recommendations, 
 not yet enlarged on, is, after denouncing the past administration as 
 wasteful, with expenses only twenty-three millions last year, and pro- 
 posed to be not over twenty this year, and yet profess to practise 
 retrenchment and reform, by increasing these expenses to twenty-six 
 millions, and to relieve the public suffering by adding to the debt mil- 
 lions on millions, for the most dangerous and reckless experiment in 
 public banking that has occurred since the Mississippi scheme of John 
 Law, more than a century ago. If our new plans in this report reach 
 Europe, and are there understandable, I think we shall obtain the 
 high reputation of being very Solomons in wisdom as to monied mat- 
 ters, and shall succeed, as we ought on such bases, in obtaining their 
 liberal loans. 
 
 The whole, sir, is wrong in fundamental principles. I would call 
 it, except for the high source whence it emanated, a system of most 
 wretched quackery in both politics and finance. It savors of the 
 Biddle school throughout. 
 
 We should begin, as well as end, in economy. We should resort to 
 old-fashioned frugality in expenses, old-fashioned thrift by industry. 
 We should begin, as well as advance, by saving and labor, by holding 
 on to our present resources, keeping what we have already got, and 
 instead of giving them away like the spendthrift, obtaining more, so 
 far as our real wants require, and as can be raised without proving 
 too burthensome to the people. 
 
 As the Georgia memorial justly prays, we should reduce rather 
 than increase expenses ; and the financial committees could not too 
 
STATE OF THE NATIONAL TREASURY. 157 
 
 soon call on the President and Secretary for specific plans and items 
 for reduction, so as to bring down the aggregate to the thirteen or 
 fifteen millions approved by that memorial and the senator from Ken- 
 tucky. There is not a single case pointed out, in either, for retrench- 
 ment. Let them practise what they preach. Let us not have economy 
 merely in speeches, but extravagance in votes, — reform in generals. 
 but waste in all particulars. Let us not begin, as at this session, 
 with a proposal to increase judicial salaries, — as at the last session of 
 the Senate after the fourth of March, with putting officers on salaries 
 with no duties for months to perform^ and with advocating additional 
 allowances to others. Above all, sir, let us not resort to the misera- 
 ble shifts of desperate debtors, by kiting and new loans, to postpone, 
 merely, the evil day, but to increase greatly, in the end, the debt ; 
 and then most complacently concur with the Secretary, in this report, 
 that such is one of his " early and effectual measures to prevent the 
 further augmentation of the debt" 
 
 He is also to "prevent this further augmentation of the debt" by 
 paying away, as before remarked, three millions of our resources from 
 lands and nine millions as a fourth instalment, and supply the amount 
 of them by a new loan, or increased debt, to the amount of twelve mil- 
 lions of dollars. He is to do this, too, when it is apparent as the dome 
 on your capitol that they have no claim on us for a dollar due as a 
 debt, but really owe us something like twenty-eight millions. The 
 President is a Virginian, and not quite so loose or flat, and, therefore, 
 does not pretend they have any such claim. Did it never occur to 
 the Secretary that, if there was any pretence to justify a payment of 
 this nine millions to them as a deposite, it would be much easier, and 
 just, and prudent, to pay it according to the views of a plain Yankee, 
 by deducting it from the twenty-eight millions they now owe us, and 
 holding them liable for only the balance? 
 
 This would be rather more of an " early and effectual measure to 
 prevent the augmentation of the debt," than to place in a debtor's 
 hands still more money, without interest, and to procure it by addi- 
 tional borrowing, on interest. It is vain to expect more surpluses to 
 aid us. It was quite as vain to expect them, when the present Secre- 
 tary of War lost a fortification bill, by insisting on placing a rider in 
 it to make a second distribution of millions on his estimates, while he 
 censured others for erroneous estimates tending to show none were 
 likely to occur. 
 
 It is equally vain to expect relief from a national bank of any 
 kind, aside from its unconstitutionality and dangers to public liberty. 
 I will merely say, as to the constitutional question, that the State 
 rights man, or democrat of 1798, who can swallow this new Fiscal 
 Bank as constitutional, could swallow both Jonah and the whale, as 
 easy as the whale did Jonah alone. 
 
 Was the new fiscal agent of the President and the national bank 
 of the Secretary, deemed by them free from constitutional objections, 
 
158 STATE OF THE NATIONAL TREASURY. 
 
 one and the same institution in form and substance 1 Or is one an 
 animal without claws, and the other, as explained to us in the special 
 report, the old hyena or tigress, with power to issue, circulate, and 
 discount notes, as well as take deposites, — with power to act out of 
 the District of Columbia, and for other portions of the Union, if they 
 please, as well as for this District, and thus involving all the old 
 objections to its violation of the constitution? As well might we 
 appropriate millions for paupers, roads and jails, in the District of 
 Columbia, with authority to pay a certain proportion of it to such of 
 the States as might agree to take it, and call the result constitutional. 
 The consent or dissent of the States, unless for altering the constitu- 
 tion in the prescribed mode, can never make an act or a charter con- 
 stitutional, which would otherwise be unconstitutional. It would be 
 irrelevant and absurd. Accordingly, in the last clause of the prepared 
 charter, in his supplemental report, he nullifies this provision about 
 the assent of the States, by empowering Congress to push the bank 
 where it pleases, and thus involving all the power exercised in the old 
 charters. 
 
 But, as before remarked, I do not mean to argue here the constitu- 
 tionality of this measure of relief which the Secretary proposes, or 
 even its expediency, further than to say this : that the new Fiscal 
 Bank, with twenty millions of its capital furnished by us, as is 
 involved in the project, and that to be controlled by a board of politi- 
 cians here, under the eyes and nose of the executive, will be, in the 
 nature of things, and by examples in several States as to their public 
 banks, loaned almost exclusively to politicians and office-holders, large 
 and small, and thus the great danger of executive influence be increased 
 four-fold, and much of the public treasure exposed to be irretrievably 
 lost. And, finally, by locating the mother bank here, instead of a 
 sub-treasury, for a fiscal agent, because the latter, in the Secretary's 
 wisdom, improperly concentrated the surplus funds at New York, — if 
 he means to cart the spare specie hither, or distribute it across the 
 Alleghanies, he will justly be obnoxious to the censures of his own 
 political party. One of his own presses says, " He would thus wage 
 a continual ivar with well-known useful and salutary commer- 
 cial laws ;" and that he would thus make his "official pockets as 
 empty as his ideas are jejune" A man, they justly say, is not 
 born a financier or a Secretary ; and must take much pains to inform 
 himself, before he catechises others, or dashes into absurdities, as if 
 he knew everything by instinct or intuition. 
 
 Another intelligent whig banker writes to me, in a letter from 
 which I quote : 
 
 " The precious metals (says the writer) must be so arranged and placed as to save 
 a great amount of labor. The great saving is in having them so situated that they 
 can pay balances, instead of sides of account. 
 
 *« At a central point of commerce, large districts of country can settle their balances 
 without any movement of the metals. The world, for great operations, can revolve 
 
STATE OF THE NATIONAL TREASURY. 159 
 
 round London ; the United States round New York ; New England round Boston. 
 All perfect as operations are limited or expanded. The economy is in perfecting set- 
 tlements without any movement of the metals. The saving is in time, risk, and 
 transportation. The metals, to do this, must be concentrated." 
 
 And where, let me ask common sense, the laws of trade, and fiscal 
 experience? At New York, the London of America. At New 
 York, where nearly two-thirds of the whole of our revenue is col- 
 lected, and perhaps more than that proportion of our imports and 
 commerce concentrated ; and not at this great legislative and political 
 emporium, but which, with all its just fame for hospitality and 
 fashion, has not so many vessels as it has hacks, nor so much revenue 
 from customs as will pay for the cigars smoked here. 
 
 But, in the face of this, the new Fiscal Bank of the Secretary, 
 which is to relieve the exchanges, and commerce, and the finances, is 
 to be located where neither of the two former hardly exist at all, and 
 almost none of the latter accrues, instead of being located at the cen- 
 tre and heart of our whole commercial as well as banking and fiscal 
 operations. 
 
 But there is a charm, I suppose, with the paltry change of name 
 from National or United States Bank to Fiscal Bank; and this 
 change is to remove, I suppose, all constitutional difficulties. I trust 
 that no real democrat of the school of '98, no State rights politi- 
 cian, can be gulled by any such simpleton measure, and especially 
 when the great horror of the Secretary's friends last year was a real 
 fiscal bank, or treasury or government bank, and some of their lofty 
 banners and log-cabin carousals were inscribed, "No Government 
 Bank" Such is a part of the " relief to be anticipated," of which 
 the President speaks; such is one of the "measures of restoration 
 and relief recommended by the Secretary. " Restoration ! " Yes, 
 I fear that not only the Bourbons are restored, but all their old and 
 exploded principles. But no more of this now. I am talking too 
 long, I fear, on some of these marvellous plans for relief. 
 
 Let me end, then, by a summary in respect to them, in their dif- 
 ferent aspects, as measures to relieve individuals — to relieve States — 
 to relieve the General Government. 
 
 1. It proposes to relieve individuals, not by recommending any 
 bankrupt law, nor by the President's recommending any, — which, how- 
 ever objectionable in many other respects, would certainly relieve one 
 clas3 in society, the debtors, but entirely at the expense of another 
 class, the creditors ; — nor is one of the usual modes of relief recom- 
 mended, by reducing the tariff and taxes, nor another, by lessening the 
 burthen of any public debt pressing on them ; but by the increase of 
 taxes, or the tariff, something like eight or ten millions, and by increas- 
 ing the debt some fifteen or twenty millions more. This, too, when 
 these individuals are represented to be already suffering under heavy 
 expenditures, and burthened and broken down by the mad measures 
 
160 STATE OF THE NATIONAL TREASURY. 
 
 of the past administration. So much for the kind of relief proposed to 
 individuals. 
 
 2. It next proposes to relieve the States, by giving them three mil- 
 lions in distribution from the lands, and taking back from them, on this 
 account, from three to four millions, by increased taxation and a higher 
 tariff. Tins is contained in the Secretary's supplemental report, and 
 strongly in the President's message, as one of the measures by which 
 the country may once more return "to a state of prosperity." Yes, 
 the States receiving this three millions, not from an existing surplus, 
 but to be supplied, in fact, by new taxes, under an increased tariff, are 
 to find in it a return to a state of prosperity ; because they will be 
 forced to pay back to the General Government, in additional duties, not 
 only all they received, — pay back with one hand what they received 
 in the other, — but pay back near a million more, to cover the expenses 
 and losses of collecting and distributing it. Unfortunately, too, the 
 President, though commendably disclaiming the constitutional power 
 to assume State debts, or pay for them out of the revenue from duties, 
 justifies this distribution of the public lands, as virtually within the 
 object of the original cession of them from the States. 
 
 In haste or inadvertence, he overlooks the fact, that immense quan- 
 tities of these lands were never ceded by the States, but purchased by 
 us of foreign nations, and paid for out of the duties ; because the net 
 receipts from all the lands since 1789 are not yet equal to the 
 expenditures connected with them by eight or ten millions of dollars. 
 He forgets, then, that, in distributing the proceeds of sales in Iowa, 
 Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana and Florida, — more than half the present 
 proceeds, — we are virtually distributing the proceeds of the duties paid 
 for them, and to this extent assuming State debts. I can but entreat 
 the indebted States themselves also to see if they are to get by this 
 three millions such means of extinguishing their debts as the President 
 had hastily supposed. 
 
 Let the indebted States look to the operation of this mode of 
 relief. One million, out of the three, must go to the States which 
 are not in debt ; of the two millions distributed to the indebted 
 States, one million will be absorbed in new works, repairs of old 
 works, &c, and one million will be left for the payment of interest — 
 one-twelfth of the whole amount of the annual interest due from the 
 States. What sort of relief is this ? They must, in this condition, 
 resort to their own retrenchment, industry, and resources, their own 
 prudence and energies, if the three millions are given, or never get 
 their financial wagon out of the mire. They may call on Jupiter till 
 doomsday; and if they insist on permitting Gettysburg tapeworm 
 roads to help straight ones elsewhere, to begin a dozen new and unim- 
 portant canals to assist forward one useful work, and thus never com- 
 plete any of them, — and if they are constantly looking to others for 
 loans, donations, and charitable alms, as relief, — they will remain dis- 
 
STATE OF THE NATIONAL TREASURY. 161 
 
 tressed much longer than the commencement of this and the other 
 numerous relief measures of this relief administration. 
 
 Another new project for their relief, proposed by the Secretary, was 
 to pay the States the fourth instalment under the deposite act of 1836. 
 To pay the States? "We owe them nothing. We deposited with 
 them twenty-eight millions, to be returned when called for ; and the 
 Secretary, instead of calling for the return of the money, when the 
 exigencies of the country require it, proposes to give them nine mil- 
 lions more. Was there any surplus from which this sum was to be 
 taken ? No. The money must be obtained by increased taxation, or 
 a large burthensome debt. What relief was there, then, in this opera- 
 tion? We take nine millions from the treasury, and, to replace it, 
 with the expenses of collection, &c, we must draw ten millions, or 
 more, from the pockets of the people, by duties or other taxes. 
 
 The only true means of relief are industry, frugality, and econ- 
 omy, — not wild schemes of distribution. The former distribution 
 or deposite scheme, by which the States got twenty-eight millions, was 
 the greatest curse that ever befell them, as it led them into all kinds 
 of extravagances and follies; the effects of which would, in some 
 degree, be felt for ages. 
 
 And, if the value of State stocks be raised in the end, after infinite 
 distress, it will not be for the benefit of the States, whose agents have 
 sold some of them at thirty and forty per cent, sacrifice, but to the 
 benefit, or relief and profit, of the nabob speculators on both sides of 
 the Atlantic, who have already bought them at a discount almost equal 
 to the old soldiers' certificates. 
 
 Coupled with this kind of relief to the States, is the further opera- 
 tion of the other project of relief to them, in respect to their currency, 
 through the new Fiscal National Bank, of thirty or fifty millions of 
 capital, which will rob their State institutions of most of the specie 
 they have left ; break most of the sound banks now in operation, where 
 it can, as it did in the west and south-west, from 1819 to 1824 ; strip 
 them of their legitimate business and profits : reduce prices, as it did 
 then, ten or twenty per cent, more, and bring to the hammer and to 
 ruin half the property left of those in any way indebted. To disregard 
 this, is to let all historical warning be lost, and the lessons of wisdom 
 taught in our own annals be no more useful than an old almanac. 
 
 But, beyond and over all this in peril to the States, by asking and 
 receiving such relief from the General Government as donations, 
 instalments, and largesses of all kinds, is the radical and fatal change 
 thus introduced in their relations to that government. They are, by 
 such a relief, to be made dependants on the General Government, 
 instead of living, as now, independent. They are to become slaves 
 instead of masters, — to creep and cringe, and bow here, to obtain their 
 yearly supplies ; and thus, for a mess of pottage, for which they, in 
 another way, are made to pay more than the value, must submit to be 
 14* 
 
162 STATE OF THE NATIONAL TREASURY. 
 
 stripped of all their relative power, control, and sovereignty. In shun- 
 ning Charybdis, you are wrecked on Scylla. 
 
 You could remedy a single loss of a few thousands, or even millions, 
 of money, as the hair cut off will grow again. But when you intro- 
 duce a new principle into the system, erroneous, poisonous, pestilen- 
 tial, how is it to be resisted by the very party overcome and pros- 
 trated by its corrupting influences 1 How can you easily rouse once 
 more, in the willing slave, all the proud feelings and aspirations of the 
 free 1 How can the lofty twenty-six sovereignties that compose this 
 Union, after once succumbing and truckling to the General Govern- 
 ment, and demeaning themselves to receive bread and alms at its 
 hands, — how can they ever regain their pristine supremacy, and control 
 the encroachments and usurpations of the great central consolidated 
 power, to which they have bent the knee of dependence and homage ? 
 
 A great central consolidated power, thus wielding both the purse 
 and the sword, and thus armed with its fiscal agent, and capital 
 enough at its disposal to bribe half a continent, is, to be sure, to lord it 
 here, over abject States ; but time only can show whether it is not to 
 be controlled and to move itself, by the slightest nod of those mer- 
 chant kings, or monied monarchs, on whichever side of the Atlantic, 
 whose influences to raise the prices of their State stocks can make 
 palatable measures so fatal to the liberties and independence of the 
 whole country. 
 
 So much for the relief to the States. 
 
 The measures proposed in this report are lastly advocated on 
 account of the relief they are likely to bring to the General Govern- 
 ment, pretended to be involved in debt and wasteful expenditure, 
 though it has paid every due promptly and in specie, and is in so high 
 credit as to be sought for as a guarantee by others. It is to relieve 
 this government by stripping it of three millions of its present 
 revenues; by adding many millions to its expenses; by creating a 
 large and permanent national debt of twenty to forty millions ; by 
 virtually giving nine millions more, in the fourth instalment, to the 
 States ; and by repealing, in the sub-treasury, the great barrier against 
 the use of non-specie-paying banks, and depreciated, irredeemable 
 bank paper, to destroy our credit, and cause public as well as private 
 losses to an incalculable amount. 
 
 This is the relief to the General Government. 
 
 I, for one, say, as respects my individual State, or United States 
 relations, I ask no such political nostrums, — no relief, except in the 
 old-fashioned mode of greater frugality in expenses, greater aversion 
 to and freedom from debt, greater industry, temperance, and 
 morality in society ; and much less do I ask for any of the kinds of 
 relief which this extraordinary report and its extraordinary recom- 
 mendations would bring to us. 
 
 And if the brave Granite Republic, whose interests I have the 
 honor to represent in part here, should deem it inexpedient, unconsti- 
 
STATE OF THE NATIONAL TREASURY. 163 
 
 tutional, or dangerous to public liberty, to approve these measures, — 
 and should refuse to accept of beggarly and insulting alms, which she 
 never asked for, and which are to be wrung from the hard earnings 
 of her own people, and by increased taxes on their own comforts, if not 
 necessaries of life, — let me tell you, sir, that she will not be cajoled 
 nor dragooned into acquiescence, by being told, as she is, in one 
 clause of the Secretary's reformed bank charter, that you will still 
 force from her this tributary tax, and bestow the proceeds on others, 
 more supple and menial. 
 
 STATE OF THE NATIONAL TREASURY.* 
 
 It would seem, sir, from the pause in this debate, that the motion 
 to print is about to be put. But, as the objection to it was first offered 
 by me, with a view to expose some of the numerous errors with which 
 the report abounds, and as the senator from Maine has replied to a 
 portion of my remarks, it might be supposed that I acquiesced in the 
 sufficiency of his explanations, if I did not now express a contrary 
 opinion. 
 
 I hasten, therefore, to say, sir, that his explanations are not satis- 
 factory, either as to details or general principles. They do not attempt 
 to answer my exposition of several of the most glaring mistakes in 
 the report ; and, in almost every instance where any attempt is made, 
 it fails entirely, or plunges the Secretary into a new difficulty. One 
 cause of the embarrassment of the senator, as to details, arises from 
 their inherent irreconcilable character, and another from the hasty 
 and inadvertent manner in which many of them have been presented 
 by the Secretary, whether in the report or in the fiscal portion of the 
 message. Hence, taking the exj:>lanations given, still the whole dis- 
 crepancies and contradictions, as respects the figures, are only changed 
 to new amounts, but not entirely removed in a solitary case. 
 
 In truth, there is no way possible to reconcile many of the varia- 
 tions, and it might be as prudent for him, first as last, to admit them 
 to be clearly inexplicable. 
 
 In the next place, as to the great general conclusions in the report 
 concerning deficits and debt, there is no easy mode of removing the 
 whole doubt about their true amount, because the Secretary has 
 
 * A speech in reply to Mr. Evans, on the motion to print an extra number of the 
 Report of the Secretary of the Treasury; delivered in the United States Senate, June 
 18,1841. 
 
164 STATE OF THE NATIONAL TREASURY. 
 
 mingled and confounded several items, which should have been kept 
 perfectly apart. 
 
 I am not surprised, therefore, that the learned senator, with all his 
 experience on a financial committee, has met with no better success in 
 bringing light out of darkness, or groping a way out of the labyrinth. 
 
 Thus, for one instance : the Secretary, in order to give an inflated 
 appearance to the aggregate of appropriations not spent on the 4th of 
 March last, and of the expenditures likely to happen under them 
 during 1841', has first jumbled together what should have been, and 
 usually is, stated separately, — the appropriations and expenditures for 
 the current service, and those for treasury notes. Thus, at the start, 
 he probably deceived and misled even himself, in respect to the exag- 
 gerated amount of some of his results. 
 
 If he had kept them distinct, as is customary, most palpably there 
 would not have been so much trouble in ascertaining their amount, 
 their urgency, and the necessity there was for the call of an extra 
 session of Congress. What we wanted to know was, whether, if the 
 expenditures were confined to existing appropriations, there would be 
 a deficit in the treasury ; and whether we were called together, at this 
 inconvenient season of the year, and at so much expense to the States 
 and the Union, to supply a deficiency occasioned by the old adminis- 
 tration, or to be occasioned by adopting the recommendations of the 
 new one. The Secretary does not say, as any business man would 
 say, in a similar situation in private life, " I owe so much ; and I want 
 to spend, in addition, so much." If he had done so, he would have 
 found that his estimates of expenditures, under the old or existing 
 appropriations, were too high, by five millions of dollars. 
 
 He proposes to expend twenty-three millions, whereas the appropri- 
 ations by Congress, for the service of the year, were but about eighteen 
 millions. Now, he (Mr. W.) would assert, without fear of contradic- 
 tion, that a reference to the records of the department would show 
 scarcely a single instance, for the last twenty-six years, where the 
 expenditures of the year exceeded by one million of dollars the 
 amount of new and permanent appropriations by Congress for that 
 year. And yet the Secretary proposes to expend, during the present 
 year, near five millions of dollars more than the appropriations already 
 made by Congress for the whole year. 
 
 Mr. Woodbury then quoted, from an official document, the appropri- 
 ations and expenditures for a number of years back, which showed 
 that in every year except 1839 (which was about one million the other 
 way) the expenditures were considerably less than the new and per- 
 manent appropriations ; and said that it was the invariable practice of 
 the department, formerly, to take the amount of the new and perma- 
 nent appropriations as their estimate of the amount of expenditures 
 for the year. He ventured to assert that, from Hamilton to Gallatin, 
 and from Gallatin to Duane, this would be found to have been the 
 practice; and yet the present Secretary has, at one bound, estimated his 
 
STATE OF THE NATIONAL TREASURY. 165 
 
 expenditures at five millions more than the appropriations for the 
 whole year. This amount of expenditure cannot be effected in any 
 legitimate way ; it can only be done by hastening appropriations into 
 expenditures, without any regard to public economy, or by putting 
 large amounts into the hands of disbursing officers, who will deposit it 
 in banks which want the use of the public funds, and there the money 
 will be banked on, and furnish accommodation to speculators and poli- 
 ticians, in and out of Congress. Now, this mode of hastening expend- 
 itures, for the mere purpose of creating a deficit in the treasury at the 
 end of the year, was, in his opinion, neither wise nor expedient. There 
 was also a way of diminishing the receipts of the treasury. These 
 might be affected, to a considerable extent, by the advice given by the 
 Secretary to the President in relation to the public lands. He (Mr. 
 Woodbury) would ask how many public land sales had been advertised 
 by the new administration, during the three months that it has been in 
 power. Have there been ten ? have there been five 1 have there been 
 three ? Whereas, in the same period, during the preceding adminis- 
 tration, you will find nearly twenty. But the nursing of his resources, 
 and the curtailment of his expenditures, may have been prevented by 
 other pressing and more important avocations of the Secretary ; he 
 has, as Bolingbroke said, on his accession to power, in the quotation 
 made the other day, friends at Ins elbow to reward, and enemies to 
 punish ; and, to do this efficiently, he has called in a star chamber 
 inquisition to his aid. 
 
 How he and the rest of the administration are to prosper under it, 
 in this land of courts and juries, — of accusations to be first drawn up 
 and notice given, of witnesses to confront the accused, and of a pre- 
 vious hearing by counsel, before condemnation, — how all tins new 
 importation from European despotisms, into our republican system, 
 is to work in our boasted land of liberty and laws, remains yet to be 
 seen. 
 
 Had the report stated the aggregate of existing appropriations for 
 the current service on the 4th of March distinct from those for the 
 redemption of treasury notes, had it kept those already made distinct 
 from those he wished to be made in future, and had it preserved all 
 those to be expended in the next three months distinct under each 
 general head, the Secretary would probably have been struck with the 
 unusual amount of some of them, and detected the exaggeration. He 
 must have started back at some of the strange results, and discovered 
 the over-estimates put on him by other officers, or fallen into carelessly, 
 through his own hasty and confused manner of mixing up matters 
 wholly separate in their character. 
 
 Another illustration, besides that formerly given as to the mistakes 
 of the Secretary, in relation to the expenses under existing appropria- 
 tions for the year, lays in almost a nutshell. In the statement, it will 
 be perceived, I have used only round numbers. 
 
 Thus the year 1841 began with available funds in money, including 
 
166 STATE OP THE NATIONAL TREASURY. 
 
 what was in the mint, equal to near $1,000,000. There were received 
 from customs in two months, and estimated by him to be afterwards 
 received from the same source in the next ten months, about $14,000,- 
 000. There were received from lands in the first two months, and 
 estimated by him for the next ten, near $3,000,000. Estimated and 
 received in the first two months, and next ten, from banks and miscel- 
 laneous sources, $220,000. Now, the receipts from customs and 
 lands, if the last should be properly advertised, are under-estimated at 
 least, $1,500,000. So are the receipts from deposit banks, and the 
 United States Bank, quite $150,000. These make an aggregate of 
 $19,870,000. The department had, besides this, a power to issue 
 more notes under the old act, beside what were paid in till the 30th 
 of March, near $400,000. And it had the power, under the new act, 
 to issue, before the 4th of March, about $673,000, and after the 4th, 
 $5,000,000. These made all the available resources for the year 
 $25,943,000. Now, if he expended out of the existing and perma- 
 nent appropriations only an amount equal to the whole new ones, 
 calling them $18,000,000 (and they differed either way not a third 
 of a milhon), it would pay them, and leave to him $7,943,000. 
 This would be enough to redeem all the old treasury notes out at 
 the beginning of the year, being about $4,600,000, and leave a 
 balance of $3,343,000. These were all the notes likely to be paid 
 in, and all which fell due ; and quite one-fourth of a million of them, 
 for reasons explained the other day, would probably not come in 
 during 1841,— $250,000,— thus raising the balance to $3,593,000. 
 This balance, then, would cover all contingencies and fluctuations in 
 expenses and receipts not very extraordinary. It would, also, enable 
 him even to spend the maximum suggested last December, of twenty 
 millions (or two more), and still have on hand quite $1,593,000 ; — 
 this would be the natural result on the existing appropriations. 
 
 It is worthy of remark here, that, in this view of the subject, with- 
 out including any expenses or appropriations of this extraordinary ses- 
 sion (as should be the case when looking to the question of the prior 
 necessity for calling it), there would be neither debt nor deficit to be 
 provided for during the whole of the present year, — much less the 
 ensuing three months. 
 
 Again: there would be, even next year, no debt becoming due, 
 except the new treasury notes issued in 1841, over and above the 
 amount redeemed. This would be about $6,000,000; from that 
 deduct the above balance on hand, and the net burden next year 
 would be, from this source, short of $4,500,000. 
 
 Leaving, however, in the treasury, 1st January, 1842, a balance 
 somewhat smaller than when 1841 began, or only about one-quarter 
 of a million, including what is in the mint. 
 
 It may be next a matter of wonder how the Secretary could reach 
 a result so different from this, — how he reached the conclusion, that 
 both the debt and deficit of this and the ensuing year, when united. 
 
 
STATE OF THE NATIONAL TREASURY. 167 
 
 should be over twelve millions, or something more than my calculation 
 of what would be likely, if acting in a manner necessary and usual, by 
 about $7,500,000. 
 
 But I can render it perfectly intelligible to the Senate, in a single 
 moment, how his excess arose ; and, though he may make it occur in 
 the end, yet it will be seen on what unsubstantial ground it is sought 
 to be justified. Thus, he computes his expenditures, under the exist- 
 ing appropriations, higher than is customary, on a given amount of 
 them, by $5,000,000, and higher than should be, under all contin- 
 gencies, by $3,000,000. Then he computes expenditures under new 
 appropriations, prepared either in his three or ten months' estimates, 
 and which have not been made, may not be, and would not have been, 
 this year, except for this extra session, over $3,000,000. Then he 
 estimates his receipts from customs and lands too low, as we hereto- 
 fore explained, by at least $1,500,000 ; and these account for the 
 whole difference of $7,500,000. 
 
 Besides this, there were other excesses in expenditure, and under- 
 estimates in receipts, to very considerable amounts, in his computa- 
 tions, as formerly detailed, but which need not be repeated here. In 
 this way goes by the board his whole deficit of near six millions, and 
 the debt and deficit for this and the ensuing year of about twelve mil- 
 lions, with the mistaken and inflated phantom debt of thirty-one or 
 forty millions, and leaves behind only the small fragment of treasury 
 notes which may fall due next year, over and above the balance in the 
 treasury. That is likely to equal, if no new appropriations are made, 
 and the old ones spent no more rapidly than usual, only about four 
 millions and a half. 
 
 This is the molehill which has been swollen by whig rhetoric so 
 often into a mountain. And even this would have been all extin- 
 guished, had Congress seasonably, as was again and again urged, 
 stopped the immense new drains on the revenue by new judicial con- 
 structions, and modified the drawbacks so as to conform to their orig- 
 inal principle. It would, also, all have been easily paid in 1841, had the 
 United States Bank not failed again, — totally and forever, it is feared, 
 since the year began, — and strewed the whole country with fragments 
 of wreck, as well as given a deadly stab, for a time, to our credit 
 abroad, and to foreign confidence in American integrity. 
 
 Yet the past administration is taunted with a debt, though in reality 
 so diminutive, and though created, if at all, only by accident and 
 procrastination in necessary legislation, as well as by malconduct in 
 banks. Taunted, too, in this report, which, with its supplement, pro- 
 poses to create deliberately, designedly, and without any urgent neces- 
 sity, under the new retrenching administration, a further new, perma- 
 nent national debt, of twenty-eight or thirty millions. 
 
 This, then, is the attitude of the two administrations on this sub- 
 ject. The past one, charged again and again, in most wanton 
 virulence, as having caused a debt of forty millions, instead of four 
 
168 STATE OF THE NATIONAL TKEASURY. 
 
 to five ; and the present reforming one, which brings the groundless 
 charge, recommending a new debt of twenty-eight or thirty millions, 
 instead of only four or five. 
 
 That administration adjured Congress to be sparing in appropria- 
 tions, and to revise the tariff laws in season to prevent any permanent 
 debt whatever in a time of peace ; while this one, on the contrary, 
 with careful deliberation, and in time of peace with all foreign powers, 
 recommends a new, permanent, voluntary debt, of near thirty millions. 
 The former followed the lessons and wisdom of ages on this subject, as 
 condensed by Mr. Gallatin, in his late interesting pamphlet on the 
 banks and the currency. " A public debt (says he, pages 28 and 29) 
 was always an evil to be avoided, whenever practicable ; hardly ever 
 justifiable, except in time of war. It has a tendency, perhaps, more 
 than any other cause, to concentrate the national wealth into the 
 hands of a small number of individuals ; " — " and it feeds the drones 
 of society." 
 
 But the present administration disregards the sages of other times, 
 and even the admonitions of that financier, once such an oracle with 
 the chairman of the Committee on Finance. The past administration 
 — or rather the person who now addresses you — is also threatened 
 here, by the senator from Maine, with having deserved impeachment, 
 because, under what his party has denounced as prodigal misrule, I 
 deemed it a duty to remonstrate against any attempt to advance money, 
 except for short periods and in limited amounts ; or to expend it by 
 subordinate officers, either wastefully or prematurely ; — while the 
 present administration — the boasted reformers — seem ardent to jus- 
 tify the new Secretary in letting it be advanced as any person may 
 desire, either as to time or amount, and be expended in all kinds of pro- 
 fusion, so as to produce, in only twelve months, an excess of expenditure 
 over what is customary equalling near five millions of dollars. Under 
 this retrenching and frugal administration, I am, it seems, to be punished 
 for my labors and watchfulness to promote saving, and to check lavish 
 waste ; while my successor, for the opposite course, is to be puffed and 
 idolized. So be it. History must, after a time, be set right on this 
 and several other topics. 
 
 I would stop here, sir, were it not that my silence, in not replying 
 to several portions of the speech of the senator from Maine, might be 
 considered a left-handed compliment to its ability, as not being suf- 
 ficient, in my opinion, to deserve notice, and were not some of his 
 statements singularly erroneous. I shall, therefore, from my notes, 
 advert to a few of his remarks, as hastily penned down. 
 
 In the outset, I disclaim all his commendations for what he is pleased 
 to call the elaborate character of my computations, as I was more 
 desirous, some days ago, to submit my objections, than the Secretary's 
 friends appeared to be to have the report scrutinized, — probably from 
 a conviction of its numerous imperfections. 
 
 If, as the senator seems to suppose, any peculiar anxiety was 
 
STATE OF THE NATIONAL TREASURY. 169 
 
 betrayed anywhere, in respect to the discussion, I am not aware that 
 it existed on this side of the House. 
 
 He next admits that all I read from the report tending to produce 
 an impression that the " legacy of debt" created and left by the past 
 administration on the shoulders of the present is equal to forty mil- 
 lions, or even thirty-one millions, has been misunderstood by many of 
 his political friends, and that their conclusion is entirely unfounded or 
 false. So be it. The senator from Maine admitted expressly that he 
 (Mr. W.) had been fighting phantoms, when he had exposed the hum- 
 bug of the forty million debt. Is it, then, at last discovered that this 
 forty million debt of Mr. Van Buren's administration, which had been 
 the theme of every whig orator throughout the Union, — which had 
 been rung from valley to hill- top, — discussed at cross-roads and the bars 
 of village ale-houses, — that this is a phantom — an ignis fatuas ? 
 Yes : this is now a phantom, which has even been asserted by author- 
 ity as high as the executive chair of this nation, and has been circulated, 
 far and wide, by men of intelligence, whose character, in other respects, 
 would induce a belief of their conviction of its truth. 
 
 The thirty-one millions of excess in expenditure over the receipts 
 from 1837 to 1841 figured so largely and loosely in this report, that 
 Mr. E wing's supporters, in many places, exulted that he had officially 
 proved the existence of a debt to that extent. They even quoted his 
 aggregate down to his cents, as exemplified in one of the former 
 extracts, in these words : — 
 
 "Keep it before the People — That it is now officially announced that the 
 national debt incurred by Mr. Van Buren, during the four years of his administra- 
 tion, amounts to thirty-one millions, three hundred and ten thousand, fourteen 
 dollars and twenty cents." 
 
 But now, — most gratifying result, in the face of the assembled 
 Senate, and before the whole country, — the senator from Maine 
 frankly admits that this enormous national debt was all a phantom. 
 If his (Mr. W's) remarks had produced no other result, that discovery 
 was a sufficient reward for his labors. 
 
 Mr. Woodbury then commented on that portion of the report which 
 recommended, as a permanent balance in the treasury, the sum of 
 four millions, and said that, with the power to issue treasury notes, one 
 million was abundant ; and so the senator from Maine ought to con- 
 fess. The experience of the past three or four years had fully verified 
 this ; and even half a million would answer, instead of having four 
 millions borrowed on interest, and, after the sub-treasury is repealed, 
 lying idle in banks, so that they could bank and speculate on it at our 
 risk and cost. 
 
 Mr. Ewing himself is compelled to admit that one million is enough, 
 
 while the power to issue treasury notes continues ; and that power, we 
 
 all know, remains till another year, to a certain extent. So the small 
 
 scattered sums, in numerous places, which the gentleman considers so 
 
 15 
 
170 STATE OF THE NATIONAL TREASURY. 
 
 useless and ineffective, are, when coupled with the power to issue such 
 notes, fully operative for various local expenditures of a minor charac- 
 ter. When larger sums are needed near, then, and not till then, notes 
 are issued and put on interest, and, being at or above par, supply the 
 deficiency, to the convenience, economy, and satisfaction, of all con- 
 cerned. 
 
 But, among my other sins while in the treasury department, called 
 up in judgment against me by the senator, — and not now, I believe, 
 for the first time, — is the issue of these treasury notes at all, instead 
 of a resort to a high tariff, or permanent national debt. I am grat- 
 ified that the gentleman thus gives me an opportunity to pay off a few 
 old scores, which, as I am in favor of punctuality, economy, and short 
 settlements, I improve the first opportunity to do which is afforded, 
 and hope, in this manner, amicably to balance our accounts. 
 
 These notes, he says, were generally called for by the department 
 without full notice, after much delay, and when no leisure was 
 allowed to provide anything better. Congress, he intimates, was thus 
 forced to vote for them in haste, and reluctantly, when the circum- 
 stances of the country and of the treasury indicated a large permanent 
 deficiency, and not a temporary one, as pretended, and which per- 
 manent deficiency required a funded debt, or increased taxes. 
 
 Now, as to the first allegation, that treasury notes are not appro- 
 priate fiscal instruments in the emergencies of the few past years, and 
 have not been prudently used by the department, I will take the liberty 
 to refer him to Mr. Gallatin, a financier possibly quite as high an 
 authority and as long in experience in these matters as any of the 
 croakers who have so flippantly assailed me on this account. 
 
 It was in September, 1837, that these notes were first recommended 
 by me to be issued. It was during a suspension of specie payments 
 almost universal, and under a temporary deficiency of revenue, as I 
 shall soon demonstrate. 
 
 In the pamphlet before referred to, Mr. Gallatin, page 87, in a note, 
 observes, as to treasury notes, that — 
 
 *« Used as soberly as they have been of late years by the treasury department, and 
 provided they are kept at par, they are the most convenient mode of supplying a tem- 
 porary deficiency in revenue, as well as the most convenient substitute for currency 
 in the payment of duties." 
 
 Thus, it seems, by a disinterested and most intelligent financier, 
 and at the same time a political opponent, that I recommended these 
 notes under the proper circumstances ; that I used them soberly, and, 
 as the annals of the country will show, kept them at par, and often 
 above par ; and furnished very great facilities to the community in 
 large public payments, as well as in distant commercial transfers and 
 exchanges. 
 
 Congress, too, after various trials, have continued to sanction my 
 views, though the gentleman complains, next, that I have deluded them 
 
STATE OF THE NATIONAL TREASURY. 171 
 
 into these measures without giving due notice. Had I induced Con- 
 gress, in this way, to adopt a good measure, when they otherwise would 
 have substituted for it an inappropriate and bad one, the public suffer- 
 ing thereby would certainly not have been such as to justify much 
 complaint. 
 
 But as it would not have looked entirely above-board and honorable 
 in me to pursue a good end by indirect means, I throw back the twice 
 or thrice repeated imputation made in these halls, and pronounce it not 
 only unfounded, but directly contradicted by our own official records. 
 So far from delaying to give notice, the first act which passed in Octo- 
 ber, 1837, was called for by the department, in the very first commu- 
 nication it could make to Congress, when it met in September. 
 
 [Mr. Woodbury here turned to his report on that occasion.] 
 
 The next act, in 1838, authorized no new ones, but merely changed 
 the form or restriction, so that others could be issued to a certain 
 amount, instead of old notes paid in before the year expired in which, 
 on their face, they were payable. Even this alteration would not have 
 been needed, had the bill passed as originally reported and recom- 
 mended by the department, with power to reissue, within the year, 
 the notes paid in before the year expired. But some wise Neckar in 
 the other wing of the capitol moved a prohibition to that, and did not 
 allow, instead of it, any power, within the year, to issue new notes in 
 place of the old ones. Thus, the whole object of a temporary loan or 
 credit for one year was likely to be defeated, unless the notes were 
 put on the highest rates of interest ; and the treasury was exposed to 
 be left with a mere cloud, instead of substance, as all the notes, once 
 issued, might come back in a single month. 
 
 The next act, passed in March, 1839, merely extended the period 
 of issue till the 30th of June in that year ; and the propriety of some 
 remedial measure, like that, against fluctuations and contingencies, was 
 urged in the annual report in December previous, instead of being 
 thrown before Congress without due notice. 
 
 [Mr. Woodbury here read, from the annual report in December 
 previous, extracts to that effect.] 
 
 Only one other act passed till the law now in force, and that was in 
 March, 1840 ; and that, or some other efficient measure, to cover fluc- 
 tuations and contingencies, was urged strenuously in the previous 
 annual report, as long before as December, 1839. 
 
 So was it in respect to the existing act passed in February last. 
 The grounds of that, or some other remedial measure, which Congress 
 might prefer, were all fully disclosed in the previous annual report, 
 two or three months before. 
 
 [Mr. Woodbury here read such extracts from both reports.] 
 
 So that the gentleman's reiterated charge, on tins point, of not giv- 
 ing due notice, is refuted by the record itself. But I can see how he 
 has been led into an erroneous belief of its correctness. He has heard 
 the misrepresentation so often repeated by others, that, like Sancho 
 
172 STATE OF THE NATIONAL TREASURY. 
 
 Panza's impressions in that way, from his own repetitions of his own 
 fabrications, he begins to believe the misrepresentations of others to be 
 true. But, if he had only turned back in his own mind to other cir- 
 cumstances, as well as to the annual reports, he would have found that 
 there were still different reasons to account for his misconception, and 
 to show it to be a palpable error. In almost every instance, except 
 the first issue of notes in 1837, many members of Congress became so 
 engaged in the more interesting employment of embarrassing the per- 
 sons in power, and forming new combinations to put others in their 
 places, that the recommendations of the President even, and much 
 more those of the departments, were generally assailed by many of 
 those then in opposition, and delayed and thwarted in every possible 
 method. From that circumstance, and having the inclination in respect 
 to the finances, as I had in respect to the receivers, — which has been 
 also complained of, and will be soon noticed, — not to let the public credit 
 be violated while in my charge, and any just cause be given to call 
 the treasury bankrupt, I took the liberty to make other and additional 
 communications to the proper committees, and, at times, even to Con- 
 gress itself. 
 
 Those new communications recalled to their attention the former 
 ones, and urged prompter action. It is those that the senator has 
 inadvertently seized on, if anything, as the first suggestions made by 
 me ; when, in truth, they were the last ; and when they had become 
 necessary, not by my delay to make early and earnest recommenda- 
 tions on this subject, but by the delay of Congress to act on the reme- 
 dial measures proposed, — measures, indeed, which often failed to be 
 adopted in season, solely because it was the policy of the party with 
 which the senator himself acted, as avowed by its distinguished leader 
 in the east, since rewarded with the official spoils of prime minister, 
 to oppose everything and propose nothing. 
 
 But the senator says the remedy which finally was adopted should 
 have been a permanent increase of the tariff, or a permanent debt. 
 Then, I ask, why was it not so shaped during the ample time, — the 
 months he and others had the recommendations before them, and were 
 delaying action. 
 
 But, as a further proof that there is no foundation for the impres- 
 sion he now entertains, that the issue of treasury notes was the wrong 
 measure for the occasion, we have not only Mr. Gallatin's deliberate 
 opinion against him, and the deliberate opinion of Congress during 
 four years against him, but the result of experience, showing that, 
 even yet, no change in the tariff seems to be urged much at this ses- 
 sion, and that a permanent national debt is now needed, if at all, more 
 to promote the various Quixotic schemes of the new administration, 
 than to supply any permanent deficit, or even temporary debt, of the 
 past administration. 
 
 Events have shown, directly in the teeth of the gentleman's asser- 
 tion [that the deficiencies in 1837 and since were not temporary], 
 
STATE OF THE NATIONAL TREASURY. 173 
 
 that they have all been so temporary as to be met without having out 
 at the beginning of this year, unpaid, over about four and a half mil- 
 lions of treasury notes, and that every dollar of them would have been 
 extinguished, had Congress, as was repeatedly urged, modified and 
 prevented the enormous drawbacks forced from us since 1837, and 
 stopped the immense drain on the treasury since opened by new judi- 
 cial constructions of the tariff. 
 
 This is capable of demonstration, and yet the gentleman argues that 
 I had not a right to consider the deficiency as temporary. 
 
 Even all the notes issued since the 1st of January last would have 
 been rendered unnecessary, or been redeemed before this year termi- 
 nates, if many in Congress had abandoned President-making and 
 attended a little more to the substantial interests of the revenue ; and 
 more than this, if there had not beside been imposed on the treasury, 
 during past years, more appropriations than it asked, without, at the 
 same time, providing any new permanent resources to meet them. 
 
 When your fiscal agent had, for instance, means to meet twenty- 
 three millions of expenditure and no more, and so informed you, there 
 were placed on him twenty-five and thirty millions, against his 
 remonstrance, and no new means provided to meet the difference, 
 except to throw him grudgingly and late on the pittance of treasury 
 notes he had asked for other purposes. And because that agent did 
 not claim to be able, with twenty- three millions, readily to pay thirty, 
 he was denounced as muddy-headed. I fear it will be necessary to 
 take a great deal of mud out of the brains of those making such accu- 
 sations, before they could accomplish what they so inconsiderately 
 called for in others. But, thanks to a benignant Providence, the 
 finances were carried in safety through these and all other difficulties, 
 as well as the most cruel and disheartening discouragements ! Every 
 claim authorized by Congress was paid with promptitude, and gener- 
 ally in specie or its equivalent, though surrounded and baffled by 
 broken banks and depreciated paper. During the whole struggle, the 
 pecuniary credit of the General Government, instead of being blasted 
 and bankrupt by mal-administration, as many of its opponents have 
 inconsiderately alleged, was kept high, both at home and abroad. This, 
 too, has been accomplished without adding a dollar to the taxes or the 
 tariff; but under a biennial reduction of the latter going on during the 
 whole period, and without adding a dollar of permanent public debt, 
 and leaving abroad only the small balance of about four and a half 
 millions of treasury notes when the present year began, and only 
 between five and six millions on the 4th of March. The whole of 
 these were also likely to have been prevented, or redeemed this year, 
 had the erroneous decisions and drawbacks connected with the tariff 
 been corrected by Congress, or even had the United States Bank, in 
 January and since, not scattered ruin over our commerce and credit, 
 and of course impaired deeply the revenue from imports. 
 
 The only other matter bearing on this topic which I would now 
 15* ' 
 
174 STATE OF THE NATIONAL TREASURY. 
 
 explain, is the postponement, authorized conditionally last year, of 
 about two or two and a half millions of new appropriations. Those, 
 the senator from Maine would argue, have caused the excessive 
 expenditure proposed in this report of near five millions, or double the 
 whole amount ! But, in point of fact, as appears on your own files, 
 only about one million and three-fourths of these appropriations were 
 ever postponed at all by the executive ; and that small amount only 
 for a period of about three months, instead of the whole year. Indeed, 
 as the appropriations passed so late in the season as July, not over a 
 quarter of a million would probably have been expended in 1840, had 
 no postponement whatever taken place. So that the whole of this 
 mighty load thus thrown on 1841 does not exceed two or three hun- 
 dred thousand dollars. To counterbalance this amount four times 
 over, there were expended, in 1840, — from peculiar circumstances 
 explained in the annual report, — from one to two millions more of old 
 appropriations than usual ; and the balance of them left at the close 
 of the year, including all those authorized specially to be postponed 
 till 1841, was not so large as at the end of 1839 by over two 
 millions. 
 
 So much for the gross exaggeration, that the five million excess 
 of expenditure proposed in this report is to be justified by any 
 virtual postponement from the last year of only about a quarter of a 
 million. 
 
 Mr. Woodbury then alluded to the memorial from Dahlonega, 
 recently presented by Mr. Clay, of Kentucky, who had warmly 
 eulogized the sentiments contained in it, which, after denouncing the 
 late administration for its extravagance in expending forty millions per 
 annum, which it never spent, recommended a reduction of the current 
 expenses of the government to thirteen or fifteen millions. And how 
 has the Secretary of the Treasury followed out its recommendations ? 
 Instead of the twenty-three millions of the last year, and the twenty 
 millions for the present, to which the late administration had taken 
 measures to reduce the expenditures, he had pushed them up to 
 twenty-six millions in the ten months, — being at the rate of thirty 
 millions per annum, — and if he succeeds in his recommendations of 
 a fiscal agent and the distribution of the public lands, the debt, beside, 
 will soon reach not only thirty, but forty millions per annum. He 
 called upon the friends of the administration to carry out the princi- 
 ples of reform and retrenchment which they professed so loudly 
 before their accession to power ; to show their sincerity in doing it 
 now, and not to put it off until to-morrow, " to-morrow and to-morrow, 
 till the last syllable of recorded time." Why not give us at once a 
 little of the " vigorous reduction" which the senator taunts me with 
 having recommended, as most assuredly I did, with earnestness, and 
 in almost all forms, as well as at all times ; and had the good fortune 
 to practise what I preached. 
 
 It is not agreeable so often to speak of my own official conduct; but 
 
STATE OF THE NATIONAL TREASURY. 175 
 
 the manner of the attack, and public considerations, independent of any 
 personal feeling, demand and justify it. 
 
 Next, the senator had endeavored to reconcile the discrepancies 
 between the treasury report and the President's message ; but most 
 unsuccessfully. Mr. W. then showed that many of the assumptions 
 as regards different dates were unfounded, and that in nearly every 
 instance the senator had extricated the authors of these documents out 
 of one difficulty by involving them in another. 
 
 But not a case existed where, by the explanations proposed, the 
 sums would foot alike in the report or message, nor where the Presi- 
 dent's items, when added up, corresponded with the erroneous aggre- 
 gates taken, as he would seem to say, expressly " from the report of 
 the Secretary of the Treasury." New footings are, to be sure, 
 reached in some cases. But those new ones differ, and are contradic- 
 tory, as well as the old ones. Not an instance can be found where 
 the President proposes to refer to a date different from the Secretary, 
 except one ; and in that case, if making all the allowance desired for 
 the difference in the two items connected with it, the discrepancy still 
 remains unreconciled. 
 
 Beside that, by pursuing this course, two new contradictions become 
 apparent, in that single statement, in the face of the documents. Nor 
 has the astute vindicator of the Secretary even attempted to explain 
 why the omissions are made in the aggregate expenses of the ten 
 months, and also of the whole year, of some items included in the 
 three months' expenses. Those three months are a part of the other 
 ten and twelve. Why, then, should not the expenses of the whole 
 include the expenses of a part of the whole ? 
 
 With due respect to the philosophy and logic of the senator and the 
 Secretary, the whole ought to embrace all the parts, — at least, such 
 was the doctrine when I was a schoolboy. It is a little remarkable, 
 too, that in suggestions made by the senator with a view to reconcile, 
 but in vain, errors already discovered, he should open the door to the 
 detection of more. Thus, beside what has been noticed in table D, 
 annexed to the report, there is almost half a million said to be 
 received from the United States Bank, " from the first of January 
 to the M of March, 1841." But in the body of the report (p. 5) 
 the Secretary says this sum was received by the public agent last 
 October. 
 
 Again : if the explanation attempted of this contradiction should be, 
 that, in the first instance he speaks of, its receipt in form into the 
 treasury by covering warrants, between the 1st of January and 3d of 
 March, then there is exposed another and material error, because, on 
 the same page, he says it was not carried on the books till " the 4th 
 of March, 1841," instead of " between the 1st of January and 3d of 
 March." The difference of a day here is everything, both politically 
 and financially, because one administration ended on the third, and the 
 other began on the fourth ; and if this sum was carried on the books, 
 
176 STATE OF THE NATIONAL TREASURY. 
 
 as if paid previously to the fourth, and since the 1st of January, it 
 would swell, and has swollen, the amount of expenditures by the past 
 administration in the first two months of this year, half a million of 
 dollars ; while, on the contrary, the Secretary, in his exhibit of the 
 receipts during those two months, in the body of his report, has for- 
 gotten to give the past administration and the treasury any credit for 
 this half-million received from the bank. 
 
 Again : if this expenditure is carried on the books as having been 
 made on the 4th, then it is, or ought to be, included in his estimate of 
 the ten months' expenditure, and is among the appropriations he esti- 
 mates to be outstanding on the morning of the 4th of March. 
 
 While, on the contrary, he has omitted, in the receipts for the ten 
 months, to credit a single dollar for the half-million received from the 
 bank. Whichever, then, of these hypotheses may be true, there is a 
 new manifest mistake developed of more than half a million of dollars ! 
 
 Again : the senator alludes to what might be the arrearages to be 
 paid in the past three months, and thus increasing the expenses. But 
 I have before shown that these arrearages could not exist beyond the 
 ordinary small amount always occurring in long unsettled or distant 
 operations, or you would have had loud complaints here, by suifering 
 creditors and contractors. I have shown, too, that the amount of old 
 appropriations, which alone could cause any arrearages, were smaller 
 than they had been for four or five years preceding ; and the whole 
 of them, if all due, were not one-fourth of the " raw-head and bloody- 
 bones" which had been paraded at the last session, in this and the 
 other House, as monstrous arrearages of forty millions. 
 
 When gentlemen of that party, which modestly claimed, besides the 
 morals, most of the talents and learning in society, talk of demands 
 being arrearages, which the past administration was censured for not 
 paying, though they had never been sanctioned by Congress, and con- 
 sisted of any kind of obsolete claims which any individuals might 
 please to set up, from the French spoliations of near half a century 
 old, to the latest loss of some starved horse in Florida, the case is one 
 beyond the reach of argument. If the absurdity of the pretence is not 
 sufficient on its face to make the community scout it, many of them 
 must have eaten of the insane root. 
 
 I can inform them, further, that if arrearages can justly be trumped 
 up in this way as the foundation for political accusation against the 
 executive departments for not paying them, when Congress had made 
 no appropriations to recognize or discharge them, — and hence when 
 the heads of those departments would have been impeached if daring 
 to pay them, — it would be as easy to swell such arrearages to 
 $400,000,000 as to $40,000,000. For doubtless more than twice 
 that large amount of claims of all kinds has been made on Congress 
 and the departments since 1789, which have not been paid, nor yet 
 authorized to be paid. So shallow a course of complaint is too puerile 
 for further notice. 
 
STATE OF THE NATIONAL TREASURY. 177 
 
 Mr. W. then alluded to the assertion that the bonds for duties on 
 goods destroyed by fire in New York, which had been postponed, in 
 1836, to the amount, as that senator supposed, of four or five millions, 
 were an appropriate charge against the late administration. But he 
 [Mr. Evans] will probably find that the amount of the fire-bonds, as 
 they are called, and which were in fact postponed, did not equal one- 
 fourth of that sum. He is, I think, confounding those with the four 
 to five millions postponed in 1837, under the suspension of specie 
 payments, and which were, in fact, both postponed and paid under the 
 past administration, and without creating any pretence of a charge 
 against it on that account. On the contrary, the fire-bonds, though 
 due before 1837, and postponed in part (whatever their amount) so 
 as to fall due since 1837, have, in scarcely one instance, been paid to 
 this day ; but, under a subsequent act of Congress, passed in 1838, 
 have been remitted in large amounts, if not entirely. Indeed, the 
 past administration had received but little aid from any such incidental 
 sources, though it had been exposed constantly to new and large drains 
 by judicial decisions, — to drawbacks, reductions, and appropriations, 
 made much beyond the amount of the annual estimates. It had, how- 
 ever, obtained some relief from one among the items which Mr. Ewing 
 had arrayed against it, as an excess of expenditure over receipts, to 
 the extent of thirty-one millions, and which he had so talked about, in 
 connection with the debt created by the past administration, as to make 
 many of his party, in the manner before explained, say that the Secre- 
 tary of the Treasury had characterized these thirty-one millions as a 
 debt. But the honorable senator from Maine now says this is a fan- 
 tasy ; yes, a miserable " goblin damned." 
 
 Yet that administration had much more extraordinary expenses to 
 meet than the amount of any extraordinary aids received from the 
 collection of its dues from banks, or any other source. So far from 
 having been blessed with a time of peace at home, as intimated, a war 
 has been carried on during the whole four years of the administration, 
 at a greater expenditure of blood and treasure than any frontier war 
 this country has ever been engaged in ; and tins war still exists, not- 
 withstanding the bravery and skill combined in the present adminis- 
 tration. The last administration had done more, considering its means, 
 and the difficulties it had to contend with, than any that had preceded 
 it. With reductions in the tariff to the amount of forty or fifty mil- 
 lions, with the convulsions in commerce and business occasioned by 
 two suspensions of the banks of the country, it had yet, in despite of 
 these difficulties, maintained the public credit unimpaired. 
 
 But will the Senate spare me a moment longer, to reply to another 
 animadversion by the honorable member, rather more personal to my- 
 self? 
 
 [Here several voices said, "Go on, go on I"] 
 
 Instead of vindicating the present Secretary throughout, he seems 
 
178 STATE OF THE NATIONAL TREASURY. 
 
 inclined to abandon him, in many respects, entirely ; and, I suppose, 
 as a sort of set-off, then assails me. 
 
 I regret this, as I never begin reflections of this character, but will 
 most assuredly repel them, come whence they may, whenever their 
 importance and the time and occasion justify it. 
 
 It seems that I committed a heinous sin in writing and urging on 
 receivers too often a careful discharge of their duties. He probably 
 thinks that the more modern military style of the present administra- 
 tion should have been adopted ; and whether sufficient cause existed or 
 not, I should have said to the President, at once, " Off with their heads/' 
 
 Let me caution that gentleman against too suddenly introducing into 
 our civil system of equal rights and privileges either military, drum- 
 head, court-martial codes, or precedents from the worst eras of Euro- 
 pean despotism. These recent, reckless, proscriptive, and almost 
 universal removals for mere opinion's sake, can hardly be sanctioned 
 by any good precedent ; nor, when applied to officers like receivers and 
 collectors, connected with the collection and safe-keeping of the public 
 money, will they be very likely to aid in replenishing your treasury. 
 
 If every officer, too, like a receiver, is to be removed for every 
 mistake in his returns, or every failure of the mail to bring them at 
 the day due, or for every accident preventing a deposite at the hour 
 required, and is not to be first written to, as was done by me, for 
 explanation, you may be assured that the treasury department and the 
 President will always have full employment in merely removing and 
 appointing to office, without engaging in other official duties. And if 
 a single mistake or error of that kind is to be considered a good cause 
 for immediate dismissal from office, both the President and Secretary 
 might do well, under the mistakes and errors recently committed in 
 their public communications, to consider by how frail a tenure they 
 hold their own high stations. 
 
 Why, sir, not a single mail can reach this capital of the Union, from 
 our two to three millions of square miles in territory, from its immense 
 northern lakes, its distant Rocky Mountains, its broad gulfs, and 
 extended seaboard, without some irregularities or informalities in the 
 returns of officers, connected either with the military or some of the 
 numerous branches of the civil service. None without some defects in 
 and from themselves, and none without some derived from others. 
 None without some accident of sickness in the officers or their families, 
 or without some disaster by flood or field, to cause unexpected error 
 or delay. The correspondence with receivers, to which he refers, was 
 written under such circumstances and in such cases. Similar corre- 
 spondence has always taken place under my predecessors ; volumes, 
 like that which has been published, could be collected from other 
 periods, and in all the departments. 
 
 Some cases of this kind, under Mr. Gallatin, and especially one with 
 a collecting officer at New Orleans, have been published, years ago, in 
 your own edition of certain public documents. The officer afterwards 
 
STATE OF THE NATIONAL TREASURY. 179 
 
 turned out to be a large defaulter, and, like some more modern ones, 
 fled to Europe. 
 
 But did Mr. Gallatin, or Mr. Madison (for it is the President, and 
 not the Secretary, that can remove or appoint), at once remove the 
 officer, before the defalcation was admitted or ascertained on our books? 
 No. In every instance, also, in all the recent correspondence to which 
 the gentleman refers, not a case can be found of a warrant on a 
 receiver being protested or unpaid, unless explained by some accident, 
 and the receiver was not forthwith suspended or removed. So no case 
 exists of a pecuniary default or embezzlement, clearly ascertained on 
 our own books, when the offending receiver was not dismissed, if, in 
 the mean time, he had not resigned. 
 
 But, for party purposes, the incessant labor of the department, 
 night and day, at all seasons, and under all discouragements, to spur 
 officers up to punctuality, to increase their care in having formal 
 returns, to make them faithful and prompt in their deposites, and thus 
 saving many thousands, if not millions, to the treasury, — this now, 
 by honorable opponents, is again to be revived, and distorted into a 
 partisan theme for taunts, for scoff, for scorn. One sentence is, 
 probably, as heretofore, to be quoted, and another explaining it to be 
 suppressed. One letter read, and the reply, clearing up any doubt. 
 not read. Different letters to the same person, in different years, and 
 under new and different circumstances, are to be represented as all 
 belonging to one transaction. 
 
 But enough of this for the present. History will, when set right, 
 settle this question also, with many others of a like character. This 
 much, at all events, is certain : that not so much money in amount has 
 been lost by all the receivers combined, who are mentioned in that 
 correspondence, as has been lost, in a short period since, in each of a 
 dozen cases of officers in banks, appointed and regulated by our oppo- 
 nents, and belonging to their own ranks. No, sir ; not so much by 
 three times told. 
 
 A few words more, on two or three other of the senator's allusions, 
 unless the Senate is too much fatigued for me to proceed. 
 
 [Many said, u No, no, — go on ! "] 
 
 Well, sir, the senator from Maine observed, that the celebrated 
 specie circular operated so as to draw money from New York city, 
 and should, therefore, on my reasoning as to the new project for a 
 Fiscal Bank in this report, and the supplement to it, have been con- 
 demned. 
 
 I am happy to agree with him that, in times like these, or in any 
 ordinary times, that particular effect of the specie circular would have 
 been injurious. But the measure had other influences, which were 
 highly salutary, and, in the peculiarly extraordinary crisis then exist- 
 ing, its tendency to withdraw some specie from New York city served 
 to check and terminate a greater evil, — the immense overtrading 
 there, and the immense paper bubble speculations that then inundated, 
 
 ^ OFTHE V 
 UNIIUCDpitw 
 
180 STATE OF THE NATIONAL TREASURY. 
 
 like a second deluge, the whole country. These it immediately began 
 to thwart, embarrass and destroy. Fortunate would it have been for 
 millions of people, could some measure have effected the same result a 
 year earlier. Thus did this incident of it prove, in that emergency, 
 highly beneficial. Yet the senator censured it, while working that 
 salutary correction, because it removed some specie from the great 
 centre of commerce, while he vindicates this report, and its supple- 
 mental project of a bank, calculated to withdraw specie from the same 
 place, even in ordinary times, and as the ordinary settled policy of the 
 Secretary's financial schemes. The Secretary seeks, also, thus to 
 remove the specie by his new banking machine, to be located here, as 
 its centre, and abuses the sub-treasury for concentrating specie in 
 New York, when Mr. Gallatin, in the pamphlet before mentioned, 
 declares, like the authorities cited the other day, that the places for 
 such a bank are " the great centres of commerce" (p. 93), and its 
 board of control must not be, as in this city, in the centre, I admit, 
 merely of court etiquette and fashion, but must "sit in a great 
 COMMERCIAL city:' (p. 95.) 
 
 We have heard much, also, in this report and the message, and 
 elsewhere, of the benefits the new "Fiscal Bank" would produce on 
 exchanges. But the difference in what is called exchanges is often a 
 difference between the value of gold and silver and the value of mere 
 irredeemable paper ; and thus, what are called exchanges are swollen 
 to ten or fifteen per cent., when real exchanges, between specie in one 
 place and specie in another, are not one per cent. It is truly said, by 
 the distinguished financier before cited, that a national bank cannot 
 remedy this, unless it can drive out the local paper ; that, in respect 
 to mere exchanges, it can only buy and sell, like others, at market 
 prices, settled by other great laws of trade, pervading the civilized 
 world, and which this bank can neither control nor alter. Nor can it, 
 with only ten or fifteen millions of currency, expel one hundred and 
 twenty millions of local bank paper. The idea that it can, is quite as 
 crude as the other, about its great influence over exchanges. Mr. 
 Gallatin is as explicit on this point as on the other ; though I will not 
 now detain the Senate by reading quotations as to both. But it is 
 intimated that the revulsions of 1837, as well as the excesses of 1836, 
 were attributable to the past administration. Without stopping, on 
 this occasion, to argue that point, I will refer merely to the admission 
 of the same political opponent [Mr. Gallatin], whose high standing in 
 these matters has been more than once recognized in a very flattering 
 manner on this floor. 
 
 Mr. G. says (page 32) : 
 
 " The unforeseen, unexampled accumulation of the public revenue was one of the 
 principal proximate causes of the disasters that followed. It cannot be ascribed 
 
 EITHER TO THE PRESIDENT OR TO ANT BRANCH OP GOVERNMENT ; and its effects might 
 
 have been the same, whether the public deposites were in the State banks or had 
 been left in the National Bank, organized and governed as that was." 
 
STATE OF THE NATIONAL TREASURY. 181 
 
 The same idea had, on more than one occasion, been set forth in 
 documents emanating from the treasury department. But then its 
 correctness was stoutly denied by the party now in power, both in and 
 out of Congress. I rejoice that the scales have already fallen from 
 the eyes of some of the most able among them. 
 
 Again, in the face of no little upbraiding, I remonstrated, in 1836, 
 against the too rapid collection and distribution of the surplus ; and in 
 another debate, at this session, took the liberty to explain in detail the 
 injurious operation of that dangerous provision, which, rather than 
 any mal-administration by the treasury department, hurried on the 
 catastrophe which followed. Without going into a similar explanation 
 again at this time, let me merely give a few remarks of Mr. Gallatin 
 on that feature of the bill : 
 
 " Its process was much too prompt." — " The legislature was not, and could not 
 be aware, how slow and gradual the diminution of discounts must be, in order that 
 universal distress may not ensue." 
 
 There is much more of a similar character in this very able pam- 
 phlet, which I will not detain you by reading, though bearing directly 
 on the criminations which, in this debate and in the documents before 
 us, have been cast on the past administration, and particularly on its 
 fiscal operations. It has further been specified, as an instance of the 
 hostility of the treasury department at that period to the State banks, 
 that, if its measures did not cause their suspension, the head of the 
 department resisted and retarded the resumption of specie payments. 
 
 But the reverse was the truth, — by the great forbearance used in 
 not suing the banks, and by circulars of advice to begin resuming in 
 every city, county, and State, the first moment practicable, as the 
 ablest bankers now admit was right, rather than to wait for all to 
 unite. Indeed, I did more, as well as promised more, in favor of 
 resumption. This may be seen by my correspondence, in the appen- 
 dix of this pamphlet, with such really sound financiers as Nathan 
 Appleton, of Boston, and George Newbold, of New York. 
 
 In fine, to pass over any further discussion of such points at this 
 moment, it should be noticed, in concluding, that most of the modes 
 of relief proposed by the Secretary and President, and which I before 
 endeavored to prove to be ill-judged and fallacious, nobody has yet 
 undertaken, on this floor, to vindicate. Even the senator from Maine 
 slides over the whole in detail, doubtless because too novel, if not 
 doubtful, in character, to merit his vindication, except by loose and 
 very general commendation. One of them, the proposed distribution 
 of the proceeds of the lands to the States, as well as another, the mar- 
 vellous relief to be anticipated by the indebted States from a new 
 national bank, Mr. Gallatin justly considers, like the politicians on 
 this side of the Senate chamber, as delusive, and by no means proper 
 to be relied on. 
 
 Though he was in some degree friendly to such a bank, when of 
 16 
 
TEA AND COFFEE — NECESSARIES OF LIFE. 
 
 small capital, carefully modified in other respects, and under severe 
 restrictions, — less friendly, however, than in former days, — he still 
 regards such an institution as very "liable to be abused;" and he 
 pronounces the last bank to have been, in every respect, " A PUBLIC 
 NUISANCE." He adds that " the mismanagement and gross neglect 
 which could, in a few years, devour two-thirds of a capital of thirty- 
 five millions, are incomprehensible, and have no parallel in the history 
 of banks." Yet the reestablishment of a similar bank seems to be a 
 favorite scheme with many gentlemen on the other side, and with it 
 the adoption, also, of the other measures of relief, as they are mis- 
 called, by giving away nine millions, — one specimen of their economy, 
 — and three millions more, as another specimen ; by raising the taxes, 
 through a tariff, near eight millions higher, as another mode of reliev- 
 ing the community ; and, as another, by loading us and our posterity 
 with a new national, permanent debt, in time of peace with foreign 
 nations, to the enormous amount of twenty-eight or thirty millions 
 more. Such financiering, if carried into effect, would make us the 
 laughing-stock of Europe. 
 
 These are the Secretary's reform measures, and which, by tins 
 motion, we propose to disseminate widely, if not commend. The sen- 
 ator from Maine had concluded his remarks by expressing his hopes 
 that the measures of " relief " proposed by the Secretary of the Treas- 
 ury would be adopted. Independently of constitutional considerations, 
 and those of expediency, he (Mr. W.) hoped so too ; for he did not, 
 and could not, wish any administration a greater curse than to have 
 hung round its neck the measures proposed by the Secretary of the 
 Treasury. 
 
 TEA AND COFFEE — NECESSARIES OF LIFE* 
 
 It is of no consequence to me who made the motion to have these 
 articles considered free. If that desirable object can only be obtained, 
 it is all I wish. The senator from North Carolina can now present 
 his reasons in favor of exempting them from duty, if convenient to 
 him. But, if he declines, I would detain the Senate a few minutes, 
 and only a few, in stating what has influenced me to make the motion. 
 
 In the first place, these articles were not taxed either to benefit the 
 
 * A speech delivered in the Senate of the United States, Aug. 31, 1841, on motion 
 to include tea and coffee in the list of free articles. 
 
TEA AND COFFEE — NECESSARIES OF LIFE. 183 
 
 products of agricultural or manufacturing labor. Neither came in 
 competition with them. We were, therefore, wholly relieved from 
 any considerations connected with the principle of protection. On the 
 contrary, the duty on tea and coffee would operate unfavorably to 
 those engaged in manufactures, as well as those in agriculture, because 
 both of those classes, in common with all others in the community, 
 were consumers of these great articles, and of course burdened by 
 taxation upon them. 
 
 All, then, possessed a common interest in making them free ; and 
 all, he trusted, would unite in making them free, unless the revenue 
 proposed to be derived from them was needed indispensably to fulfil 
 the public engagements, or to meet those current expenses which the 
 respectability, usefulness, and honor, of the General Government 
 demanded. 
 
 Whatever those really did demand, he was willing, for one, to vote, 
 even to the taxing of necessaries. But he was not willing to do this, 
 if due care and economy would prevent the occasion for it, or if the 
 retaining our other rich resources in the proceeds of the public lands, 
 instead of lavishly giving them away, would prevent it. 
 
 This, then, is the gist of the inquiry under the present motion : 
 
 Is this tax on tea and coffee, — the luxuries of the young, if you 
 please, but the comforts of the middle-aged, the solace of the more 
 advanced in life, and the necessaries of the old, — is this tax indis- 
 pensable? 
 
 Whether these articles, under all views and at all times, were or 
 were not real necessaries, did not make so great a difference in this 
 respect, as whether, under the limit of twenty per cent, in the compro- 
 mise, we could or could not get revenue enough for an economical 
 administration, without imposing some duty on tea or coffee. Because, 
 if we could not, then we must tax even necessaries, or resort to more 
 loans. I admit, however, that these subjects of almost universal use 
 were once regarded as luxuries, and so taxed. But in the progress of 
 wealth, comfort, and intelligence, among the middling and poorer 
 classes, which had elevated them so much higher in the social circle, 
 tea and coffee had become, to almost all, a species of necessaries ; and 
 they required exemption from duty, when practicable, almost as much 
 as salt or molasses, if looking to their wide-spread consumption, and 
 their conduciveness to temperance and general happiness. Yet, under 
 pressing circumstances, we had been obliged at times to tax the great- 
 est necessaries. But were we now, by any such circumstances, com- 
 pelled to renew a tax on tea and coffee ? 
 
 The senator from Kentucky had been so obliging as to refer to a 
 report made by me at the last session, in which, under certain events, 
 it was suggested that tea and coffee would be among those articles 
 which we might be obliged to tax. Yes, sir, I then thought, and do 
 now, that these articles, though once luxuries, were not to be now 
 strictly treated as such, and still were to be taxed, if it was necessary 
 
184 TEA AND COFFEE — NECESSARIES OF LIFE. 
 
 to raise so much under a tariff as to embrace articles of that descrip- 
 tion, in order to obtain the indispensable amount. 
 
 I am happy to find that my views as to the character of these arti- 
 cles concurred with those of the honorable senator, expressed as long 
 ago as 1832. He then remarked, in much better language than I 
 could select for myself, that 
 
 " If the universality of the use of objects of consumption determines their classifi- 
 cation, coffee, tea, and spices, in the present condition of civilized society, may be 
 considered necessaries. Even if they are luxuries, why should not the poor, by 
 cheapening their prices, if that can be effected, be allowed to use them?" 
 
 Hence, sir, the articles of tea and coffee — only now quasi luxuries 
 to any, and substantially, or practically, among the comforts, if not 
 necessaries, of all classes — are not to be taxed, unless indispensable 
 to meet our imperative engagements. But, on the contrary, if it 
 appear that we are not able to meet those engagements, except by 
 taxing necessaries as well as luxuries, then you must march up to the 
 urgency of the occasion, and tax them, as you already have woollens, 
 sugar, and iron. I thought formerly, as I do now, and hope always 
 to think, that if you will not reduce your expenditures as low as 
 eighteen or twenty millions, and do not expect larger importations 
 than those of 1838, it will not be possible to make the ends of the 
 year meet, without going beyond twenty per cent, duty on some arti- 
 cles, or raising the duty on others now free, including tea and coffee ; 
 and that the only question would then be between the preservation of 
 the public faith and a moderate tax on tea or coffee. Between those 
 two considerations, when forced on us, I did not then, nor could I 
 now, hesitate. 
 
 But I then stated expressly, as I now do, that our expenditures 
 ought not, in my opinion, to exceed about eighteen millions a year, in 
 1842. I had expressed a similar opinion, in the annual report on the 
 finances, in the December previous. And I still think that they could 
 safely and prudently be reduced to even less than eighteen, in ordinary 
 times, and am ready at any moment to designate the items and amounts 
 of reduction under each which appear to me feasible. I then thought, 
 also, and then said, that probably the imports would be larger in 1842, 
 and afterwards, than they had been in 1838. But it was necessary 
 to take some year as an illustration of the computation, and therefore 
 a new one (1838) was selected, as 1839 had been unusually high. It 
 was, however, manifest then, as it is now, that if our expenses should 
 not exceed eighteen millions yearly, and the imports prove to be much 
 larger than in 1838, no duty whatever on tea and coffee would proba- 
 bly be necessary. 
 
 By the much larger amount of imports, as computed by the Secre- 
 tary of the Treasury, for 1842, no duty on them will be required in 
 order to defray eighteen or even twenty millions of expenditure. 
 Hence, in accordance with the principles I have always entertained on 
 
TEA AND COFFEE — NECESSARIES OF LIFE. 185 
 
 this question, and in accordance with sound views of political economy, 
 this motion to make tea and coffee free ought to prevail. 
 
 The only remaining inquiry, on this occasion, is one of fact, — that 
 is, whether the Secretary's estimate as to the revenue, or mine as to 
 the proper amount of expenditure, are either of them erroneous. It 
 becomes a question, on sound economical principles, whether we could 
 obtain enough for all our reasonable wants, without the duties on tea 
 and coffee, or not. This must depend upon how much we ought to 
 expend yearly under the new administration, so radical in its profes- 
 sions ; and how much we are likely to receive yearly, without a tax on 
 these articles, under its high expectations as to a revival of prosperity. 
 I shall, then, for reasons stated on several former occasions, suppose, 
 until the contrary is shown, that the expenditures in 1842 ought to 
 be not over eighteen millions, and that the large imports estimated at 
 this session in the treasury department, and in the other House, may 
 be probable. Then we can assess twenty per cent, on one hundred 
 and twenty-five millions of dutiable imports, and then the net revenue 
 would be over twenty millions. To that, in the first half of next year, 
 there will be added over two millions, before the last reduction takes 
 effect, on the 1st of July ; and, after that, over a million more, for the 
 augmentation then made by the home valuation. The senator from 
 Kentucky will probably estimate the addition by the home valuation 
 at even a larger amount. 
 
 The whole revenue from customs would thus be over twenty-three 
 millions ; — add to this only three millions more for the lands, and you 
 have a net revenue of more than twenty-six millions, to meet eighteen 
 millions of expenditure. I add the lands, because the bill giving them 
 away has not yet become a law, and ought not to. But if it does 
 become a law, and is not repealed before a distribution is made, there 
 will be still twenty-three millions of revenue, to meet only what ought 
 to be eighteen millions of expenditure. That will leave an excess of 
 five millions of revenue ; so that two millions on tea and coffee, as well 
 as one million on salt and molasses, can be dispensed with, and still 
 two millions extra be left to cover contingencies and fluctuations, 
 whether in receipts or expenditures, or in paying the debt. The duty 
 on tea and coffee can thus safely and prudently be omitted. It amounts, 
 at twenty per cent, on an average import, to only about two millions, 
 instead of three, as supposed by the Secretary and others. The 
 amount brought in during 1840, of near twenty million pounds of 
 tea, was, from difficulties between China and England, nearly double 
 the average quantity consumed here. Hence, say ten millions, at 
 twenty-nine cents per pound, with the ninety-five million pounds of 
 coffee, at nine cents per pound, and they would be together in value 
 only about $11,450,000. On this a duty of twenty per cent, would 
 yield, in the gross, only $2,290,000, and of net revenue not much 
 above two millions. 
 
 Place these, then, among the free articles, and there would still be 
 16* 
 
186 TEA AND COFFEE — NECESSAKIES OF LIFE. 
 
 over twenty-one millions of revenue, from customs alone, to defray 
 eighteen millions of expenditure. I, therefore, have proposed to go 
 still further, and, by another amendment, reduce the duties on salt 
 and coffee, next year, one half, and, in 1845, the other half, consti- 
 tuting together about a million. 
 
 If they both were free, as well as coffee and tea, the revenue on 
 the imports above stated would be likely to exceed the maximum 
 deemed proper for expenditure, as before computed; and hence, I 
 trust that not only this motion will prevail, but insure success, also, 
 to the other. 
 
 I am unwilling, on this occasion, and at this late period of the ses- 
 sion, to detain the Senate a moment by collateral and incidental matters. 
 I will not add a word not necessary to present these few direct and 
 plain reasons in behalf of tea and coffee. If any gentleman is anxious 
 to exonerate these articles from impost, and the people at large from 
 being burdened by a heavy tax on them, let him not be deterred by 
 any apprehension that our expenditures may, by accidental and 
 untoward circumstances, be swollen for a year or two as high as 
 twenty-three millions. Even in that event, he can vote for this motion 
 with perfect safety, if the proceeds of the lands are not finally given 
 away. 
 
 Thus, should that law not take effect, or be repealed at the next 
 session, there will, without a tax on tea and coffee, be twenty-three to 
 twenty-four millions of revenue from both customs and lands ; being 
 quite enough to meet the whole expenditures, though increased by the 
 interest on the new debt, and other unfavorable causes, to twenty- three 
 millions. 
 
 The first issue, then, is, will you retain a duty on tea and coffee, 
 when it will not be needed at all, if you only keep down the expenses 
 to eighteen or twenty millions ? Or, in other words, are you deter- 
 mined to raise the expenses extravagantly, at the sacrifice of tea and 
 coffee ? 
 
 The next issue is as follows : If you allow the expenses, whether 
 extravagantly or necessarily, to be swollen to twenty-three millions, 
 will you not keep the public lands, and pay the expenses with their 
 proceeds, rather than tax articles of such wide-spread consumption, 
 among the masses of society, as tea and coffee? Or, in different 
 words, will you, merely for the purpose of giving away the rich pro- 
 ceeds of the public lands, without any really gainful result to the 
 General Government, the States, or the people at large, — as shown by 
 me on another occasion, — will you heap additional burdens on those 
 who desire to continue their temperate and humble enjoyment of the 
 use of tea and coffee 1 
 
 These, sir, are the true questions. In the best view, it is a contest 
 between increased expenditure, with tea and coffee taxed, on the one 
 hand, and economy, with tea and coffee free, on the other hand. In 
 the worst view, it is a war between giving away idly, if not mischiev- 
 
ON THE LAND DISTRIBUTION BILL. 187 
 
 ously, the whole public lands, beside burdening heavily with taxation 
 tea and coffee, on the one side, and, on the other, not giving the lands 
 away, and not taxing at all articles of such universal use. 
 It is for the Senate to decide between these alternatives. 
 
 ON THE LAND DISTRIBUTION BILL: 
 
 I consider this bill as proposing the greatest innovation, in the 
 administration of the concerns of the General Government, which has 
 occurred in our history. Nor is it one of those measures which form 
 an epoch for good or glory, like the birth of Christianity, or some 
 memorable revolution in favor of popular rights ; but it will form, it 
 is feared, an era of evil and disaster, like the deluge, or the cholera, — 
 like "war, pestilence, or famine." 
 
 Why, sir, what is the manifest character, the very front of the 
 case, whether we look to it in a fiscal or political view? In the 
 former view, it is no less than a donation, by the General Government, 
 of a thousand millions of acres of land. It is giving away, outright, 
 a territory equal in extent to more than half the smaller kingdoms of 
 Europe added together. It is parting with a productive fund, or a 
 capital for financial resources, richer than that of the most gorgeous of 
 Oriental despotisms. We throw away, like the base Judean, a pearl 
 worth all his tribe. We do this, too, when represented to be embar- 
 rassed in our finances, when our expenditures are rapidly increasing, 
 when twelve millions of new debt have been authorized and ten or 
 fifteen more are in progress, and when a large augmentation of taxes on 
 some of the greatest necessaries of life has passed one House, and is wait- 
 ing on your table the sanction of the other. Above all these consider- 
 ations, we do this when no surplus exists, or is likely to exist, and 
 when the loss of the yearly revenue of the lands is not only to be sus- 
 tained by the General Government, but a new resort become necessary, 
 for an equal if not larger amount, to be exacted back in taxes from 
 the States and the people. 
 
 In a political view, the measure is still worse, if possible. It is 
 unequal and unjust to particular States, to particular sections of the 
 
 * A speech delivered in the Senate of the United States, August 25th, 1841, on the 
 final passage of the bill for Distribution of Public Lands. 
 
188 ON THE LAND DISTRIBUTION BILL. 
 
 country, to particular classes ; and it is in this, and other ways, 
 demoralizing to society, and dangerous to the Union itself. 
 
 In these opinions I may err. But my conviction of their correct- 
 ness is so strong, that I do not hesitate to throw the facts and reasons 
 on which they are founded before political opponents, and to ask even 
 of them reconsideration and deliberation. No person is more ready to 
 do justice than myself to others from whom I am divided by mere dif- 
 ferences in opinion ; and whatever of party discipline, of hasty State 
 instructions, or imperfect examination, may have operated to carry this 
 bill thus far, I know that there are candor, patriotism, and conscience 
 enough, — yes, sir, independence and high honor enough, — on the 
 other side, yet to arrest so alarming an innovation as this, if I can only 
 bring the real facts and true principles of the case to bear fairly on 
 their judgments. I will try, sir. I am bound to try, by the instruc- 
 tions of my State, as well as a sense of duty. And had the screw, or 
 a contest for physical exhaustion, forced me to rise at an untimely 
 hour, I should have spoken, sir, at the risk of perishing at my post. 
 
 Let me first dispose of several topics which may be regarded as inci- 
 dental, or collateral, to the main questions. Some of those have, on 
 former occasions, and with some friends of the bill, assumed an import- 
 ance to which they are hardly entitled, and must therefore be swept 
 away. 
 
 Thus, the Chairman of the Land Committee (Mr. Smith, of 
 Indiana), who has industriously watched over this measure, urged its 
 adoption because the public lands were a fluctuating source of revenue. 
 What, sir ! are we to give away a valuable estate, if its income is irreg- 
 ular '] Would an individual throw away a farm, or a fishery, because 
 this year he realized one thousand dollars from it, and the next but 
 eight hundred dollars, and the next twelve hundred ? Absurd ! I 
 have heard the same argument pressed on other occasions. Yet it is 
 not only unreasonable in itself, but, unhappily for its authors, it is not 
 founded in fact. Here are the official returns in my hands, from 1817 
 to 1840 inclusive, of the revenue from customs and from lands, sepa- 
 rately. Take out the three years of 1835, J 6, and '7, when the 
 prices of everything were raised so artificially high by bank expan- 
 sions, and when the prices of the public lands were not by Congress 
 raised with the rest, and consequently surplus capital, in many places, 
 rushed into the purchase of lands, — how then stands the comparison? 
 Why, sir, the average revenue from customs was about twenty millions 
 yearly, and that from lands about two and a half millions ; and the 
 departures from these averages were much oftener and much greater 
 in the former than in the latter. On the mode of reasoning, then, 
 which has been pursued on this point, we should give away all the 
 receipts derived from customs, rather than those from lands. But 
 enough of this. 
 
 The next collateral topic is, that the lands ought not to be regarded 
 as a source of revenue. Why should they not be, as much as any other 
 
OX THE LAND DISTRIBUTION BILL. 189 
 
 productive property ? Why not be used for profit, especially when, 
 without them, we must resort to higher taxation 'I If gentlemen regard 
 them as owned by the General Government only in pledge, mortgage, 
 or trust, till certain objects are accomplished, and then to be returned 
 to the States, I will soon show that no such trust either exists, or, if 
 existing, has been accomplished in all its objects, or is attempted to be 
 recognized and carried out by the provisions of this bill. But now, 
 passing by these, if the lands are not to be kept for revenue, why use 
 them as a source of expense, rather than revenue ? Why pay over 
 the proceeds of them by this bill, after some small deductions, and 
 not pass over, nor deduct, all the charges still yearly connected 
 with them ? These consist of the Indian expenditures, equalling, for 
 many years past, more than all the present revenue from all the pub- 
 lic lands. Here they are, sir, in the tabular statements before me, 
 going back a quarter of a century. In one year three millions and a 
 fraction, in another nearly three and a half, and in another exceeding 
 four millions. 
 
 Why, also, should we not deduct, or pass over to the States, with 
 the income of the land, the burdens, in procuring and defending it, 
 connected with the Florida war, and Revolutionary pensions, each 
 enough to absorb the whole ? No, sir ! Instead of distributing the 
 proceeds of the lands by this bill, because we should not make them a 
 source of revenue, we do it with the certain and inevitable result of 
 making them a source of expense. We give away lavishly the income 
 from them, but reserve almost all the heavy expenditures incurred 
 annually on account of them to be paid by heavy taxation. I told the 
 chairman on a former occasion, and I repeat it now, that if he will 
 place the whole accounts of the receipts and expenditures connected 
 with the public lands into the hands of a master in chancery, whether 
 they relate to the present or past, not a dollar of net revenue or net 
 proceeds will be found to exist, to be distributed. The bill itself, then, 
 is delusive, in pretending to pay over a source of revenue, or net 
 proceeds from land alone. 
 
 One more of these collateral topics, and I have done with that class 
 of arguments in favor of so objectionable a measure. 
 
 It is gravely stated that the lands are a corrupt and corrupting 
 species of property, and ought, therefore, to be disposed of at once. 
 Indeed ! Why more corrupt than the revenue from customs ? Either 
 can be applied to purposes of personal or political aggrandizement, by 
 unscrupulous politicians. But neither, in and of themselves, need be 
 used to promote such profligacy. And from whom, sir, does this 
 objection come ? From the very persons who, by this very bill, still 
 retain, in one of its sections, the absolute right in the General Govern- 
 ment, notwithstanding the distribution, to dispose of any part or all of 
 the lands themselves, in any manner and to any object, corrupting or 
 otherwise, which Congress may deem proper. The bill, then, destroys 
 the argument. In fine, sir, if the lands have, in special cases, been 
 
190 ON THE LAND DISTRIBUTION BILL. 
 
 heretofore applied to dishonest purposes, the bill retains a full power 
 to make the same disposition of them hereafter. 
 
 With these hasty remarks on incidental or collateral points, I pass 
 to the great paramount and direct principles involved in this alarming 
 measure. First, as to some of its constitutional bearings. If we 
 analyze its character with care, and look through forms and names to 
 substance, I feel a strong conviction that several of its principles, and 
 especially its tendencies, will be found directly at war with the spirit 
 of the constitution. More than this, sir ; the measure, as a whole, it 
 is feared, will, on examination, appear to be exceedingly impolitic, 
 at this juncture very ill-timed, and entirely delusive as to any ben- 
 eficial results anticipated from it, either to the General Government, 
 the States, or the people at large. 
 
 What, then, is its real character? I pronounce this distribution, 
 sir, to be a gift to the several States — a naked gift. And if, on a 
 thorough scrutiny, it turn out to be so, whether consisting of property 
 or money, I shall endeavor to show it to be unconstitutional. 
 
 Less will be said, on some of the points connected with this branch 
 of the inquiry, than if I had not been relieved by previous able dis- 
 cussions of them, on this and previous occasions. Let no one attempt 
 to escape the conclusion that it is a gift by any suggestion, that, under 
 the circumstances of the case, and the provisions of this bill, it ought 
 to be considered in the light of the payment of a debt due to the 
 States. 
 
 A debt ! Why, sir ? What State holds the bond or note of the 
 General Government for this debt ? None. Only seven of the twen- 
 ty-six States ever made any cession of any supposed title to any of 
 the public lands, whose proceeds are now illogically argued to be a 
 debt due to each of the twenty-six. Nineteen of them never pre- 
 tended any right to any of them, as separate States. How, then, do 
 we owe any debt ? How arises any semblance of debt to those nine- 
 teen ? Even the other seven merely quit-claimed, or released to us, 
 what most of them had little or no legal right to. They did it to 
 quiet disturbances, settle conflicting pretensions, promote the general 
 welfare of the whole United States, and never dreamed of creating 
 thereby a debt for the value of the lands. If so, what was the 
 amount of the debt ? And why has it not been before demanded ? 
 On the contrary, the title of those seven States separately, sir, rested, 
 to use the words of an old provincial governor, on about as strong a 
 record as "the scratch of a bear's paw." The lands were mostly 
 waste or crown lands ; and, in the struggle of the Revolution, they 
 were bought and paid for, by the whole thirteen States then in being, 
 by their blood. Their indomitable courage and constancy conquered 
 them. Their sacrifices, sufferings, and blood, balanced the accounts. 
 But, beyond all this, what pretence of debt is due to those seven States 
 for the immense domain of Louisiana and Florida, which they never 
 claimed — never conveyed? That domain the General Government 
 
ON THE LAND DISTRIBUTION BILL. 191 
 
 bought of France and Spain, and paid for out of the public treasury. 
 Yet, sir, by this bill, you undertake to pay those States, as well as the 
 rest, a larger amount, on account of the lands thus obtained from for- 
 eigners, than all which were ever surrendered to us by all the seven 
 States together. But it cannot be done as a debt. 
 
 Again : if a debt, why do we not deduct from it, in this bill, at least 
 the acknowledged debts due to us from those and other States 1 
 
 The Revolutionary debt due to us from several of the old States 
 exceeds four millions of dollars ; and the recent deposite with the 
 States in 1837, acknowledged by their solemn laws as well as ours to 
 be a debt due to us, exceeds twenty-eight millions. Yet this bill, if 
 paying to them an old Revolutionary or more recent debt, should cer- 
 tainly deduct what is due to us. Once more, why does not the Pres- 
 ident recommend its payment in his message, as a debt, if it be one ; 
 and why did not the Secretary of the Treasury, so anxious to swell our 
 national debt, discover and urge this as a part of it, instead of placing 
 the distribution, as does the President, on grounds entirely different ? 
 
 But more. If this be a debt, what right have we, as provided in 
 this bill, to stop the payment on the occurrence of a war? What right 
 have we, as in the bill, to stop payment of it, and dispose of the whole 
 lands in any different manner which Congress may at any moment 
 happen to prefer ? What right have we, also, as in this bill, to stop 
 the payment whenever Congress pleases to increase the minimum 
 price of the public lands per acre? What right to suspend its payment 
 when the tariff is increased above twenty per cent., as is now provided 
 in the amended bill ? 
 
 All these are gross usurpations, — violations of compacts, and dis- 
 graceful immorality on the part of the Senate, — if we regard these 
 proceeds to belong to the States, as a debt due, and not to be a mere 
 gift. 
 
 Let us pass from this untenable and contradictory hypothesis to 
 another, somewhat more plausible, which is, that the distribution is 
 the execution of a (rust in favor of the States in these lands, rather 
 than a gift. 
 
 Some have called it a resulting trust, after the payment of the Rev- 
 olutionary debt. They have been driven to this from the fact, that, 
 in several of the cessions, no trust whatever is expressed. Here are 
 the whole of the grants proving that fact. But, if it be a resulting 
 trust, let me ask you, sir, as a lawyer, and once a chancellor, as well 
 as judge, if a trust can result of anything except what is contained in 
 the deed, and to any person except the grantor in each deed ? There 
 would, then, result nothing, to any State, of the lands in Florida or 
 Louisiana, as none of them are in any of the deeds. Nor would a 
 trust result to any State, except of that particular land contained in 
 its particular deed. Hence, for instance, instead of giving, as in this 
 bill, to New York a vast distributive share in the whole of the public 
 lands, she should have nothing in those purchased from foreign powers, 
 
192 ON THE LAND DISTRIBUTION BILL. 
 
 nor in those conveyed by other States, but simply all which remains 
 of what was covered by her own deed. Under this view, also, as only 
 seven States released any title whatever, nothing whatever could 
 revert to any of the other nineteen, by way of resulting trust. Much 
 more could be presented under this head, to show how utterly ground- 
 less, in every view, is this pretence, that the distribution is not a gift, 
 because it is a resulting trust. But I forbear to weary the Senate 
 with it. 
 
 The only other argument to prove it not to be a naked gift is an 
 idea formerly much dwelt on, but, on full examination, found to be 
 equally unfounded, that the distribution is the execution of an express 
 trust contained in the deeds of cession. 
 
 Pray tell me, sir, if there was in them an express trust, to be ful- 
 filled at a certain time, and in a certain event, to the States, when 
 was that time, or what that event ? Gentlemen have argued that it 
 was after the payment of the Revolutionary debt, or of all the national 
 debt. Yet here are the words, in every deed, in the document in my 
 hand, and not a syllable of that kind appears in one of them. But, if 
 it did, neither of those events has yet occurred. Some of the Revolu- 
 tionary debt yet remains ; and large charges for Revolutionary claims, 
 including pensions, as well as for paying annuities to Indians, and 
 discharging other expenses yearly, in the extinguishment of Indian 
 titles, and the defence of that very soil from Indian incursions. So, 
 some of the other portions of the national debt remain ; and we have 
 added to them, at this very session, twelve millions, and have in pro- 
 gress, in the ridiculous make-shift for a bank, the new-fangled Exchange 
 Fiscal Corporation, an authority for ten or fifteen millions more. 
 
 The express trust is, then, as untenable as the resulting one ; not 
 only for these reasons, but that it cannot extend, by any pretence 
 whatever, to any portion of Florida or Louisiana. Besides all this, 
 however, the bill itself puts a veto on the whole assumption of its being 
 the execution of a trust. If money is to be given to the States on 
 that account and on their theory, — of its beginning when most of the 
 debt was paid, — then the distribution should go back to 1835, and 
 embrace all the net proceeds since. Then, too, it should in future 
 reach only the NET proceeds, instead of taking, as it does, almost the 
 whole gross proceeds. Then, as before mentioned, what right has 
 Congress to reserve a power to stop the execution of this trust, and 
 otherwise dispose of all or any of the lands, whenever it pleases ? Then, 
 how dare the chairman insert a provision in the bill, as he has, sus- 
 pending the trust, in the occurrence of war ? Where is the right to 
 do it ? How dare he, also, in that view, to annul the whole trust, as 
 he does, if Congress at any time chooses merely to raise the minimum 
 price of the public lands ? How can we, ourselves, also be justified in 
 the amendment made to suspend its whole operation, at any moment 
 when it shall become necessary to raise the tariff higher than twenty 
 per cent. ? Who gave us such a power over this property, if it be an 
 
ON THE LAND DISTRIBUTION BILL. 193 
 
 express trust ? Where is it conferred 1 — by whom ? What right have 
 we to retain the lead mines and salt springs, to lease for revenue ? 
 What right to the sixty or seventy millions of acres exchanged with 
 the Indians in the far west ? No, sir ; the whole bill is inconsistent 
 throughout with any such idea. The distribution is treated in all 
 respects as a naked gift, and, as such, is to be made and regulated, if 
 at all, by the constitution, and the provisions of it applicable to the 
 disposal of all the property and money of the General Government. 
 
 Otherwise, it would also be impossible to exercise, as we do, an 
 unlimited discretion in several other provisions. Thus, we give an 
 additional per centage to some States, and withhold it from others. 
 We give thousands of acres besides that, and an equal share to some 
 States, and none to others. We make it begin at an arbitrary date, 
 and we suspend it at an arbitrary date or event. We act as if uncon- 
 trolled : and the public must look to our acts on record for their true 
 character, rather than our words in debate. There is no manly, hon- 
 orable escape from these conclusions. We cannot hold up our heads 
 as statesmen, and conduct in this way, except with our own ; — never 
 with a debt or a trust belonging to others. We can honestly act in 
 this way only with property or money which belongs absolutely to the 
 General Government, for common, public, joint, confederated purposes, 
 and which we may possess the right to give away in this manner, con- 
 sistently with the constitution. The chairman has felt the force of 
 this, and has at last attempted a vindication of his bill, on the ground 
 that it gives away the lands rather than money, and that Congress can 
 rightfully give away the property of the General Government when 
 and where it could not give away its money. This is the last refuge 
 for defence : and if this position prove unsound, as I believe it to be 
 totally, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile this distribu- 
 tion either with the letter or spirit of the constitution. 
 
 Where, then, let me inquire, can any clause in that sacred instru- 
 ment be found, which, in the slightest degree, justifies such a conclu- 
 sion !■ We are referred to the authority granted in section third, article 
 fourth, "to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations 
 respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United 
 States." 
 
 But did anybody, till within a year past, ever dream that this con- 
 ferred a power to give away the whole public property, of every kind, 
 of the General Government ? What, sir ! a power to arrange and reg- 
 ulate, or even to sell, meant to be one to give away? Was such a 
 doctrine ever broached before, in the whole half-century which has pre- 
 ceded us under the constitution, and which has been filled with con- 
 flicts of the most astute and able minds to discover grounds for broad 
 constructions ? To dispose of property or appropriate money, not as 
 douceurs or mere gifts, but objects connected with the "general wel- 
 fare," has been considered very latitudinarian. But the argument 
 which allows you to give away the whole of our princely domain, 
 17 
 
194 ON THE LAND DISTRIBUTION BILL. 
 
 extending from the Atlantic to the Rocky Mountains, and even to the 
 Pacific Ocean, — to bestow our whole navy, our numerous fortifications, 
 this very hall where we deliberate, — and these to any and every object, 
 however local, narrow, or sectional, and to be applied, if any State 
 chooses, to the erection of mere jails, a bounty on wolf-scalps, or the 
 most paltry matter of domestic police, — outrages all the restrictions in 
 the constitution, and declares open war with the Virginia platform of 
 '98. In fine, it goes as much beyond the doctrine of the " general 
 welfare," as that goes beyond the limitation of various specific objects 
 enumerated in the constitution. 
 
 I feel mortified, sir, that a son of Virginia, the commonwealth 
 that has heretofore fought so many victorious battles in favor of strict 
 constructions, should for a moment have seemed to yield any kind 
 of assent to such a worse than Hamiltonian heresy. He, too, a repub- 
 lican of the school of '98 (Mr. Archer). Why, sir, the whole dis- 
 covery is in the teeth of the construction by Jefferson and Madison, 
 cotemporaneous as well as that continued for half a century. It is 
 death to every sacred principle, — death to public safety, public virtue, 
 public liberty. It is, in truth, founded on an entire mistake as to the 
 obvious meaning of the word dispose, and as to the object of that 
 clause in the constitution. It was manifestly introduced, not to appro- 
 priate or apply our property, but merely to regulate its sale and 
 management. 
 
 The word dispose usually means "to arrange," or "to bargain," 
 or "to alienate;" as, "the man has disposed of his house," &c. 
 Richardson, Johnson, and Webster, are full of such definitions. What, 
 also, is " a sound and disposing mind," in a testator, but a mind capa- 
 ble cf making a judicious bargain ? Any different construction vio- 
 lates the ordinary signification of the words, as well as common sense. 
 Why should a power be conferred on Congress to give away all our 
 property, but not our money'? This clause, like the authority intrusted 
 to an agent, by an individual in society, to dispose of his farm, or of his 
 stock of cattle, in the owner's absence, is a power to sell them, and not 
 give them away. But, being sold, what shall be done with the pro- 
 ceeds depends, in both cases, on other and distinct arrangements, pro- 
 visions, or orders. In this case, the clause to dispose of the lands, 
 &c, is executed not by giving them away, but by selling them under 
 the laws which form our beautiful system of land sales, that has been 
 in force more than a quarter of a century. 
 
 Under this bill, the mode of disposing of the lands themsalves, gen- 
 erally, is not attempted to be changed. They are still to be sold to 
 A, B, and C, at public auction and private entry, and not to be given 
 away to them. But, after being sold, like any other property, such as 
 refuse lumber or timber, condemned vessels, goods forfeited, &c, and 
 the proceeds paid into the public treasury, then this clause in the con- 
 stitution as to their disposal is executed, exhausted. After that, this 
 bill undertakes to give away the proceeds of those sales, but with no 
 
ON THE LAND DISTRIBUTION BILL. 195 
 
 more right or authority under that clause than under any other clause 
 whatever. No, sir ; such a course would subvert the natural import 
 of the plainest language. It must give the proceeds away, if at all 
 legally within and under the constitution, as it gives the half-millions 
 of acres to nine of the States, by virtue of the clauses which specify 
 to what objects the public money may be applied; and it should 
 expressly apply them or their use, as is done with that half-million, to 
 national objects. There is no other way legally of drawing money 
 from the treasury which is once in it. There should be no other. 
 And let me tell my friend from Virginia (Mr, Archer) that every 
 dollar of this distribution — not like property granted, but like money 
 voted — will be entered on the books of the treasury among the gen- 
 eral revenues of the government, and come out of that treasury consti- 
 tutionally only by an appropriation ; and when paid out, must and 
 will be charged up as among the expenditures of the year. It is, then, 
 to be treated exactly like the money collected in taxes. There is no 
 power in the constitution to treat the proceeds of property, or to give 
 away the proceeds of property, differently from the proceeds of taxa- 
 tion. 
 
 What a miserable, wretched farce would it be to attempt to carry 
 into effect the contrary doctrine ! Then you could give away prop- 
 erty, but not the money which was used to purchase it. You could 
 collect money in taxes to buy other property to supply the place of 
 that given away : and this second purchase might also be given away, 
 but the money to buy it could not be. 
 
 Am I, sir, — in an American Senate, surrounded by the ambassadors 
 of twenty-six sovereign States, many of them ex-judges, ex-governors, 
 ex-secretaries, and conscript fathers for age and dignity, — am I 
 doomed to listen to such deceptive reasoning, such morality? It is 
 not possible for us to sanction a system of paltry evasion. 
 
 Forbidden by the true meaning of the word dispose, forbidden by 
 the design of the whole clause, forbidden by sound logic, to make a 
 gift of property, where you cannot make it of money, what would be 
 the fatal consequences of such a practice, and which tend with equal 
 force to forbid it 1 
 
 Why, sir, in this way, the objects most sacred to the framers of 
 the constitution, such as freedom of conscience and liberty of the press, 
 might be placed in the most imminent danger, by giving away property 
 to any or every purpose, without regard to constitutional limitations. 
 The property might also be given to the most pernicious and demoral- 
 izing purposes. It might be given to establish partisan presses, to 
 erect churches or theatres, to furnish shows of wild beasts, or gladia- 
 torial combats, or triumphal processions, as in days of yore, and the 
 whole community become betrayed, corrupted, and prostituted, with 
 their own money. But, beyond this, the public property could be 
 given to particular favored classes, whether manufacturers and the 
 rich, or to the desperate and needy ; and thus convert the government 
 
196 ON THE LAND DISTRIBUTION BILL. 
 
 substantially into an oppressive monied oligarchy, or a levelling, 
 ferocious agrarianism. 
 
 A single other consideration, in respect to the remarks of some 
 senators that Congress has been accustomed to give away lands more 
 liberally, or on different principles, than money. But if this was so 
 under impulses of feeling, or under the influence of our ample resources 
 in land, it cannot alter a constitutional principle, which recognizes no 
 distinction in the power to appropriate, or give away, either property or 
 money. 
 
 Again : most of the cases supposed to be mere gifts of land, whether 
 to individuals or States, have been, in fact, grants with a view to pro- 
 mote legitimate and express constitutional objects. Thus the donations 
 for education in the new States have been asked to increase the 
 inducements to remove there, and augment the value and sales of our 
 other lands. So of the grants to canals or roads. So of the grants 
 to the Revolutionary veterans, like Stark and Lafayette, to pay them 
 more fully for their sacrifices and toils. So of lands granted for 
 bounties to enlist, or, instead of pensions, to form a part of the compen- 
 sation and reward for the most perilous services by flood and field. 
 
 Nor can there be any sound distinction, taken so ingeniously by the 
 senator from Virginia (Mr. Archer), between the lands granted for 
 common objects and property, or money obtained for general objects. 
 Why, sir, the very first dictionary you open defines the word general 
 to mean common. (See Todd's Johnson.) They mean the same pre- 
 cisely in the preamble of the constitution and elsewhere, when the 
 common defence and the general welfare are spoken of under the 
 same view and restrictions. So, in the deeds of cession by Virginia, 
 Georgia, and North Carolina, to form "a common fund;" by Massa- 
 chusetts, "for the common benefit;" by Connecticut, "for the com- 
 mon use and benefit." They all mean exactly the same as a general 
 fund, or for the general benefit or general welfare ; and when the 
 old Congress voted, in 1780, to apply them to the " common benefit," 
 they meant the same ; and all their successors have done the same with 
 the proceeds of them as with the taxes. What is the boasted desig- 
 nation of his own native State? It is the "unterrified common- 
 wealth." Is she not, then, in consulting the common weal of her 
 citizens, consulting their general weal ? And can she give away the 
 'property of the State, more than its money, because she is a common- 
 wealth? These points, sir, cannot require any further illustration. 
 The property, as well as the money, held by the General Government, 
 is, therefore, held for the common or general purposes for which that 
 government was established. It is joint property. It is for joint, and 
 not separate, objects of the States. It is for national or confederated 
 ends, and not for the local ends of each State. It is, in fine, a 
 species of joint stock company, or partnership, for both pecuniary and 
 political specified objects. 
 
 The property, any more than the money, of such a partnership, 
 
ON THE LAND DISTRIBUTION BILL. 197 
 
 cannot rightfully be applied to other than the joint and enumerated 
 objects. What lawyer, or even village referee, would dare to hold 
 that either of these could be given away ? or even used for the sepa- 
 rate debts and purposes of one of the firm, while the firm continued, 
 and was in debt, and needed the income of all its property ? The 
 division of the joint or common property would likewise be a dissolu- 
 tion of the compact, if not otherwise provided for, and tend, like this, 
 to entire disunion, and the ruin of the partnership concerns. Under 
 these views, and our well-known embarrassed condition as a common 
 Confederacy at this crisis, the common property or common funds 
 cannot be given to its separate members to be used separately, and for 
 local objects, as is proposed by this bill, without, in my opinion, an 
 open, clear, flagrant violation of the whole object of the cessions, and 
 of all the constitutional regulations as to use and disposition of the 
 public resources. 
 
 I may be too strong in this conclusion from these premises alone. 
 But whether so or not, there are still other material considerations, 
 which greatly tend to strengthen it. 
 
 Thus, the original idea of a distribution, whether of money or lands, 
 was to appropriate them to some one of the great national objects sup- 
 posed by its friends to be confided to the General Government, and not 
 otherwise. 
 
 The only difference, very material from usual appropriations to 
 those objects, was, to let the States expend these appropriations for 
 common and joint objects, rather than for the General Government to 
 do it. But, by this bill, we neither designate the objects of expenditure, 
 so as to make them, in anybody's view, national, nor retain the con- 
 trol over the expenditure, so as to have it applied only to purposes 
 contemplated and authorized by the constitution. This is a portentous 
 departure from principle, as well as precedent, and tends to break down 
 every constitutional barrier in use, either for property or money. 
 
 Go back, sir, fifteen years, and listen to some of the first whispers 
 of distribution, and mark the dangerous departure since. Then it was 
 a distribution proposed merely of a surplus in the treasury, and not 
 particularly of the public lands. Then it was proposed to be made of 
 an excess beyond our current wants, and not of what we forthwith 
 needed ; not, when we were embarrassed, resorting to loans, increasing 
 our expenditures, and obliged to raise, by additional taxes, the whole, 
 and even more than all we distribute. It was to be, also, of only an 
 accidental excess ; because, if a permanent one, it was conceded, on all 
 sides, to be proper to prevent it by a reduction of the tariff, and to 
 avoid, by all means, a constant distribution. It was then, likewise, to 
 be expressly required, in the act of appropriation, to be applied exclu- 
 sively to objects deemed national by its friends, and therefore constitu- 
 tional. 
 
 When, in 1831 or 1832, a project originated for giving away the 
 public lands, or their proceeds, it had become probable that the duties 
 17* 
 
198 ON THE LAND DISTRIBUTION EILL. 
 
 would soon be reduced, after the payment of the public debt. Hence, 
 it was perceived by the manufacturers, that, unless the lands were 
 given away, the duties would be too much reduced, and the protection 
 too much lessened, for their interests. The diminution would be three 
 millions more than if the proceeds were given away, or appropriated to 
 some great and exclusive objects. But did anybody then propose to 
 keep duties high, much less to raise duties higher, for the sole purpose 
 of distribution 1 Or did they dare then, at first, to attempt to distribute 
 the lands, in order to help the manufacturers, or for any other pur- 
 pose, whether of political ambition or personal aggrandizement, without 
 restricting the use of them, in the appropriation itself, to what they 
 considered national, and therefore what had the appearance of being 
 constitutional objects ? No, sir ; the bill of the senator from Kentucky 
 limited expressly the use of the proceeds of the lands to " education, 
 internal improvement, colonization or reimbursement of any existing 
 debt contracted for internal improvements." (See journal of the 
 Senate, July 2d, 1832.) 
 
 The speech of that senator, June 20th, 1832, urged the passage of 
 his bill because those objects were " all national in their nature," and 
 therefore constitutional. (Mr. W. read extracts from the speech.) 
 
 Go a step further, and look at the same learned senator's speech, 
 delivered January 11, in that same year. I rejoice to find that he 
 there, also, supports my present position ; and, indeed, goes so far as to 
 say virtually, not only that duties should not be raised to be distributed, 
 but that a measure in the form of the very bill now before us would 
 be both unwise and unconstitutional. In order to avoid any miscon- 
 ception of his meaning, I will give his own words. 
 
 " In making this inquiry [said Mr. Clay], the first question which presents itself 
 is, whether it is expedient to preserve the existing duties, in order to accumulate a 
 surplus in the treasury, for the purpose of subsequent distribution among the several 
 States. I think not. If the collection for the purpose of such a surplus is to be made 
 from the pockets of one portion of the people to be ultimately returned to the same 
 pockets, the process would be attended with the certain loss arising from the charges 
 of collection, and with the loss, also, of interest while the money is performing the 
 necessary circuit; and it would therefore be unwise. If it is to be collected from one 
 portion of the people and given to another, it would be unjust. If it is to be given to 
 the States in their corporate capacity, to be used by them in their public expenditure, 
 I know of no principle in the constitution which authorizes the Federal Government 
 to become such a collector for the States, nor of any principle of safety or propriety 
 which admits of the States becoming such recipients of gratuity from the General 
 Government." 
 
 In the teeth of all this, the specific appropriation in that bill was 
 afterwards stricken out. The money was, as in this, "given to the 
 States in their corporate capacity, to be vested by them in their public 
 expenditure;" and the bill, as it ought to have been, even on its 
 author's own reasoning, was then virtually vetoed by one of our fear- 
 less Presidents. General Jackson, in some respects u the noblest 
 Roman of them all" dared to stem the tide of popular delusion, and 
 
ON THE LAND DISTRIBUTION BILL. 199 
 
 coincided in the principle avowed by the father of the measure at the 
 commencement of that same year, when he (Mr. Clay) said, ' : I 
 know of no principle in the constitution w T hich authorizes the Federal 
 Government to become such a collector for the States/'' 
 
 Again, in 1836, the distribution was made of a surplus, and ono 
 accidental, not designed nor permanent. The excess was also not 
 given away, but loaned on deposite. It was expressly stipulated to be 
 returned whenever needed for the current expenditures of the General 
 Government. If it had been a gift, it is well known that the bill 
 w T ould never have been signed by the executive. Look, also, to anal- 
 ogies elsewhere. Did the State of New York, in 1837, give money 
 or property to her embarrassed citizens 1 No, sir. On the contrary, 
 it made a loan, both in form and substance. Even England, with her 
 omnipotent Parliament, has authorized only loans, on some occasions, 
 to aid her mercantile or manufacturing classes in great commercial 
 convulsions ; but seldom, if ever, resorted to a gift so lavish, wasteful, 
 and unconstitutional, as the present one. 
 
 The tendency of this measure, in another respect, goes to undermine 
 the strongest foundations of our present form of government. It 
 changes, in a most important particular, the whole relations between 
 the General Government and the States. The power of the former is 
 fearfully increased, by virtually conferring on it the whole taxing 
 authority for the whole Union, for local as well as general objects. 
 This power of taxation, whether by direct or indirect means, — by stamp 
 acts, internal duties, or excise, — is all to be concentrated here, and the 
 immense resources thus accumulated, as well as our present vast con- 
 trol over all foreign and general relations, to be wielded at discretion 
 by a great central consolidated monarchy. Yes, sir ; a practical mon- 
 archy, ere long, in such an event, is as inevitable as that the gentlest 
 gales may be swollen into tempests, and pestilence fester into death. 
 
 On the other hand, the States, once independent, sink into most 
 humiliating reliance for daily bread on their former servants. The 
 sovereigns become the slaves. Our whole system becomes metamor- 
 phosed, and the original attitudes and relations between the members 
 of the Union and the Union itself are virtually dissolved. This I 
 say, sir, from personal conviction ; and in this I am backed by the 
 fearless and inflexible freemen of the State I help to represent. At 
 the last session of her Legislature, the following, among other saga- 
 cious resolutions, was adopted : 
 
 "Resolved, That the distribution of the public revenue — whether it may have 
 accrued from the proceeds of the sales of the public lands, or otherwise — is without 
 sanction in the constitution, would be disastrous to the prosperity of the States, and 
 tend to destroy that due relation between the States and the Federal Government, 
 to preserve which should be the paramount object of legislation." 
 
 Not to be tedious on this, I pass to another consideration, which 
 shows the direct tendencies of this measure to produce what most of 
 
200 ON THE LAND DISTKIBUTION BILL. 
 
 us admit to be clearly unconstitutional. It is this. To the extent of 
 the amount distributed to the indebted States, the distribution is urged 
 on us, as it substantially is, a measure designed for their relief. Such 
 has been the reasoning of distinguished senators in this chamber, — " to 
 relieve the old States in embarrassment ;" and, as the executive 
 message says, to help u the debtor States" High-minded and honor- 
 able men will not countenance evasion, but look through the mere 
 surface — the varnish. What, then, is a measure so recommended, 
 and so passed, but, in substance, to the amount pledged to be given, an 
 assumption of State debts ? Why else, sir, does the gentleman from 
 Virginia appeal so eloquently to our sympathies in behalf of the 
 indebted States ? Why, sir, did the chief magistrate himself argue 
 in favor of the measure (under certain wise limitations, however, here- 
 after to be noticed), except that it would relieve the indebted States 
 from a resort to oppressive direct taxation ? 
 
 Why is the bill to be passed at all as a measure, among others, 
 demanding a hasty and extraordinary session, if not designed as a 
 relief to them, by furnishing the money to help to discharge the debts 
 under which they are represented to be now suffering so deeply? 
 Within two years we have solemnly resolved that the assumption of 
 State debts is not warranted by the constitution ; so has the President 
 decided in his message, at the opening of the present session. But if 
 we promise to furnish to those States in debt, because they are in 
 debt, and need relief, the money to help to pay a portion of their 
 liabilities, is not this a virtual assumption of their debts to that extent? 
 Will it not increase the value, in the market, of their bonds, to the 
 extent of that assumption ? Base, dishonorable, craven, would it be, 
 for us to attempt by indirection what we are ashamed to do directly. 
 Let the measure, then, stand or fall on its real character ; and, if I am 
 capable of understanding either facts or principles, the constitution is 
 in danger of being thus violated in a most essential particular. 
 
 To dwell no longer on considerations of this character, I shall pass 
 to others of a different bearing, after invoking the attention of the 
 Senate a moment to the oppressive departure of this distribution from 
 that equality and justice among the members of the Union, which are 
 the only effectual preservatives of either the constitution or the Union. 
 Thus it is manifestly a measure to aid the indebted States, rather than 
 the rest. Nay, more ; it is done, in some respects, at the expense of 
 those not indebted, as you tax all for the help of the former. The 
 prudence and economy of the latter are unjustly requited. They 
 neither need your distribution, nor can they willingly submit to high 
 taxation for the benefit of others. If they take your gifts, they will 
 prove like Indian gifts, for which you will exact, in return, much more 
 in amount. These miscalled donations cannot, by them, be often 
 employed in any beneficial manner, without a risk in beginning new 
 works or new speculations, that will involve them, like the deposites of 
 1887, in larger taxes and heavy losses. If divided per capita among 
 
ON THE LAND DISTRIBUTION BILL. 201 
 
 their citizens, which is perhaps the more just course, it will come like 
 money won by chance, or drawn in a lottery, and injure, as well as 
 corrupt, most of those connected in any way with its employment. It 
 will prove worse than the Georgia land lotteries, so strongly denounced 
 by others in this debate ; and, like the gift of Pandora's box, be fatal 
 with every evil, except delusive hope. Thirteen States — little 
 indebted, several of them not at all, and the whole not a million each 
 on an average — are, by this measure, to be oppressed and demoralized, 
 in order to carry this distribution into other States, — others, too, which 
 need only because they have been less frugal and provident. What 
 does this resemble but pillage and plunder, under the forms of law ? 
 This is not only impolitic and unwise, but it is unjust, immoral, and 
 destructive of every fraternal feeling between the different States. 
 
 It is partial, also, to the west, as contradistinguished from the 
 Atlantic, so as in a material respect to constitute another inequality 
 among members of the same Union, possessing equal rights ; because 
 a larger portion of imported articles from which the additional tax is 
 to be obtained is consumed on the seaboard. The articles being 
 cheaper to the latter than the former, are more used, and the latter 
 are by habit attached to their use. But no inequality would be 
 caused, if the distribution was not made, and each State was obliged to 
 supply its own wants, or pay its own debts, by its own system of taxa- 
 tion. The Western States obtain also ten per cent, more in money, 
 and half a million of acres more in land, than the Atlantic States ; 
 and thus another great apparent inequality is introduced. Whatever 
 increase of population may before another census occur, in the new 
 States, to justify this in some degree, it has not yet taken place ; and 
 it will happen, too, in some of the Atlantic States, such as New York 
 and Maine, as well as in the west. Yet the last States get neither 
 the ten per cent, nor the half-million acres of land ; though, on that 
 theory, they are equally and justly entitled to both. Again, this 
 measure discriminates most oppressively against and in favor of par- 
 ticular classes. Against consumers, who lose in all ways by it. For 
 manufacturers, who gain on almost everything. The rich, also, are 
 relieved from the direct taxes of the States, which would otherwise 
 fall chiefly on their property for this three or four millions ; and the 
 burden is transferred, or flung in a great measure on the middling 
 and lower classes, the agriculturists and mechanics, who, with their 
 families, will be obliged to pay quite as much, under the proposed 
 tariff, as the most opulent. 
 
 It is thus made more onerous to the masses, whose wants, on the 
 contrary, most need relief, and a neglect of whom brought the Bour- 
 bons to the guillotine. It will tend to excite retaliation abroad by 
 higher duties on foreign products, and thus derange capital at home, 
 circumscribe commerce, and depress some branches of industry. It 
 may alienate whole sections of the Union, as it revives the heart- 
 burnings and jealousies that preceded the last tariff compromise. It 
 
202 ON THE LAND DISTRIBUTION BILL. 
 
 is not like a national bank, nor an ordinary bad law, such as the 
 sedition act, which operates but on a few, or temporarily. It rather 
 poisons the whole fabric of society, and, it is feared, ineradicably. It 
 is like the taste of that forbidden fruit by our first parents, which 
 brought in death and sin, with all our woes, and diffused the taint of 
 depravity through the whole of their erring race. 
 
 Beware, then, sir, lest the first step in this distribution be not the 
 last one, — the fatal step to the preservation of the constitution, and 
 the peace, as well as perpetuity, of the Union ! 
 
 A few minutes more, sir, on the other tendencies of this measure, 
 independent of the constitution. 
 
 Why have I before called it exceedingly impolitic? Because it is a 
 measure that, under the existing condition of the treasury, will require 
 us first to collect back in taxes every dollar distributed from the public 
 lands. This is amply enough to stamp the measure as idle ; and, if 
 intended to operate equally, as useless. But this is not all. We are 
 next compelled to collect the same amount, by resorting to high duties ; 
 and thus greatly increasing the expenses of collection, in order to 
 guard, by more officers and cutters, against smuggling. This will 
 obviate all the usual difference, dwelt on by the senator from Virginia 
 (Mr. Archer), in favor of the greater cheapness that sometimes exists 
 in collecting indirect, rather than direct taxes. That senator has, 
 however, entirely overlooked one or two other large additions to the 
 burdens imposed, over and above the amount of the gift. There is 
 the new and extra cost, and risk, and delay, of paying over and trans- 
 ferring this money to the States. There is a higher price paid for the 
 domestic manufacture, whenever its rival from abroad is taxed, and is 
 almost equal to that tax. There is a higher price also for the profits 
 of the different dealers, on the increased cost of the article, by means of 
 the duties. 
 
 There is an augmented burden, as before explained, flung unjustly 
 and impoliticly on the agriculturist, to aid indirectly the manufac- 
 turer ; and on the middling and less wealthy classes, to aid the rich. 
 This is a burden from which, under a tariff on necessaries, the former 
 cannot escape, as the senator before me (Mr. Archer) has hastily 
 supposed, unless they flee from civilization to more than savage life. 
 
 Under most tariffs, when judicious, luxuries alone are taxed high, 
 and the necessaries of life are left either low or entirely free. Then 
 his theory would be plausible, that the tax would fall on income more 
 than capital, and would be usually voluntary, and would be mostly 
 avoided by not consuming luxuries. But here, sir, you propose to 
 tax almost every necessary quite as high as the most useless luxury ; 
 and he that would avoid the tax can hardly escape it, either by dying 
 or living. It infests everything and everybody. Let one return to 
 the use of mere bread and water : even the water he must drink from 
 a gourd, or pay a tax on his pitcher and tumbler ; and as to his bread, 
 — the grain must be pulled, and not reaped with a taxed sickle, — 
 
ON THE LAND DISTRIBUTION BILL. 203 
 
 must be eaten without salt, molasses or sugar, — for they are all taxed 
 as high as the most costly wines and splendid jewelry. More, sir: he 
 must wear skins, as both cottons and woollens will pay a large duty. 
 [" Coon-skins," said Mr. Sevier.] Yes, whig " coon-skins and 
 gourds." He cannot venture even on an Indian blanket, it is taxed 
 so enormously ; much more, buy a taxed Indian kettle, or use even a 
 trap, knife or rifle, like the poorest savage, — for they are all burdened 
 to help pay for this execrable distribution. He must, in truth, rebar- 
 barize, and become more helpless and degraded than the meanest 
 savage, in order to realize the senator's fancy sketch of a free, inde- 
 pendent and prosperous American, avoiding the beautiful and benefi- 
 cent operation of his favorite tariff system, by not using taxed 
 articles. What a blessing and exemption it must prove to the Virginia 
 planter, as well as the farmer of the east ! Does not the gentleman see, 
 that, in the great use of foreign iron, neither of them can turn a furrow, 
 without a tax on their plough and chains ; neither weed their corn, but 
 with taxed hoes; nor load nor spread their manure, without taxed 
 shovels; nor reap, nor mow, nor grind their grain, without being 
 taxed in all possible ways 1 Not even a horse-shoe nor a knife can 
 escape. 
 
 These illustrations might be followed out much further, to show the 
 crying impolicy of either keeping high taxes on some necessaries or 
 raising them on others, so as to enable us to give away the proceeds 
 of the public lands. But I hasten over them, to glance a minute at 
 another striking evidence of its impolicy. The compromise of 1833 
 pacified great interests, and should be sacred. This act violates the 
 spirit of that compromise in several essential particulars. It first 
 requires an increase of the tariff on free articles, to take effect before 
 1842, when, if the lands are retained, it would not be necessary on 
 those articles, either at all, or certainly not till the periods indicated in 
 the act of 1833. It next requires an increase of duties, under this 
 distribution, and on account of it, which would not be necessary for 
 revenue, without so wasteful a gift. Now, an augmentation of revenue 
 for this gift, and not "for an economical administration of the govern- 
 ment," which is the express limitation of the compromise, is as much 
 a violation of the spirit of the compromise as it would be to raise the 
 tariff above twenty per cent. It is likely, also, that, ere long, the tariff 
 must and will be raised on some articles above twenty per cent., and 
 the restrictive clause against stopping the distribution be then repealed, 
 or evaded by an improper resort to more loans in peace. Because, 
 without a great change in policy and prospects, it can hardly be pos- 
 sible to meet the increasing expenses of the government, unless heavier 
 taxes, or a retention of the income of the public lands, takes place. If, 
 to escape it, we plunge into a larger debt in time of peace, and build 
 up unnecessarily a class of dronish fundholders, the impolicy of the 
 distribution will be no less manifest. 
 
 So, whether we halt in taxes at twenty per cent, and resort to loans. 
 
204 ON THE LAND DISTRIBUTION BILL. 
 
 or go higher and not resort to them, the design of the compromise is 
 violated, and this measure becomes very impolitic. Forcing us up 
 even to twenty per cent., to give away, is outrageous. Why, sir, a 
 twenty per cent, tax, and that on necessaries, is double the odious 
 tithe tax of church and state, from which we so often boast an exemp- 
 tion in this land of republican liberty ; so a twenty per cent, tax on 
 tea is double the British tax of three cents a pound on tea, which 
 helped so powerfully, by its oppression, to drive our fathers into 
 rebellion. 
 
 Proceed, then, if you will, in this ruinous career. Break through, 
 then, as you will and must at this or the next session, the sacred 
 compromise. Borrow largely, or go up to twenty-five or thirty per 
 cent., as is probable, in taxes, not to meet necessary expenses, but lav- 
 ish ones, and to enable us to make this fatal gift. Destroy your 
 pledged, recorded faith with the south. Arouse again, as in 1831 
 and '2, brother against brother, State against State. Cast once more 
 an apple of discord, — a firebrand into every region of our happy 
 Union. Prepare to blot the glorious star of State after State from 
 the constellation of the Union. But reconsider, I beseech you, all the 
 direful consequences, before you strike the first blow. 
 
 I pass by more of its impolicy on other accounts, to add that, in the 
 present juncture, the distribution is peculiarly ill-timed, as well as 
 impolitic. Have you not heard, sir, from your own friends, till we 
 are almost deaf, that the General Government is, at this moment, 
 almost insolvent, — that its debts are large, and that they, as well as 
 its expenses, are fearfully increasing ? And is this a time to part 
 with all our permanent and valuable income ? Is this a time for a 
 self-styled republican to seem to sneer like some senators at economy '? 
 To give away our great means, not only of making preparation, but 
 of furnishing security for necessary loans ? 
 
 Why, sir, such a spendthrift course in an individual, as to his pri- 
 vate affairs, would subject him, in New England, to be placed under 
 guardianship ; and, in the South, I apprehend that he would hardly be 
 saved from the insane hospital. We must tear off the mask, or be lost. 
 
 There is a deeper question still, as to the time. Are our forts not 
 said to be dilapidated, and some of them occupied only by bats and 
 owls? Is our navy not represented as rotting down? our naval 
 steam-batteries few and inefficient '? and an enemy almost thundering 
 at the gates of the capitol 1 
 
 Never, no, never, sir, can it be wise, in such an emergency, with 
 such evil portents in every quarter, to strip ourselves naked and 
 defenceless, before a bold, enterprising, and bitter foe. Under a form 
 of government the most difficult in the world to prepare seasonably 
 for war, we deliberately remove from it the means already possessed 
 for such wise preparation. We refuse the wise motion of the senator 
 on my right (Mr. Linn), to dedicate these lands to that impending 
 
ON THE LAND DISTRIBUTION BILL. 205 
 
 necessity ; and we do it, as he eloquently described, when surrounded 
 with dangers on all sides, of almost every degree of horror. 
 
 The burning of the Caroline, and the murder of our citizens, are 
 still in controversy ; the north-eastern boundary unsettled, and hang- 
 ing like a dark cloud over that frontier ; the mouth of the Oregon per- 
 haps to be fought for ; the confiscation of our slaves in the Bermudas 
 persisted in ; our peaceful merchantmen seized, and, with deep humil- 
 iation to us, searched on the coast of Africa ; Indian massacre menaced 
 on the western frontier, and a servile insurrection meditated by Brit- 
 ish fanaticism in the fair savannas of the south. Yet this is the 
 crisis seized on, not only to give away large resources, but to give 
 them for the avowed purpose of being paid over to our haughty ene- 
 mies. Let the States themselves faithfully perform their obligations, 
 as they doubtless will, in time, to all, — even to England. But let not 
 us, who are under no contract to advance this money, give it away 
 virtually to strengthen our foes, — we, who owe her nothing, except 
 reprisals or punishment. It has long been quoted as an illustration of 
 Dutch cupidity, that gunpowder was, for gain, allowed to be sold during 
 war to their enemies. But in this we evince the still greater stupidity 
 of virtually giving gunpowder to our enemies. We furnish, too, by 
 this distribution, at this ill-timed and ill-starred moment, under a con- 
 dition to be suspended when actual war happens, a sort of pledge to 
 our enemies, that, however much we are encroached on, however 
 insulted, however dishonored, peace is not likely to be interrupted by 
 the States or the people, as in that event the distribution will be 
 recalled. What a degrading policy ! How derogatory the tendency ! 
 What a moral for history ! 
 
 But, with these proceeds wisely devoted to preparation in peace for 
 defence in war, an inland frontier of five thousand miles in extent can 
 be strengthened at the most exposed points, and armed freemen pro- 
 tect the rest with their bayonets. A sea-coast of two thousand miles 
 can be, in time, studded with forts and batteries, and our populous marts 
 of commerce, instead of being naked to the assaults of invaders stim- 
 ulated by the prospect of booty and beauty, will be skilfully pro- 
 tected from conflagration and pillage. 
 
 One remaining view of the whole subject, and I close. 
 
 All the brilliant expectations now formed of this distribution are 
 proved to be delusive. The whole history and character of the meas- 
 ure show that it has changed within the last fifteen years, so as now to 
 be vitally different from what it was at first. Those individuals, 
 therefore, who formerly approved, could now consistently oppose dis- 
 tribution. Those States, likewise, who have formed expectations of 
 advantage under different circumstances, and then desired the distri- 
 bution, might now properly resist it, as an eventual injury. There has 
 been inattention, in some quarters, to these essential differences. Oth- 
 ers have looked only to the dazzling lustre of a large gift, without 
 considering that, in the present exigency, it is a deluding appearance 
 18 
 
206 ON THE LAND DISTRIBUTION BILL. 
 
 of generosity, without being really beneficial to either the General 
 Government, the States as a whole, or the people at large. This can 
 be shown to a certainty almost equalling mathematical demonstration. 
 Analyze the matter a moment. Most assuredly the General Govern- 
 ment can gain nothing by the operation finally, but a character for 
 stupidity in relinquishing, when much needed, a certain and large 
 source of income, and the odium of resorting to higher taxes instead 
 of it. It introduces, also, into the finances, when deranged by a 
 repeal of the sub-treasury and a new system of large loans, an ele- 
 ment of disturbance novel and wide-spread, — a hazardous transfer of 
 three millions of distribution into the different States, however remote 
 from the usual channels of commerce. How much this, like the dis- 
 tribution in 1837, may help to injure the banking institutions and 
 derange the exchanges, time only can determine. 
 
 Politically, the General Government becomes still more unfavorably 
 affected, by acting in the menial character of a tax-collector for others. 
 And, however its power may be thus fearfully enlarged, and in time 
 abused, it loses much dignity, — it ceases to be respected, though 
 dreaded, and exchanges tranquillity, as well as esteem, for the miseries 
 which must eventually come of anarchy, disunion, or tyranny. 
 
 In regard to the States, taken together, if the distribution be equal, 
 and only a like sum is to be returned to us in new taxes, they can 
 gain nothing ; if it be unequal, as it is, we have treated some with 
 gross partiality, and some with wicked injustice. So much for its fis- 
 cal effect on them generally. But, if a larger sum is to be returned, or 
 rather collected from their inhabitants, in consequence of this distribu- 
 tion, as has been before demonstrated to be the case, then an actual 
 monied loss is inflicted on the States as a whole. All the States, 
 too, must lose in relative power with the General Government politi- 
 cally ; all must feel humiliated by receiving a sort of alms, and all 
 must, in time, sink from proud sovereignties into little more than 
 dependent provinces, or tributary counties. But it may be asked, do 
 not even the indebted States gain something 1 Not a dollar, if the 
 distribution is equal, because they receive no larger a proportion of 
 the proceeds of the lands than the States not indebted, and, as for- 
 merly explained, they must have collected from them, under the tariff, 
 if equal, even a larger amount than the sum received. How can it, 
 then, be accounted for that these indebted States are anxious for the 
 measure? I answer, because the tax will hereafter be collected to 
 that amount by the General Government, rather than by the States ; 
 that is the whole advantage. While, to counterbalance it, more is 
 obliged to be collected from their citizens ; and just offence is given to 
 the States not indebted, that they are to be taxed higher when not in 
 debt themselves, nor wanting the proceeds themselves, but fleeced as 
 they are for the accommodation of other States, more improvident, 
 wasteful, and, in a fiscal view, less deserving. Even the others have 
 often been deceived into resolutions and approvals favorable to a dis- 
 
ON THE LAND DISTRIBUTION BILL. 207 
 
 tribution, under the false notion that there is a spare surplus, and that 
 taxes need not be raised higher in consequence of the gift, and that 
 the amount received will be a vast relief to them in the discharge of 
 their indebtedness. The fallacy of these expectations has already been 
 made manifest, except the last, which, if possible, will appear, on 
 examination, more utterly groundless and delusive than the others. 
 In fact, the indebted States do not procure a dollar more towards pay- 
 ing their debts than is raised by the tariff from their own citizens, nor 
 indeed so much. Again, the whole sum obtained by this arrangement 
 is a mere drop in the bucket to help the indebted States to meet their 
 obligations. Thus, for example, half of the twenty-six States owe the 
 whole debt, except about thirteen millions 01* dollars. The sum they 
 all owe at this time cannot fall much short of two hundred millions, 
 of which this three millions' gift, if all going to that purpose, would 
 pay about one-seventieth only of the principal, leaving sixty -nine parts 
 of it, out of seventy, still to be raised by the States themselves, under 
 their own taxation. What impotent relief! What a mockery to 
 those who have been flattered with the false hopes that this distribu- 
 tion was alone to save them from insolvency, and extinguish the whole, 
 or nearly the whole, of their imprudent liabilities ! Shame on such 
 delusions ! Not to dwell too long in details, I pass by many connected 
 with this topic, to say that the single case of Pennsylvania may illus- 
 trate most fully the inefficiency of this distribution to extricate from 
 difficulty that class of States. 
 
 [Here Mr. Clay, of Kentucky, asked, across the Senate-chamber, 
 What will, you do with North Carolina, who owes nothing ? Mr. W. 
 replied, If the gentleman will have patience a moment longer, I will 
 show that the States not indebted are worse treated, and will fare 
 worse, than those which are indebted.] 
 
 Pennsylvania owes near forty millions. Her annual interest cannot 
 be much, if any, less than two millions. Her share in the distribution, 
 at $10,000 for each electoral vote, will be about $300,000. This 
 would pay so little of the principal as to leave undischarged $39,700,- 
 000, and, what is a more just view, would leave, of the interest alone, 
 to be still raised from taxation and her other resources, $1,700,000 
 yearly, without extinguishing then a single dollar of the immense 
 forty million principal. This is a sample of the whole. I know, sir, 
 that this great Keystone State in politics is also able to develop her 
 immense resources, and discharge punctually and honorably all her 
 obligations. I entertain as little doubt that she is willing to do it, — 
 is doing it, and will prove successful, — even the Keystone in her 
 financial energies, as well as in her politics. But it is demonstrable 
 that, to accomplish it, she must put her own shoulder to the wheel, and 
 never rely on this deluding, paltry, derogatory, beggarly, false char- 
 ity of the distribution. If the value of State stocks should be raised 
 by it, the gain would be to the holder, — often a speculator and for- 
 eigner, — and not to the States, unless they sell more, which is to be 
 
208 ON THE LAND DISTRIBUTION BILL. 
 
 deprecated and prevented, rather than encouraged. Now, sir, a moment 
 to the States not indebted, including North Carolina, and a reply to 
 the question of the senator from Kentucky. Several of that class, five 
 or six in number, owe nothing, and some so little that the thirteen 
 together are, as before remarked, indebted but thirteen millions in the 
 aggregate. They throw one hundred and six electoral votes, and 
 hence would receive over a million, or one-third of the whole distribu- 
 tion. Is this a blessing, or a curse in disguise, even to them ? First, 
 they receive it when not needed to pay principal or interest of their 
 debts ; next, they receive it when not wanted for works of internal 
 improvement, or colonization, or even education. Their other resources 
 for these purposes are ample, — or they have no roads or canals to 
 make which would be profitable, or not involve them in further and 
 ruinous expenditure, and many have no blacks to colonize. 
 
 Furthermore, if they had all those things to be done, they could 
 more economically, by their State system of taxation, collect this very 
 million of dollars, than have it collected from them as it is now to be 
 by the General Government, with costs, commissions, interest, and 
 other additions ; and then only the naked sum handed back as a dis- 
 tribution — a gift and a blessing — which they themselves have been 
 obliged to contribute from the sweat of their own brows. 
 
 This, then, is the subtle Greek gift, to be feared most by them. 
 This your relief — your whig relief ! The generous dealing with the 
 States not indebted is, to give them not a single dollar but what is 
 extracted from them again in taxes ; in most cases, to collect even 
 more ; to subject many of them to this taxation, when they do not 
 need the proceeds of it ; to force them often into wasteful extrava- 
 gance with it, and cause still further taxation to meet that ; or, if 
 loaned out for profit, to become brokers, and lend it to large corpora- 
 tions ; or, if distributed per capita, to promote dissipation and waste 
 in those receiving it, as if it was some gambling lottery, or other 
 chance windfall, which is usually most pernicious and immoral in its 
 operation. But there are, sir, back of all these, some considerations 
 affecting injuriously both the indebted and non-indebted States. By 
 changing the system of taxation from one chiefly direct to one indirect, 
 and by throwing the collection of it to a distance on the General Gov- 
 ernment, instead of bringing it home by State officers to their own 
 doors, openly " eating up their substance," the States, in appearance, 
 feel the tax less, while their citizens, in truth, pay more. The States 
 are tempted, not only, in fact, to increase the public burdens in this 
 way, but to embark in additional enterprises, larger expenditures, and 
 to conduct their whole finances in a more profuse and even prodigal 
 manner. Beside this, and over all this, a greater portion of the tax 
 is thus wrung from the consuming States, that do not manufacture, 
 and a greater benefit conferred on other States, that do. 
 
 In every way, then, as regards the States in their separate State 
 capacities, the distribution is a delusion to all, unequal and unjust to 
 
ON THE LAND DISTRIBUTION BILL. 209 
 
 many, really beneficial to none ; and, fiscally, as well as politically, 
 to the whole, most pernicious in its tendencies. 
 
 But when we turn a moment to the people as individuals, and 
 without reference to their governments, whether State or Federal, the 
 operation of this measure is oppressive in the extreme. 
 
 Beside its general tendency to relieve property or capital from tax- 
 ation, as admitted by the senator before me (Mr. Archer), and thus 
 to relieve the rich who own it, and who least need relief as a class, — 
 beside its temptation to make more expenditure and debt, which aid 
 the same class, and to assist the foreign and domestic fundholder, who 
 often bought in on speculation, and undeservedly has got a new secu- 
 rity to the small extent of the amount paid over by us to the indebted 
 States (and who are, in truth, the only persons aided by it, except 
 jobbers in politics, as well as in stocks), — the change which it forces in 
 the tariff operates on a vast majority of the community with a most 
 destructive partiality. 
 
 Thus, — for a single example, which will come home in its details to 
 the business and bosoms of all, — in consequence of giving away, by 
 this distribution, three millions of the proceeds of the public lands, it 
 is proposed to reduce the duties on no necessaries of life, but, among 
 other things, to raise them twenty per cent, on tea and coffee. 
 
 Now, sir, this last will yield, on our average consumption, only about 
 two millions, and not, as misapprehended by many, nearly three mil- 
 lions. The duties on salt and molasses are now about one and a half 
 millions, and in 1842, when at twenty per cent., will not much, if any, 
 exceed one million. Hence it follows, that both salt and molasses 
 might be made free, and coffee and tea left free, if we did not give away 
 this three millions, and, in consequence of it, require the high tax of 
 twenty per cent, to be retained on salt and molasses, and as high an 
 one to be imposed anew on tea and coffee. Hence, sir, you see the 
 first bitter fruits to the middling and poorer classes over the whole 
 country of this boasted benevolent distribution, — a tax on four of their 
 greatest necessaries, quite three millions in amount, which might oth- 
 erwise be entirely free. 
 
 But this is not the worst feature in the oppression thus caused to 
 the farming interest, mechanics with small estates, and last, though 
 not least, to the mere laboring classes of every kind of workmen. 
 They, all together, constitute much of the bone and muscle of the 
 community ; and not only the physical power, but much of the sound 
 intellect, the useful intelligence, the soul, the morals, the industry, and 
 life-blood of society. It becomes, virtually, an abhorrent poll-tax on 
 these classes for a large portion of this unnecessary burthen. This is 
 not a popular tirade. To prove by facts, and to see ourselves how 
 they are treated by this change in the system of collecting three mil- 
 lions by the tariff instead of the States, — a change so much lauded 
 by the senator from Virginia, — let us examine a single computation. 
 Take my own State, and which, in this respect, may be a fair sample, 
 18* 
 
210 ON THE LAND DISTRIBUTION BILL. 
 
 not only for the interior of the east, but of the whole Union. The pop- 
 ulation of New Hampshire is a little less than 300,000, paying a 
 State, county, pauper, and school tax, of not over $300,000, or a 
 dollar per head. Of this, a small farmer, with a family of five chil- 
 dren, making seven, — the average number of a family, — would not 
 generally pay over five dollars ; because our system, as that of other 
 States, is to collect taxes chiefly from capital, valuable houses and 
 lands, from stock in trade, money at interest, bank-shares, horses, &c. 
 In tins condition of things the distribution is made, and New Hamp- 
 shire, with her present electoral vote, would receive $70,000. If this 
 amount was then to be supplied, as it must be, by taxes, and those 
 collected under our State system, rather than by the proposed resort 
 to the tariff, the farmer and his family of seven would pay only $1.16 
 more. But, by an increased duty of twenty per cent, on tea and coffee 
 alone, which equals only two millions, and hence would, or should, to 
 be equal, impose on New Hampshire only two-thirds of the $70,000, 
 he has to pay about $1.77 instead of $1.16, being an addition, or loss 
 to each farmer, of more than fifty per cent. Thus, on a pound and a 
 half of tea, — the average consumption per head, — it is nine cents, which, 
 for seven persons, is sixty-three cents. On six pounds of coffee per 
 head, at two cents a pound, is twelve cents ; and for seven persons, 
 eighty-four. These alone make $1.47. Add to these the assessment 
 above twenty per cent, for home valuation, the increased price for 
 cash duties, and the profits of the intermediate dealers on those, and 
 the duty, and they constitute, on the whole, a higher charge yearly to 
 each farmer, by at least thirty cents more. This would make $1.77 
 paid to raise only two-thirds the amount, instead of $1.16, paid under 
 a State tax, to raise the whole. Thus it is manifest that he pays in 
 tins way sixty-one cents more on these articles alone, or above fifty 
 per cent, more, than he would under the State taxes ; and, beside all 
 this, is continued to be subjected to twenty per cent, taxes on all his 
 salt and molasses, that might otherwise be free. 
 
 But take the class of laborers and artisans, who pay merely a poll tax, 
 or that and a cow or small house and garden, which might make their 
 whole State taxation, with a family of seven, not exceed a dollar or a 
 dollar and a quarter. This class drink as much coffee and tea, usually, 
 as the farmer himself, and their additional tax on them would be near 
 $1.77, while the increase of the State tax, to raise a like sum, would 
 not be over twenty-five or thirty cents ; making a discrimination against 
 that whole class of equal to six or seven hundred per cent., and making 
 them use taxed salt and taxed molasses, daily and hourly taxed neces- 
 saries, instead of free ones. 
 
 These two great classes of people, thus oppressed by such a system, 
 constitute more than one-half of the population of most of the States ; 
 and, while we both lower and raise the tariff, to benefit wealthy cap- 
 italists engaged in manufactures, — not one to ten so numerous as agri- 
 culturists, — while we change the system of taxation avowedly to relieve 
 
ON THE LAND DISTRIBUTION BILL. 211 
 
 property and the rich, we do this at the expense of the more neces- 
 sitous, and of the great masses. Thus we utterly neglect the greatest 
 good of the greatest number. The extent of the inequality and out- 
 rage can hardly be comprehended, sir, till you consider, that if only 
 half of the population of the United States consist of these classes, 
 and if they suffer by this unjust discrimination only three-fourths of 
 a dollar to each family of seven, it must be a loss yearly to them of 
 nearly a million of dollars. 
 
 What a wretched cheat, as well as rank oppression, must the whole 
 measure, then, prove to be in practice to the people at large ! In this 
 age of the schoolmaster abroad, and the great power of the press, do 
 you expect them to be blind as well as deaf, and senseless to such 
 injustice 1 "No, sir. An act like this may be passed under impulses, 
 — it may answer a temporary end, if adopted, to advance the interests 
 of unscrupulous demagogues, and political jobbers as well as stockjob- 
 bers. But surely it will deprave, degrade, and defraud, all connected 
 with the miserable delusion. Surely, the sound statesman, as well as 
 the virtuous yeomanry of the country, will, when fully possessed of 
 all the facts and principles adverse to its adoption, lament and depre- 
 cate a measure so pregnant with evil. 
 
 I may have failed to collect and present the most important of those 
 facts and principles, so as now to produce such a conviction. Certainly 
 I have not such confidence in my success as to anticipate a rejection 
 of this bill, unless gentlemen opposite will condescend to examine fur- 
 ther for themselves, and postpone a final decision till they can coolly 
 and conscientiously revise previous impressions. If they, however, will 
 neither delay the measure nor reject it, I am not without some faint 
 hope that it may never become a law of the land. There is another 
 high tribunal under the constitution whose ordeal it must pass. From 
 the past scenes of this session, where the President, under a fearful 
 responsibility, has exhibited the lofty moral sublimity of preferring 
 duty to party, and has, by his example, recalled to memory some of 
 the best days of either modern or ancient republics, I expect at least 
 a full and fair consideration of the measure. I neither ask nor wish 
 from the President any sacrifices of principle on this or any other 
 measure. But I do trust that he will consider the substance more 
 than the form of the present act ; and if, as a senator, he voted 
 against the similar bill of 1832, at a time when there was a surplus 
 existing, or anticipated, rather than, as now, a deficiency and a resort 
 to additional taxes rendered indispensable, and at a time when it was 
 admitted by friends of the measure that a bill in this form, and under 
 present circumstances, would be without constitutional sanction, he 
 must now, as President, certainly hesitate, if looking to consistency, 
 as well as constitutional duty. 
 
 He must see, also, great doubts in collecting money by one ratio 
 under the constitution, and in distributing it by another, and in con- 
 forming neither to the idea of a debt or trust due to the States, nor to 
 
212 
 
 NATIONAL FINANCES. 
 
 any rule of specific appropriation of this money as a gift or grant, but 
 rather make it to aid in the discharge or assumption of State debts, or 
 some other objects which cannot, by possibility, come within any fair 
 constitutional power over these delicate and highly responsible mat- 
 ters. 
 
 But no more of this. If all here fails, there is still another power, 
 — another tribunal, above either Senates or Presidents, — which I trust 
 in God will set everything right. This bill cannot go into actual operation 
 till next year. In the mean time, and before the leprosy of corruption 
 can penetrate and taint the body politic, the people may get light more 
 full and unclouded. The blue sky of hope is gleaming out in various 
 quarters. Let discussion and examination, reason and justice, a sense 
 of equal rights among all the members of the Union and all classes 
 of the community, be roused and electrify the whole. Then repeal 
 will be invoked in a voice wide, deep, and irresistible. No difficulty 
 in the way can arise, as to vested rights or violated compacts. The 
 whole matter is public in its origin, public in its progress, public in its 
 ends. 
 
 Let the great conservative power in our system, then, be honestly 
 and faithfully appealed to, and a repeal will, in my apprehension, 
 become as certain by the fiat of the people, as are the movements of 
 that omnipotent Providence, which controls not only the planetary 
 system, but all human designs. 
 
 NATIONAL FINANCES.* 
 
 All admit that this is an alarming exigency in our financial affairs. 
 The bill on your table, as well as the proposed amendment to it, both 
 look to the dire necessity of borrowing something, not only in a period 
 of profound peace, but at a moment when our credit has suddenly 
 become much depreciated ; friends and foes must, therefore, be anxious 
 to effect a loan on the best terms which are practicable. As a gen- 
 eral rule, the loan should be small in amount as possible ; and the best 
 terms would certainly be the lowest rate of interest, and the shortest 
 period, which are obtainable in so critical a position. We can hardly 
 appreciate the change in that position, and its present deplorable char- 
 
 * A speech on the Loan Bill; delivered in the United States Senate, April 9, 1842. 
 
NATIONAL FINANCES. 213 
 
 acter, unless we advert to our situation one short year ago, with no 
 permanent debt of our own, with a small temporary one of only five 
 or six millions, and that above or at par, with a reduced and reducing 
 expenditure, with a revenue from lands and customs ample, under 
 slight revisions in the latter, to meet such an expenditure, and extin- 
 guish the whole debt, and with a national credit untarnished, unde- 
 preciated, and unsuspected. If, more in sorrow than in anger or in 
 party reproach, we contrast that lofty position with what now stares 
 us in the face, — a hideous mass of large permanent debt, and a still 
 larger temporary one, — greatly increased expenditures, depreciated 
 stocks, and protest on protest for non-payment of ordinary demands, 
 as well as temporary loans, — our hearts must recoil at the sight. 
 When we look further, and see the whole land revenue squandered, 
 and an impossibility of getting onward in such a ruinous career with- 
 out further disgrace, further acts of bankruptcy, or further loans at 
 rank usury, it all admonishes us solemnly that something wrong must 
 have produced such disasters, and that something new and efficient 
 must be adopted to remove them. Let us examine the subject, then, 
 in a manner which an emergency so calamitous demands, rising, for 
 once, above party or the mere politics of the day, and forgetting every- 
 thing but what is required of us as statesmen, patriots, and senators. 
 I shall, therefore, forbear to criminate or recriminate ; and, in such a 
 condition of peril to the country and its high character, I will devote 
 my whole efforts to discover the best mode of relief, through a loan, 
 which appears to comport with public honor and public safety, and 
 which, at the same time, bids fair to be crowned with success. 
 
 Hence, I am willing to overlook every consideration of form in this 
 bill, and every subordinate objection, if only the main features of it 
 can be made such as are most likely to insure a creditable escape 
 from present ignominy. I say nothing, then, as to the extension of 
 the time for a year or two within which the loan must be made, if 
 made at all. Nor will I be captious concerning the amount which the 
 executive is authorized to borrow, though in one view it is much too 
 large, and in another it is not large enough, by several millions, to 
 carry out the policy now in force. Nor will I dwell on the better 
 reasons which exist for a monthly publication of what is done under 
 this bill, as in the case of all our treasury note bills, rather than a 
 report of it to Congress hereafter, which, of course, could call for it 
 without this provision. Nor am I tenacious as to the form of advertising 
 and of accepting offers, though, in some respects, exceptionable. Nor 
 will I stop to expose the great danger of issuing certificates virtually 
 to bearer, and also in sums as small as fifty dollars, or fifty cents, and 
 thus open the door to infinite difficulties or frauds, and forgeries, in 
 respect to the payment of interest, and create a paper circulation not 
 redeemable at all for twenty years, and for discharging which not 
 even the one dollar of specie to three of paper is required to be kept, 
 which the original exchequer project provided for. 
 
214 NATIONAL FINANCES. 
 
 Nor will I, on this occasion, so pressing and momentous, indulge 
 even in reply, at any length, to many party strictures, made in 
 the course of this debate, by senators on the other side. They have 
 been such as to swell the real expenses of the last administration to 
 thirty-five millions, on an average, yearly, when all who examine with 
 care know and admit them to have been but twenty-seven and a frac- 
 tion ; — such as taunting us with the Florida war, when our opponents 
 engaged to end it in a single month, but have not yet finished it, 
 though more than a year has elapsed; and such as asking for the mon- 
 uments over the country of our expenses, and declaring that none exist, 
 when all the civil, foreign, judicial, legislative, military and naval 
 operations of the country, have been promptly sustained ; immense 
 removals of Indians made, to give place to Christian civilization ; large 
 pension payments continued to the survivors of the Revolution ; 
 numerous public buildings erected ; arsenals, armories, barracks and 
 forts built; roads extended, rivers and harbors in many cases improved, 
 and peace maintained, in a most perilous crisis, on both our northern 
 and north-eastern, as well as south-western frontiers. 
 
 I pass by much more, because my great anxiety is to discuss only 
 the leading principles involved in the amendment to the bill, and in the 
 bill itself. 
 
 What, then, has led to the necessity for a further loan bill, in any 
 form ? For tins is virtually the third one asked within the last eight 
 months. The answer to this will, in some degree, explain the pro- 
 priety of the amendment, and the best mode of effecting whatever loan 
 is necessary. 
 
 This bill is wanted, first, for the residue of the twelve million loan 
 authorized in July last, because that loan, to the amount of nearly six 
 millions, had utterly failed, even before this session commenced. But 
 the act of July permitted six per cent, interest to be given, if no lower 
 terms could be obtained ; it run for only three years, which time, the 
 chairman of the committee (Mr. Evans) has argued, would now 
 insure better terms in the market than a longer one. It pledged the 
 faith, before unsullied, of the whole Union, for the prompt payment of 
 both its interest and principal. It had for aid, beside, the overwhelm- 
 ing popularity of a new administration ; the whole financial talent of 
 its numerous experienced friends ; the boasted superior tact which was 
 to be evinced in managing our magnificent resources ; — yet, in less 
 than four months, it utterly failed, and the treasury soon after became 
 protested, the national faith violated, and the stock is now selling at the 
 discredited discount of ninety-five in the hundred. This, as the stock 
 is redeemable in two or three years, is a rate of interest near eight per 
 cent., being the only instance before of such depreciation in our credit 
 in time of peace, since the government went fully into operation, except 
 in the deplorable era of the administration of the elder Adams. 
 
 Let my friend near me, then (Mr. Archer), when he reflects on 
 these facts, not flatter himself longer that the proposed loan, as the 
 
NATIONAL FINANCES. 215 
 
 bill now stands, can be obtained at par. Let not him, or others, dream, 
 in such a prostration of our credit, that the greatness of the nation, 
 its numerous population, its immense wealth, its past glory, will 
 insure success, without further special pledges for security, or addi- 
 tional revenues from lands, or taxation of some kind. No, sir. All 
 the former, and more than these, existed under the bill of July ; and 
 yet, — wretched delusion and disappointment ! — the loan has not been 
 effected, and our national faith has received the widest, deepest, dark- 
 est stain which ever branded it with degradation and dishonor. In 
 short, the government stands before Europe, as well as America, both 
 a bankrupt and defaulter. Let us look at these astounding facts, and at 
 other recent experience in the Union, and not delude ourselves or the 
 country with abstract reasoning about the extent of our resources, 
 with eloquent eulogies on national grandeur, and patriotic hopes of 
 relief from mere empty promises. Hard will it be for these, when 
 already so faithless, to accomplish what our own senses and memory 
 disprove, and what the history of all nations evinces must, in such 
 emergencies in peace, be derived either from increased means or dimin- 
 ished wants, and perhaps, at the same time, from greater skill in man- 
 aging them, and wiser counsels. 
 
 There is another striking illustration on this point, in the other part 
 of the bill. 
 
 "Why is the additional five million loan, included in that, wanted 
 at all 1 
 
 "Would it be needed now, if you were able to succeed in borrowing 
 money, even at the rate of six per cent.? — a rate high for us in peace, 
 with all our old national debt extinguished. No, sir. If you could 
 have effected that, by all your greatness, power, resources, glory, and 
 popularity combined, it would, up to this time, have been done under 
 the last treasury note bill, or under the former permanent loan bill. 
 Could all these high qualities bring the money, as my whig friend, 
 near me, seems to suppose, then why has it not come ? You have had 
 those qualities, and both those bills, since January last; but you have 
 not had the money. 
 
 The permanent loan having sunk impotently in your hands, though 
 your favorite measure in contrast with the system of treasury notes, 
 you then took a new tack, and, soon after this session commenced, 
 adopted the odious and denounced issue of treasury notes. As a last 
 resort, rather than recall the lands, you took to your embrace a sys- 
 tem which had been before discarded with the most contemptuous scoffs. 
 You hoped it might prosper and keep your credit at par, as well as 
 it had accomplished both of those ends under the preceding adminis- 
 tration. 
 
 But you refused to sustain it with any additional pledges or reve- 
 nues, as I then had the honor to propose a pledge similar to this, 
 under a conviction that in a state of discredit like the present, it was 
 judicious, if not indispensable. You relied, as you argue now, only 
 
216 NATIONAL FINANCES. 
 
 on great national wealth, great national resources, and your great 
 financial skill. 
 
 What has been the mortifying result ? In less than three months, 
 even this excellent resource for an emergency, if properly guarded and 
 properly conducted, failed entirely in your hands. The credit of your 
 notes has sunk as low, at times, as three to four per cent, below par ; 
 your public interest and public debt in these very notes have remained 
 unpaid and protested ; your public faith to contractors and officers 
 broken, and your treasury subject to take the benefit of your new 
 bankrupt system over and over again, if the same forms could be 
 applied to it as to an individual. Yet, after all these loads of finan- 
 cial disgrace, we hear eloquent appeals to run again the round of 
 mere hollow and fallacious promises ; we hear exhortations to put 
 another bill into the market for other loans, instead of these discredited 
 ones, with no new revenues pledged or raised to sustain it, and no 
 new policy adopted. And confidence — yes, sir, senatorial confidence — 
 is asked, that it can thus be obtained at par or nearly at par, in despite 
 of all argument, experience and analogy. You could get something 
 for the stock; but can you get what it is creditable to receive, or honest 
 for our constituents to sanction 1 In this emergency, then, something 
 more must be done, on our part, to obtain such terms as are reasonable 
 and just, and to pluck up drowning honor by the locks, or it is lost 
 forever. Experience proves this. Some of the terms of the bill itself 
 prove it. The state of the country, the treasury and the administra- 
 tion, prove it. What, then, is that something more ? Manifestly, to 
 remove the cause or necessity for the whole or a part of the loan, if it 
 be practicable, consistent with public faith and public duty. If it be 
 not, then, in the next place, to increase the security and success of such 
 a loan as is indispensable, so as to obtain it on the best possible terms 
 which are within our power, and are proper under all the unfortunate 
 circumstances of the treasury. The real cause of the loan lies deeper 
 than the mere failure of the last treasury note bill, or of the last loan 
 bill. It is this : The past administration yearly reduced its expenses, 
 for reasons explained on former occasions, but which need not now be 
 repeated, till, in 1840, they were only twenty-two millions and a half 
 of dollars. It sent in estimates, and determined to bring them down, 
 in 1841, to less than twenty millions ; and proposed a further deduc- 
 tion, in 1842, to about eighteen millions. Now, the present adminis- 
 tration, instead of keeping down the expenses, in 1841, to less than 
 twenty millions, or even as low as the twenty-two and a half of 1840, 
 unfurled at once every sail, crowded every kind of expense, called a 
 costly extra session, made millions of new appropriations, and thus 
 swelled the expenditures for 1841 to more than twenty-five millions. 
 In this way a necessity was caused for more than five millions of the 
 proposed loan. Again : this year the same administration contem- 
 plates an expenditure of more than twenty-six millions, being eight 
 
NATIONAL FINANCES. 217 
 
 more than what was proposed by the past administration. These 
 together have created a necessity for thirteen millions of loan. 
 
 But above and beyond all this, the present administration omitted 
 last year to advertise and sell the public lands in the usual manner 
 after the 4th of March, and thus lessened the receipts from them 
 probably quite two millions. It next gave away, for this year, the 
 whole of the receipts from that source, which, if the lands were adver- 
 tised as fully as usual, would equal three millions ; and thus, as to 
 the lands in both years, created a necessity for a loan of five millions 
 more. 
 
 All these united make eighteen millions, or equal to the whole 
 amount embraced in this and the July loan bills, and one million of 
 what is in the treasury note bill of last January. 
 
 The whole case, then, lies within the span of your hand. If wo 
 could now retrace our steps, and incur no more expense in 1841 and 
 1842 than was contemplated by the past administration, and advertise 
 and retain the proceeds of the lands, as that administration proposed, 
 we could at once remove any cause for a single dollar of the present 
 loan, and could redeem all of the twelve millions of July last, which 
 has already been borrowed. But I admit that the whole of this is not 
 now in our power. "What is past is gone forever, and we must submit 
 to the loss. What is to come, however, is yet under our control. 
 This includes most of the expenses of the present year, as few of the 
 new appropriations have passed, and includes, also, most of the sales 
 of the public lands. 
 
 It is, then, manifest that, if the old appropriations are now so post- 
 poned, and the new ones so reduced, as to require, in 1842, but 
 eighteen or nineteen millions expenditure, which is practicable without 
 essential injury to the public interest (as shown fully on a former 
 occasion), and if the distribution of the proceeds of the public lands is 
 suspended or repealed, and those ready for the market are seasonably 
 advertised in the accustomed manner, it will make a difference in 
 expense of seven to eight millions, and in receipts of three to four 
 millions ; and, thus united, supersede the necessity of any part of the 
 loan included in the present bill, with a view solely to defray our 
 expenses. This is the whole case in a nutshell. But some gentlemen 
 refuse to postpone or retrench so much. Others may refuse to recall 
 the lands for this purpose. And others still, if the retrenchment or 
 repeal of the distribution is intended hereafter, are not yet willing to 
 do either. And others may wish the loan accomplished, in order to 
 redeem and fund at once all the treasury notes out, and answer the 
 present emergency a few weeks, though not needed to cover the cur- 
 rent expenses, if they are properly reduced. I say, then, to all such, 
 that if the distribution of the lands is ever to be suspended or repealed, 
 this is the accepted time. If not done by an amendment to this bill, 
 it will come too late for accomplishing all its natural benefits, and will 
 leave your public credit to be blown upon, blasted and sunk, more to 
 19 
 
218 NATIONAL FINANCES. 
 
 the injury of the States separately, as well as collectively, than the 
 value of all these lands to the end of time. 
 
 Why do I say this ? Not for declamation, sir, but from a solemn 
 conviction that, if without that suspension or repeal, and without 
 retrenchment, as well as without the previous imposition of a dollar 
 of new tax of any kind or in any way, you go into the market, with 
 the provisions of this bill, to sell the stock at any sacrifice, and for a 
 period of twenty years, your conduct will lead to the loss of more 
 than three millions of dollars on this loan alone. It will also be hung 
 up to reprobation, not only by those who are now to suffer as to the 
 interest from such improvidence, but by a succeeding generation, who 
 are to suffer still more as to the principal, by refunding millions which 
 neither they nor the government ever received. If any usury, extor- 
 tion, or waste, could justify repudiation, or tempt to it, such conduct 
 has a powerful tendency that way; though, absolutely and sin- 
 cerely, I abhor everything like repudiation of debt, whether in public 
 or private life. I am a debt-paying man. I belong to a debt-paying 
 race. I represent a debt-paying State ; and, thank God, no native or 
 foreigner can obtain its scrip or bonds under par, or even above par, — 
 for not a dollar of them exists, or ever has existed, of a permanent 
 character, under its present form of government. 
 
 Let us see how this matter stands, as to the analogies and examples 
 around us at the present moment, when we are forced into the market 
 with a loan bill so exceedingly loose, and dangerous, and unprece- 
 dented in its provisions. Some senators seem to forget the change, in 
 the times and character of the country, on the subject of a public debt. 
 It is no longer a matter of theory and conjecture, that the obligation of 
 contracts will never here be impaired, and the debts of individuals, — 
 the sacred loans to them, — never be sponged out by a retrospective 
 bankrupt law, and one, too, made avowedly to release the debtor for- 
 ever, rather than benefit the creditor. Nor is it any longer a matter 
 of doubt, denial, and abhorrence, that even States themselves, the 
 American States, can ever fail or refuse to pay the sacred loans to 
 them punctually. The borrowers have had plighted faith, public 
 morality, constitutional duty, ability in population and wealth, all con- 
 secrated originally to discharge the interest and redeem the principal 
 promptly ; and yet has it been done ? Have not these borrowers been 
 obliged, in many cases, to sell the evidence of these loans sometimes 
 for eighteen cents on the dollar, and in others for thirty and sixty 
 cents only, on some of the largest States in the Union ? And yet, are 
 we so purblind and inconsiderate as not to see the inevitable conse- 
 quence of all this ? If not, can we suppose that these same capitalists 
 and brokers, whether here or abroad, who have just been so sadly 
 plundered, will rush forward and lend more to us, at a much less sac- 
 rifice or depreciation, on the same plighted faith only, — on the same 
 public morality, population, wealth, and duty only ? The borrowers 
 have nothing more to rely on yet, — the firm is no richer than all the 
 
NATIONAL FINANCES. 219 
 
 separate partners. The ability of the whole, in their mere population 
 and resources, is no more certain, to the extent of this loan, than that 
 of many of the separate indebted States. But in these times it has 
 turned out, as has been predicted in all former times, and realized in 
 many instances, that promises with actual collateral security of lands 
 and taxes, or other revenue sufficient to meet loans and current 
 expenses, are infinitely better and quicker in the market than promises 
 without such security. This is the case with individuals ; and most 
 emphatically is it so with governments, with States, and confederacies. 
 Hence, those States that have actually imposed taxes, or possess other 
 resources equal to the payment of their current expenses and interest 
 on their loans, are not discredited at all, or but slightly ; while others, 
 without such existing income, or any other collateral pledge, are pro- 
 tested, and their bonds scorned. Even while this debate is going on, 
 the bonds of the great State of Pennsylvania, before sunk below fifty 
 cents on a dollar (because without any adequate pledge to redeem 
 them), have fallen, in a single day, five dollars more on the hundred, 
 in consequence of her legislature having just adjourned for two months, 
 without raising a sufficient revenue to discharge her current expenses 
 and interest. 
 
 But why dwell longer on analogies ? Where are our own bonds or 
 scrip, issued in July last ? Where are our own treasury notes, issued 
 since January last? Depeciated, hawked about at a discount, pro- 
 tested, and refused for payment by every public claimant who has any 
 prospect of obtaining anything better. In this deplorable condition, 
 we are urged to pass this bill speedily to remedy the evil ; and yet, are 
 sending this new scrip into the market, without raising first a dollar 
 more of revenue in any shape, of tariff or taxes, to meet the interest 
 of our expenses ; without taking back the proceeds of the lands to 
 assist in this essential duty ; without material retrenchment of any 
 kind ; with seventeen millions of permanent debt thus authorized, and 
 the certainty of five or six more before we adjourn, if the present pol- 
 icy is persisted in ; and, in fine, with an increase now accruing, lagging 
 far behind our burdens, and not equal to our contemplated expense 
 into about ten millions a year. 
 
 Look, a moment, at this last attraction to confidence. See how it 
 has turned out with States conducting in a similar infatuated manner. 
 See how it has turned out with ourselves thus far, — giving away 
 great revenues when we are obliged to borrow, increasing greatly our 
 expenses when we ought to reduce them, and asking more confidence 
 and more loans after we have already failed, and without raising or 
 pledging a dollar that did not exist when the failure occurred. 
 
 It is true that this bill does what the bill of last July did not, by 
 making a pledge of the customs generally to meet this loan, and thus 
 recognizing the utility of some kind of pledges. But the misfortune 
 in this is, it pledges nothing new, nothing additional, nothing which 
 did not exist, and would not exist, to be applied to the debt, perhaps 
 
220 NATIONAL FINANCES. 
 
 as faithfully without the pledge as with it, though not with a like 
 assurance and certainty as regards the creditor. But the pledge of 
 the lands, contained in this amendment, would, on the contrary, be 
 three to four millions a year of new means, new revenue, new ability : 
 means, too, in our own possession and control, and not contingent or 
 uncertain like a loan; means, also, voluntary, and not extorted by 
 taxes, and hence doubtful, and often delayed; means coming in 
 weekly and monthly, as wanted, and where wanted; means which 
 we have always used, from the foundation of the government, and the 
 parting with which last summer, under all the circumstances of the 
 case, has been one of the most fatal stabs to our credit, our financial 
 character, and national honor, which it was in human power to inflict. 
 
 Gentlemen have misapprehended the whole scope of this amend- 
 ment, and the advantages to this loan in a repeal of the distribution, 
 by regarding it as a mere question of pledging or not pledging to a 
 creditor, in a collateral form, what you already possess, and are bound, 
 in good faith, if able, to apply to his payment, without a specific 
 pledge. 
 
 In the vacillation and uncertainty of legislation, and the distresses 
 of the times, as well as in the constant occurrence of deficiency in 
 means, it would clearly be useful to any particular creditor to have a 
 priority or preference in the revenue, or some important branch of it, 
 doing much service in case of a deficit ; and the only mode of effecting 
 this is by giving him a previous specific, tangible, collateral pledge 
 of a part of it, as is proposed in this amendment. 
 
 But it would be infinitely more useful, in other views connected 
 with this loan, to repeal the distribution, not merely to use it as a 
 pledge, but so as to add three or four millions more to our certain and 
 permanent income, — so as to reduce the necessity of so large a loan, no 
 less than the difficulty and sacrifices in effecting it, and so as to 
 increase our ability, and, of course, our credit, to a like extent, to meet 
 all our public engagements, whether of debts or otherwise. 
 
 Let us look, a moment, at these objects separately. 
 
 1. With those considering an actual pledge either conducive to 
 success or success on better terms, the lands present a large and 
 valuable auxiliary. 
 
 The House of Representatives have, by this bill, shown their con- 
 fidence in a pledge, by including the customs. If they (the customs) 
 are useful, so would be the lands. If they will help to reduce the 
 interest on the discount, so will the lands. The President, also, has 
 recommended a suspension or repeal, evidently to aid the loan by a 
 pledge, as well as for other purposes. Our past history is also full of 
 evidence that a pledge of these very lands has been deemed" useful in 
 securing loans. They were pledged in the very first funding and 
 loan bill under the constitution, as has been often stated before at this 
 session. But, more than this, they remained pledged till the Revolu- 
 tionary debt was extinguished, as late as 1835. This is the reason 
 
NATIONAL FINANCES. 221 
 
 why the pledge of them was not repeated during the late war, while 
 old taxes, new taxes, and the sinking fund, were all pledged over and 
 over again. The lands had been already consecrated to pay a part of 
 the price of our liberties. But we, like Americans and honest men, 
 gave everything else as security for our public faith, in the second 
 great struggle with our ancient oppressors; and nobly have we 
 redeemed those promises. The security was not confined, as the 
 chairman supposed (Mr. Evans), to a stipulation to raise more taxes, 
 but it was extended to the whole sinking fund of eight millions, 
 and new taxes raised, direct and internal. The whole were dedicated 
 to this sacred object. They went so far as to engage not even after 
 peace to repeal the latter, unless substituting something else as 
 valuable. (Sect. 5, of act of Dec. 23, 1814.) 
 
 Such a course as this pursued in 1789 and 1814, instead of being 
 degrading, derogatory or humiliating, was, on the contrary, honest, 
 truthful, manly, honorable for a debtor, — American in duty, and 
 Anglo-Saxon in feeling. Remember that we are asking favors, not 
 conferring them ; dependent on our creditors for money and indul- 
 gence, far should it be from us to ill-treat, or trifle with, or leave 
 them insecure. England always pledged new taxes for her loans, till, 
 as gentlemen have explained, they could, from the size of her debt, be 
 of no avail. Such a pledge secured the very debt on which the Bank 
 of England itself rested in its origin. And when governments are dis- 
 credited in the stock-market, and become beggars for loans, they must 
 not assume a lofty port, and be choosers of their terms, but give usual 
 security and usual certainty, if expecting success within any reason- 
 able sacrifice. To be sure, we are not torn by internal dissensions so 
 much as Spain, notwithstanding what is occurring in one of the States 
 (Rhode Island) in a struggle for popular rights ; yet we are in a con- 
 dition of great pecuniary discredit, and must expect to be asked for 
 ample security. Spain has had to place the Rothschilds in the receipt 
 of the income of her quicksilver mines, for their security. Even the 
 revenues of Cuba have been talked of as a pledge, placed under the 
 control of some third power, for the safety of still further loans. And 
 is it unworthy for us to pledge our own lands, won by the valor of our 
 forefathers, and pledged by their honesty and fidelity to their obliga- 
 tions, and which, parted with, instead of pledged, during the last half- 
 year, have been a fruitful source of all our present pecuniary woes ? 
 Such a pledge has likewise been most strenuously advocated by the 
 great founder of American finance ; and, in his second report on public 
 credit, in 1795, he enforced it as always judicious, by reasons the most 
 irresistible. Are we wiser, in these matters, than Hamilton? Is it 
 disreputable for us to do, in matters like these, what such men as he, 
 and Madison, and Washington, approved 1 Is it degradation to follow 
 in their footsteps, or to seek to secure well and pay promptly all that 
 we owe 1 There is a lurking conviction in the bill, as it comes to us, 
 that a pledge is useful, — or why are the customs pledged 1 There is 
 19* 
 
222 NATIONAL FINANCES. 
 
 such a conviction -with the executive also, or why has he recommended 
 the suspension of the distribution to aid the loan 1 
 
 Is the Senate alone to disavow, repudiate and disparage, such opin- 
 ions ? And are we alone to regard it as dishonor to take a usual and 
 effectual step to prevent dishonor 1 But it may be believed by some, 
 here and elsewhere, that though a suspension or repeal of the distribu- 
 tion is proper in this emergency, yet it is not required to be made in 
 this bill, in the form of a pledge of the proceeds, but may be made in 
 a separate bill, after this passes, or in a bill raising the tariff above 
 twenty per cent. Such, I understand, is the view of my friend from 
 Virginia (Mr. Archer). Now, sir, let me conjure such gentlemen 
 to reflect whether a suspension or repeal, in the present form and at 
 the present moment, would not have a double advantage ; as it would 
 not only render the loan more secure, and hence obtainable on better 
 terms, but it would, if done now, show at once to the monied world 
 that we would not be obliged to borrow so much by three or four mil- 
 lions. In that view, we should certainly be more likely to procure 
 what we wanted, and at lower terms ; as it would be seen by all that 
 our necessities had become less, and our means greater. 
 
 But, if the suspension does not take place in this bill, or before it is 
 flung upon the world, the suspension is not certain, and can have no 
 influence whatever in procuring this loan. If it is, therefore, ever to 
 be suspended or repealed, — whether formally pledged or not, — this is 
 infinitely the better time. 
 
 2. Again : whether pledged or not, the suspension now will con- 
 vince the world that we actually possess, and not merely hope to raise, 
 three or four millions more, to aid in paying the interest and principal 
 of this loan, with our other large expenses. That alone, independent 
 of the pledge, is a most conclusive argument in favor of doing it now, 
 before the loan is thrust into the market. 
 
 In this view, the pledge of the customs, already in the bill, is 
 without value. It is nothing of revenue, or ability, or means, which 
 is new and additional, like the land recalled. It is merely transferring 
 from one box or column the same sum to another box or column, but 
 adds not a dollar to our ability. It is only a new promise to strengthen 
 an old one ; or paying an old broken promise by an empty new one of 
 similar character. 
 
 All know, and feel, and admit, that we have failed to get the money, 
 without the possession of the land revenue. Why, then, will not all 
 now restore it, in order to see whether we may not be able, as we for- 
 merly were, to obtain loans readily, not only for six per cent., but five 
 and four and a half, and that for short terms, instead of the long and 
 losing one of twenty years. The probable revenue from these lands 
 would alone pay six per cent, interest on a loan of fifty millions of 
 dollars, and would extinguish, in four or five years, the whole principal; 
 as well as interest, of this proposed loan. 
 
 If, as the senator near me (Mr. Archer) asserted, the treasury is 
 
NATIONAL FINANCES. 223 
 
 now arid as a sand-bank, by the sirocco misrule of the past 
 administration, — if he really believe this, when we left it in high 
 credit, its notes at par, and all its debts punctually paid, — why was it 
 made more bare by the acts of this administration last summer, giving 
 away three millions of our former revenue, and increasing expenses 
 four or five millions a year ? And when the nakedness is now dis- 
 closed to every eye, — however shameful and however produced, — why 
 will he not join with us in restoring what the treasury has been 
 stripped of? And why will he not do it now, forthwith, when most 
 needed, and when its possession will save millions to the country in 
 credit and capital ? I appeal to his patriotism and judgment, as well 
 as his common sense, about this, against his preconceived opinions or 
 sudden impulses. 
 
 3. This view of the subject goes far deeper, wider, higher, than the 
 question of mere collateral security. It involves an addition or 
 increase of one-fifth to our whole present revenue. It is, in part, 
 accomplished forthwith. 
 
 It so far relieves the banks from danger of suspension, by having 
 their deposites withdrawn so largely by capitalists taking the loan. 
 
 It leaves more money to be loaned to merchants and others, as well 
 as exempts them more from forced collections by banks and capitalists 
 to procure money to invest in the loan. It also injures less the pres- 
 ent stockholders, and less defeats all the hopes of other borrowers. 
 
 Once more : it does not depend, like other resources, on future legis- 
 lation or future imports, or the chances of trade and consumption. It 
 has not the delay and uncertainty even of a loan, which will require, if 
 abroad, at least three months; but it is tangible, specific, present, 
 accessible. Some of the money is now in hand, the rest coming in daily, 
 as wanted and where wanted. It does not increase the burdens or 
 distresses of the people, as future taxes instead of it may, but is paid 
 voluntarily, and for substance in return. All this, and much more of 
 weight, goes out to the community with this very bill, and has an 
 electrical effect in inspiring confidence in your increased ability, as well 
 as increased prudence. People see and feel that you are resorting to a 
 natural source of relief, and not a harsh, oppressing and doubtful one, 
 in imposing still greater taxes on those now so broken down. It is 
 an immemorial and accustomed source of supply in all our history, — 
 an inexhaustible and rich one, if not squandered, and one which has 
 helped, and always should help, to defray the great expenses which 
 have alone rendered the lands valuable, such as the war for our inde- 
 pendence, the Indian wars since and hereafter, the extinguishment of 
 Indian titles, all our Indian annuities, and the whole system of civil 
 government which insures sales, safety, cultivation, wealth, liberty and 
 happiness, in connection with the national domain. 
 
 Nor is the repeal contemplated in this amendment proposed merely 
 to aid in discharging interest, leaving the residue of the proceeds of 
 the public lands to lie idle or be wasted, as the senator from Ken- 
 
224 NATIONAL FINANCES. 
 
 tucky (Mr. Crittenden) seemed to suppose. It is expressly applied 
 to redeem the principal, as well as interest ; and the act to which this 
 is an addition provides expressly that the Secretary of the Treasury, 
 whenever having funds, shall purchase in the stock itself. Such is 
 virtually the resolution offered the other day, by the senator from Vir- 
 ginia (Mr. Rives), and such is the substance of the President's recent 
 message, recommending a suspension. 
 
 In respect to that message, I do not hesitate to speak with frank- 
 ness, though in praise of a political opponent. Considering that the 
 chief magistrate so recently signed the distribution bill, and with what 
 favor it is regarded by most of his party, and with what death-like 
 tenacity it is adhered to, I consider his recommendation to suspend its 
 operation during the present emergency as evincing much good sense, 
 elevated devotion to duty over party feeling, and no little degree of 
 magnanimity. I am no partisan nor eulogist of those in power ; but 
 I can appreciate fully the obstacles to such a lofty course, and can do 
 justice to this particular act, even in an opponent, however much I 
 regret and disapprove many other measures of his administration. 
 
 Nor can I forbear to add, in favor of this recommendation and of 
 the amendment now under consideration, that they seem to me in strict 
 accordance with the original idea of a distribution of the proceeds of 
 the public lands. 
 
 The author of the project (Mr. Clay) expressly and repeatedly 
 repudiated the idea of any distribution except of a surplus. But now, 
 whatever may have been expected last summer, no surplus is pretended 
 to exist, or is likely to exist. He also disclaimed, and has reprobated 
 at this very session, the idea of a distribution of any money raised by 
 taxes. 
 
 Yet it is demonstrable that, to the full extent of this distribution, 
 and, most think, to a much greater extent, taxes must be imposed, if 
 it takes place ; and what difference does it make to the community 
 whether the taxes are imposed for the purpose of distribution, or as the 
 inevitable consequence of distribution ? The author of it also voted, 
 at the last session, for a distribution which was to be suspended the 
 moment duties were imposed above twenty per cent. He thus vir- 
 tually stipulated, as far as he or the law could, that the distribution 
 should then stop. The bill, it is well known, could not have passed 
 without such a stipulation. What, then, becomes of the propriety, 
 courtesy, duty, of seeking now to violate that stipulation ? And if it 
 is not to be violated, and the duties are to be raised above twenty per 
 cent., as our opponents insist, then does it not comport with the spirit, 
 as well as the letter, of the distribution act, to suspend it ; and if to 
 suspend it soon, then to do it at once, rather than some months hence ? 
 Now it will accomplish two great objects, rather than one, as it will 
 aid greatly in effecting a favorable loan, which it could not do unless 
 now. In other words, the original gift of the lands was, by its express 
 terms, to revert on contingencies which have substantially happened. 
 
NATIONAL FINANCES. 225 
 
 The amendment is, then, substantially abiding by the original principles 
 of the distribution, as well as the act itself, instead of being a wanton 
 violation of them. It is also pursuing a really stable, rather than 
 fickle policy. It is truthful, honest, safe, prudent, profitable ; and, in 
 every view, to my mind, deserving the support of even those who voted 
 for the act of distribution itself, on any fixed principles similar to those 
 avowed by its author. 
 
 But there is another question connected with the repeal proposed in 
 this amendment, about which I offered some views to the Senate on a 
 former occasion, and which the senator from Virginia, opposite (Mr. 
 Rives), has urged in this debate. It is of a very grave character, and 
 involves an alternative no less momentous than this repeal of the distri- 
 bution, or a probable necessity to resort to direct taxes. Your plan is 
 to raise at least twenty-six millions a year by the tariff. If you recall 
 the lands, you need not raise but twenty- three ; and if you retrench 
 properly beside, you need not raise twenty millions by a tariff. These 
 last you might get ; but how are these twenty-six millions to be obtained 
 from a tariff in times like the present? — times embarrassed beyond 
 precedent ; no State loans abroad to come home in goods ; no credit, but 
 cash payments, and those in specie, or its equivalent, instead of depre- 
 ciated paper ; and a new bankrupt bill in force, for debtors rather than 
 creditors, and thus breaking up all trust from abroad to the importer, 
 as well as from the importer to the retailer, and from the retailer to the 
 farmer, mechanic, and laborer. Who will be so greedy to obtain here- 
 after mere promises, hollow promises to pay for merchandise, which 
 may all at any moment be sponged out, and the destructive process 
 repeated a hundred times, if necessary, through all classes of the com- 
 munity 1 
 
 Let us examine this a little in detail. The chairman expects now 
 to obtain from duties under the present laws, accruing in 1842, only 
 about thirteen millions of dollars. By what magic is the other thir- 
 teen to be procured from the same source 1 
 
 The senator from Rhode Island has a very summary mode of accom- 
 plishing it, by putting twenty per cent, on the average amount of free 
 goods for several years back, before the present tariff law passed, and 
 including among them three years of the highest importation in our 
 history. This is a little too sweeping and loose for a body like this, 
 and for critical times like these. Why, sir, though that average was, 
 from various causes, swollen to near seventy-one millions, yet the 
 actual amount of free goods, in 1840, was only fifty-seven millions, 
 instead of seventy-one ; and, in 1841, only about fifty-four millions of 
 free goods imported and retained in the country. But this is not all. 
 By the present tariff, near eighteen millions of free articles besides tea 
 and coffee, and about thirty millions with them, are still left free. Put, 
 then, twenty per cent, on the balance of twenty-four and twenty-seven 
 millions, and you would obtain a net additional revenue of little over 
 one-fourth what is needed. If you place twenty per cent, on tea and 
 
226 NATIONAL FINANCES. 
 
 coffee also, and leave scarcely anything free except specie and articles 
 to aid in our manufactures, even then not half enough will be procured. 
 
 Adopt another form of calculation. The imports not reexported in 
 1840 were about ninety-five millions, and in 1841 near one hundred 
 and nine millions. Now, subtract from these only the thirty millions 
 at present free, and twenty per cent, on the balance of sixty-five or 
 seventy-nine millions would yield a gross revenue of only about thir- 
 teen to fifteen millions, and a net one of at least a million and a half 
 less. Tax tea and coffee at a like rate, reducing the free list to 
 eighteen millions, and still the net revenue on such an amount of 
 imports, at twenty per cent., will be but fourteen and a half to sixteen 
 and a half millions, instead of twenty-six millions. 
 
 The Senate, however, know full well that a tax of twenty per cent, 
 on articles before free will diminish the amount of them which can be 
 purchased and consumed ; and hence that these imports would, with 
 only that tax, have been smaller in both 1840 and 1841. What, then, 
 are they likely to be in 1842, with a tax of twenty per cent, on all 
 before free, except eighteen millions? and, besides this, with cash 
 duties, a bankrupt system, no State loans coming home, and an 
 indebted, embarrassed, and otherwise highly taxed community. It is 
 palpable that you could get ten millions more by a tariff only on the 
 hypothesis that, under all these untoward circumstances, and with the 
 tariff more than doubled, we should import lawfully, and consume quite 
 as much as needed in 1840, with half of the whole entirely free, a 
 credit system of three to six months, without interest, no bankrupt bill, 
 some State loans returning in goods, and a country less embarrassed. 
 
 How irrational ! If tea and coffee were included, rather than take 
 back the lands, the tariff need not, on that hypothesis, be increased 
 quite so much. But still it must go as high as thirty-six or thirty- 
 seven per cent., to procure a net revenue of twenty-six millions; and 
 the whole imports must also continue to be as large. But, in such an 
 event, the regular imports, instead of keeping up to what they were in 
 1840, would, under circumstances so very different, be supplied, in 
 many cases, by smuggling, and a great diminution would also happen 
 in the whole consumption of foreign merchandise, however obtained ; 
 so that you probably could not realize twenty-two millions, instead of 
 twenty-six. You would get protection, I grant. You would, in many 
 cases, obtain entire prohibition. That would suit the senator on my 
 right (Mr. Simmons), and his manufactures. But will it give you 
 revenue, — enough revenue, — twenty-six millions of revenue? That 
 is the question. Why, sir, that senator and his friends desire this very 
 state of things in order to diminish imports, and, consequently, revenue 
 is diminished too. If a higher tariff did not diminish imports, but 
 leave them as they are, or allow them to augment, let me ask what use 
 would the increase of duty be to the manufacturers ? 
 
 Away, then, with the fanciful, impracticable idea that you can 
 obtain revenue enough by a tariff to equal your wants of twenty-six 
 
NATIONAL FINANCES. 227 
 
 millions, without adopting this amendment, recalling the lands, or 
 without resorting to direct taxes and excise ! 
 
 It may be imagined by some that, after a year or two, if not now, 
 the imports may again increase sufficiently, as the exports in general 
 increase gradually when left untrammelled. 
 
 This would be the case, were it not for the entire revolution in com- 
 merce that will be effected by cash duties and the bankrupt system, as 
 well as the permanent and increasing check on imports imposed by the 
 increase of domestic manufactures under so high a tariff. But those 
 circumstances, when all combined, will make our imports not only low, 
 but the quantity consumed in the country continue stationary, if not 
 retrograde. 
 
 [Mr. Archer here observed that this might be deemed an advan- 
 tage.] 
 
 Yes, sir, an advantage to the manufacturers ; high and effectual pro- 
 tection enough to them ; but not to the consumer, who is obliged to pay 
 more for his necessaries. The only question here, however, is, whether 
 it will cause a higher revenue from customs. Seldom has our con- 
 sumption increased in any degree corresponding with our population. 
 This would be not a little remarkable, if our population had not spread 
 westward in agriculture, and had not, in the Eastern and Middle States, 
 become more devoted to manufactures. Hence the consumption of 
 foreign goods, instead of increasing in a ratio with population, has been 
 almost stationary, over several great periods of our history. The 
 tables are before me, reported to Congress by the treasury depart- 
 ment in December, 1839, giving our yearly consumption of foreign 
 articles since 1789. The result is, that, though we consumed in 1820 
 about fifty-six and a half millions, and in 1790 only twenty-two and a 
 half, — doubling in thirty years, as few manufactures existed then, — 
 yet, in every subsequent period often years, the increase in consumption 
 has been trifling. In 1800 the amount consumed was about fifty-two 
 millions, and in 1830 only fifty-six, or an addition of but four millions 
 in thirty years. Again, in 1810 the consumption was sixty-one mil- 
 lions, and in 1840 but eighty-nine, or less than fifty per cent, even 
 under imports forced on us unnaturally, by large State loans. In that 
 period, however, our population had augmented over one hundred per 
 cent. It is evident that consumption must fall off again much from 
 1840, by means of a high tariff, cash duties, and pecuniary embarrass- 
 ments. So that even the chairman of the Committee on Finance last 
 December computed our whole imports, the ensuing six years, as 
 likely to be, on an average, not over one hundred and sixteen millions. 
 
 A few days ago I understood him to consider his former estimate 
 too high, as it undoubtedly is. But, taking that, and deducting eight- 
 een millions reexported, and we have ninety-eight millions left for 
 consumption. This is too high, probably, by thirty per cent. Yet, 
 taking from even that the present free list of thirty millions, and the 
 balance of sixty-eight millions, at a duty of twenty per cent., would 
 
228 NATIONAL FINANCES. 
 
 yield Only thirteen millions and a fraction. This would leave so much 
 more to be raised as to require forty per cent, duties on a like large 
 import to produce only the gross amount equal to the net revenue 
 anticipated. But, with any per cent, whatever, — even taxing tea and 
 coffee, — it is extremely doubtful whether the expectation can be realized 
 of obtaining twenty-six millions of net revenue from customs alone. 
 Why, sir, what has our whole history, recorded facts, and not mere 
 speculation or theorizing, shown on this point? Never, under the 
 high tariffs of 1824 and 1828, have we received in net revenue from 
 customs as much as twenty-six millions, except in two years, when such 
 large amounts were coming home in foreign goods for State loans, and 
 swelling the amount, artificially, so much beyond all expectation and 
 all precedent. Then, also, the free articles were but little more than 
 half in value what they are now, without tea and coffee. 
 
 On no other occasion in our entire existence as a nation have the 
 customs yielded so much, except in the two peculiar years at the close 
 of the late war, when the duties were doubled, and large imports were 
 compelled, in order to supply the privations of a three years' war. 
 
 Is it not, then,, a miserable delusion, with a good supply on hand of 
 foreign merchandise, and the whole credit system itself, as well as its 
 inflations, private and State, exploded, to expect now that under even 
 double the present rate of duties we can realize twenty-six millions 
 net income from customs 1 
 
 Do gentlemen forget, likewise, that nothing is so delusive as to rely 
 on averages since 1834, — averages in a period of unparalleled expan- 
 sions of all kinds, and excesses that never can be repeated while the 
 severe pain and losses sustained by them are fresh in recollection ? 
 
 Why, sir, as explained more fully in the annual report on the 
 finances, in December, 1839, we imported, in a few of those years of 
 over-action, not only an amount equal to our exports and a fair profit on 
 them, but one equal to those and most of the loans procured abroad in 
 the same period. I think the excess was near a hundred and thirty mil- 
 lions. Rather than expect or wish a repetition of this extravagance, 
 we may well pray God to avert it, if there were the smallest likelihood 
 of its occurrence. No, it is impossible. What follows ? Simply that, 
 persisting in your other resolutions, you, who gave away the lands to 
 relieve the States from direct taxes, will be forced to resort to direct 
 taxes yourselves, in order to supply the deficiency. What admirable 
 wisdom and gain to the community ! 
 
 The pilot at the helm of State says, then, as to the lands, manfully, 
 bravely, skilfully, on this occasion at least, Take them back. Public 
 sentiment reechoes, Take them back. Reason and sound policy equally 
 enjoin the same. But the senator from Rhode Island (Mr. Sim- 
 mons), as he gets three millions more protection to manufactures if 
 the lands are not taken back, laments the evil this course will cause 
 to the States, our partners in the firm of the General Government, 
 our brethren or sisters in the same family of the Union. 
 
NATIONAL FINANCES. 229 
 
 What, sir ! an evil to require them to return what they cannot 
 retain without paying for it, in a larger tariff, the same sum, with costs 
 of collection, transfer, and distribution, &c, added, equalling, probably, 
 twenty-five to fifty per cent. ! To require them to release this Indian 
 gift, — this burden of twenty-five or fifty dollars more in every hun- 
 dred for all they get ! But, besides this, who in the States are relieved 
 from direct taxes most, and who are burdened most, by substituting for 
 them the tariff? It is property — the wealthy — that are attempted 
 to be exonerated from direct taxes, in order to throw additional bur- 
 dens on consumption, or the middling and poorer classes, who pay per 
 head nearly as much, under a tariff, as the most wealthy. 
 
 Such is your boasted relief proposed by the distribution ! But if 
 you cannot obtain enough by a tariff, and must yourselves resort to 
 direct taxation, will senators inform me whether then even the wealthy, 
 or property, are relieved, by paying, under our direct taxes, twenty- 
 five or fifty percent, more, for double collection, commissions, &c, than 
 they would be, in the first instance, under the State system of direct 
 taxes ? 
 
 From these considerations, it must ere this have occurred to the 
 whole Senate that there is involved in the success of this amendment 
 a deep question of character. This is, in truth, a question nearly as 
 important, if not more so, to our success in the loan, as an increase 
 of revenue to the extent of three millions. Because, by taking back 
 the lands instantly, and before the loan is attempted, whether we pledge 
 them or not, we exhibit to the public a returning sense of right to the 
 interests of the General Government, — a returning foresight in finance, 
 — a returning prudence and precaution in danger, — a disposition to 
 rise above mere party measures, and the wisdom to look to facts and 
 arguments, and the spirit of measures rather than to bald forms. 
 
 We shall evince efforts — real efforts, practical efforts — to succeed 
 without making unnecessary sacrifices : efforts adapted to obtain better 
 terms and redeem our promises, as well as make them ; and efforts, like 
 those of individuals asking indulgences, directed prudently to secure, 
 no less than indemnify, in the end, those who are so obliging as to 
 grant those indulgences. Such a course must improve our character 
 as to monied matters, and inspire confidence ; while the opposite 
 course will shake confidence. Such a system of conduct, in private 
 life, wins trust and better terms in borrowing ; while its opposite, even 
 with more means in prospective, disappoints and disgusts, saps faith, 
 alienates regard, and prevents success. 
 
 Why should we, in this business, slight the experience and axioms of 
 all people, as well as all governments ? Are we alone likely to suc- 
 ceed on a set of principles and under a series of measures which, every- 
 where else, and in all recorded time, have led both individuals and 
 nations to pecuniary disgrace and bankruptcy ? Is it left to this age, 
 and this administration, alone to be wiser than all antiquity or modern 
 times, and outstrip all the Neckers and Hamiltons of the past? Con- 
 20 
 
230 NATIONAL FINANCES. 
 
 siderations like these bear strongly on the question of character ; and 
 character, quite as much as property, is necessary to insure success in 
 borrowing. 
 
 Who ever before heard of an individual, or government, when out 
 of money and embarrassed, giving away a sum equal to one-fifth of all 
 the permanent income anticipated? Or, when out of money and 
 embarrassed, not only do that, but at the same time increase expenses 
 nearly one-fourth 1 
 
 Most clearly, such conduct cannot but have a disastrous influence 
 on any loan attempted ; while, to change this conduct to the reverse, 
 would as clearly operate very favorably on such a loan. Again : who 
 ever before heard of an individual, or government, out of money and 
 embarrassed, and thus, also, out of credit, refusing either to give secu- 
 rity for loans when in its power, or to increase its revenue when in its 
 power, by an easy addition to it of three or four millions ? 
 
 Thus out of money and out of credit, how absurd is it to anticipate 
 more credit while remaining in the same condition and with the same 
 character, — to expect success in a loan without either new security or 
 new means, but merely to repeat the eternal round of every spendthrift 
 and bankrupt, by offering new promises for others already broken, and 
 new and greater sacrifices, discounts, and usury, to repair old breaches 
 of contract ? This course is also characterized by a changeableness 
 and indecision of character equally fatal to any prospect of success in 
 borrowing. 
 
 By taking back the lands now, under all these circumstances, we 
 abide by the spirit of the distribution ; while, by a refusal to do it, we 
 are unstable and vacillating. Once, likewise, they were to be given 
 away only when a surplus existed in the treasury; now, when none 
 exists. Once, they were to be taken back, if the duties must be raised 
 above twenty per cent. ; now, they are not to be. Once, they were to 
 be held to pay the debts of the Union ; now, they are not to be. Once, 
 they were to be recalled, if war occurred; now, they are not to be, 
 though forced into numerous preparations and increased expenditures 
 for war, which, in point of principle, is equivalent, in this respect, to 
 war itself, and though the disastrous Florida war still continues, which 
 the friends of the present administration promised to finish in a single 
 month. Look at a few other arguments used, and changes proposed in 
 financial matters, as bearing on the fiscal consistency and firmness of 
 character in those who are to seek by this loan the confidence of capi- 
 talists and the community. 
 
 Thus, the friends of the administration generally in this body argue 
 against the utility of any pledge whatever to secure this loan; while 
 the House of Representatives, by the votes of almost all their friends 
 there, have inserted in the bill a pledge of the duties, and nobody 
 among them here moves to strike it out. The same friends here, and 
 especially the chairman of the Committee on Finance (Mr. Evans), 
 argue that a short loan can be obtained on better terms, or will be 
 
NATIONAL FINANCES. 231 
 
 higher in value in the market, than a long loan ; and yet he insists on 
 keeping in the bill a power to make the longest loan ever authorized 
 in this country in a period of peace. 
 
 Next, their Secretary of the Treasury, in 1841, asked for only twelve 
 years ; now, the same officer asks for a long loan, and twenty years is 
 given. Last year, the majority in Congress thought three years long 
 enough ; now, the same majority insists that twenty is not too long. 
 Last year, Congress expressly prohibited any sale of the loan below 
 par, as has always been done in peace, except in 1798 ; now, it is pro- 
 posed expressly to permit it, and to any extent, and without any lim- 
 itation. But one brief month since, the Senate likewise resolved, 
 almost unanimously, that the expenses of the year ought to be met by 
 means raised within the year ; and the author of the resolution (Mr. 
 Clay) urged its early passage, as one measure calculated to restore 
 public confidence and improve our credit; now, in the teeth of all 
 that, we gravely propose to postpone the payment of at least ten mil- 
 lions of the expenses of the present year, not only beyond the pres- 
 ent year, but for twenty years, and to burden with them the next 
 generation, or our children and our children's children. 
 
 Again : the loan bill is hurried, because it is said the money is 
 needed now, — has been needed for months ; — and yet, we propose to 
 make a bill in such a form as is not expected to succeed in this coun- 
 try, but to go abroad, and require at least three months to make full 
 inquiries and receive returns. In other words, we refuse to adopt the 
 amendment, and take back the proceeds of the public lands at once, 
 when at once wanted, when constantly coming in, and which are the 
 best security to obtain more, and which would themselves yield much 
 more, but for culpable neglect in advertising them ; and we substitute, 
 in this emergency, a means of procuring the money not likely to suc- 
 ceed at all, except at ruinous discount, and then after a quarter of a 
 year's delay. Recollect, also, that these things are not done in a cor- 
 ner, or under a bushel, but on the house-top. The whole country, as 
 well as capitalists, witness, and scrutinize, and weigh, the kind of 
 character evinced by such a course of proceeding. 
 
 It is known, on both sides of the Atlantic, that never before, in 
 peace, have we authorized such a sale of stocks at a depreciation, except 
 in the administration of the elder Adams ; that never before, in peace, 
 have we attempted to shuffle off the current expenses by a loan till 
 the next generation. That never before, in peace, have we been 
 subjected to pay more than six per cent., and seldom so much, 
 except under the unfortunate extravagances of 1798. They all 
 see and understand that in this way a permanent and large national 
 debt is to be established, without war, and our farms virtually mort- 
 gaged to secure it forever, and often to foreigners. The borrower is 
 thus made servant to the lender, and no escape from the usury, extor- 
 tion, or immense loss involved in such a loan, but in utter bankruptcy 
 or repudiation. The last is deprecated and dreaded ; yet tempted in 
 
232 NATIONAL FINANCES. 
 
 those who will hereafter be requested to pay large sums of discount, 
 not a dollar of which, either under them or their fathers, ever went 
 into the public treasury. 
 
 There is much in this to make us pause, and especially to make 
 lenders pause. The history of this novel and derogatory proposition, 
 both as to the length of time and the sacrifice of our stock for any- 
 thing it may chance to bring, is not a little curious. Twenty years 
 were not dreamed of, last July, by Mr. Ewing or anybody else. He 
 recommended only twelve years, and Congress sanctioned but three. 
 At the commencement of this session, Mr. Forward recommended, in 
 his annual report, a longer time than three ; but he does not hint at 
 even twelve years, — much less twenty ; and the latter time must have 
 been adopted, I fear, from some wretched precedent of State or city 
 borrowing in the late ruinous speculations, and which have sunk the 
 credit of several of them down, first to freezing-point, and then to zero. 
 
 As to the other project, of selling the stock for what it will bring, it 
 was not tolerated at all by Mr. Ewing, — not even hinted at by Mr. 
 Forward in his annual report, — is expressly prohibited in all our 
 other loan bills in peace, except the reprobated one of 1798 ; and it 
 is also forbidden in most of the States, however desperate in other 
 respects about their credit. Whoever is the author of so derogatory 
 a proposition, its first appearance, to my eye, was from New York, 
 and probably the purlieus of Wall-street, in the printed letter in my 
 hand, dated March 8, 1842. In that, among other matters, it is 
 observed, "The loan bill must be passed, and the stock sold to the 
 highest bidder." Since that, we hear constantly, morning, noon, and 
 night, the only specific or panacea among the wise financiers in both 
 Houses, '• The loan bill must be passed, and the stock sold to the 
 highest bidder" This last thriftless and destructive shift, to sell the 
 stock "to the highest bidder" and that for twenty years, seems to 
 be the very alpha and omega of the wisdom now connected with our 
 finances. Sir, only three days after the date of that dictatorial letter, 
 the present Secretary of the Treasury himself writes to the chairman 
 of the Committee of Ways and Means in the other House, requesting 
 " a provision in the loan bill by which the stock can be sold for what- 
 ever it will bring." 
 
 This is the wretched finale of all that skill, economy, and prosper- 
 ity, with which a new administration was to relieve all the distresses 
 of the community at large, and especially conduct the finances of the 
 country on most accurate, saving, and wonderfully improved plans, 
 compared with what preceded it. Our opponents took the treasury in 
 successful operation on the 4th of March, 1841, — every demand paid 
 punctually, public credit never higher or quicker, its stocks and 
 notes at or above par, no debt beyond five and a half millions, tem- 
 porary, and the power to issue five millions more of treasury notes, if 
 necessary, besides nearly a million of dollars in money on hand. Yet, 
 in a single year, during profound peace, all our fiscal operations have 
 
NATIONAL FINANCES. 233 
 
 become stagnated and embarrassed, — debts protested for non-pay- 
 ment ; creditors and contractors, at times, without either money or even 
 depreciated treasury notes ; public credit destroyed, and our stocks 
 driven from the market ; a debt contemplated, permanent or tempo- 
 rary, which, by the close of 1842, must equal at least twenty-four 
 millions ; revenue falling off, expenses increasing, and no effectual 
 remedy able to be devised by this administration, but to follow the 
 Wall-street command ; and after one loan bill last July in a perma- 
 nent form, and another last January in the shape of treasury notes, 
 to introduce a third one within eight months, and cry out to all, 
 '•The loan bill must be passed, and the stock sold to the highest 
 bidder^ 
 
 We seem, as yet, hardly aware of the discredit we ourselves, by 
 refusing to amend this bill in any important respect, throw on our 
 own loan. We brand on its front ignominy and depreciation. We 
 invite shaving of the deepest cut, by refusing to adopt the only 
 amendments which can avert it, first to take back the lands, and then 
 shorten the period of the loan, and prohibit any sale under par. After 
 adopting those in succession, we might then, to avoid all risk of fail- 
 ure, authorize giving seven or eight per Cent, interest, if found to be 
 necessary, though it would be much less likely to be required. Then 
 the payment of even that interest for only four or five years would 
 not be equal to one-tenth of the loss on a loan for twenty years, 
 though at a smaller rate of interest. If we cannot retrieve our credit 
 in four or five years, so as to borrow money at par, or pay it off, our 
 affairs must continue to be sadly conducted. If we do not mean to pay 
 off the current expenses in peace by the end of five years more, the 
 stewardship over the public affairs should at once be changed. Look 
 at an illustration on this point, in figures. 
 
 If we take back the lands, and pledge them as proposed in this 
 amendment, and then shorten the term of the loan to five years, and, 
 prohibiting a sale below par, are obliged to give eight per cent, inter- 
 est for the eleven millions of money, then the whole principal goes 
 into the treasury, without deduction, posterity is not burdened nor 
 tempted into wrong, and we have to pay in interest, discount and 
 principal, only $14,000,000. But if we refuse such amendments, 
 and are obliged to make a discount on the loan, so as to yield eight 
 per cent, for twenty years, — which is what our present six per cent, 
 stock is selling at, — the discount must be so exorbitant that we will get 
 not over eighty-four dollars for every hundred. That loss, with the 
 six per cent, interest paid on the whole one hundred for twenty years, 
 will compel us to pay more than four times as much for the money we 
 get as we should in the other case. 
 
 If we sold this stock at a loss of only ten dollars in one hundred, 
 
 or for ninety, — which is about seven per cent., and is low as can be 
 
 expected at this moment, — we lose, at once, over a million of dollars in 
 
 principal, and we pay an interest for twenty years on one-tenth of the 
 
 20* 
 
234 NATIONAL FINANCES. 
 
 whole principal, which we never get, and that would, if put at com- 
 pound interest, equal two millions more in the twenty years. Thus, 
 quite three millions will be sacrificed of interest and principal, or a sum 
 equal to more than one-fourth of the whole loan authorized. 
 
 Let me remind the Senate that we go into the market not only with 
 this exposure to ruinous loss, but with an actual debt contemplated 
 some millions higher than what this bill will fund. 
 
 It is manifest, on a little scrutiny, that, following out the policy pro- 
 posed on the other side, the real debt, at the end of this year, will be 
 near twenty-three millions, instead of only seventeen, as some suppose, 
 or only twenty-one millions, as others suppose. So that the public 
 and monied men will perceive that even this loan, if the treasury 
 notes are all funded, as gentlemen on the other side profess to intend, 
 is forthwith or soon to be followed by another permanent loan, nearly 
 half as large as this ; because the Secretary of the Treasury makes 
 the deficiency in his report, at the commencement of the year, likely 
 to be, by its close, near fourteen millions and a quarter. He needed 
 at least a million and a half more on hand in the treasury, to facilitate 
 disbursements and transfers. Since that, he is convinced, as the chair- 
 man is (Mr. Evans), that the customs will yield about three millions 
 less in 1842 than he supposed. Supply that, and the amount to be 
 left on hand, with the deficiency, and they equal near eighteen millions 
 and three-fourths. Quite a million more will probably be lost in this 
 loan by deduction at the start, and must otherwise be made up. So 
 that this, and the old loan of six millions, will, with the eighteen and 
 three-fourths millions, constitute an aggregate of near twenty-five mil- 
 lions of debt. Whatever reduction is made in expenses below the Sec- 
 retary's estimate will lessen this, and whatever is added by Congress 
 will increase it. In order to carry your policy into effect, of funding 
 all the treasury notes, as well as meeting these changes, another per- 
 manent loan may be needed of eight or nine millions. If you do not 
 redeem the treasury notes, but can and do keep them out, by paying 
 six per cent, interest on them, you may make the whole debt, if you 
 please, near twenty-seven millions, because the old and new permanent 
 debt will be seventeen, and the old and new treasury notes out will 
 constitute near ten millions more. This prospect is most disheartening. 
 But to keen-eyed and sagacious capitalists it will look still worse than 
 this, if your course be not altered ; because, beside another seven mil- 
 lion loan in 1842, in addition to this, under a form either permanent 
 or as treasury notes, they look at the ensuing years. Then, as things 
 now stand, not much more can be raised at present by a tariff: and 
 your expenditures bid fair to exceed your receipts annually at least 
 ten millions, unless you take back the lands, retrench greatly, or 
 resort to direct taxes. Nobody believes that you dare attempt the 
 latter, or to impose internal duties. And hence, if you will not repeal 
 the distribution bill, or reduce much more the expenses, utter insol- 
 vency and national repudiation glare at us all in the face. But how 
 
NATIONAL FINANCES. 235 
 
 would the scene be changed, by adopting a different policy, even at this 
 late day, and after the losses of 1841 of receipts from lands by not 
 advertising, and the waste by adding then five or six millions to our 
 expenses ! 
 
 Thus, limit your expenses, as well you may, to twenty millions, and 
 that not so low by two millions as >we contemplated and were fast 
 approaching. Add three more to cover contingencies, debt and 
 interest, and the whole expenditure need not exceed twenty-three mil- 
 lions. This result we have yet in our own power, by cutting down the 
 new appropriations, and, if necessary, postponing or lessening some of 
 the old ones. If it be not always too soon or too late, too small or 
 too large a case, too hard or too soft an instance for reduction, the 
 retrenchment can and will go to that extent, and, as I have before 
 shown, will leave all our great national establishments efficient. 
 There is not half so much trouble or danger in facing such measures 
 as many suppose. I have been through similar scenes of reduction, 
 from 1837 and 1838 to 1839 near six millions, and thence to 1840 
 quite two and a half millions more. All this was before the Presi- 
 dential election. We have only to imitate this, and go on in a like 
 course as was contemplated in 1841, when retrenchment was to bring 
 down the whole expenditure to twenty or eighteen millions. The task 
 is far easier, because the works and undertakings are finished, and old 
 objects are accomplished yearly. This circumstance alone will lessen, 
 and continue hereafter to lessen, the expenses almost as fast as pro- 
 posed, if we forbear from running into new and unnecessary expenses. 
 Resolve on it, then, firmly ; begin, and the business is at once half 
 clone at your hands. How, next, shall we meet the twenty-three 
 millions proposed in the present year 1 
 
 By twenty millions from customs, as estimated by the chairman (Mr. 
 Evans) in January last, or nineteen, as estimated by the Secretary, 
 and one million more accruing this year above twenty per cent., which 
 he omitted ; add to this the receipts from the lands, if properly adver- 
 tised, and the whole can be discharged. But now the chairman wishes 
 to correct his former estimates, and make something like three to four 
 millions difference in them in only two or three months. I trust, under 
 this request, he will feel a little more charity hereafter, as well as 
 those who are associated with him, for any errors made by others in 
 estimates. The senator from Kentucky (Mr. Crittenden), has set 
 a good example on this point, since his short experience in executive 
 office, by saying that he now believed no administration — not even 
 one under General Harrison — could get on without some mistakes 
 and wrongs. 
 
 But, correcting this error of three millions in their estimates, and 
 putting a tax of only twenty per cent, on tea and coffee, we have an 
 ample supply to discharge all the necessary expenses of the year. As 
 to the treasury notes now out, senators will perceive that many of 
 them would thus be extinguished before the year ends, without any 
 
236 IMPORTANCE OF THE VETO POWER. 
 
 additional loans. But what are not so disposed of I would cheerfully 
 fund at six per cent, for a few years, on a pledge of ample security. 
 They then come at once to par in value, and remain there ; and the 
 whole debt of every kind can and will then, in a few years, be entirely 
 extinguished. 
 
 We should thus escape national bankruptcy, — millions on millions 
 would be saved to a naked treasury, — public credit would revive, and 
 escape a brand and degradation, under the terms of this loan, which 
 can never be effaced. No temptation will be held out to repudiation, 
 — dreaded and sincerely deprecated repudiation. A permanent 
 national debt, built up in profound peace, would be most happily 
 avoided. The sacred compromise, as to the tariff, ten years ago, 
 would continue inviolate. The new compromise, solemnly and explic- 
 itly enacted at only the last session, will not be profaned. The highly- 
 prized resolution of the distinguished senator (Mr. Clay) who has 
 just left us, pledging the Senate to raise means enough within the year 
 to meet all the expenses of the year, will not be trodden under foot by 
 his friends, as soon as his back is turned. We shall refuse to show 
 real vacillation and mutability, and at the same moment will evince 
 the candor and courage to do right, however different in form from 
 what party influences or party prejudices may countenance. Instead, 
 then, of making bad worse, and trying new and dangerous experi- 
 ments, we shall return to courses, in matters of finance, sanctioned by 
 the experience of all ages, in public as well as private life. May we 
 decide wisely, then; for thus our "bane and antidote are both before 
 
 IMPORTANCE OF THE VETO POWER.* 
 
 There are a few circumstances, connected with this proposition to 
 lessen or abolish the veto power, which have struck me with some 
 surprise. 
 
 If we were now in the midst of a revolution, and such an one as 
 ended in our independence, it would not be unnatural for men who 
 had suffered severely from executive oppression to be prejudiced 
 strongly against all executive power. Especially when these wrongs 
 
 * A speech in support of the veto power ; delivered in the Senate of the United 
 States, Feb. 23, 1842. 
 
IMPORTANCE OF THE VETO POWER. 237 
 
 had been inflicted by the monarch, rather than the people, of another 
 country, and many of them through the absolute vetoes of his subser- 
 vient governors, sent here to domineer over us, well might we, in the 
 excitement, denounce such vetoes as arbitrary, and such an executive 
 as tyrannical. Hence, one of the first grounds of grievance detailed 
 in the Declaration of Independence was, that the king had refused 
 his assent to laivs the most wholesome and necessary for the 'pub- 
 lic good. He claimed the power to do this, also, from Divine right, 
 and not, as our executive derives it, from the people. He exercised it 
 for his own benefit, and that of his kingly third estate* in the realm, 
 and not, as our executive does, for the benefit of the people. He used 
 it himself, or by others, almost as often and capriciously as Queen 
 Elizabeth, who vetoed thirty-four laws in one session ; and not merely, 
 as here, on great and grave occasions, occurring but twenty times in 
 half a century. 
 
 Circumstances like these made Doctor Franklin averse to any 
 executive chief magistrate, and induced several of the States, in their 
 first constitutions, formed in the heat and struggle of the Revolution, 
 with wounds still bleeding from abuses, to give no veto to their gov- 
 ernors, and in other cases to give a less one than that in the present 
 constitution of the General Government. Indeed, it even led them, 
 in other cases, like the old Confederation, either to have no separate 
 executive whatever, or one elected by, and entirely dependent on, 
 the legislature. 
 
 But, after the experience of eight years in the great conflict, and 
 four or five more in peace, subsequent to the achievement of independ- 
 ence, the wisest and ablest from all quarters of the country convened, 
 and decided almost unanimously in favor of the propriety of the pres- 
 ent veto. They cast aside prejudices. They resorted to reason and 
 experience, and in the very first project of materials for a constitution, 
 submitted in the convention by Mr. Randolph, the present veto power 
 was introduced. It was repeated again in Mr. Pinckney's articles, and 
 in all the numerous changes afterwards made in other matters, this 
 remained unaltered, except in the majority, from three-fourths to two- 
 thirds, necessary to overrule its operation. In the end, too, it received 
 the large and almost unanimous vote of ten States out of twelve. The 
 journal and debates are before me, but I will not detain the Senate by 
 quotations or more details. What is equally striking, on this subject, 
 must be the fact, that, in none of the conventions of the people in the 
 different States for adopting the constitution, do we find the veto dis- 
 agreed to. Numerous, also, as were the amendments proposed in 
 various other particulars, such was the harmony as to this, that not 
 one relates to any further restriction of it ; nor has one of the amend- 
 ments adopted since laid a profane hand upon it. Nor have I been 
 able to discover in a convention of the people, or in a State Legisla- 
 ture, long ago or lately, during the whole lapse of a half-century, a 
 single proposition deliberately introduced to restrict or destroy the veto. 
 
238 IMPORTANCE OF THE VETO POWER. 
 
 Jealous, and justly so, as our people have always been of executive 
 power, and open as they have ever been to impulses, where so much 
 freedom of opinion and discussion properly exist, nothing has ever 
 shaken their sagacity, intelligence, and firmness, in defence of a power 
 which they know full well now exists for them, and not for a monarch ; 
 now lives for their security against errors by their agents, and not as 
 a weapon with which to oppress the people themselves ; and which, if 
 dissatisfied, they well know can be overruled by them at any time, 
 quickly, either by electing new members to the legislature, or a new 
 executive, without changing their constitution or removing salutary 
 checks on their representatives. 
 
 Under all these circumstances, it certainly must be a matter of some 
 surprise to others, as well as to me, that now, for the first time, and 
 not coming from the people or the States, or the popular branch of 
 the legislature, a proposal originates here, and with a single member, 
 to throw away some of the checks over us which the people and the 
 States so deliberately ordained. Such a proposition can, I admit, be 
 legally made ; and, in this instance, doubtless springs from laudable 
 motives. But, in these particulars, it is surely not a little extraor- 
 dinary. 
 
 The mover disclaimed any influence on him from recent events, or 
 the manifesto of a part of the whig members of Congress, in Septem- 
 ber, 1841. In my opinion, he might well do this so far as regards 
 the manifesto, though others in the debate have considered that as the 
 cause of the present movement. Because, sir, beside all the array, 
 by way of authority, to which I have alluded, in favor of the present 
 veto, it is clear to my mind, on recurring to the manifesto itself, that 
 the signers of it did not believe, before the recent events of the extra 
 session, that the constitution, in respect to the veto, ought in any 
 particular to be altered. Here it is, sir, and the very reverse seems 
 to me to be the truth. The language on that point is, that they had 
 intended to restrain executive poiver and patronage, in respect to 
 the veto, by voluntary self-denial in its excessive use, and not by 
 any change in the magna charta of our liberties. The constitution 
 was to continue untouched. This idea is forfeited by what was avowed 
 only last March, by another exponent of the principles of gentlemen 
 on the other side, more widely relied on than even the signers of the 
 manifesto. As that exponent was General Harrison, this remark will, 
 of course, not be deemed derogatory to any of these highly respectable 
 signers. Without adverting to what may have been uttered by him 
 at popular meetings, and misapprehended or misrepresented, I hold 
 here his deliberate official expose on the veto, in his inaugural ; and 
 among other remarks there, which need not be repeated, he says : 
 
 The veto power " appears to be highly expedient, and if used only -with the for- 
 bearance and in the spirit which was intended by its authors, it may be productive 
 of great good, and be found one of the best safeguards to the Union." 
 
IMPORTANCE OF THE VETO POWER. 239 
 
 He adds that, in his opinion, it was 
 
 '* To be used only, first, to protect the constitution from violation ; secondly, the 
 people from the effects of hasty legislation, where their will has been probably disre- 
 garded or not well understood ; and, thirdly, to prevent the effects of combinations 
 violative of the rights of minorities." 
 
 From the beginning to the end, not a syllable is uttered in favor of 
 lessening the veto by a change of the constitution ; but, on the con- 
 trary, General Harrison proposed, in these cases, to exercise it as 
 widely as it ever has been exercised from the foundation of the gov- 
 ernment. So that this motion does not appear to emanate from the 
 whig party as a whole, or even from a portion of it in legislative cau- 
 cus, unless it has sprung from the eventful negatives of the bank bills, 
 at the late extra session. But, in my view, it was not intended to go 
 as far as this, even at the excited meeting of a portion of the members 
 of Congress, in September, smarting under disappointment and rebuked 
 by executive difference in opinion. The manifesto they sent forth does 
 not, could not, and, looking to the intelligence and character embodied 
 in the meeting, I might well add, dared not, propose to do what was 
 tantamount to the entire abolition of the veto power in the constitution. 
 And although they then recommended, generally, some change in it, 
 there was still expressly reserved, and to be left, as much control in 
 the executive as was indispensable to avert hasty or unconstitu- 
 tional legislation. 
 
 That control was all which most of its friends ever designed to effect 
 by the present veto. It is also the only control which ever has been 
 exercised under it, from Washington down to Tyler, either by the 
 Presidents who have been so much denounced, or by others who have 
 been so highly commended. 
 
 That control, in my opinion, as will soon be explained more fully, is 
 not left by the proposed amendment ; and hence it is not in accordance 
 even with the doctrines of the manifesto, much less with those of the 
 eminent statesmen and jurists of both parties in politics in the long half- 
 century which preceded the manifesto, and concurred, in all emergen- 
 cies, in sustaining its fitness and usefulness. The elder Adams wrote 
 a treatise to illustrate the importance of checks and balances ; and Mar- 
 shall and Jay, as well as hundreds of others of the Hamilton school, — 
 no less than Madison, Hancock, Samuel Adams, and a host in the 
 Jefferson school, — defended the qualified veto, as established and per- 
 petuated to the present moment. Both JeAY and Gentile in politics 
 have agreed in this. 
 
 Though some exceptions have existed, the great masses of both par- 
 ties have always approved it ; and while we reverence the name of 
 one above all parties, and in respect to whose memory we adjourned 
 yesterday, on the anniversary of his birth, we may well, at the head 
 of all the authorities in favor of both the adoption and use of the veto, 
 cite him, — him who reigns, and,, while the republic lasts, will, I trust, 
 
240 IMPORTANCE OF THE VETO POWER. 
 
 continue to reign, highest, — first in war, first in peace, and first in 
 the hearts of his comitrymen. 
 
 All the long-acknowledged principles of most of the gentlemen on 
 the other side of the House tend, also, to the preservation, and even 
 increase, of executive power. Have they not always befriended a strong 
 executive ? Have they not always advocated a strong government 1 
 Have they not argued for an independent executive ? 
 
 I pass over other matters connected with precedent and party prin- 
 ciples bearing on this question. The proposition has been made, 
 though not a party one, and we must meet it. The senator from 
 Kentucky (Mr. Clay) manfully avows that he has made it on his 
 own personal views and pledges ; and, therefore, not emanating from a 
 party, and not, as I have attempted to show, agreeable either to party 
 principle or party precedents. I trust, then, it will be considered and 
 voted on free from party excitement or party discipline. 
 
 This is a fortunate position for calm inquiry, and I shall, therefore, 
 hasten to examine what justification there may be for disregarding the 
 great array of time and authority which stands in favor of the veto, 
 and for introducing so hazardous an innovation as that now proposed 
 for its virtual destruction. 
 
 Some have argued that the present veto power is wrong in princi- 
 ple ; others have contended that, if not wrong in principle originally, 
 our experience during the last half-century shows that it has become 
 wrong to retain it longer in practice. 
 
 I will examine both of these positions ; and, first, the question of the 
 original propriety of the veto on the ground of principle. 
 
 Looking to theory, our governments are not founded on the idea of 
 different orders or estates, to be consulted and represented, as is the 
 case elsewhere, and therefore a check or veto is given to one over 
 another. But they are founded on the theory that there is here but 
 one order, or estate, or interest, to be regarded, and that this one con- 
 sists of the people. They are the foundation of all, — the superstructure 
 and the ornament. Whether they act per capita in the choice of rep- 
 resentatives, or through their State sovereignties in electing senators, 
 or through electors combining the two other forms in the appointment 
 of President, it is still their action behind and over all, as well as 
 their welfare and security, which are the end and object of all. Why, 
 then, do they permit a veto power 1 I answer, they do not permit it 
 over themselves. Whenever they act in person, and in primary meet- 
 ings, no concurrent body is required to assent, or allowed to dissent. 
 No veto is of right permitted to control them, from any human source. 
 In such action, also, bare majorities are sufficient. Otherwise, there is 
 no equality, and one man is tolerated in being more in natural rights 
 and power than another. This condition of things, which some in this 
 debate have stigmatized as a mad democracy, is the true philosophy 
 of our system. It is recognized as correct by the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence ; and the people acknowledge no veto or negative over their 
 
IMPORTANCE OF THE VETO POWER. 241 
 
 operations, but what they may themselves choose to impose, and what 
 intelligence, morals, and religion, impose on each enlightened and 
 accountable being. 
 
 But as it is not possible, with large communities like ours, scattered 
 over two or three millions of square miles of territory, to convene 
 together in person for the frequent purposes of government, the people 
 perform most of those purposes by representatives or agents of some 
 kind. 
 
 Here lies the secret and argument for the veto. It is to regulate 
 and check those agents when liable and likely to err, and not, as some 
 senators have argued, to control the people themselves. It is to help 
 to insure accuracy, skill, and fidelity in the delegates of the people, 
 and not to control the people. It is chiefly to secure the latter from 
 effects of haste, prejudice, passion, and mistakes of all kinds, in those 
 whom, on the representative principle, they find it convenient to 
 employ ; and it cannot be used to thwart the people themselves, or to 
 defeat their will. It is not and cannot here be applied to their acts ; 
 but the acts only of their agents. So far from the veto power being, 
 as some have intimated, an illustration of the will of the nation con- 
 trolled by the will of one ma?i, it shows merely the will of one set of 
 agents for the nation checked and delayed by the will of another set ; 
 and this is done, not against, but in conformity to, the will of the 
 nation, as expressed in the constitution itself. 
 
 The great guide, in delegating power by the people, is to part with 
 no more than is necessary to insure efficient government, and to divide 
 what is parted with among as many distinct bodies and agents as are 
 necessary to insure skill in its use, and under as many checks and 
 balances as can be devised to prevent any abuse of the power 
 delegated. One of those checks on legislative agents is the veto over 
 them intrusted to the executive agents. But other checks exist on the 
 executive and judiciary as well as the legislative bodies, and are all 
 wise, full of foresight, and indispensable to guard the people from 
 errors committed by their agents. These checks, too, wdiether placed 
 in one hand, ten or a thousand hands, are still not checks on the 
 people themselves, nor independent of the wish and will of the nation, 
 nor hostile to its interests. Which class of agents best agree with the 
 views of the people, is afterwards to be settled by the people them- 
 selves at the ballot-boxes, when the term of office expires, under our 
 system of frequent elections. 
 
 The check of a short tenure of office is something, both over the 
 legislative and executive. The check of impeachment is more, over 
 both the executive and the judiciary. The check of the assent of the 
 Senate to all treaties and important appointments is still more, over 
 the executive, and the concurrence of majorities in two legislative 
 bodies before any act can pass is a still further check over each branch 
 of the legislature. So is the right claimed to instruct agents a check 
 over some j so was the right to remove or recall agents, at any 
 21 
 
242 IMPORTANCE OF THE VETO POWER. 
 
 moment, over the old Confederation. But, in almost every free govern- 
 ment in the world, a still further check on legislation has been the 
 power of either an absolute or qualified veto over it, exercised by a 
 third body, consisting of a few, like the ephori at Sparta ; or one or 
 two, like the tribunes at Rome ; or of one, like our own President. 
 
 This tends to prevent in season any threatened evil from legislative 
 errors. It averts the wrong before the fatal blow is inflicted. Where 
 all delegated power in all the departments of the government is 
 derived from the people in different ways, one department is as much 
 the exponent of their will, in the matters intrusted to it, as the other ; 
 and when they differ as to what is the people's will radically, is it not 
 prudent that new action or new measures should be postponed till the 
 people, by new elections, can themselves speak on the subject 1 This 
 is our "mad democracy," sneered at by other gentlemen. Even 
 Chief-justice Marshall, in view of these checks, pronounced our gov- 
 ernment a iv ell-regulated democracy. And though, in the debate, 
 ridicule has been applied to this idea, and to the democratic derivation 
 of all power from the people, yet a more recent authority than Mar- 
 shall, and, with some on the other side, quite as high on mere politics, 
 
 " The broad foundation on which our constitution rests being the people, — a breath 
 of theirs having made, as a breath can unmake, change or modify it, — it can be 
 assigned to none of the great divisions of government but to that of democracy." — 
 General Harrison's Inaugural. 
 
 It is "we the people," in the constitution itself, that ordained it; 
 and in all the States it was adopted by power derived from the people. 
 It was from the people of Virginia, the people of New Hampshire, 
 the people of Massachusetts, and so on through the whole ; acting in 
 States, I admit, but still the people, under, around and above all. 
 Requiring the concurrence of two legislative bodies in passing laws 
 rests on this same sound principle, that the laws are more likely to be 
 right, and accord with the views of the people and the constitution, if 
 two examine and concur, than if only one acted on the subject. On a 
 like theory, confirmed by all experience, the concurrence of a third body, 
 after due examination, like the executive, and especially where he is 
 also elected by the people and amenable to them, increases the security 
 against error and injury to the community. 
 
 You might as wisely move to abolish the first as the last. It is 
 treble distillation, or refining to insure more purity and excellence. It 
 is obtaining all lights from all quarters. All constitutions are, like- 
 wise, in and of themselves alone, checks, and great checks, on all 
 departments. But they are only parchment, reaching the conscience, 
 and are open to misconstruction ; and hence, the more care and 
 restraint by different bodies, which can be employed in legislating 
 under them, are the better, when not too expensive or complicated. 
 The people then feel safer. They sleep in more quiet from aggres- 
 
IMPORTANCE OF THE VETO POWER. 243 
 
 sion. They have all the bolts and bars practicable. No agents are 
 angels or Platos, whether legislative or executive agents ; and no 
 people are fit for self-government, who will part with power to agents 
 without imposing every check and balance on them which is calculated 
 to protect the community from mistakes in those agents, and which 
 experience has shown to be salutary. Even Patrick Henry, though 
 so strenuously opposed to the present constitution, insisted that more 
 checks were proper, instead of there being too many. He said : 
 
 " In the British government there are real checks ; — in this system there are only- 
 ideal balances. Till I am convinced that there are actual efficient checks, I will not 
 give my assent to its establishment." 
 
 Mr. Jefferson expressed his opposition more strongly against a legis- 
 lature without proper checks than an executive, because it substituted 
 many tyrants for one. 
 
 All the best writers on government in this country, since the able 
 vindication of the veto power, in the Federalist, by Hamilton, Madison 
 and Jay, — such as Kent and Story, — have treated it with high com- 
 mendation, both in its theory and practice. France, in her charter of 
 1830, has returned to an absolute veto. And if England, after the 
 revolution, has seldom witnessed its use, because resisted by the Com- 
 mons, on account of its being in hands not amenable to them, yet the 
 executive there, in its power to dissolve Parliament if attempting dan- 
 gerous laws, and its power over the House of Lords in the appoint- 
 ment of its members, still retains indirectly and exercises as powerful 
 a weapon to defeat legislation as any veto, however unlimited. 
 
 The qualified veto exists in seventeen of our State constitutions, and 
 in most of the others is omitted only because the executive is there 
 chosen by the legislature, and hence too dependent on them to make 
 the power of any use in his hands. Though six or seven of the 
 States make the veto power less extensive than in the constitution of 
 the General Government, yet they substitute for it a shorter term of 
 office in the members of the legislature, and hold them more strictly 
 amenable to instructions from their constituents. How often has its 
 use been most salutary in many of the States, as well as in the 
 General Government ! But I omit details as to this, which other 
 gentlemen have presented fully already. 
 
 It has been said, and that well and truly, by an eminent jurist 
 politically attached to the other side, that the more frequent use of the 
 veto in both governments would doubtless have been better for the 
 community. Especially might most concur in this, when looking to 
 the millions of State debts and myriads of broken State banks which 
 have recently covered so much of the country with desolation, under 
 a hasty and ill-advised and too little checked system of State legisla- 
 tion. Those States that have escaped may well rejoice that some 
 checks or other, more efficient, have existed among them, against the 
 vast impulses of speculation and interest. And no government has 
 
244 IMPORTANCE OF THE VETO POWER. 
 
 more cause for thankfulness than this, that the exercise of the veto 
 power averted from it, in the Maysville road case, much of the two 
 hundred millions of debt which afterwards fell elsewhere, from want of 
 the existence of the veto there, or the sagacity and fearlessness to 
 employ it. 
 
 But, in the consideration of this question, as to the expediency of a 
 veto power in our system of government, the nature and extent of it, 
 under our present constitution, have been misunderstood, and the mis- 
 take has tended to render this power more dreaded by some, and 
 therefore more censured, than it otherwise would have been. 
 
 It has been denounced as a one man power. This is either to 
 prejudice it as something monarchical, on account of our just jealousy 
 of executive influence, or it rests on an entire misconception of its true 
 character. Are not all our State Governors — whether the powers 
 intrusted to them be more or less — a one rnan power 7 A plural 
 executive has long since been exploded, as less responsible and more 
 dangerous. Is not every humble justice of the peace a one rnan 
 power ? — every sheriff, marshal, or constable ? Are not district 
 judges a one man power? In some of these cases the authority 
 given to the one man is limited, in others an appeal lies from it, and in 
 all there is an accountability to the people in some way for its exer- 
 cise. Hence they are safe as human trusts can be. But there must 
 be some such trust, or there can be no representative government 
 whatever. Such is the case of the veto power vested in the executive 
 by our constitution. It is a trust limited, and for and from the peo- 
 ple. It is exercised, not in originating laws, but merely in approving 
 those which originate elsewhere. It is to be used under a high sense 
 of duty, and a solemn oath to support the constitution, and with a 
 view only to the public welfare. An appeal lies, in all cases, from it to 
 the legislature itself; and if two-thirds of the members concur, the veto 
 is virtually reversed. If the executive misbehaves in its use, he is 
 not only liable to impeachment, but he forfeits public confidence, and 
 endangers not only his private character, but his reelection to the most 
 elevated station in the republic. If not thus overruled, it can be by 
 electing new and different members of the legislature, or by electing a 
 new executive, and all this without much delay. It is a power by 
 which no existing law can be changed, no new burden imposed on 
 the community, no new office created, no tax levied nor money 
 appropriated, no new debt incurred, and neither peace nor war 
 declared. On the contrary, it tends to prevent rashness and fickle- 
 ness — the banes of republics. 
 
 It is a power which was conferred to prevent wrong, not to do 
 wrong. It is one intended to ward off a violation of the constitution, 
 and which may avert most ruinous effects from haste, inadvertence, or 
 corruption. It was conferred for each of these purposes, as well as to 
 protect the executive department from legislative encroachment and 
 destruction. These are material purposes ; and some of the reasoning 
 
IMPORTANCE OF THE VETO POWER. 245 
 
 on the other side has not been entirely fair, which has represented the 
 protection of the executive authority as almost its sole object. Never 
 yet has it been so employed during our whole history ; and the argu- 
 ment by the senator from Kentucky (Mr. Morehead) has been falla- 
 cious, which asked, in a case where it was used to prevent a supposed 
 breach of the constitution, whether it was not there badly used, because 
 there had been no haste in the law then vetoed. It might as well 
 have been asked in other cases, where it has been employed to prevent 
 the ill effects of haste, whether it was not badly employed there, 
 because in those cases no constitutional question arose. It can and 
 should be used for both purposes, or either, whenever the public welfare 
 appears to demand it ; and it has truly been remarked, that so pru- 
 dent has been its employment as never to have been overruled by a 
 two-thirds majority; that every President exercising it has been 
 reelected hitherto, and no one has failed to be reelected but such as 
 never used it. If the people had ever been really dissatisfied with it, 
 or the cases in which it had been applied, how quickly would it, long 
 ago, have been swept from existence by those who control our whole 
 system ! 
 
 Passing over many illustrations adduced on this point by others, 
 very little is the injury which could be inflicted by a reckless execu- 
 tive, in using the veto improperly. Beside impeachment, and refusal 
 to elect, how immediately could his supplies be cut off, his patronage 
 cramped, the salaries of his favorites lessened, or their offices abol- 
 ished ! It is used, too, by the will and direction of the people, instead 
 of being independent of it. They may truly say, 
 
 " He is ours 
 To administer, to guard, to adorn the State, 
 But not to warp or change it." 
 
 It is used by an officer not only amenable to the people, and virtu- 
 ally appointed by them, and representing them as explicitly as the 
 legislature, but by one elected through votes of the whole, instead of 
 a district or State alone, and hence less liable to local or sectional 
 feelings, prejudices, and undue influences. It is used by an officer* 
 thus situated, much more likely to be right than one man, making a 
 bare majority, in this House or the other, to pass a bankrupt or some 
 other law, — and that in contravention, perhaps, in some cases, of instruc- 
 tions from the people, — or than a bare majority of one in the highest 
 judicial tribunal, and on the greatest and gravest questions of consti- 
 tutional doubt. It is used by an officer most widely known and 
 esteemed for talent and virtue, who acts only after calmly considering 
 all which has ever been said and done by others, and who cannot dis- 
 sent without setting out his reasons at large, for the whole country to 
 scrutinize, as well as the legislature, and who risks, in using it improp- 
 erly, both fame and office. In using it, — when of such advanced 
 age, high standing, and great experience, as are usually associated in 
 21* 
 
246 IMPORTANCE OF THE VETO POWER. 
 
 a chief magistrate, — he is less likely to be impulsive or passionate 
 than a large and popular body of men. The most he can do by it is 
 to keep things as they are At the same time, he cannot make it 
 effective even to prevent legislation, and retain matters merely as they 
 are, unless one-third of the legislative body concur with him in his 
 conclusions. This demonstrates that it is not only in no offensive or 
 aristocratical sense a one man power, but is in no sense a power which 
 is exercised solitary and alone by one man. In assenting to a law 
 under the veto power, he must have concurring with him a majority 
 of both Houses, or his assent is nugatory. In dissenting, also, by its 
 exercise, he must have one-third of the legislature concurring with 
 him, or his dissent is nugatory. 
 
 It is, therefore, in substance, not a one man power, but a power 
 actually exercised, and which must be exercised, in conjunction and 
 concurrence with many others, or it becomes void. Others are asked 
 by it merely to try a second sober thought, under calmer circum- 
 stances and in cooler moments. In fine, the whole essence or vitality 
 of the power is, in its utmost extent, to require review and reconsid- 
 eration in others. After that, it exacts only a majority of two-thirds 
 of the legislature to pass certain laws, instead of a bare majority : and 
 those laws such as the executive, another agent of the people and the 
 States, supposes have, by haste or some other cause, been carried 
 through injudiciously. 
 
 It will thus be seen that acts of the Houses can become laws in 
 spite of him, and that the whole war against the veto power is a war 
 by one class of delegates from the people against the people them- 
 selves, because they have required two-thirds instead of a bare major- 
 ity of their legislative agents to unite before laws shall be perfected 
 in doubtful cases. Is this war not rather a reflection on the people, 
 by their agents, who wage it ? 
 
 Is it not marvellous modesty in an attorney, to complain that his 
 principal does not choose to confide more power to him, or to leave 
 what he confides without a check or concurrent opinion by another 
 attorney, or by two others ? The principal here, the people and the 
 States, deem their vital interests safer with a double or treble check 
 over their delegates ; and is it fit or decorous for these delegates to 
 complain ? The people are willing that a bare majority of the people 
 themselves should control, hi their primary assemblies. But they 
 may prudently refuse to be controlled by their own agents, unless a 
 majority of two-thirds agree, and unless two or three kinds of those 
 agents concur. This is wise precaution, and not oppression nor tyr- 
 anny. How absurd to pretend that this course is derogatory and inju- 
 rious to the people, and tends to control the will of the nation by the 
 will of one man ! 
 
 Why, sir, our own constitution, as well as that of many of the 
 States, is full of similar provisions, which might, on principle, be 
 assailed even with more propriety than the veto. Do you not per- 
 
IMPORTANCE OF THE VETO POWER. 247 
 
 ceive that this very amendment now under consideration cannot suc- 
 ceed, according to the express provisions of the constitution, unless 
 two-thirds of the legislature are in favor of it ? and even three-fourths 
 of the States ? Why has not the mover proposed to abolish that two- 
 thirds or three-fourths requisition, as well as this ? 
 
 You know, also, that in trials of impeachments, by the same consti- 
 tution, the respondent cannot be convicted without a majority of two- 
 thirds of this body concur. Why does not the mover propose to amend 
 that? 
 
 Again, sir, by the same constitution, treaties cannot become laws of 
 the land unless two-thirds of the Senate agree to them. Why does 
 not the learned senator (Mr. Clay) move to amend that provision 
 also? 
 
 In some cases the constitution goes still further ; and the equal 
 representation of each State in the Senate cannot be changed by an 
 unanimous vote of every other State, and of both Houses in Congress, 
 unless the particular State in interest assents. Will he not next pro- 
 pose to strike out that provision ? So, before 1808, by the constitu- 
 tion, no vote, however unanimous, could pass a law affecting the 
 importation of slaves. So, in many States, similar provisions of a 
 two-thirds or three-fourths vote, in agents of the people, is, in some 
 important cases, explicitly required. 
 
 Look to New York as to corporations. Look, sir, to the conven- 
 tions of the several States which adopted our present constitution, and 
 you will find numerous instances when it was urged to extend the 
 two-thirds principle still further than it has been by the veto, rather 
 than curtail it as is now attempted. 
 
 Here they are, in their debates, extending to votes for war, votes 
 to make loans, votes to raise troops, votes ceding the fisheries, votes 
 regulating navigation and commerce, votes raising direct taxes. 
 
 I will not detain the Senate by further specifications concerning 
 them. 
 
 All of us have drawn, with our earliest breath, the right to a trial 
 by jury. It is secured to us by the constitution, as the palladium of 
 civil liberty. And yet, must there not be an unanimous vote by a 
 jury in the smallest case ? Do gentlemen intend to abolish that ? So 
 the common law courts of much importance have each four judges. 
 Why ? To secure, if all were present, a vote of three to one for any 
 decision ; and if one was absent, at least a vote of two to one, or the 
 very two-thirds provided for in this case of the veto power. 
 
 I pass by the want of exact proportions even in primary represent- 
 ation in the other House, where large fractions must be unrepre- 
 sented. I pass by the three-fifths representation of slaves there, as 
 another of the sacred compromises of the constitution. I pass by even 
 the enormous inequality of numbers, as represented in the Senate. 
 Only seventy or eighty thousand people in Delaware have as much 
 power, through their State authority, in this body, as two millions in 
 
248 IMPORTANCE OF THE VETO POWER. 
 
 New York ; or one voter in one State possesses virtually a power in 
 the Senate equal to twenty-five voters in another State ; or one agent 
 here, by our check on the bills of the other House, has a power in 
 legislation equal to five in the other House. Is this disproportion next 
 to be assailed, and the constitution in all these particulars next to be 
 prostrated ? 
 
 Far be it from me, sir, to impute any such revolutionary designs to 
 any who have supported this amendment. But do not the elementary 
 principles they advance in support of it lead inevitably to changes 
 innumerable and vital in our constitution, and perilous to all our 
 boasted rights and liberties under it 1 
 
 Away, then, with this course of reasoning ! Away with the idea 
 that our fathers, who fought against monarchy, approved a power in 
 the constitution which is either monarchical or dangerous, or unsus- 
 tained by the soundest analogies and reasons in the history of all ages, 
 — matters which they had widely scrutinized, and on which they had 
 deeply and anxiously reflected ! 
 
 While this power was used by Washington, Madison, and Monroe, 
 nobody dreamed that it was wrong in the abstract, or in practice 
 unwarrantable. Nor is it more unwarrantable now ; but only, per- 
 haps, more an obstacle to some of the ill-advised schemes of ambition, 
 avarice, or speculation, which have of late years overwhelmed so many 
 with ruin and dismay. It is not vetoes, but vetoes on darling meas- 
 ures, — vetoes on distribution, internal improvements, and banks, all 
 connected with the absorbing strides of the monied power, — which 
 have excited so much hostility and condemnation. A veto on the bill 
 repealing the bankrupt law, during this session, was looked forward 
 to with exultation by many who denounced its use in the other cases. 
 Grant, then, that the mover of the amendment, as must undoubtedly 
 be the case, is free from all motives unworthy his station and charac- 
 ter, in making the proposition. But the tendencies of it, and the 
 arguments for it, are all just subjects of analysis and criticism, and 
 must be hung up to such reprobation as they appear to deserve. 
 
 Another of his reasons against the present veto power is its sup- 
 posed mixture of legislative with executive duties. In reply to this, 
 it might be said, that so far as he retains any part of the veto in his 
 amendment, as he professes to do, the same mixture is continued by 
 himself. In the next place, the veto is not a legislative power, as 
 arranged under our constitution, and is not, therefore, a mixture of 
 legislative with executive duties. It is Roman, and not English or 
 French, in its origin. It is, therefore, tribunitian or plebeian, rather 
 than legislative. The laws, as laws, are originated and perfected with- 
 out it. The executive merely affixes his assent, as a tribune for the 
 people, or withholds it. 
 
 But the law is made elsewhere, and becomes, in spite of his dissent, 
 in full force, if two-thirds of the legislature are subsequently in favor 
 of it. 
 
IMPORTANCE OF THE VETO POWER. 249 
 
 Again : were all this otherwise, and were the power legislative, it 
 is no violation of the general principle separating legislative, executive, 
 and judicial powers, to vest this in the executive. They are still sep- 
 arated in their great divisions ; but, for checks and balances over the 
 agents of the people, and not over the people themselves, some mixture 
 is made, and properly made, in detail. It is considered, by some of 
 the wisest statesmen and writers, that this, so far from being a deform- 
 ity, or an argument against a power so mixed, — if the veto be such 
 an one, — is a beauty, a guard, an excellence. Are we, as legislators, 
 to complain of such a mixture, when we exercise an executive power 
 as a check over the President, in stopping all his treaties and all his 
 important appointments, if we dislike them ? — when we exercise, also, 
 judicial powers, in trying all impeachments ? and, when the other 
 House also exercises the judicial power of a grand inquest in respect 
 to political offences, and the power also of prosecuting attorney, by its 
 own members, in person, in case of impeachments ? But, beyond all 
 this, does the mover complain of such a mixture in the executive, when 
 he himself proposes, in another amendment, to make a new mixture in 
 legislative duties, by devolving on the two Houses the executive power 
 of appointing the Secretary of the Treasury and Treasurer? 
 
 Lastly, as to the rightfulness of the present veto in principle, it is 
 argued that a more restricted one, allowing a bare majority to pass a 
 law, notwithstanding the dissent of the executive, would prove suf- 
 ficient to answer the design of this power, as a check on the legisla- 
 tive agents of the people. 
 
 But the senator from Virginia (Mr. Archer) justly remarked 
 that this would, in practice, prove no veto at all. The amendment, 
 therefore, in such a form, is a virtual abolition of the whole power. 
 Suppose the law to be vetoed is an encroachment on executive privi- 
 leges ; will it not, when sent back, be of course repassed by the same 
 bare majority who at first intended to assail him ? Suppose the law 
 involves a constitutional question, which was fully debated, and a bare 
 majority voted against the scruples in that respect ; would not the 
 same persons repass the law, if sent back ? So of a bad law, passed 
 through corruption, or impulse. I admit that a mistake through 
 haste, in a law, if sent back, they might correct. But that could be 
 corrected by a new law. Thus, every important and vital object of 
 the veto power would be prostrated by a change like that contained in 
 this amendment. 
 
 Executive independence, constitutional doubts, stability in laws and 
 systems, great sectional questions in a small minority, would all bend 
 before it, and be overwhelmed in one common ruin. 
 
 If an executive, under such circumstances, stripped of all direct 
 check on the error of erring legislative delegates, should be driven to 
 the greater use of his indirect influence, it would tend to practices 
 truly monarchical, contaminating, and fatal to American liberty and 
 virtue. After this amendment, there would be less of the veto left 
 
250 IMPORTANCE OF THE VETO POWER. 
 
 than was allowed to remain even in the first stages of the French rev- 
 olution; for then the passage of the law vetoed could not take place till 
 two successive sessions sanctioned it. And when thus reduced, what 
 was the next step in their encroachments? The whole was swept after 
 it, in less than twelve months. Nothing remained to check the excesses 
 and tyranny of legislative aspirants, till the entire country was cov- 
 ered with confiscation and carnage. 
 
 In another view, still different, the largest veto here is less likely to 
 be misused, or to be dangerous, than the smallest one in monarchies. 
 Tor there the different departments of government generally represent 
 different interests, and are either jealous, hostile, or encroaching, for 
 their own personal benefit and aggrandizement. 
 
 But here they all represent only one interest, — that of the people. 
 None have an object or estate separate from the people ; and hence the 
 occasion for differences will be less frequent, and, when they do occur, 
 will be less selfish, and therefore more entitled to weight, respect, 
 reconsideration, and delay, unless the majorities in the two legislative 
 bodies are quite as large as two-thirds. 
 
 It has next been argued, that, though the qualified veto in our con- 
 stitution may have been proper at the time of its adoption, circum- 
 stances have since changed, by the disproportionate growth of the 
 executive power over the legislative, so that the veto ought to be fur- 
 ther reduced or annulled. This is an important view of the subject, 
 and I will endeavor to meet it in frankness, and with facts, as well as 
 general principles, calculated, in my estimation, to demonstrate the 
 entire fallacy of the position. 
 
 We have heard repeated, in this debate, a remark which originated 
 with Mr. Dunning, that executive power had increased, is increas- 
 ing, and ought to be diminished. Whether this is correct or erro- 
 neous, it should be kept in mind that it was uttered under a monarchy, 
 with an executive claiming to rule by Divine right, — not amenable to 
 the people, — possessed not only of an absolute veto, but a power at 
 any time to defeat any law by a dissolution of Parliament, or by 
 appointing additional members to the House of Lords, — revered as the 
 original fountain of all laws as well as honors, and acknowledged as an 
 independent permanent third estate in the realm. It is never, as a 
 general principle, true in a republic. 
 
 Here, executive power can never legitimately increase by its own 
 operations, except as the growth of the country augments the business 
 of all the departments. It can never be enlarged disproportionately, 
 except to carry into effect the plans of the legislative authority. Here, 
 the executive can get nothing beyond what the people and States gave 
 him at first, unless the legislature, under this enlargement of its own 
 influence and objects, voluntarily choose to confide more to him, for its 
 own or for public purposes. Here, also, if party power ever becomes 
 exclusive and absorbing, it is developed first and most in the legisla- 
 
IMPORTANCE OF THE VETO POWER. 251 
 
 ture, which is more immediately connected with the people, and with 
 party machinery and party impulses, than the executive. 
 
 Hence, the executive, considered alone, is here almost powerless. 
 Instead of being everything and doing everything, as some have argued, 
 it is manifest that here, as well as abroad, his influence for good or 
 evil is much less than many suppose. 
 
 " How small, of all that human hearts endure, 
 The part which kings or laws can cause or cure !" 
 
 But here laws do almost the whole which can be done by the Gen- 
 eral Government, either to advance or retard the influence of those 
 other great and active agents in society which are the source of most 
 of its weal and woe. Hence, the legislature here is made the depos- 
 itory of almost every important power delegated by the people. It 
 makes peace and war, and not the executive, as elsewhere. It helps, 
 through means of the Senate, to make all treaties and important 
 appointments to office ; and not the executive alone, as in most other 
 countries. It can pass all laws in despite of his objections, if only 
 two-thirds of the members concur in the passage ; and not the execu- 
 tive, as in both England and France, possessing an absolute veto over 
 them all. It is invested with the great incidental authority, under the 
 constitution, to pass laws in every case not expressly enumerated, if 
 necessary and proper to carry into effect what is enumerated. 
 
 But the executive has no such sweeping, undefined, grasping author- 
 ity, independent of the legislature. Even many parts of the constitu- 
 tion itself cannot be enforced, either by the executive or the judiciary, 
 without previous legislation. The executive power is tied up and 
 hedged around in almost every respect, while the purse and the sword, 
 which are the power over taxation of all kinds, with that of raising 
 armies and navies, — officers, high and low, — all depend on legislative 
 action either for existence or support, and in most cases for both. He 
 can unite in no law but with them and their previous action. He can 
 make neither treaty nor important appointment to office, without the 
 cooperation of one of the Houses. He cannot put a seaman afloat, or 
 plant a soldier in the field, a secretary in his cabinet, or a clerk in a 
 custom-house, or even buy bread and meat for his own table from the 
 public revenue, without first having their express and prior sanction. 
 He is but one, too, among millions ; while, on the contrary, the legis- 
 lature is numerous. He can comparatively have but few connections 
 or intimates, while they have many, and are in constant and more fre- 
 quent intercourse with every portion of the community, to command 
 popularity from the great sources of all real power in a republic. It 
 is hence that the combined talents, intelligence, wealth, and influence, 
 of the legislature, in a country so free and enterprising, active and 
 aspiring, as this, are always an overmatch for a single executive, and 
 more especially one thus restricted and dependent. 
 
 The fashion and tendency of the country are, for the legislature to 
 
252 IMPORTANCE OF THE VETO POWER. 
 
 crowd the executive gradually off the end of the fallen tree, as 
 Tecumseh did General Harrison, when illustrating how the white 
 population slowly encroached on the aborigines. 
 
 From such a spirit, and from that jealousy which is in itself com- 
 mendable, but which is not always skilful, the executive has, in several 
 States, become a mere cipher. 
 
 One senator (Mr. Morehead) has complained, in this debate, that 
 the President presumes to give his opinion to us on important public 
 questions. Yet the constitution and his oath demand this duty from 
 him. At the same time, it has been amusing to witness, in two other 
 instances, senators on the same side of the House (Messrs. Clay 
 and Rives), in discussing resolutions calling on the President for 
 papers, resist them, because they indicated too prying, too inquisitive, 
 or too intermeddling a spirit, on the part of the legislature, with what 
 are properly executive duties. It would seem, therefore, that in fight- 
 ing against a supposed increase of executive influence here, we are 
 fighting the air. 
 
 But, independent of all reasoning to show that the legislature here 
 is much the most powerful, encroaching, and increasing, even in 
 despite of the veto power, let us advert a moment to the opinions of 
 some of the ablest writers and statesmen on this point. They are of 
 all parties. 
 
 Wilson said, in discussing the checks and balances in the constitu- 
 tion (Debates, p. 1330), he " was most apprehensive of a dissolution 
 of the government from the legislature swallowing up all the other 
 powers." 
 
 G. Morris (p. 1165) " concurred in thinking the public liberty in 
 greater danger from legislative usurpation than any other source." 
 
 Madison (p. 1163) observed that "experience in all States has 
 evinced a powerful tendency in the legislature to absorb all powers in 
 its vortex." — u This was the real source of danger to the American 
 constitutions." 
 
 The Federalist — Kent and Story — are all full of the same element- 
 ary principle, as expressed by the latter, that " the tendency of repub- 
 lican government is to the aggrandizement of the legislature at the 
 expense of the other departments;" or, in the words of the first, 
 " The legislative department is everywhere extending the sphere of its 
 activity, and drawing all forces into its impetuous vortex." 
 
 Even Mr. Jefferson denounced an unchecked legislature, or a con- 
 centration of all power in it, as the worst of tyrannies. (Notes on 
 Virg, p. 214.) 
 
 Before quitting this point, and in order to prevent misconception, I 
 would observe that the growth of legislative power, within the limits 
 of the constitution, and without encroachments on what the people and 
 the States, for their safety, have confided to other departments, has 
 never been with me a matter of regret. It is, at times, evidence of 
 the increase of intelligence, talent, and enterprise, among the members 
 
IMPORTANCE OF THE VETO POWER. 253 
 
 as well as in the community at large. It conduces to the general 
 improvement of our institutions and of the community, and is not only 
 excited by much of what advances the prosperity of the country and 
 the age in which we live, but in some degree reacts and augments the 
 power of what feeds and stimulates it. A high order of talent and 
 virtue in Congress, long experience in the public service, and great 
 political science, must and should command due influence everywhere. 
 Nor am I one of those who cherish no jealousy of executive power. 
 I would check and restrain it with care in our constitution, as has been 
 done by our fathers ; and I would afterwards watch its operations with 
 argus eyes, in order to detect and thwart the first movements violating 
 those constitutions. This natural jealousy, in most of our population, 
 is a great guaranty that abuses will seldom be attempted ; and, if 
 attempted, will seldom be allowed to succeed. But far be it from any 
 of us to seek to defeat the constitutional checks and balances placed 
 over us by our constituents, for their security and their welfare. 
 
 The only remaining apology for asking them to take from the exec- 
 utive a portion of his power controlling us is this. Notwithstanding 
 all theory and argument show the legislature in a republic to be more 
 increasing and encroaching than the executive, it is said the facts devel- 
 oped here since A. D. 1789 show that the latter has really grown the 
 fastest in power, and must, for the public safety, be deprived of some 
 of its privileges, and especially of the present veto power. 
 
 This is the last, and, in my view, most important position which has 
 been advanced. It has met with least attention in the debate ; but, on 
 a scrutiny, the facts will be found to operate most triumphantly against 
 those who assume the position. 
 
 Look at our legislative history impartially ; select not two cases 
 only, like the mover, and those doubtful in character, if not bearing 
 against him, but examine a host which exist connected with the sub- 
 ject. I shall not detain the Senate with a collateral inquiry, which 
 were decided right and which wrong, but merely allude to the cases as 
 events showing the instances and progress of legislative influence com- 
 pared with the executive. Having heretofore occupied stations in both 
 of those departments, and as well in the State as the General Govern- 
 ment, I am in a situation to feel impartial between the two rival powers. 
 I do not contend that all, in either branch of the government, are saints, 
 or all sinners ; but those in each have virtues and frailties incident to 
 their position as well as private characters, and of which I shall ven- 
 ture to speak with that freedom, as well as candor, indispensable in 
 any useful inquiry after truth. 
 
 One of the first measures in the first Congress, under the new con- 
 stitution, was to organize the executive departments. Under the Con- 
 federation, the Secretaries had, in analogy to what exists in both Eng- 
 land and France, been permitted to appear in person before Congress, 
 and make explanations. But, in the new arrangement, such was the 
 jealousy lest executive influence should gain some advantage over the 
 22 
 
254 IMPORTANCE OF THE VETO POWER. 
 
 legislature by the presence of its agents, that none of the Secretaries 
 were permitted to appear on the floor of Congress, and only the Secre- 
 tary connected with the treasury was made subject to attend in person 
 when desired. It is another curious illustration of the dread of execu- 
 tive power, and the stripping it in this way of any opportunity for 
 personal influence over Congress in public discussions, that the Secre- 
 tary of the Treasury, though thus made liable to attend, has, in the 
 whole fifty years since elapsed, never been once called before the leg- 
 islature, and enabled in person to vindicate his measures and repel 
 unjust attacks. 
 
 Another question arose, and was settled in the organization of those 
 departments, which shows the great strides since of legislative claims 
 over the executive. It was long and most ably debated, whether the 
 Secretaries should be made removable by the President alone, or only 
 in conjunction with and by the assent of the Senate. The decision 
 was solemnly made against the propriety of the interference of this 
 legislative branch of the government, and was acquiesced in quietly 
 and practised on constantly for more than a third of a century. 
 
 Yet, of late years, such has been the increase of legislative claims 
 over the executive, rather than the reverse, that a continuance to make 
 removals, in conformity to the principle of that decision, has been 
 denounced as unconstitutional, not merely by partisan presses or dis- 
 appointed expectants, but by grave and learned senators, and the 
 executive has been hung up for it to unmitigated censure and scorn. 
 
 Another event soon occurred, which the senator from Kentucky 
 (Mr. Clay) adduced as a proof of the increase of executive power, 
 but which, in truth, gave the legislature an early as well as unex- 
 pected power over all nominations to office. The President retired, or 
 was driven by our conduct, from appearing, in person, in this chamber, 
 to procure a confirmation of his appointments. This at once gave 
 more freedom of speech and inquiry in respect to them, — enabled the 
 Senate to use greater examination, and relieved them from all personal 
 importunity or argument from the executive. It thus established a far 
 greater and more efficient check over all his selections for office than 
 could have been possible under the previous practice. 
 
 The next important development of the increase of legislative influ- 
 ence was also in this body. After sitting for some years with closed 
 doors, even in legislative business, and thus being, in public apprecia- 
 tion, little more than a council of review, our doings, in the considera- 
 tion of laws, after strenuous opposition, were flung open for publicity 
 and discussion before the people and the world. This body shot for- 
 ward at once in power and popularity ; and wants nothing more, but 
 the same publicity and discussion in acting on appointments, to make it 
 a still more formidable check in appointments than it now is. Should 
 the motion of my friend from Ohio (Mr. Allen) prevail on this sub- 
 ject, the country will owe him a deep debt of gratitude, not only for 
 the new restraint it will place on the President, but for the check it 
 
IMPORTANCE OF THE VETO POWER. 255 
 
 will impose on the worthless harpies that fly around the executive for 
 office, and who, if their characters and claims were here in the blaze 
 of day to undergo public examination and exposure, would often shrink 
 from their applications. Thus the mode of administering the govern- 
 ment is almost as essential to preserve a due balance between the dif- 
 ferent departments as the express provisions of the constitution itself. 
 Another shock to executive influence, and at the same time an increase 
 of legislative power, was in the repeal of the celebrated judiciary act. 
 That repeal took from the executive a power to reward friends with an 
 office whose tenure was good behavior, or for life, and asserted the 
 authority of the legislature to shorten the term to a year or less, if it 
 pleased at any moment to abolish the act establishing the office. 
 
 [Here Mr. Clay inquired, across the chamber, if that decision was 
 wrong.] 
 
 I began this examination of occurrences in our history bearing on 
 the comparative increase of legislative and executive power by stating 
 explicitly that it was not my purpose to detain the Senate by arguing 
 whether the decision, in any case, was right or wrong. I merely refer 
 to the record, and to the manifest character and tendency of the deci- 
 sion, whether correct or incorrect, to prove that the legislative, rather 
 than the executive power, has augmented greatly. 
 
 But what have we, beside all these, in the further progress of our 
 affairs 1 A most insidious system of taxation by a tariff. It looked at 
 first only to revenue ; and manufactures, like other interests, came in 
 merely for incidental protection, and that under a low rate of duties, 
 from twelve and a half to thirty per cent. Next, it gradually 
 increased, under legislative influence, and for the aggrandizement of 
 the members and their powerful constituents, to a deliberate and enor- 
 mous protection, for manufactures alone, of fifty, eighty, and a hun- 
 dred per cent. It thus disturbed so fearfully the pursuits of the 
 community, and deranged so greatly the employment of capital, as, with 
 other circumstances, not necessary to be now recapitulated, to break 
 down the whole system ; but only to be revived again recently, with 
 the new and tremendous claim of a legislative right to increase its pop- 
 ularity, by giving away, through distribution acts, immense amounts 
 of the public revenue, and relieving the States, to some extent, from 
 both debt and direct taxation. 
 
 Next in our history came the system of internal improvements. At 
 first, a cloud in the horizon no bigger than a man's hand, appropriat- 
 ing six or eight thousand dollars to preserve some piers in the Dela- 
 ware river, at Newcastle, it in time rolled onward, expanding, under 
 legislative impulses, to the immense aggregate of nearly two millions 
 yearly. One member urged a work that would aid his city ; another, 
 his State; another, perad venture, his own local interests; another, 
 doubtless, the public convenience, till Congress found itself wielding 
 this immense influence over all quarters of the country, by a system 
 of log-rolling as irresistible as it was unlimitable and ruinous. When 
 
256 IMPORTANCE OF THE VETO POWER. 
 
 the executive had the courage and independence to stem the torrent 
 by the Maysville veto, and thus checked many extravagances, the 
 same influences rushed into State legislatures, soon overwhelmed many 
 of them with immense debts, and has now burst out again here, by 
 forcing Congress into new schemes of distribution and increased tariffs, 
 to be, in many cases, similarly wasted. 
 
 Once for all, it may be added, as another illustration of our topic, 
 that neither of the fatal distribution acts of 1836 or 1841 could ever 
 have been passed into laws, but for the increased and increasing power 
 of the legislature. Who would have dared, in 1790 or 1800, or even 
 1810 or 1820, to propose measures like those? 
 
 "What would Gerry, or George Clinton, or George Mason, have 
 thought of a proposition to bestow on the States all the large revenue 
 from our vast public domain, and resort to heavy taxation on the 
 people to supply the loss of it ? What republican would have dreamed 
 of giving the appropriation of our money to a different government 
 from that which imposes the burdens ? Executive influence resisted 
 and retarded this destructive course for years, till, at last, by help of 
 the concentrated money power for a bank, and a concentrated money 
 power for protection to manufactures, the legislature has triumphed, 
 the executive has been revolutionized, the distribution accomplished, 
 the tariff compromise proposed to be violated, and, but for the death 
 of the late incumbent, all executive resistance to any and every legisla- 
 tive rashness prostrated in the dust. 
 
 Who, also, but the legislature, have swollen the pension system 
 from a few thousand dollars, at first contemplated, to many millions ? 
 Who are the agents, and who are thanked and sustained for the vast 
 sums thus expended ? Who, but the legislature, for their own expan- 
 sive plans of favor, popularity, or, in some cases, public policy, added, 
 for some years, from ten to twenty millions to the aggregate of expend- 
 itures asked for by the executive ? What increase of influence has 
 grown up here over the press, by the enlargement of our printing 
 expenses'? How many of the Indian expenditures have also been 
 crowded on the executive by the legislature ? How many grants, in 
 private claims, much more acts of charity or generosity than justice, 
 to legislative importunity ? How much of the light-house system ? It 
 has been increased from a few thousands to about a third of a million 
 of dollars, and I fear there is no limit to the local jobbing and local 
 influences connected with it. How many thousands of State expenses 
 in the late war, incurred not only without our authority, but, in some 
 cases, in contempt of it, have been paid out of the national treasury, 
 under the pressure of legislative importunity ? 
 
 If the executive, in some of these cases, selects agents to expend the 
 money, they are agents recommended by members of Congress, and 
 both the expenditure and the appointments contribute to the growth of 
 legislative influence. His only gain is that of more labor and respons- 
 ibility. So, if millions are expended on forts or navy-yards, the patron- 
 
 
IMPORTANCE OF THE VETO POWER. 257 
 
 age is nominally with the executive, but really with Congress ; and 
 the local increase of expenditure is sought for by some members as a 
 most desirable boon, for the profits and salaries to influential friends, 
 quite as much as for patriotism. 
 
 I hasten over many other instances of the increase in legislative 
 power, lest being too tedious, such as each House authorizing clerks 
 without specific laws ; such as requiring estimates for public buildings 
 to be first submitted to a House committee ; such as bestowing double 
 or additional compensations on our officers, in the teeth of a provision 
 controlling, in that respect, the executive departments ; such as having 
 increased our own salaries and franking privileges, but never the Pres- 
 ident's : and such as having officers to protect this chamber, and a 
 police to guard the capitol, but not a solitary individual around the 
 President to shield him even from insult or outrage. 
 
 But one moment on the great change of power and claims evinced 
 between the executive and legislative branches as to the keeping of the 
 public money. 
 
 In 1789, a law passed, as a matter of course, confiding the custody 
 of the public money to the executive. It w T as to be kept by the treas- 
 urer, whom the President appointed, and whom he could remove. 
 The mere keeping of it in safety was, in its nature, a ministerial or an 
 executive act. It conferred no increase of power, but only an increase 
 of liability and labor. The money could not be used or loaned to a 
 single dollar's amount. No gain, or profit, or patronage, belonged to 
 its possession. But lately, such is the progress of legislative claims 
 and power, the keeping of the public money by the executive has been 
 denounced in Congress as most dangerous to public liberty. The 
 mere removal of it from one depository to another, though under 
 express provision in the law or charter of 1816, has been stigmatized 
 as usurpation, and the executive conduct on that occasion dragged 
 hither and nailed to your table with most reproachful condemnation. 
 Even his wish to be heard, and his protest against the attack on his 
 good name, was rejected and virtually flung under your table ; and his 
 character, without hearing or trial, was sought to be handed down to 
 posterity, on our official records, as one unfaithful to public trusts and 
 a violator of the constitution he had sworn to defend. 
 
 Who would have proposed to arraign Washington thus, under whose 
 administration the places of deposit for the public money were fre- 
 quently changed by the executive? Why this great revolution in 
 legislative feeling and action on this particular subject 1 Manifestly 
 because, in the mean time, powerful individuals have been permitted to 
 enjoy temporary loans of this money from the banks, after they were 
 selected as depositories, — loans which our own officers holding it could 
 not and dared not make, without exposing themselves to punishment. 
 
 A change of the depository might compel a collection of the loans, 
 and cut off future favors to the same persons. Did not much of the 
 clamor arise from this ? And has not the repeal of the independent 
 22* 
 
258 IMPORTANCE OF THE VETO POWER. 
 
 treasury been, in part, the result of the like determination to obtain 
 the use of the public money by similar persons, — members of Congress 
 and their influential friends, — and which use that law forbade ? Did 
 not some similar pecuniary considerations, in similar quarters, enter 
 into the reproaches for the vetoes against internal improvements and 
 the distribution bill? Much more did they not burst out at the 
 vetoes of the bank bills, in 1832 and 1841? 
 
 The last two contained a singular illustration of what some might 
 consider not executive but legislative grasping, because it originated 
 here, and was negatived by the President. It changed the location of 
 the bank from a great commercial city to this capital, where the mem- 
 bers of Congress could, if disposed, exercise more immediate and pow- 
 erful influence ; and, at the same moment, after long debate, the bill 
 passed without prohibiting members from obtaining loans. 
 
 Let me invite your attention next to two great changes in our system 
 of credit for lands and duties, which have stripped, and justly stripped, 
 the executive of much incidental influence. In 1820 over twenty mil- 
 lions of debt for the former was under his discretionary control as to 
 its collection, and at all times for the latter it has. been from ten to 
 twenty millions yearly. Just as truly as it is said in Holy Writ that 
 the borrower is servant to the lender, just so truly has this first change 
 deprived, and will the last one after next June deprive, the executive, 
 either in person or through his subordinates, of a large amount of 
 indirect power. 
 
 Not to detain you with other specific measures, showing the growth 
 of legislative claims and legislative power on the one hand, and of the 
 wane of executive influence on the other hand, let me add that the 
 usages of the government, in all appointments to office, from the lowest 
 to the highest, are more illustrative of the truth of these positions than 
 even the positive enactments of Congress. 
 
 Yes, sir, from the most paltry clerkship, or light-house keeper, or 
 tide-waiter, to judges, foreign ministers, and cabinet officers, the per- 
 vading and overwhelming influence of the legislature has been hourly 
 and daily felt more and more. 
 
 Go to the files in the departments, — go to our own : whose interfer- 
 ence is most common? whose recommendations are most powerful? 
 whose remonstrances, when overlooked, are most indignant ? Members 
 of Congress, most assuredly. I stand not here to pass judgment on this 
 as right or wrong ; but merely to bear witness to the fact, and its con- 
 sequences on the growth of legislative influence over the executive. 
 
 Why, sir, the whole patronage of the army and navy is almost 
 absolutely resigned to them. They virtually make the selection of 
 cadets, and control most of those of midshipmen. Who press, also, the 
 increase, and decide the choice of pursers, assistant-surgeons, chaplains, 
 and the marine corps, but members of Congress ? And why, but for 
 this, have we, in the very last year alone, as appears in the document 
 before me, eleven additional pursers, the chaplains nearly doubled, and 
 
IMPORTANCE OF THE VETO POWER. 259 
 
 the higher grades of officers increased to make way for new ones 
 at the bottom ; so that the post-captains are thirteen more than at the 
 beginning even of A. D. 1841, the commanders forty-one more, the 
 surgeons eleven, the lieutenants forty more, and the passed midshipmen 
 and midshipmen one hundred and twenty more! This may be all 
 right, or questionable, or wrong. I do not now enter into those con- 
 siderations. But who have been gratified by it? Who have urged 
 and controlled most of the new appointments ? 
 
 Yet this is not all. What influence but the legislature compelled 
 General Harrison, — who had previously denounced the appointment of 
 members of Congress themselves to office, as one of the amendments 
 on your table does, — what but that forced him to select four out of six 
 of his cabinet from those very members of Congress ; and, while boast- 
 ing that he would act as President of the country, and not of any 
 party, selecting all of them from the ranks of one party ? I cannot 
 stop now to trace this further into foreign embassies, judgeships, and 
 collectorships. But let me ask if the legislature have not assumed for 
 some time even to checkmate the appointment of the executive himself? 
 Have they not blackballed him in a legislative caucus, when unmanage- 
 able ? or recommended another, likely to be more complying ? And 
 when driven from these halls to general conventions, have not the 
 members of Congress, in many cases, been members of those conven- 
 tions? And did not some of them, as at Harrisburg, change the 
 nominee for President by their all-controlling influence 1 
 
 Let me ask, in candor, too, if the whole system of removals from 
 office for opinion's sake, so much denounced formerly by those who 
 now practise it most, has not had both its stimulus and sanction in 
 Congress itself, to gratify the members themselves, or their active 
 friends ? If not so, why are not those removals prevented by legisla- 
 tion ? And why is a President sustained at this moment, or why was 
 one sustained last March, who daily then and daily now turns out 
 worth and integrity and fidelity, to starve or beg favors of a cold world, 
 merely to reward with the spoils of office some partisan sycophant? 
 There have been quite too much of talk and pledges on this point, and 
 quite too little of performance. Above all this, as an evidence of 
 legislative interference and encroachment on the executive, have not 
 members of Congress, even the loftiest, taken the field in person 
 against him ? Have they not assailed him in season and out of season, 
 at dinners and jubilees, on the stump and in halls of legislation, and 
 on the Sabbath as well as week days ? As an evidence how feeble is 
 his power, compared with theirs, especially when theirs is reinforced 
 by that vast monied influence which his independence and vetoes had 
 disaffected, did they not mainly drive the last President from office ? 
 Did they not substitute another, in spite of all the imputed increase of 
 executive power, and that other disposed to gratify this monied influ- 
 ence by internal improvements without limit, except the want of funds, 
 by distributions lavishly of the public revenue, and, but for his pre- 
 
260 IMPORTANCE OF THE VETO POWER. 
 
 mature death, by national banks, as large, gigantic, omnipotent, as the 
 most latitudinar y member of Congress might desire 1 
 
 It is even in this debate admitted (by Mr. Archer) that, after all 
 the use of the recent vetoes and the imaginary growth of executive 
 power, the present President is not able to command a single vote 
 here, or in an electoral college, nor over half a dozen in the other 
 House. I concede that the change in the constitution, voting for a 
 person as Vice-president not selected originally as a candidate for 
 President, may have placed in the executive chair one, however 
 amiable, not perhaps of the same weight and extensive popularity as 
 would have been there had the constitution not been altered. I see, 
 also, at the same moment, as another illustration of my subject, that 
 unless, by a happy accident, as in the person before me (Mr. Cal- 
 houn), and one other, who has since adorned the Presidency itself 
 (Mr. Van Buren), the executive power has been weakened since 1804 
 by that change, and especially its influence in and over this body 
 through its presiding officer. But go to the retired veteran of the 
 hermitage, — a President by nomination as well as election, — a Presi- 
 dent in mind, experience, courage, constancy, virtue, popularity, great- 
 ness of all kinds, and, in some respects, the noblest Roman of them 
 all. He had also a double term, — all the immense increase of power 
 which the gentlemen have argued that vetoes confer, — and was sur- 
 rounded beside with all the halo, so dangerous, as some apprehend, of 
 having been a military chieftain. 
 
 Yet what was he, with all these adventitious aids ? Instead of wield- 
 ing both the purse and the sword, he could not impose the smallest 
 tax, or use a dollar, but by specific assent and appropriation of 
 Congress. He could not enlist or pay a single soldier or sailor, till 
 Congress furnished both the authority and means. He could not 
 employ or reward a single follower, except as the legislature permitted 
 him. In the height .of all his power and influence, he was seldom, if 
 ever, able to command a majority in both branches of Congress for a 
 whole term. And when he retired to private life, as quietly and 
 powerless, after all his vetoes, as the humblest of our constituents, it 
 has been a taunt against him that he cannot, as he could not in the 
 height of his glory and power, control an election even in his own 
 district. I, sir, boast of this, not to give his aged bosom a pang, but 
 to illustrate the purity and independence of my countrymen, and as 
 the strongest evidence of his forbearance and patriotism. It repels, 
 also, this whole fallacy about the increase of executive influence. Yes, 
 it is most true and convincing that, though millions of hearts beat with 
 gratitude to him for his public services, and millions of bayonets are 
 ready to defend his gray hairs from insult and injustice, yet to influ- 
 ence improperly a single election he has neither the power nor incli- 
 nation. He could not, if he would ; and, thank God, he would not, if 
 he could. 
 
 It must, therefore, be manifest that the executive without us is a 
 
IMPORTANCE OF THE VETO POWER. 261 
 
 mere pageant. He is a mock monarch, in whose hands we place the 
 real sceptre or withdraw it, and make it a broken reed, or means of 
 defence for the people and their rights. All the controlling, absorbing, 
 or encroaching powers, are with the legislature. The proximity and 
 intimacy with the people is with Congress, while the President is more 
 removed from them in his intercourse. Numbers are with us, also, 
 being over fifty in one branch, and near two hundred and fifty in the 
 other, to him alone ; and he not only one to three hundred, but to 
 seventeen millions of people, more near and more ready, usually, to 
 sustain us against him. We have, too, talents, intelligence, experi- 
 ence, quite an over-match for any one man elsewhere ; because we 
 have not only the most intellectual, aspiring, and popular, among the 
 young and middle-aged, but ex-judges, ex-governors, ex-secretaries, 
 ex- vice-presidents, and even ex-presidents themselves, to aid us with 
 their experience and influence. 
 
 " It is necessary, then (said one of the signers of the constitution) , that the executive 
 magistrate should be the guardian of the people, — even of the lower classes, — against 
 legislative tyranny, against the great and wealthy, who, in the course of things, will 
 necessarily compose the legislative body." 
 
 Standing in this attitude towards him, it excites pity, no less than 
 regret, that an attempt should be made to rob the single executive of 
 much of that little power and dignity which the struggles and legis- 
 lative victories of fifty years have left in his possession. 
 
 What should we say of him, were he to turn round and urge that 
 some of our powers or checks over him should be removed or lessened? 
 The scorn and indignation which would, in such case, assail him, is 
 another illustration how feeble he already is in influence compared 
 with us. 
 
 In fine, sir, the whole fallacy of the argument will be more apparent, 
 if we look nakedly at a few of its assumptions. First, the veto is 
 desired to be changed because executive power has greatly increased, 
 when the facts in our history from all quarters, as well as the nature 
 and tendency of legislative influence in free countries, show the exact 
 reverse. 
 
 Next, if the executive has not increased in power separately, it is 
 contended that he has as the great agent and exponent of a party, and 
 therefore that the veto must be taken away. When, if such be the 
 truth, are not the active, influential, and controlling members of party, 
 members of Congress, and closely connected with them ? And must 
 not the executive, thus situated, so far from being likely to check our 
 acts too often or improperly, be likely not to check them enough ? 
 
 Next, if he has, under a high sense of duty, and bursting away from 
 party trammels or legislative influence, ever used the veto against us, 
 is it not right, and the will of the nation, of the people, and for the 
 public welfare, that he should thus use it? If it be not, let us have 
 specified the particular instance of any veto which any member of this 
 
262 IMPORTANCE OF THE VETO POWER. 
 
 body of the political school of 1798 will contend to be wrong ; or any 
 one, where the people, in the next election after its use, have not 
 indirectly and constructively approved it. 
 
 In every instance they have reelected the President who has used 
 it ; and it is insanity to suppose the power will ever be wilfully abused 
 by one illustrious for public services over the whole Union before he 
 can be elected, and who, without a hope of gain or fame by such an 
 abuse, would suddenly abandon his integrity, forfeit reputation, embit- 
 ter future life, disgrace his friends, and stain, with a sacrilegious hand, 
 his own and his country's history. In short, one of the distinguished 
 jurists of the age, and, at the same time, a politician acting with the 
 other side of this chamber, has, in the calm of his closet, in a work 
 well known and before me, deliberately stated to posterity his convic- 
 tion, that if, between the different departments, there has been any 
 increase or encroachment, it has not been on the part of either the 
 executive or the judiciary. 
 
 But it may be apprehended that exceptions will occur to all this 
 general reasoning and facts, and then, at times, the country may suffer 
 by a misuse of the present veto. Though this must be almost a case 
 of fancy, considering that the veto power changes nothing, but merely 
 delays, yet there are other constitutional and effective means, already 
 existing, to obviate any evil consequences in such a case, without 
 amending the constitution. First, if two-thirds of both houses are 
 satisfied that the consequences of any particular veto are likely to be 
 injurious, they can and will at once overrule it. If so many are not 
 thus satisfied, the danger is probably not very clear or great. But, 
 whatever it may be, another remedy exists in one year, if at the close 
 of a Congress, or two years at the furthest. Then all of the other 
 House may be changed, and one-third of the Senate, and a new law, 
 like that vetoed, may be passed by a two-thirds majority. If that rem- 
 edy fails, there is still another. The President himself can be changed, 
 in one year, perhaps, or two, and certainly in four, so as to insure suc- 
 cess with the same law, even without a majority of two-thirds. Nor is 
 this mere theory. We have just witnessed a case of this kind as to 
 the executive, effected by what means except and in addition to legis- 
 lative influence I shall not now stop to examine. A civil revolution 
 in the executive, for the first time in the nineteenth century, by a pop- 
 ular election, has just been accomplished, in favor of the broad con- 
 struction of the constitution ; and the unlimited doctrines of the gen- 
 eral welfare, and those monied measures which legislative influence 
 had attempted, but by executive vetoes had been thwarted in accom- 
 plishing, — such as United States banks, distributions of the public 
 lands, and unlimited internal improvements, — have all but one been 
 perfected, without changing the constitution, and in despite of former 
 vetoes. 
 
 The failure of that one only was in consequence of a lamented event 
 in the hands of Providence alone, and to which allusion has been 
 
IMPORTANCE OF THE VETO POWER. 263 
 
 already made ; but that failure it would be madness to attempt now to 
 remedy, by a rash prostration of all constitutional barriers to passion, 
 indiscretion, or faction. 
 
 Nor was this amendment the remedy proposed in 1827, with a view 
 to curtail executive influence. It was then proposed to accomplish 
 that under express laws and other amendments to lessen executive 
 patronage through appointments, &c, and much of which has since been 
 indirectly accomplished, — some by new laws and some without them, 
 — through the mere force of Congressional influence. That can be 
 pushed still further now, as it might then, by legislation only, — 
 reducing salaries, and abolishing unnecessary offices, — if it should be 
 supposed that such a measure is required by the public welfare, or is 
 necessary to check existing abuses in executive favors. Such a course 
 is safe, constitutional, legitimate, and may prove often a great preserv- 
 ative of public liberty. 
 
 In that way, the House of Commons, after the revolution in Eng- 
 land, brought their new monarch, popular and talented as he really 
 was, to reasonable terms ; and this without robbing him of the veto 
 power, or its exercise, when found necessary, or when the same results 
 could not be accomplished by him through other checks and balances 
 more formidable than that. One member boasted "that they had 
 brought the king's nose to the grindstone, and in another session they 
 would make him leap over a stick." But they wisely refrained from 
 prostrating any of the constitutional powers of their executive, as I 
 trust we shall any of our much more feeble and more accountable 
 chief magistrate. 
 
 The natural, active, and irresistible influence of the legislature in a 
 free government, and its inroads on executive power, are such, that 
 the latter needs all its clear authority, if not a reinforcement of it, to 
 prevent gradual encroachment and decay, with ultimate imbecility and 
 ruin. When these come, what follows ? What does the history of 
 all free governments demonstrate as to which triumphs, and as to the 
 consequences ? Not that the increase of executive power ripens into 
 despotism, but the gradual destruction of it by the legislature ; not 
 that the executive pushes forward, but, being overcome, a despotism is 
 afterwards introduced, either by the legislature or the military, to pre- 
 vent further anarchy, bloodshed, and utter insecurity of property and 
 life. In all cases the legislature first conquered the executive, rather 
 than he them. Was it the executive, or the tribunes with the veto 
 power, who encroached on the legislature, and introduced the tyranny 
 of the Caesars ? No. It was the Senate — the legislature — exciting 
 tumults against those holding the veto power ; and, in the rage of 
 disappointment, some of them in person uniting to murder the Gracchi, 
 in order to defeat the use of the veto. Anarchy followed on these 
 legislative encroachments, till usurpation and despotism came in and 
 extirpated every vestige of liberty. Was it the executive that by 
 encroachment destroyed the legislative department in England, in the 
 
264 IMPORTANCE OF THE VETO POWER. 
 
 seventeenth century, or was it not rather the latter which brought the 
 former to the block ; and next, by the help of the army, pushed for- 
 ward a real military chieftain, in Cromwell, with sword in hand, and 
 purse at command, to absolute dominion ? Who encroached in France, 
 and then established an inexorable despotism, in the iron sway of 
 Bonaparte ? It was the National Assembly — the legislature — which 
 rode over all checks and balances, and beheaded Louis the Sixteenth. 
 
 It was the legislature there that first lessened the veto, though not 
 so far as now proposed by this amendment ; who next abolished it 
 entirely : next destroyed both the executive and the peerage ; assumed 
 all powers, legislative, executive, and judicial ; and finally covered the 
 most beautiful country of Europe with pillage and murder. They 
 hastened to drag youth, loveliness, talent, and virtue, to the guillotine ; 
 filled the prisons with gray hairs, and hung at the lamp-posts all that 
 was pure and holy in religion. The bloodiest scenes in romance or 
 tragedy fall far short, in horrors, of the unembellished consequences of 
 those legislative encroachments. 
 
 I was not a little struck with astonishment that the course of France, 
 in respect to the veto, was alluded to by the mover as a precedent for 
 us. Such consequences as there ensued it is not possible that he can 
 either intend or anticipate here. But whither does the destruction of 
 one restraint, in government, on human ambition or human passion, 
 tend? To the prostration of all restraints. When the balance is 
 destroyed, and more especially, not by taking merely from one side, 
 but putting into the other, one beam kicks the skies with accelerated 
 speed. Remove one check or guard of the machine, in a steam-engine 
 in full motion, and not only that guard is lost or destroyed, but the 
 whole machine is dashed into ruins. Whatever is, by this amendment, 
 torn from the executive, is not restored to the people or the States, or 
 invested in a separate independent officer, like a tribune ; but it is vir- 
 tually conferred on the legislature, already too powerful and encroach- 
 ing ; — and thus, as was said in the first debates in Congress after the 
 adoption of the constitution, "if you take away the powers from one 
 branch of the government and give them to another, there is an end 
 of liberty." 
 
 The great security, as we have already shown, is to divide and 
 check delegated power, rather than concentrate and leave it more 
 unchecked, as this amendment proposes. When divided, patriotism 
 and talent are mutually vigilant and useful in reaching proper results ; 
 and if a want of them influence one branch, it is checked and cor- 
 rected in the other. But if unworthiness and infidelity to duty creep 
 into different branches, instead of being concentrated in one, acting 
 alone and fatally, it is less dangerous, because divided, jealous, or 
 hostile ; and interest in one counteracts interest in the other, ambition 
 here defeats ambition there, faction foils faction, and revenge, revenge. 
 
 Mr. Jefferson justly said (Notes on Virg., p. 214) : 
 
 
IMPORTANCE OF THE VETO POWER. 265 
 
 "An elective despotism (a mere legislative power) was not the government we 
 fought for; but one which should not only be founded on free principles, but in which 
 the powers of government should be so divided and balanced, among several bodies 
 of magistracy, as that no one could transcend their legal limits, without being effect- 
 ually checked and restrained by the others." 
 
 In the volumes near me, sir, are numerous other grave warnings on 
 this subject ; but I forbear detaining the Senate. 
 
 Unless this division of powers is sacredly preserved, the next victim 
 will be the smaller branch of the legislature, prostrated before the 
 most numerous one. Such was the progress in England, as well as 
 France. Make the present amendment, and the abolition of the Sen- 
 ate, by another, will be, ere long, proposed, on the same fallacious rea- 
 soning as this. The Senate will be denounced, as not organized on 
 bare majorities, — as a less equal and less full exponent of the nation? s 
 will; and because the more immediate and numerous representatives 
 of the people should not be controlled by such a one man or fifty 
 man power. 
 
 The qualified veto, in a limited executive like ours, is a power con- 
 ferred by the people, — popular with the people, and formidable only 
 to legislative tyranny. A legislative despotism, unchecked, and in 
 which most or all power is concentrated, is most dangerous, as it 
 gives hundreds of tyrants instead of one, or allows some less scrupu- 
 lous demagogue, like Robespierre, to become the true one man power 
 over the rest, which is always the most fearful and atrocious. That is 
 the real one man power which, half a century ago, talked, in strains 
 since revived, of the will of the nation being controlled by the will 
 of one m>an. It was such a one man power that taunted the feeble 
 Louis with defeating the will of the nation, but whose colleagues in 
 the legislature, for the preservation of their own lives from the guil- 
 lotine, and their property from plunder and confiscation, were at last 
 obliged to assassinate him in self-defence. 
 
 The constitution here shows how the will of the nation is to be 
 expressed and represented. The constitution allows none of its dele- 
 gates to violate that will, without furnishing redress in a constitutional 
 mode. The constitution makes one set of its delegates to represent 
 and speak that will, as well as another set ; and, for the safety of the 
 people and the States against error in all their delegates, requires, and 
 has a right to require, a concurrent opinion of them all in what they 
 do, or of a majority of them so large as to obviate the probability of 
 wrong. Thus, no one man alone does or can, under the constitution, 
 represent their will, speak their will, or control their will ; but all con- 
 joined, or in some other conservative manner prescribed in the instru- 
 ment. I, for one, am unwilling that this constitution should be 
 changed ; and much less so, until the people, or the States, first inter- 
 fere and require an amendment. 
 
 To us, as to their agents and servants, it should be a political Bible. 
 It is wise almost to inspiration. It is the revealed will of the people 
 23 
 
266 TARIFF. 
 
 and the States to their delegates. It is worthy of a corresponding 
 reverence ; and I would almost as soon attempt to amend the Gospel 
 of Jesus, as amend this sacred charter of our liberties. 
 
 TAKIFF* 
 
 I ASK the indulgence of the Senate to the consideration of a few 
 objections to the general character of this bill, before taking up the 
 amendments in detail. Being one of the Committee on Finance 
 opposed to its passage, I am requested, by several friends near me, to 
 state the grounds of those objections now, as they may throw some 
 light on the propriety of adopting or rejecting many of the amend- 
 ments. Those grounds are two-fold : first, as to the amount of the 
 tax imposed ; and, next, as to the manner of imposing it. The amount 
 proposed to be collected is believed to be unnecessarily large, and the 
 manner of assessing it is so unequal and oppressive as to be equiva- 
 lent, in many cases, to an odious poll-tax. There can be little doubt 
 concerning either of these positions, if the facts are carefully exam- 
 ined. The sum sought to be raised is the enormous one of thirty-two 
 millions of dollars. This is the gross amount, leaving twenty-seven 
 millions net. It is increased near ten per cent, more to the consumer 
 by the cash duties; and still further by another ten per cent., when- 
 ever the imports are in foreign vessels, not entitled to any treaty priv- 
 ileges. The burden on the community will thus, in its mildest form, 
 equal an average of quite two dollars per head to every man, woman, 
 and child, throughout the Union. In those quarters which manufac- 
 ture least, the tax will be still heavier in proportion ; and more espe- 
 cially will it be so in the Atlantic States, where the people consume a 
 larger share than elsewhere of what is imported from abroad. Indeed, 
 sir, the burden is larger than all the other money taxes, State, county, 
 and town, combined ; for they all are supposed not to exceed, if they 
 equal, two dollars per head. It is more than double the average 
 expenses of the General Government annually, since its foundation, 
 including even quasi French wars, the last war with England, and all 
 
 * A speech on the Tariff Bill ; delivered in the Senate of the United States, July 
 20, 1842. 
 
TARIFF. 267 
 
 our numerous Indian wars. It does not lessen this burden to call it a 
 tariff. The collection of duties from customs is a tax, though under 
 the disguise of "a tariff," as much as a collection of revenue from any 
 other property. Taxation of any kind, and to any extent, is also an 
 evil ; — sometimes, I admit, a necessary evil ; but still an evil, and 
 instinctively sought to be avoided or lessened by all people, in all ages. 
 It has justly been called the great censorium of mankind. Through 
 it, all, more or less, feel ; and if unequal, or if too high, it becomes a 
 grievance and an oppression which, in more cases than the tax on tea 
 before our own Revolution, and the tax on salt before the French 
 Revolution, have helped to overwhelm those who imposed it. 
 
 This is not theorizing, but a great practical inquiry, coming home 
 to the business and bosoms of all. It is a momentous question, then, 
 whether, in these embarrassed times, and when State taxes are unusu- 
 ally high, we shall collect ten or thirteen millions more than is indis- 
 pensably necessary ; and it is no less momentous, whether we shall 
 collect it so as to burden heaviest what are necessaries, rather than 
 luxuries, and to press most hardly labor and the middling interests, 
 rather than property and the rich. 
 
 It is believed, sir, that the true answers to these questions must 
 show that this bill ought not to pass ; and if some little time is occu- 
 pied in attempting to prove it, the chairman's censure for any delay 
 in the final disposal of it will belong to himself and his friends, rather 
 than to this side of the Senate. For why has this bill, — all-import- 
 ant as it is considered, and as it clearly is, — why, after a tedious 
 session of near eight months, and after an extra session before that 
 of almost four months more, has it never reached us for discussion 
 until to-day ? Among the matters which the first distinguished chan- 
 cellor of the exchequer under the new administration (Mr. Clay) 
 placed on our journal (fourteenth page), early in the extra session, 
 was what " ought first , if not exclusively, to engage the attention 
 of Congress, — the provision of an adequate revenue for the gov- 
 ernment by the imposition of duties." Every day since, sir, you 
 have had triumphant majorities in both Houses. What, then, can be 
 the apology for delaying till this late day a provision which was 
 deemed so important, more than a year ago, as to be regarded a prom- 
 inent reason for summoning then an extra session of Congress? What 
 is the excuse, in the mean time, for allowing the treasury to become 
 bankrupt? the public laborers and contractors to go for months unpaid? 
 their families to starve, or their claims to be sacrificed, in the money 
 market, to sharks and banks ? Instead of now deprecating discussion, 
 why did you not seasonably provide against all these evils, and rescue 
 our national credit from degradation, and adjourn as long ago as last 
 May ? That was the day proposed on tins side of the House ; and it 
 ill becomes any of those to deprecate the loss of time now, in examin- 
 ing a measure of this magnitude, who have so strangely procrastinated 
 it ; and who, week after week, — not to say month after month, — 
 
268 TARIFF. 
 
 have wasted the session in the consideration of veto resolutions on 
 which no vote has ever been taken, and of resolutions on retrench- 
 ment equally left undecided, but almost every one of which, thus far, 
 has been practically and openly violated. But, quitting any topic of 
 party controversy, I think that, if we calmly examine the financial 
 condition of the government, all this enormous twenty-seven, millions 
 of revenue will not be found really necessary to meet such expenses 
 as ought to be incurred. 
 
 I am aware that the financial budget of the Secretary of the Treas- 
 ury, at the commencement of the session, called for this amount, so 
 very extravagant for times like these. But was it the reduced amount 
 he and his political friends had before promised 1 Or was not the 
 promised amount, as put forth imposingly at Hanover court-house, and 
 in the Georgia memorial at the extra session, quite fourteen millions 
 less 1 Indeed, it was not half what is now called for. The expenses 
 of Mr. Adams' administration (at thirteen millions) were held up 
 over the whole country as a model to which you were to conform. 
 But men of reflection knew full well that such rash pledges were likely 
 to prove fallacious, though a reduction to seventeen or eighteen mil- 
 lions was considered feasible by the past administration, and was in the 
 course of gradual accomplishment by the present year. In this opinion 
 they were justified by precedents, as well as your own views that 
 an amount still lower would be sufficient. Looking to the average 
 expenses in former periods, and making due allowances for peculiarities 
 in some of them, this sum seemed ample; as General Jackson's first term 
 was but fourteen millions, his second and first united but seventeen, 
 and both of them and his successors united but twenty-one millions. 
 Though forced, at first, artificially higher, by the vast mass of near 
 thirty millions of extra appropriations accumulated on the last admin- 
 istration under the impulses of an overflowing treasury, and the costly 
 protraction of the Florida war, equalling quite half of all which was 
 expended in the last contest with England, yet the expenses of that 
 administration, by great efforts in reduction, fell, in the last two years, 
 to twenty-five and twenty-three millions. If the policy thus adopted 
 had since been persevered in, the expenses last year would have been 
 under twenty millions, and the present year not over eighteen. But 
 what have you done, and what are you doing ? You complained of 
 their highness when only twenty-five and twenty-three millions, and 
 yet proceeded at once to raise them to twenty-six. 
 
 We proposed reduction to eighteen, and were in rapid progress to it, 
 when you declared our steps too slow, though retarding them by vot- 
 ing, in almost every controverted case, for the highest amount. You 
 promised, if power was conferred on you, to reduce them still lower : 
 and yet you propose, by this bill, to collect, in taxes, to defray your 
 expenditures for this and several years to come, quite ten millions 
 yearly more than our limit. Indeed, you wish to raise thirteen mil- 
 lions more than would have been necessary under our policy, retain- 
 
TARIFF. 269 
 
 ing the public lands, as we, of course, contemplated. You have thus 
 doubled the taxation that would have been required by us, and more 
 than doubled it beyond the amount you yourselves promised to spend. 
 What is the justification of this 7 The first lame and impotent excuse 
 offered is, that this sum is all necessary to discharge the debts left by 
 the past administration. What, sir ! Want thirteen millions a year 
 more, for this and several years to come, to pay a debt left by the past 
 administration of only five and a half millions ? This is extraordinary 
 arithmetic ! It would answer, before the extra and present session, to 
 talk, for political effect, of the forty millions debt of the past admin- 
 istration. But, since then, the matter has been fully probed ; and we 
 have the official report of the present Secretary, showing that debt to 
 have been only five and a half millions. No, sir. The great debt 
 which now exists, except that small sum which was four years in accu- 
 mulating, is all your own ; and yours, too, created in little more than 
 twelve months. The whole authority to borrow, temporarily and per- 
 manently, which you have enjoyed to the extent of twenty-seven mil- 
 lions, will probably be exercised at the earliest moment you are able, 
 at any discount, in any stock-market in Europe or America, to higgle 
 away our present broken and dishonored faith. Indeed, the chairman 
 admits that the treasury must otherwise stop payment again, as soon 
 as the appropriation bills now pending shall pass. 
 
 Coming and staying here, then, through the dog-days of the extra 
 session, in order, among other things, as tauntingly avowed on your 
 journal, "to contract a temporary loan to cover the public debt 
 created by the past administration" you at once proceeded so to 
 lavish appropriations and expenditures, as well as to squander your 
 heritage in the immense patrimony of the public lands, as to have 
 required already, in one brief year, authority to contract, on your own 
 account, four times the amount of our debts ; and now, at the heel of 
 another dog-days' session, to require a new tax bill of twenty-seven 
 millions a year, to meet your current engagements. 
 
 It is right, I admit, to equalize your expenditures and receipts. 
 But, in periods of distress like this, it can be done rather more wisely 
 by husbanding all your old revenue, and reducing expenses, than by 
 giving away a part of the old revenue, and increasing the expenses ; 
 lighting the candle at both ends, and then childishly wondering how 
 it burns so fast ; and complaining of the past administration for that, 
 and almost everything else deplorable. 
 
 If you yourselves throw away three millions a year from lands, — 
 which that administration and all preceding ones retained, — you stare 
 at your deficiency, and complain of that administration for it. If you 
 vote five or six millions of new appropriations at the extra session, and 
 contemplate making the vast amount (in peace) of twenty-six more at 
 this session, you are surprised at the increasing deficit, and complain 
 of us for that also. If you give away your patrimony, and incur mil- 
 lions of loans at large interest, and run in debt till nobody will trust 
 23* 
 
270 TARIFF. 
 
 you, — while that administration got quickly all it needed, and at four 
 or five per cent., — you wonder at your loss of credit, and again com- 
 plain of us for it. 
 
 The real misfortune, sir, is the magnificent scale on which some of 
 your expenses are graduated, and the want of foresight and practical 
 wisdom in not reducing and postponing others, in a depressed state of 
 business, common, at this moment, to both sides of the Atlantic. 
 
 Without entering here into the folly, as well as illegality, of keeping 
 up a distribution of the proceeds of these lands, under present circum- 
 stances, and especially after the important proviso last September, to 
 recall them whenever the duties were raised above twenty per cent., 
 let me say, financially, that the question now is, shall we recall them, 
 or, probably, in the end, be obliged, instead of them, to subject the 
 people to a direct tax for the whole three or four millions which they 
 would yield, if properly advertised 1 At all events, if not taken back, 
 the duties will have to be kept higher, quite to that amount, on tea, 
 coffee, and other necessaries of life. Does it not, then, behoove us, 
 as statesmen, at once to proceed, and first by a recall of the lands, 
 and next by retrenchment, to save the country from this useless addi- 
 tional burden of ten or twelve millions of dollars ? 
 
 Some may think that it is now too late for effecting much in the 
 way of retrenchment. No, sir. The large army and navy bills are 
 yet pending between the two Houses, on amendments. Though the 
 civil, diplomatic, and Indian bills have passed, and on an increased 
 scale of expense, yet, if you will only conform to the reductions in the 
 others which the House of Representatives recommend, and stay your 
 hands in other pending cases, much may yet be accomplished. That 
 your fortunes, in this respect, may yet in some degree be retrieved, is 
 manifest also from the report of the treasury department yesterday. 
 The expenses, the first half of the year, for ordinary objects, have been 
 only between nine and ten millions. At this rate for the next half, 
 those for the whole year would be only $19,190,052. I concede, sir, 
 that the naval and military expenses in the last half may be a million 
 higher ; but not more than that, if the appropriations now pending are 
 cut down as the House proposes, and you refrain from making many 
 more. At the same time, our civil and diplomatic will be a million 
 less, unless our sessions are to be eternal, and we are to add still more 
 to the judiciary, foreign, and other expenses provided for in the gen- 
 eral appropriation bill. 
 
 Allow me, then, to warn the Senate that, even now, there is oppor- 
 tunity to relieve the country much, if we boldly march up to the task 
 of promised retrenchment, and also recall the lands. The last alone 
 would enable you to reduce this tax bill one ninth. Respect the other 
 House as to their reductions in the navy and military bills by large 
 majorities, as we are urged by the chairman to respect their conduct 
 in passing this bill, though done only by a majority of four. Persist 
 in the policy of deferring harbor and river bills, in these embarrassed 
 
TARIFF. 271 
 
 times, as we did, but which you then censured, though now you imi- 
 tate ; persist, too, in omitting to construct any jobbing or speculating 
 light-houses ; persist in keeping back large appropriations for forts, till 
 what has been already voted is expended ; razee even now, — it is not 
 too late, — razee, as your great leader recommended early in the ses- 
 sion, many of your foreign ministers; call on your retrenchment 
 committee — that boasted, yet, I regret to say, dumb committee — to 
 reduce and postpone elsewhere, without delay : — do thus, and I will 
 guarantee that the receipts from customs in the present year, without 
 the passage of this bill at all, will pay the whole current expenses, if 
 you only raise the free articles to twenty per cent., and take back 
 and advertise suitably the public lands. 
 
 The actual receipts from customs and lands in the first half of this 
 year, depressed as trade is, corroborate this position. They will be, 
 when all are ascertained, near -eighteen millions and a quarter for the 
 whole year. But, in the last hahy all the duties accruing will be paid 
 in cash, beside those in the first half placed on credit, and running 
 into the last half for payment. This would make three millions more, 
 if the rate was as high ; but, being lower, add only one million on that 
 amount. Half a million more for increase sales' of lands, if advertised, 
 and a million more duties imposed the rest of the year on goods now 
 free, and these will constitute an aggregate of $20,766,668. This is 
 enough to pay the nineteen millions of ordinary expenses, and interest 
 on all the loans contracted to redeem treasury notes, or any other 
 purposes. 
 
 It must, then, be manifest, without going into further details, that, 
 with promptitude and energy, it is not too late to relieve the people 
 in this mariner from at least ten to twelve millions of the taxes pro- 
 posed in the bill now before the Senate. If we are sincere in desiring 
 to lessen the burdens under which the productive industry of the 
 country staggers, if we wish to alleviate the general distress, can we 
 be justified in an attempt to impose so much more than is indispens- 
 able? 
 
 In all other countries, when severe embarrassments prevail, do not 
 their governments seek to lessen, rather than increase, the weight of 
 taxation 1 By such a course of policy here at this crisis, not only 
 would burdens be lightened, but a greater interchange of commodities 
 would relieve agriculture, and invigorate commercial confidence. 
 
 Having reviewed your lavish ways to get rid of the public income, 
 I will now advert to your means for providing it. For this is a ques- 
 tion of both ways and means. If the Senate do not consider the 
 amount of expenditures objectionable, it is your duty undoubtedly to 
 raise that amount in some proper mode. I am in favor of the firm 
 support of the public service in all its branches. I am for all neces- 
 sary taxation, however hard it may press upon individuals, if the 
 pressure is equally distributed. The glory of our laws — those impos- 
 ing taxes, as well as all others — consists in their equal and impartial 
 
272 TARIFF. 
 
 justice. I countenance no repudiation, no evasion of obligations, 
 whether public or private. Let those in power do their duty fear- 
 lessly. I am anxious to see them redeem the public faith, and resus- 
 citate our drowning, if not drowned, credit. 
 
 The country will not tolerate an adjournment of Congress without 
 something efficient being accomplished for this purpose. It is para- 
 mount to all mere party considerations, and must not be blinked, 
 dodged, patched up, or in any way shunned. But let this be done 
 without partiality to favored pursuits, and without sectional prefer- 
 ences. Does this bill propose the best mode of accomplishing that 
 desirable end 1 
 
 The true rate of duty to be imposed on imports of foreign merchan- 
 dise, looking to all the questions of political economy and public justice 
 connected with that form of taxation, is a question difficult to settle. 
 The rate is sometimes made to depend on the character of the article, 
 whether a luxury or necessary of life ; sometimes on the conduct of 
 the nation from which it comes, in respect to the retaliation provoked 
 by her taxation upon our products ; sometimes on the burdens, large 
 or small, already laid by ourselves on other property ; and again, on 
 the growth and manufacture of similar articles at home, on the press- 
 ing wants of the government, or on the unpopularity of collecting 
 taxes from other sources. Nor has the practice of different countries, 
 or of the same at different periods, been very uniform, concerning this 
 rate, for all these purposes combined. But when the object of the 
 duty is merely for revenue, as is here avowed, and as the title of the 
 bill indicates, being "to provide revenue from imports," the result of 
 general experience and of careful reasoning is, that the duty for that 
 purpose alone ought seldom to exceed twenty per cent. I admit that 
 it has often been higher for some of the other purposes before named ; 
 but, as a general rule, when revenue alone is the object, the better 
 opinion in most countries certainly is, that twenty per cent., or there- 
 abouts, is the best maximum. If it varies a little, and goes below to 
 fifteen, or above to twenty-five, it may at times make no essential 
 difference. 
 
 But this bill, while professing to be formed for purposes of pure fis- 
 cal taxation, not only goes above twenty or twenty-five in numerous 
 instances, but, in several, above one hundred. Indeed, its whole 
 duties are, on an average, near thirty-six per cent, and some calculate 
 them at quite thirty-nine. It therefore becomes important to ascer- 
 tain whether this large excess of sixteen or nineteen per cent, on an 
 average, for revenue alone, is not improper on general principles, as 
 well as inadmissible under some leading circumstances connected with 
 the peculiar position of the General Government, as to taxation and 
 the compromise. If I shall be successful in showing this, the bill 
 should undergo a material change in its whole structure, and a reduc- 
 tion be made in its rates of duties to the proper standard. But, if not 
 successful, or if these rates are found to be imposed so high for pro- 
 
TARIFF. 273 
 
 tection, and not revenue, it will become necessary to inquire whether 
 the right exists in this government to raise duties high for protection 
 alone; and if it does, whether they are here assessed in such an 
 amount, and in such a manner, in respect to all the great interests of 
 society entitled to equal protection, as alone can justify the passage 
 of the bill, as a measure of equal protection, of equal legislation, and 
 of equal taxation, on the whole people. 
 
 One of the strongest proofs that a duty equivalent to about twenty 
 per cent, is high enough for the purpose of revenue, is the practice of 
 most nations in not exceeding such a rate for that purpose. Thus, the 
 tax on imported corn, at Athens, was limited to one-fifth, or exactly 
 twenty per cent. ; and the early tariffs in England, for revenue, sel- 
 dom, if ever, exceeded twenty, and were often but five per cent. 
 When they began to exceed it (as they have done, in more modern 
 times, for the purposes of retaliation or protection, though before 1787 
 no higher than twenty-seven per cent., even for those purposes), they 
 have proved to be so disadvantageous for revenue, as to lead often to a 
 much lower duty, when imposed for revenue alone, as is the case on 
 colonial products. Indeed, the conviction has become so strong there, 
 with all parties, that for revenue alone twenty per cent, is sufficiently 
 high, that the plan proposed by the present ministry is, to impose on 
 all materials for manufactures a duty not over five per cent., and, in 
 many instances, lower, or free; next, on articles partly manufac- 
 tured, not over twelve per cent. ; and on manufactures themselves, not 
 over twenty per cent. In cases of imports from their colonies, there 
 is to be a differential duty, often more moderate than this. 
 
 Lord John Russell (the organ of the preceding ministry) enter- 
 tained similar views ; and the most enlightened there seem now to con- 
 cur with the committee on imports, that "it is obvious that high pro- 
 tective duties check importation, and, consequently, are unproductive 
 to the revenue ; and experience shows that the profit to the trader, the 
 benefit to the consumer, and the fiscal interests of the country, are all 
 sacrificed, when heavy import duties impede the interchange of com- 
 modities with other nations." 
 
 As an indication of the present feeling on this subject, allow me to 
 read a sentence, which came by the very last packet : 
 
 " The intelligence from the continent is of little interest, if we except the publica- 
 tion of a royal ordinance in France, imposing an ad valorem duty of twenty per cent, 
 on all linen yarn imported into the kingdom. As may be expected, such a revolu- 
 tionary measure has produced great stir with English manufacturers ; but it is 
 expected the French government will submit to an amelioration." 
 
 In truth, the average duties in France do not, for some time, appear 
 to have exceeded seventeen or eighteen per cent, for revenue ; which 
 is one ground of the surprise at twenty per cent, on linen yarn, and 
 is another decisive evidence that such a rate is now regarded there, as 
 well as in England, sufficiently high for all fiscal purposes. In sev- 
 
274 TARIFF. 
 
 eral of the other countries of Europe, where duties are higher, it is 
 avowedly for retaliation or protection. It was long the boast and 
 glory of Holland and Switzerland that their duties were only twelve 
 and fifteen per cent. ; and, probably, for revenue, scarce an instance 
 now exists in the latter country of their being as high as twenty per 
 cent. 
 
 In Cuba, — that most prosperous island in both commerce and agri- 
 culture, and whose exports and imports per head of her population are 
 near four times the amount of ours, and three times the amount in 
 England, — the duties are often less than twenty, and seldom exceed 
 twenty-five per cent. 
 
 But in our own records we have illustration, equally convincing, 
 that such a standard is high enough for all fiscal purposes. During 
 the Revolution, and till the new constitution was adopted, Hamilton 
 says (in No. 35 of the Federalist) that three per cent, was the high- 
 est rate. He did not propose, under the new government, to go 
 beyond nine, in ordinary cases. He thought spirits, as a luxury, 
 might bear a tax of one shilling per gallon, which was about twelve 
 per cent. ; and if it diminished the revenue, because so high, as was 
 apprehended, the gain to the public morals, by discouraging the use 
 of so bad a luxury, might prove an equivalent. 
 
 Accordingly, when the constitution went into operation, the first 
 tariff did not rise above twelve and a half per cent., except in a single 
 instance approaching nearly fifteen. It is difficult, after this lapse of 
 time, in cases in which the duties were specific, to reduce them, with 
 exactness, to a true ad valorem standard. But no comparisons can be 
 made which are of any utility, either in our own country at different 
 periods, or between our own and foreign nations, without being at the 
 labor to do this in the most important articles. 
 
 I have, therefore, attempted it myself, in such cases, generally, 
 though adopting a few from one of the Committee on Manufactures, in 
 the other House ; and having made the official values on which the 
 duties were actually assessed the basis of my computations, rather 
 than newspaper price-currents, or merchants' books, it will not be a 
 matter of surprise if some difference should exist. But mine, beside 
 being in this way most conformable to law, will, in any event, answer 
 for the general purpose of comparative examination. 
 
 The first tariff of 1789, even if made higher, in some respects, for 
 protection (as some have contended, but which is very questionable), 
 placed most of its duties as low as five and ten per cent. As it was 
 altered, from time to time, till the war of 1812, scarce an instance can 
 be found where it ranged above twenty. It remained, in most partic- 
 ulars, as low as ten and fifteen per cent. ; and where, as in the case of 
 spirits and salt, it had gone higher, the whole duty on the last became 
 repealed in 1807, and on the former the object was rather to dis- 
 countenance a baneful luxury than collect greater revenue. 
 
 Here is a table for comparison of the whole of those tariffs. Passing 
 
TARIFF. 275 
 
 by the doubling of the duties during the war, it is true that the next 
 tariffs of 1816, 1824, and 1828, exceeded, in many cases, the rate of 
 twenty per cent. ; but all of these did it avowedly for protection rather 
 than revenue. The chairman not only admits this as to the two last, 
 but argues strongly to prove it. In the ardent pursuit of that protec- 
 tion (urged on Congress almost exclusively by and for one class of 
 the community), the oppression became so great to some other classes 
 and sections, and the benefits of such high duties became so questiona- 
 ble, even for protection, that, in 1833, the whole system was aban- 
 doned, and the duties gradually reduced, so as by law, where not free, 
 to range, by the present year, no higher than the very revenue stand- 
 ard, for which I am now contending. 
 
 This circumstance furnishes another striking argument in support 
 of a limitation to that rate. It was agreed on deliberately by the 
 highest representatives of all our great interests. It was moulded into 
 a form to remain, in that particular, perpetual, unless in some great 
 exigency. 
 
 It was to operate gradually, so as not, by sudden changes, to 
 derange capital or revenue. It was a great pacificator of sectional and 
 fraternal troubles ; and it has ever since been called and eulogized as a 
 sacred compromise of former difficulties. Mr. Clay pledged himself 
 originally to abide by it, not only while above twenty per cent., — as 
 then most beneficial to his friends,-^ but after it had reached twenty, 
 and had begun to benefit most oi his opponents. This pledge he 
 renewed at Hanover court-house, as late as 1840; and General 
 Harrison, also, in his Zanesville letter, deliberately avowed, as to the 
 compromise, that he never would agree " to its being altered or 
 repealed" The compromise, then, consecrates this rate as a general 
 guide. But what do we hear now? That we were obliged to go 
 down, in conformity to the compromise, but not to stay down, in 
 conformity to it. 
 
 If there was any glory — and much is claimed — for making that 
 critical adjustment, can there be any in breaking it ? If there was 
 any propriety in reducing the rate to twenty per cent., is there not as 
 much in keeping it there 1 If there was any sound principle in the 
 arrangement, as well as in the contest, can it be satisfied with the 
 child's play of running gradually down the scale to twenty per cent., 
 and then running up again, at a single leap, to fifty, sixty, and one 
 hundred per cent.? Whether, in a great exigency, it might be proper 
 to go above twenty per cent., for purposes of revenue alone, can be 
 settled when that exigency arrives ; and when it is made to appear that 
 more can probably be collected by a higher rate, and that none of it is 
 asked for protection, or in consequence of having given the lands away, 
 or unnecessarily swollen our expenses. But, to attempt it under any 
 other circumstances, is, in my opinion, most unjustifiable. 
 
 Again: by going above twenty per cent., in the manner now pro- 
 posed, you violate another compromise, made in the distribution act, 
 
276 TARIFF. 
 
 last September. It was there solemnly stipulated, that if any exi- 
 gency should arise to require a higher rate of duty than twenty per 
 cent., the proceeds of the lands should return to the treasury, and thus 
 help to reduce the tariff again nearer the former standard. One pro- 
 vision in this bill goes directly to the violation of that stipulation ; and 
 thus, in that particular, it seems to stand out to the world, in bold 
 relief, as utterly faithless. It is at war with the professed object of 
 the bill, which is to raise and not give away revenue ; and being, vir- 
 tually, a new distribution, in new terms, and under new circumstances, 
 ought not to remain in, and thus endanger its success, but be legis- 
 lated on separately, if at all. 
 
 Another vital consideration for adhering to a rate of duty on 
 imports not much above twenty per cent, is, that if you go higher, 
 whether horizontally or by discrimination, an instant temptation is 
 held out, as now, to give away other revenue (like the lands), and 
 resist retrenchment in expenses, as well as make large additions to 
 them, in order to create an occasion to raise the tariff higher, and thus 
 to obtain, directly or indirectly, more protection. It is therefore 
 essential, with a view to secure economy in husbanding means, as well 
 as in reducing expenses, that so powerful a motive to the contrary as 
 this should not for a moment longer be allowed to exist. 
 
 It will be seen that, in this view, a low tariff tends to produce econ- 
 omy ; a high one, extravagance. A low one is, likewise, democratic ; 
 a high one, anti-democratic. And the very highest which has ever 
 occurred before in this country was imposed in 1828, under an admin- 
 istration the most anti-democratic which has before existed here since 
 1798. 
 
 The bill, by going for- such high rates, is wrong in another view ; 
 and that one which has great influence in all countries, in limiting the 
 tax on imports for mere revenue to something not much above twenty 
 per cent. It is, that a tax of this rate, on this kind of personal prop- 
 erty, is quite the fair proportion to be paid on it towards the public 
 burdens, compared with the taxes on other property. Thus, though 
 direct taxes might show to the people more distinctly the extent of 
 their expenses, and the burdens thereby devolved on them, yet, in the 
 present relations between the States and the General Government, I 
 am not the advocate of direct taxes. The education, habits, and 
 prejudices of our people, are more favorable to a tariff on foreign 
 imports, to support the General Government, whenever enough can 
 fairly be raised from that source. The propriety of such a course is 
 strengthened by the fact that most of the State taxes are direct ; and 
 that the burdens of the General Government should, therefore, as far 
 as practicable, without inequality and injustice, be flung upon different 
 sources of revenue, — such as a tariff. Hence, in that sense, and to 
 that extent, I am " a tariff man" I am in favor of such a tariff as 
 was agreed on in the compromise act, and such a tariff as prevailed 
 from the adoption of the constitution till the last war with England. 
 
TAK1FF. 277 
 
 But collecting by such a tariff all which duties of twenty per cent, 
 will yield, and husbanding the proceeds of the public lands, if more 
 revenue should be still needed to meet an economical administration 
 of the government (which I do not believe is the case now), I contend 
 that impartiality and equal justice among the different classes of peo- 
 ple and kinds of property in society require that the balance should 
 be obtained from some other source. 
 
 To illustrate this by figures : Suppose a tax of twenty per cent, was 
 laid on all property in this country equally. If valuing that property, 
 as many do, at $4,000,000,000, it would amount to an aggregate tax 
 of $800,000,000. But the whole aggregate of taxes now collected 
 in money in the United States, including twenty per cent, on imports, 
 does not probably exceed $60,000,000. This, it will be seen, is not 
 one-tenth what it would be, if all other property were taxed as high 
 as twenty per cent, on imports. Yet, in the face of this, you propose 
 to lay still more on imports, by nearly double. Another evidence of 
 this great disproportion is, that the tax on imports would not be two 
 per cent., if it was in the ratio of the value of our imports to the value 
 of all other property. 
 
 I am aware that much of the property in society should be taxed 
 according to its income, rather than its value ; but, taking that guide, 
 the inequality with which imports are treated would still be very 
 striking. 
 
 Again: it was computed by Hamilton, in 1787, that the tax on 
 imports should equal not more than one-third of all other taxation in 
 the United States. As the General Government might, therefore, in 
 case of war, or other calamities, require more revenue than one-third, 
 and more than a just tax on imports would yield, he argued strenu- 
 ously that it should also have authority to tax land, and impose 
 excises of any kind, in order to procure the residue. Yet you, by 
 this bill, propose to collect, from imports alone, half the whole mon- 
 ied taxes of the country. The gross amount is to be near two dol- 
 lars per head, on an average, when less than that amount is paid in 
 most of the States in money on all other property, and including, in 
 some, a tax on polls beside. 
 
 Experience, here and elsewhere, has evinced strongly the correct- 
 ness of these views. During the Revolution, among the highest rates 
 of duty on imports was three per cent. ; and the rest of the taxes 
 were imposed on other property. So, in the first ten years of the 
 present government, with interest on a large debt, beside current 
 expenses to be paid, not over twenty per cent., on an average, was 
 imposed on imports, and the rest collected in various ways from other 
 property. So, during the late war, a large portion of the revenue was 
 derived from other taxes than those on imports. 
 
 France attempts to raise only about one-seventh of her revenue from 
 customs. England finds a deficiency, after all her attempts to collect 
 the large proportion of about half her revenue from imports : and Sir 
 24 
 
278 TARIFF. 
 
 Robert Peel at last admits that the further amount ought to be pro- 
 cured, in justice and equality, from other sources. He says, in short, 
 "that the burden should fall on the property of the country, — not 
 upon those who are chiefly occupied in its productive industry." This 
 discloses another reason, and a potent one, why a higher rate of taxa- 
 tion on imports than twenty per cent, is unjust. It falls almost exclu- 
 sively on " those who are chiefly occupied in the productive indus- 
 try of the country." It is as heavy a burden, to the laborer and 
 farmer, in many cases, as to the large capitalist ; as the former con- 
 sume nearly an equal quantity with the last of many articles most 
 highly taxed, — such as salt, sugar, molasses, cottons, woollens and 
 iron. It thus operates with all the inequality and injustice of a large 
 poll-tax, and is, on that account, equally objectionable. 
 
 But another strong admonition against raising duties much above 
 twenty per cent, is, that, in doing so, you are by no means sure of 
 obtaining much more revenue. 
 
 I admit, readily, that you may thus obtain more protection, and 
 more retaliation, if seeking either of these ; but if seeking only more 
 revenue (as is here pretended), your success will be at least questiona- 
 ble. At the same time, it is certain that, by going very high, you 
 will deprive the people, by higher prices, of the ability to enjoy some 
 comforts and necessaries which a more moderate tariff would not pre- 
 vent ; or will demoralize many of them, by thus holding out additional 
 temptations to violate the laws by smuggling. 
 
 The first reason why you are not likely to obtain a much larger 
 aggregate of revenue under duties much above this rate is, that when 
 so high, the amount is of sufficient importance, in most cases, to raise 
 the price of the article. Hence, the consumer having only the same 
 means as before, cannot purchase so much of it, and less is imported. 
 
 The next reason is, that, when the duty is high, and sometimes 
 before it reaches twenty per cent., the temptation (and, indeed, bounty) 
 for smuggling is so great, that, on this account, less of what is imported 
 pays any duty, and the revenue is thereby lessened. That high duties, 
 as a general rule, increase the price of the article, and fall chiefly on 
 the consumer, and thus diminish both consumption and revenue, is the 
 general doctrine, not only of McCulloch and other writers abroad, but 
 of the parliamentary committee on imports, as well as most expe- 
 rienced and scientific writers. Speaking of high and protective 
 duties, they say: " These impose on the consumer a tax equal to the 
 amount of the duties levied on the foreign article," and " check import- 
 ation, and, consequently, are unproductive to the revenue." Hamilton 
 maintained a similar notion. But I concede that, when the duty is 
 prohibitory (which, in many articles, is the case at little more than 
 twenty per cent.), the price, at times, is regulated by the competition 
 at home among the manufacturers of similar goods ; and, also, that in 
 a great glut and depression of the market, the holders of goods are 
 occasionally obliged to sell under first cost. But these are merely 
 
TARIFF. 279 
 
 exceptions to general principles, as is a fall of prices, which sometimes 
 takes place after a duty is imposed, as well as in the case of a free arti- 
 cle. This often happens from some improvement in the manufacture, 
 or some new invention of labor-saving machinery. But it is ridiculous 
 to pretend that, in such cases, the fall is in consequence of the duty: 
 and, as one has gravely calculated in the other House, sometimes equals 
 u fifty ■> or a hundred, or even four hundred per cent." These last 
 must be rather of a paradoxical character. Causes enough for all the 
 reductions in price which occur in most of our imports will be found, 
 independent of any mystery about the duties, when we call to mind the 
 remarkable fact, that the changeable declared real value of British 
 exports has, since 1819, in consequence of useful improvements and 
 inventions, as well as a sounder currency and more general peace, grad- 
 ually fallen from an equality with the permanent official value, till it is 
 now only one-half of that. Again : if the manufacturers did not believe 
 that the article rose in price as taxed higher, why do they wish it to be 
 so taxed? So doing cannot aid them, unless it raises the price. If, 
 on the contrary, the actual operation of a high duty be to lower prices, 
 why do not the manufacturers desire the duty to be lessened on rival 
 fabrics from abroad, — as that, on their reasoning, would increase their 
 prices'? 
 
 Why is it, also, that the duty on raw materials imported from 
 abroad is not asked to be raised, instead of removed ; and the duty to 
 be increased, rather than refunded, on railroad iron, if it makes the 
 price lower? So through the whole system of drawbacks, and like- 
 wise of smaller differential duties in favor of colonies. This point, 
 then, being established, that an increase of duty generally increases 
 the price of the article, it seems to follow inevitably, that so much of 
 it cannot be imported and consumed, and as much revenue received on 
 it, as if the duty were less. Yet a naivete, and almost simplicity, 
 seems to have been exhibited by all the financiers on the other side, 
 from the Secretary downwards, in calculating that the same amount 
 of imports is likely to take place, and be entered at the custom-house, 
 when the duty on them is, in various instances, from fifty to one hun- 
 dred and twenty per cent., and in all at least thirty-six per cent, on an 
 average, as if no duty exceeded twenty. In England they have just 
 experienced a new illustration of what is often to be expected on this 
 subject. An addition of five per cent, was made on certain customs 
 and the excise, but which, in fact yielded only half of one per cent, 
 additional revenue, instead of five, as anticipated. More may, at 
 times, be obtained by duties above twenty per cent., where the present 
 duty is very low, and the article taxed highly is a great necessary, and 
 no substitute can be procured, and ample means exist to pay for it; 
 but, otherwise, the attempt is either a financial lottery, or a mere 
 bubble. 
 
 Many gentlemen seem, likewise, to have overlooked the probability 
 that an increased duty will, in such distressed times as these, operate 
 
280 TARIFF. 
 
 more unfavorably than usual against large imports. The pecuniary 
 embarrassments of the country, under a contracted currency, and 
 revulsions arising from that and immense speculations, are unprece- 
 dented. The State taxes, in many cases, are also higher than usual ; 
 its credit abroad, to procure goods, never worse ; its new bankrupt law 
 so sweeping and ruinous in character as to weaken much ordinary 
 confidence in business, and the prices of its great staple exports, which 
 furnish the means of purchasing, are low, from the absence of wars, 
 and the abundance of productive laborers in Europe, as well as 
 America. No new State or corporate loans are to come home in 
 goods ; and the duties are hereafter to be paid in advance, in cash. In 
 such a condition of things, it would be rather sanguine to expect as 
 large imports, even on low duties. But, if an addition is made of near 
 twenty per cent, more, the consumer must, on that account alone, dis- 
 pense with every sixth bushel of salt, or sixth pound of sugar or tea, 
 he now consumes. The entire duty is thus lost on the sixth bushel or 
 pound not imported and not consumed ; and, if no evasions of the law 
 exist, the government has got no more gross revenue, and has lost all 
 the extra expense of collecting and guarding the customs, when high. 
 But wherever a bushel or pound of any article is smuggled under the 
 high duty, which would not have been under a lower duty, the gross 
 as well as the net revenue is to that extent lessened, beside all the 
 immorality thus introduced. All extremes naturally react, and defeat 
 the object intended ; and in nothing is this more conspicuous than in 
 high taxation on imports. 
 
 It seems, also, to have been forgotten that, as our manufactures 
 have become improved, a duty less high is more prohibitory and inju- 
 rious to the revenue ; and that many articles are now made here, all 
 of which were formerly imported. It is true that we have obtained 
 an immense sum from customs since 1789 — nearly $732,000,000, 
 according to the chairman's calculation ; and he would seem to infer 
 from this, that we can hereafter obtain from that source, with ease, 
 twenty-seven or twenty-eight millions of dollars a year. But did it 
 never occur to him to divide that great aggregate by the number of 
 years it was accumulating, and to see that it has been yearly only 
 $14,000,000, or about half what he now expects? In times like 
 these, it will prove no' easy matter to obtain quite thirteen millions 
 annually above the average heretofore. 
 
 Smuggling on our many thousand miles of frontier sea-board and 
 inland — not separated from all other nations by an Atlantic Ocean, 
 as has been stated, but often by a mere river, or log fence — will mul- 
 tiply the difficulties in realizing an increase of revenue under such 
 high duties. It does not answer to talk of an escape from such conse- 
 quences, when the scenes near Castine and the Canadian frontier, before 
 and during the late war, are recalled to memory ; and when we know, 
 in the example of other nations, that even royalty has indulged freely 
 in the use of whiskey " which never saw the face of a ganger" 
 
TAKIFF. 281 
 
 and ladies of the court have often deemed it fashionable to wear smug- 
 gled gloves and laces. In fact, more than half the silks now exported 
 from France to England are ascertained to get into the latter kingdom 
 without paying the duty — so comparatively low — of only thirty per 
 cent. The custom-house force in France amounts to several thou- 
 sands ; and in Spain a constant warfare, even of force, under her high 
 duties, is obliged to be waged against the brigand violators of such 
 injudicious laws. 
 
 All these circumstances combine to show that making duties high, 
 when seeking revenue alone, is, as a general rule, injudicious and 
 suicidal. This position is strengthened by analogy in the fact, that 
 often, when duties are high, you increase the revenue by lowering 
 them. Hence, Lord John Russell observes : 
 
 " But, upon a careful view of our commercial imposts, we came to the conclusion 
 that, by removing prohibitions and lessening restrictions, it was possible to replen- 
 ish the treasury, and at the same time to secure to the working classes a greater 
 command of the necessaries of life at steady and moderate prices." 
 
 Without detaining the Senate by specifying numerous successful 
 experiments of this kind, I would recall to your memories that, in 
 England, about half a century ago, the revenue was increased nearly 
 two millions and a half of dollars, by reducing the duty on spirits 
 nearly fifty per cent. And by a reduction of the duty on coffee there 
 from one shilling and sixpence per pound to only sixpence, the aggre- 
 gate revenue from it was trebled. A large increase of revenue is also 
 anticipated there from a reduction of the duty on sugar ; and one has 
 actually occurred by such a course in Austria. 
 
 The effect of such a reduction here to increase imports and con- 
 sumption is strikingly illustrated by an official document of this 
 session, now before me. It shows that, while the duty on sugar here 
 was high, — from 1828 to 1834, — we imported and consumed only about 
 eighty-five million pounds of the foreign product more than we did in 
 the same number of years previous ; but when the duty was lower and 
 falling, during the last seven years, — from 1835 to 1841, — we con- 
 sumed of foreign sugar nearly the vast increase of four hundred and 
 fifty-five million pounds more than from 1828 to 1834. Yet this bill, 
 professedly for revenue alone, proposes gravely to return to a higher 
 rate. 
 
 What more flagrant folly can there be than that which pervades the 
 whole system, by attempting to realize the largest revenue from 
 imports by a series of duties so high and prohibitory as greatly to 
 reduce imports ? It can be equalled only by that which, when embar- 
 rassed for more revenue, hastens to give away a large source of what 
 we already possess, in the proceeds of the public lands ; or that which 
 imposes higher taxes and tolls on foreign commerce, and yet expects, 
 even in most calamitous times, that just as much will be carried and 
 recarried. 
 
 24* . 
 
282 TARIFF. 
 
 Our experience, in another respect, seems very strong against the 
 likelihood that this enormous amount of twenty-seven millions is very 
 certainly to be collected from imports by the proposed duties. The 
 average collections yearly since 1789, as before stated, under tariffs 
 at times very high, have not been much beyond half this twenty-seven 
 millions ; and each year in the table before me separately shows that 
 it was only on two very peculiar and extraordinary occasions, of two 
 years each, that the amount has ever equalled twenty-five millions. 
 One of those periods was in 1815 and 1816, after the privations of 
 a three years' war, and augmented also by speculations, which were 
 felt subsequently in sad revulsions ; and the other was in 1882 and 
 1833, when the importations were swollen by bringing home over 
 ten millions a year of State loans, principally in foreign commodities 
 for consumption. 
 
 But certain delusions can never be cured but by experiments ; and 
 in tins case, as in many others, we shall probably be obliged to witness 
 that it is only the burnt child that dreads the fire. 
 
 Dwelling no longer on these considerations, is the frame of the bill, 
 in other respects, just to the different great interests in society 1 Is 
 it well adapted to raise revenue merely, and answer the purposes of 
 honest financial taxation ? In other words, — if my views are errone- 
 ous, and twenty per cent, be too low a limit for duties on imports, and 
 no compromise prevents an increase, and more revenue must be had 
 from some source, and is likely to be obtained by exceeding that limit, 
 — has the present bill gone so much higher, in a form which is best 
 suited to add to the revenue, and to render this kind of taxation 
 equal? My impression is, that duties, when imposed for revenue 
 alone, should, in general, be graduated on a scale nearly horizontal. 
 Such has often been the usage. Such was the course contemplated 
 by the great compromise in 1833 ; and such is the tendency of many 
 of the changes now going on in Europe. Exceptions can properly be 
 made below the maximum duty, when, as with some luxuries easily 
 smuggled, more revenue could probably be procured on a lower rate, 
 while some others, not so easily smuggled, will at times yield more 
 revenue on a higher rate. But the test of every exception usually is 
 the increase of duty likely to accrue by it. Beside this, a horizontal 
 standard holds out greater security for equal justice in the whole 
 taxes. Articles used more in one section of the country than in 
 others cannot, by that, be taxed highest from prejudices against that 
 section ; nor others used most by one class in society be taxed highest 
 from prejudices against that class. One great avenue is thus closed 
 against partiality and oppression, and another against undue favor, 
 by taxing too lightly the most powerful regions, occupations, and 
 classes. 
 
 As our constitution and laws are founded on what is equal, or, in 
 other words, horizontal, respecting the rights and privileges of all, the 
 system of taxation on imports should correspond. In the States, such 
 
TARIFF. 283 
 
 is the principle which, with slight exceptions, pervades the taxation of 
 lands, furniture, stodK, &c, — chiefly in proportion to value, and the 
 rate being horizontal on the same value. One of the great solaces 
 under injudicious legislation, and one of the preventives to it, is the 
 conviction that, in a free and just system, it must bear as hardly on 
 those who make the laws as on others. But, in the case of discrimi- 
 nating duties, to accomplish other objects than revenue, this convic- 
 tion is destroyed. Taxation may be then, and often is, lightened to 
 the law-makers, or to their influential constituents, and made more 
 burdensome to others. It is this which always surrounds a discrimi- 
 nating duty with danger. 
 
 Again : scrutinize the following case of four articles, made, for other 
 purposes than revenue, to pay different rates, — one thirty, one fifty, 
 one eighty, and one one hundred per cent. Now, if the quantity of 
 imports of any of them be not affected by the discrimination, the 
 amount of revenue will, to be sure, be the same as if a duty of sixty- 
 five per cent, was laid on each. But the design is to protect the 
 articles taxed highest ; and hence their price will rise most, and thus 
 many of them not be imported, or more of them smuggled. In that 
 w T ay much revenue will be lost, and that on the very articles which, 
 to all appearance, will yield the most. 
 
 In the next place, if the poor consume the articles, being neces- 
 saries, on which eighty or one hundred per cent, is imposed, and do it 
 as much or more than the rich, then the tax falls on them dispropor- 
 tionately to their property or means. If the two articles paying eighty 
 and one hundred per cent, are also manufactured here, the poor pay, 
 thereby, an increased double tax, by the higher price of all the 
 domestic articles they use, without any indemnity, such as the rich 
 capitalist obtains who owns the manufactory. A horizontal tariff is, 
 therefore, less open to favoritism and injustice, and more in symmetry 
 with our equal system of government. But this bill, instead of that, 
 discriminates, in several cases, over one hundred, and in many over 
 thirty per cent. A paramount defect in the general structure of this 
 bill is, therefore, the great and unequal burden which it imposes on the 
 less wealthy classes. 
 
 Suppose, as some have, that the average tax is thirty-nine per cent., 
 and that the consumer, in consequence of the duties being in cash, has 
 to pay ten more; then, in all cases, the burden falling on him will be near 
 fifty per cent. If goods are imported in foreign vessels not entering 
 under any reciprocal treaty (and some of the present party in power 
 propose to put an end to all such treaties and arrangements), the bur- 
 den will equal nearly sixty per cent. But considering it only at fifty, 
 how oppressive must it be to make the laborer, mechanic, and farmer, 
 pay as much for one bushel of salt, one pound of sugar, or even one 
 yard of cotton or woollen cloth, as he would, without any duty, pay 
 for two ! You deprive those classes, in this way, of half their earn- 
 ings, when expended for such articles. 
 
284 TARIFF. 
 
 This is clearly too high ; and, at the same time, it is disproportion- 
 ate among classes, as well as different kinds of property. These 
 characteristics are what made the poll-tax so oppressive which led to 
 Wat Tyler's rebellion. Thus, in England, lately, it has been com- 
 puted that a small householder pays, for himself and family, nearly 
 half his earnings in taxes of some kind or other, while the great land- 
 lord or banker pays not one-tenth of his. So the small farmer here, 
 and especially in the Atlantic States, with ten in his family, pays, 
 as some compute, over fifty dollars yearly, under a tariff like this ; 
 while the great capitalist, with twenty times as much property and 
 income, will pay little or nothing more under it than he. 
 
 This is another practical illustration of the unequal operation of this 
 kind of taxation, when pushed, for any cause, too high. How wisely, 
 under the sufferings of the poor and humble in life which flow from 
 heavy taxes on them, did the sagacious heroine, Joan of Arc, in the 
 height of her glory, ask, as the greatest favor from the monarch of 
 France to those she loved most, that the people of her native village 
 might thereafter be exempt from taxation ! The blessed boon was 
 granted, and held sacred for centuries ; while all now asked, in this 
 bill, for the people, or any part of them, is not exemption from their 
 due share of taxes, not exclusive privileges, but merely the sacred 
 right, the inestimable, holy right, of being exempt from unequal and 
 unjust taxation. 
 
 To show that these objections to the character and frame of the bill 
 are not declamation, nor loose generalities for political effect, let me 
 ask your attention a few moments to some tabular details. 
 
 Thus, the first statement before me exhibits the different rates of 
 duty, on an average, under all our previous tariffs. From this it 
 appears that the average is higher by this bill than by any others, 
 except that of 1828; and that the burden which falls on the consumer, 
 through its rate of duty and cash payments, is greater than ever fell on 
 him before, since the government began. In this way, it quite equals 
 forty-six to forty-nine per cent. ; while the tariff of 1828 — the duty 
 being the only burden — did not exceed forty-five per cent. Under 
 the act of 1824, which the chairman admits was made so high for pro- 
 tection, and not revenue, the average was only about thirty-five per 
 cent. ; and under that of 1816, not quite thirty. Of the different 
 tariffs previous to the war, — made, as we say, for revenue alone, — the 
 average of that from 1800 to 1808 was only twenty per cent. ; and 
 of those from 1789 to 1792, and thence to 1800, only twelve and a 
 half, and then fifteen, and then twenty per cent. So that, if the acts 
 of 1824 and 1828 were made so high, and in so discriminating a form, 
 not for revenue, — as more revenue was not then wanted, — but for 
 protection alone to manufacturers, who did want it, who loaded your 
 tables with memorials for it, who thundered at your doors till they 
 obtained it, — then is this bill, in its form and tendency, a measure for 
 protection. For it is exactly like those in its discriminations, like 
 
TARIFF. 285 
 
 them in its effects, and (whatever it may be called, to varnish over the 
 real object) it is like them in substance. Revenue, to be sure, is now 
 wanted ; but this bill is not in a form to give most revenue, being so 
 high in the average, as well as in numerous particulars, as to prevent 
 importations so large as with lower duties. The measure was also 
 thrown into its present protective form by a protective Secretary, pro- 
 tective Committees on Manufactures, as w^ell as Ways and Means, and, 
 as in 1828, at the urgent supplications of the friends of high protec- 
 tion to manufactures, as well as of the manufacturers themselves. 
 
 On this subject, legislation is often pushed to an extreme, — some- 
 times from self-interest, and the ability among manufacturers to com- 
 bine more readily than farmers, and, by active importunity, to influence 
 more the legislation of Congress. The grasshoppers under the tree, 
 says Burke, keep up much more excitement and noise than the oxen. 
 Sometimes, too, there is, doubtless, an honest belief that a tariff, 
 instead of being (like all other taxes) a burden, is a blessing. That 
 is one of the notable discoveries of certain modern sages among us. 
 But a tariff cannot possibly be a general blessing, when equally bur- 
 dening all ; but very possibly a blessing to the manufacturers alone, 
 when unequal, and they reap the benefit of the tax at the cost of 
 others. With them, it is regarded, therefore, as a sovereign remedy 
 for all political bruises, a panacea for every social derangement in the 
 body politic. 
 
 Particular items, as strongly as the origin, resemblances, and high 
 average rate of duty, indicate the protective, rather than the financial 
 character of this bill. Here, sir, is a list of sixteen prominent arti- 
 cles, whose duty, when reduced to an ad valorem scale, ranges from 
 fifty to one hundred and fifty per cent. ; and here is another list of 
 seven articles, six of wliich are above twenty-five per cent., and all 
 above twenty. So are numerous others in the bill, which I have not 
 taken the trouble to compute and exhibit. 
 
 The value abroad, with the charges, are by law the basis on which 
 duties are now assessed. 
 
 By this mode, according to the custom-house books for 1840 (and 
 prices, generally, are still lower now), the Secretary himself shows, in 
 document 209, House of Representatives, at this session, that the pro- 
 posed duty on one kind of cordage would yield over one hundred and 
 fifty per cent., and on black pepper an equal rate; and so downward, 
 after due allowance, with various other articles, as set forth in the table. 
 
 Can there be a pretence that any of these, except a few, considered 
 by some as luxuries, have been raised so high for revenue, wdien, with 
 those exceptions, all made so high are articles of wliich there are rival 
 manufacturers in this country, and where many other important arti- 
 cles, of which no rival manufacturers exist here, are not raised high 1 
 
 If the high duties are imposed on the first to obtain more revenue 
 on them, why is it not placed on the others for the same purpose ? 
 The only honest answer must be, that the right to discriminate in 
 
286 TARIFF. 
 
 this revenue is believed to exist, and that it is proper to exercise it 
 in such an unequal manner for the protection of the manufacturers 
 concerned. 
 
 If the bill of 1828 did that, for such a purpose, as has been repeat- 
 edly admitted, this twin-sister does it in various respects. If that had 
 its minimums solely for protection, so has this. This, too, beside 
 being, as before shown, equally high in its average burdens, is equally 
 high in many of its discriminations; and higher in some, — such as 
 cordage and cotton bagging, when we advert to the lower price of the 
 articles now, — higher in carpeting and coal and some kinds of glass ; in 
 blankets, wares, cutlery and steel ; higher in both sugars and silks, 
 when the diminished value is regarded ; and, without specifying several 
 more, it is seven and a half per cent, higher in the large class of arti- 
 cles not enumerated. 
 
 If it be lower in a few instances, it is, as a general rule, either 
 nominally so, — the specific duty being less on the article, because the 
 latter is now proportionably less in value, as in the case of molasses, — 
 or it is really so in articles not produced here, like tea or coffee ; and 
 hence no higher duty was desired by the manufacturers for protection. 
 Thus, whether it goes higher or lower in reality, it is still carefully so 
 with a view to aid manufactures in all the material changes, — making 
 some immaterial ones as to agriculture and commerce, to keep up 
 appearances, without much beneficial addition thereby, either to their 
 protection or the real income of the treasury. I concede that the 
 naked political power thus to discriminate may exist ; but it is not 
 within the spirit of the constitution — not, as before shown, advantage- 
 ous for revenue — to exercise it in this way; nor just to most of the con- 
 sumers, so unequally taxed without an equivalent, like the manufac- 
 tures ; nor is it true to the letter or spirit of the compromise, nor 
 useful even to sound manufacturers themselves, much less to all the 
 interests of society combined. I say this from no hostility to taxation 
 for the economical support of government, but from hostility to 
 excessive taxation — unnecessary and unequal taxation. Nor am 
 I unfriendly to due protection to manufactures, or any other useful 
 occupation ; but unfriendly to partial protection, — to the protection 
 which favors one, and neglects or oppresses another, — and, as in this 
 case, favors manufactures, at the expense and injury of agriculture 
 and commerce. It is no extenuation for this injustice to allege, as is 
 often done, that the prosperity of one class in society redounds to the 
 benefit of all ; because that never happens when one class is made pros- 
 perous by the undue taxation or plunder of other classes. No taxa- 
 tion, unless unequal, can ever be advantageous to the pecuniary interests 
 of any of the tax-payers ; and if it becomes so then, it is advantageous 
 only to those directly burdened least, and indirectly remunerated 
 most. "Who can believe that, if this last were not the consequence to 
 the manufacturers from a tariff like this, it would be invoked, even 
 by them, as a blessing, and not, rather, be deprecated by all as an 
 
TARIFF. 287 
 
 evil, and prevented, as far as is practicable, consistent with the support 
 of public credit and the ordinary operations of government ? But for 
 this inequality, would not others, as much as they, desire it to pass 7 
 Are they not as patriotic to grant suitable revenues, and as intelligent 
 concerning what promotes their own interests, as are the manufac- 
 turers ? Nor can there be anything in the pretence that the farmer 
 and merchant are, in this bill, assisted by direct protection to half the 
 extent of the manufacturers. If, by some mysterious process, it con- 
 fers equal benefits on them by indirect protection, why not reverse the 
 rule, and give to them, the most numerous, the largest direct protec- 
 tion, and to manufacturers the indirect, so much eulogized 1 But, so 
 far from this, every class is sagacious enough to know, like the 
 Scotchman as to his red herring, that if there is to be direct protection 
 at all, he had better get it than his neighbor. If, as some pretend, 
 the former protective tariffs, as well as this, bestow direct protection 
 on all, like the promises of Tittlebat Titmouse to do everything for 
 everybody, I would respectfully ask what benefit that kind of a tariff 
 could have been to any of them, except to cause a loss of the whole 
 expense of administering it 1 If A, the manufacturer, is protected by 
 a tax of five dollars on B, the farmer, and another five on C, the mer- 
 chant, and B is also protected by a tax of five on A and another five 
 on C, and C by a tax of five on B and another five on A, will gentle- 
 men inform me how much more prosperous and wealthy either of them 
 has become by the transaction 1 The farmer, in particular, has not 
 considered himself well used in this system of protection heretofore. 
 Allow me to read, on this, a few resolutions, said to have passed at a 
 meeting of that class of persons in Massachusetts ; and though they 
 are not a discontented, annoying, petitioning race, they sometimes 
 resolve very firmly, and execute quite as sternly at the ballot-boxes. 
 
 ** "Whereas the general happiness and prosperity of the United States must ever be 
 intimately connected with the condition of our agriculture : and whereas three-fourths 
 of our whole rapidly increasing population must and ever will depend on the products 
 and profits of the farmer, for the supply of their physical wants, and the means of 
 moral, religious, and intellectual improvement : 
 
 "And whereas Congress has given bounties on the fisheries, to make them a 
 nursery of seamen, and has given none on agriculture, which is the best nursery of 
 freemen ; has appropriated millions annually to protect commerce, and has given 
 nothing to encourage agriculture, the basis of commerce ; has protected manufac- 
 tures with a heavy tariff, and left agriculture, which consumes their fabrics, to pro- 
 tect herself : 
 
 " Resolved, That it is the duty of the General Government not to extend protection 
 and encouragement to manufactures and commerce, unless she adopts a like policy 
 towards the great agricultural interests of the country. 
 
 " Resolved, That the protective system, as at present established, is manifestly 
 unjust to the agriculturists of the country ; imposing upon them three-fourths of the 
 tariff duties, as consumers, without affording them any adequate consideration for the 
 payment of their tariff taxes. 
 
 " Resolved, That if the manufacturer is to receive a protective duty, so should also 
 the American seed-grower, who, in consequence of the importation of foreign seeds 
 into the United States, is obliged to abandon this profitable branch of industry. 
 
 " Resolved, That the business of wool-growing has become unprofitable, and cannot 
 
288 TARIFF. 
 
 safely be followed by our farmers under the provisions of the present tariff, which 
 admits all kinds of wool of less value than eight cents per pound at the place from 
 whence it is imported, duty free, of such qualities as come in direct competition with 
 our wool of coarser quality ; therefore, 
 
 " Resolved, That it will be the imperative duty of the American farmer to protest 
 against a tariff to protect the manufacturers, if nothing more be done to protect this 
 important business from foreign competition. 
 
 " Resolved, That the present tariff is partial and unequal to farmers, wherein it 
 provides that the duties on railroad iron shall be refunded when the rails are actually 
 laid, and does not provide that the duties on the scythe and the sickle shall be refunded 
 to the farmer when he shall have applied them to the grain. 
 
 " And whereas large quantities of potatoes, grain, butter, cheese, pork, wool, hides, 
 and other articles, are annually imported from foreign countries into the United 
 States ; therefore, 
 
 " Resolved, That it is not the interest or the duty of the farmers to submit to be 
 taxed to build up commerce and manufactures, unless they also can be protected in 
 the full enjoyment of the home market for all our great agricultural staples." 
 
 But it may be replied that the present bill remedies some of those 
 complaints, by raising duties higher, to protect a few of those articles 
 of agricultural origin. In doing that, however, mere appearances 
 seem to have been consulted ; because, in reality, the farmer is placed 
 in a much worse condition by the whole bill than he would be with- 
 out it, under the existing laws. Thus, the duty on eight agricultural 
 products from abroad has been raised, by the report of the committee 
 in the other House, over the Secretary's bill, a few cents per pound, 
 barrel, or bushel ; as on butter, cheese, Indian corn, flour, lard, meal, 
 potatoes, and wool. This looks on its face very kind, as well as pro- 
 tective. But none of those articles, except wool and cheese, are 
 imported to any great extent, or are likely to be dangerous rivals to 
 our domestic products of the same name ; and the duties, old and new, 
 on the whole of these, would probably be less than fifty thousand 
 dollars a year. But, at the same moment, the duty on salt, which 
 farmers are obliged to consume in the largest proportion, has, by 
 this bill, been increased from its present rate of twenty per cent, 
 to quite eighty per cent. There has thus been added to the price 
 of what the farming interest consume of that article near half a mil- 
 lion of dollars. Vast kindness,— to bestow fifty thousand dollars 
 with one hand, and take back with the other ten times the amount ! 
 Admirable protection, — to relieve them by higher protection equal to 
 about fifty thousand dollars of new duties, but at the same moment to 
 burden them by new ones, on one article alone, near five hundred 
 thousand ! But the secret, in respect to this last article, is, that the 
 increase benefits the manufacturers of it. For the same reason, an 
 increase was proposed on several other manufactured articles, and one 
 raw material lowered, to aid the soap-makers, though produced by the 
 farmer here. I concede, however, that this bill, after a severe struggle, 
 has been made to impose a duty on hides, which is favorable to agri- 
 culture. But it is very small, and is neutralized, — indeed, exceeded 
 ten times over, — by the increased tax on iron, cordage, cottons, lin- 
 ens, glass, and various other articles of extensive consumption among 
 
TARIFF. 289 
 
 farmers, independent of salt. Indeed, the very tax imposed on hides, 
 professedly for their benefit, is another excuse for a high tax on leather 
 and shoes, which farmers consume so largely ; and the duty on wool, 
 raised some, professedly to aid them, is also countenanced by a higher 
 duty on several kinds of woollens and worsteds. This is a specimen 
 of the ridiculous round which such a forced, unnatural, hot-bed sys- 
 tem, is obliged to run ; and if a single raw material from agriculture, 
 entering into our manufactures, is visited with a higher duty, avowedly 
 to protect the farmer, you proceed at once to pick his pocket again of 
 more than the amount, by raising some duty still more on a manufac- 
 ture he uses, and sometimes on the very manufacture made from his 
 raw material. By the viciousness of such a system, the English have 
 discovered that the manufacturer was so escaping his fair share of tax- 
 ation on imports, that Parliament was obliged, in order to render the 
 whole burden of taxation more equal, to impose an excise duty on sev- 
 eral articles of domestic manufacture. From like circumstances, if we 
 pass this bill unamended, there will be so many duties nearly prohib- 
 itory for the benefit of the manufacturer ; and the rest of the tariff, 
 on which the duties are paid, will fall so much more heavily on other 
 classes, that the deficient revenue will continue, if our expenses are 
 not reduced and the lands recalled, and will have to be made up, 
 probably, from other sources, reaching more equally the manufacturer. 
 
 In that event, as the revenue will have been injured for the benefit 
 of the manufacturer, what more suitable mode of obtaining the defi- 
 ciency than one which will fall on him in a more equal proportion, and 
 thus tend to equalize nearer the benefits and burdens of all classes 1 
 The English corn-laws, so much railed at, were, in one view, at home, 
 a mode of making the manufacturer pay something to the farmer for 
 the high protective duties he had obtained on some of his own prod- 
 ucts ; and for the burdens, flung chiefly on the agricultural interest, 
 to maintain the starving paupers among manufacturers, when deprived 
 of employment by some of those revulsions so common to that branch 
 of business. Indeed, the far-reaching sagacity of Hamilton saw that, 
 even in ordinary cases, the manufacturing States would consume less 
 of foreign imports, in proportion to their numbers and wealth, than 
 the agricultural States ; and hence he urged it as an argument why 
 the General Government should have the power, when taxes became 
 high, to impose part of them on other property, in order to make the 
 manufacturing sections bear, as they ought, a more equal proportion 
 of the public burdens. (Fed., No. 35.) 
 
 Do not gentlemen see, also, that, in respect to revenue on imports, 
 this system soon kills the goose that lays the golden egg 1 If manu- 
 factures are increased by it sufficiently to supply the home market, so 
 that fewer articles are imported, — and if most of the free articles are, 
 also, raw materials for manufacture, and yield no revenue, — it follows, 
 inevitably, that much of the income heretofore derived from imports 
 must gradually disappear ; and, as a fiscal system of taxation, it will, 
 
290 TARIFF. 
 
 in time, prove a felo de se — destroying itself. Then, for most of our 
 revenue, would remain only the expensive, unpopular and deprecated 
 alternatives of excise and direct taxes. 
 
 There is another illustration, somewhat striking, of the partial oper- 
 ation of the general structure of this bill upon agriculture. The 
 highest duty, in a list of sixteen articles, is on cordage untarred, and 
 another of eighty per cent, on cordage tarred. These are articles used 
 extensively, not only in navigation, but on every farm, and in almost 
 every log-cabin. The next is coarse cottons, from twenty-five to the 
 monstrous rate of one hundred and forty per cent., — wanted for cloth- 
 ing and bedding whenever a ship sails, a fort is manned, a plough 
 driven, a cow milked, or a laborer sleeps. In this manner, the whole 
 list might be run through, and all above fifty per cent., with the excep- 
 tion of two or three, and all, but a like number, between fifty and 
 thirty-five per cent., would be found among the leading necessaries of 
 life, — including, besides what have been named, several species of 
 iron, woollens, salt, sugar, coal, wares, molasses, paper, linens, &c. 
 How wretchedly must the discriminating policy be exercised, when, in 
 a republic, the numerous masses are taxed, on their greatest necessa- 
 ries, from sixty to one hundred and forty per cent., while wines, the 
 luxury of the few and affluent, pay only about fifty per cent., foreign 
 delicacies in fruits about the same, and silks, generally, but thirty or 
 forty per cent. ! What deserves further notice is, also, the fact, that 
 among the articles which, in England, pay only the more moderate 
 duty of twenty per cent., are the universal necessaries of iron and 
 cotton, while here they are manufactures of tobacco. In the free list 
 here are, also, "gold epaulettes" and the poisonous " nux vomica ;" 
 while there it is salt, — the healthy inmate of every dwelling, from the 
 hut to the palace, but much the most extensively consumed in agricul- 
 ture. 
 
 Again : of the nine or ten articles, in another table before me, which, 
 in England, have heretofore yielded twenty out of twenty-two parts 
 of all her gross revenue from imports, one of them is grain ; and, 
 without commending the policy of the corn-laws generally, it has been 
 much protected, either directly or indirectly, in favor of her agricul- 
 ture at home. Three of the other eight are protected in the same way 
 for the agriculture of her colonies ; while, among our ten highest, not 
 one is an agricultural article, — and thus not one of them is protected, 
 either directly or indirectly. And in the eight next, there is but one; 
 and that is now protected, for the first time, only by a very low rate 
 of duty. 
 
 Sugar is, in some respects, an exception in both countries, as the 
 cane from which it is made is grown by agriculture ; but any benefit 
 from that is almost exclusively confined here to one of the small States, 
 out of the whole twenty-six, and where the growing of cotton, instead 
 of it, would prove quite as profitable. I pass by further comparisons 
 which occur to me, connected with the lower differential duties England 
 
TARIFF. 291 
 
 imposes on articles from her colonies, and from which, on those lower 
 duties, come most of the imports which yield the greatest revenue. I 
 pass by the strong contrast between her whole impost system and ours, 
 in the fact, that, deducting luxuries, the necessaries of life imported 
 there do not, on an average, now pay over twenty-five per cent., while 
 here they exceed that near ten per cent., and thus fall most heavily 
 on the laboring classes. Bad, then, as has been the English system 
 in some respects, this one concerning imports is worse, and especially 
 towards the agricultural interest. 
 
 How can we consistently pass such measures as this, and continue 
 to rail at England for her corn-laws, when now her duties on grain are 
 lower than half of those in the present bill ? Nor will it become us to 
 complain longer that she excludes our grain by high imposts, when 
 she takes three-fourths directly, or indirectly through her colonies, of 
 all we export. Nor to talk of retaliatory duties, when ours now on 
 her cotton, iron, woollens, and crockery-ware, are nearly double as 
 high as hers on our grain ; and when, if she oppresses the great mass 
 of her population, and drives many into insurrection by her corn-taxes, 
 we oppress ours much more by taxes on all which is used to protect 
 from nakedness and cold, as well as all which enables our people, in 
 the use of iron and cordage, to till the earth for bread, or navigate the 
 ocean for gain. So, more than half of these nine leading articles in 
 England, which yield most of her revenue, — such as spirits, wines, 
 tobacco, fruits, &c, — are manifestly luxuries. There, the great mass 
 of the revenue is collected from the rich, who can afford to use luxu- 
 ries, however highly taxed. But here, our nine or ten articles, which 
 are expected to yield most revenue by this bill, and which will yield 
 near twenty parts out of twenty-seven, if it succeeds as its friends 
 expect, are all necessaries, and even agricultural necessaries, except 
 two — spirits and silks. What a contrast ! There, not half the articles 
 yielding most are necessaries. Here, eight-tenths of them ! There, 
 only what goes into the mouth is taxed high. Here, what goes upon 
 the back, as well as into the mouth. Has this been done to get more 
 revenue here, when England is so much deeper in debt, and ought 
 to be so much more taxed ? 
 
 Can neither the back nor the mouth be allowed to escape here, 
 where the people at large are pretended to be so much less burdened, 
 and to have so much more weight in public affairs ? No, sir. The 
 difference is, that here our only privileged class supply clothing for 
 the masses, while there one of their privileged classes supplies food. 
 Hence, the farmer is here heavily taxed ; and hence, under the pretence 
 of revenue, the people at large are to be made tributary to the manu- 
 facturers, and to be ground down to the earth with high duties on the 
 greatest necessaries, to help build up that privileged class. 
 
 Some talk, even, as if there was a sacredness, or Divine right, con- 
 nected with them, and all legislation was to be shaped for their pro- 
 tection alone ! If you question their exclusive pretensions over agri- 
 
292 TARIFF. 
 
 culture and commerce, the reproach is, you are hostile to American 
 labor. Is no labor American but theirs 1 If you oppose high dis- 
 criminations for them, and them alone, you are vilified as an enemy 
 to domestic industry. Is there no domestic industry in the plough, 
 and scythe, and ship, as well as in a spinning-jenny, or loom ? 
 
 If you favor a tariff for revenue, and not protection to a single class, 
 it is imputed to you that your wish springs from opposition to the 
 American system, — as if the true American system was not that of 
 equal rights and equal taxation ; or, should you be so impartial as not 
 to like a home league for manufactures alone, you are denounced for 
 want of patriotism, — as if there were not home crops, home herds of 
 cattle, and home flocks of sheep, to be encouraged, as much as the man- 
 ufacture of soda-ash, or vermicelli, or pins. The agricultural inter- 
 ests are in this way misled or neglected. It may be undesignedly, yet 
 still it is done. 
 
 If those behind the curtain were, by this bill, seeking revenue alone, 
 and did not intend to blind the farmers about protection, by raising the 
 duty on such articles as butter, wheat, flour, and lard, why did they 
 select that which has so little competition from abroad, and at the same 
 moment yields so little revenue ? The fact could hardly be credited, 
 if not in the official document before me, that the revenue from butter, 
 by this change, held out as merely financial, would be increased only 
 four hundred dollars, that from wheat-flour only eighty-three dollars, 
 and that from lard, — in the distressing wants of the treasury for near 
 twenty-seven millions, — not quite the great fiscal aggregate of ninety- 
 eight cents ! This, as financiering, must astonish Europe. Why not 
 be open, manly, straight-forward? 
 
 Where are the drawbacks, too, for the aid of farmers 1 None on 
 their salt consumed, or their iron; while on the first you allow a 
 drawback to the fisheries, and on the last to the proprietors of rail- 
 roads. 
 
 What drawback is allowed on the molasses consumed in raising and 
 shipping their surplus crops — the fruit of their labor and capital 1 — 
 or on their cotton-bagging, or their sugar ? But large drawbacks are 
 granted to the manufacturers of spirit from molasses, and of refined 
 sugar, when shipped abroad, as the fruit of manufacturing labor and 
 capital. 
 
 Another characteristic of the details of the bill, exceedingly unjust 
 and unequal to the agricultural and other laboring classes, is, that, by 
 the rate of duty, when specific, whatever may be its superiority in 
 some cases over an ad valorem rate for securing revenue, it is so used 
 here as to make the secondary quality and value of any article of the 
 same name, and which, of course, is most used by the least wealthy, 
 pay as high a duty nominally, and a much higher one really, on its 
 value, than is paid on the more fashionable and costly fabric used by 
 the rich. Without fatiguing the Senate by many details on this, take 
 the articles only of shoes and flannels. The silk shoe, worn in the 
 
TARIFF. 293 
 
 ball-room or soiree, pays no higher duty than the cowhide shoe, worn 
 by the sailor, laborer, or ploughman. So the coarse flannel used by 
 the industrious classes is not only very highly taxed, but has to pay 
 just as much duty per yard as the finest fabric used by the wealthiest. 
 
 Where, also, is the free list of articles to aid agriculture? For 
 protection is afforded by letting the articles used by particular classes 
 come in free, as effectually as by taxing rival articles high. 
 
 The whole free list for the manufacturers would fill almost a page : 
 such as models of machinery, berries, nuts and vegetables used for 
 dying; all dye-woods; old metals in brass, copper, pewter, &c, to be 
 manufactured; crude brimstone, gums, madder, India-rubber, kelp, 
 barilla, wood, palm leaf and oil, reeds, &c. ; while the free list to aid 
 farmers consists only of " animals for breed" and " plaster of Paris." 
 
 To pursue this course, when agriculture and commerce have such 
 superior claims to extraordinary protection, if granted at all to any 
 class, is more especially unjust and suicidal to the best interests of the 
 whole community. 
 
 Why, sir, the value of property of all kinds in this country is esti- 
 mated at four thousand millions of dollars. Of this, at least three 
 thousand millions (or three-fourths of the whole) belong to agricul- 
 ture ; and is that three-fourths to be neglected, for only a small pittance 
 in manufactures mixed up with the other one -fourth ? All the capital 
 in the latter employment appears, by the last census, to be only two 
 hundred and sixty-seven millions and a fraction ; while the capital in 
 commerce and navigation alone exceeds it more than a hundred 
 millions, and that in agriculture exceeds it over two thousand seven 
 hundred millions. 
 
 Generalities can hardly impress us strongly enough with the great 
 magnitude of the interests in agriculture, compared with those engaged 
 in manufactures. 
 
 Here is a table, sir, compiled from the last census, as corrected. 
 Fair computations of prices on it show that the crop, in one year, of 
 only eight agricultural products, exceeds in value, by a hundred per 
 cent., the whole capital employed in manufactures. 
 
 AVERAGE PEICES. 
 
 Indian corn, at 50 -cents per bushel, $ 193,640,092 
 
 Hay, at #10 per ton, 128,047,050 
 
 Wheat, at $1 per bushel, 91,642,957 
 
 Oats, at 50 cents per bushel, 65,000,000 
 
 Cotton, at 10 cents per pound, 57,800,000 
 
 Potatoes, at 25 cents per bushel, 28,250,000 
 
 Tobacco, at 10 cents per pound, 24,018,000 
 
 Wool, at 50 cents per pound, 17,900,000 
 
 $606,298,099 
 
 When we come to the numbers employed, and belonging to those 
 employed, in each pursuit, after making proper additions for persons 
 
 25* 
 
294 TARIFF. 
 
 in families not enumerated in the census as actively engaged in each 
 occupation, it will be found that those in agriculture are more than 
 twelve millions, or above three-fourths of the whole ; while those in 
 manufactures do not exceed a million and a half, or one-eleventh of 
 the whole. Are the virtuous yeomanry of the country and their 
 industrious families — being eight to one of the inmates of factories — 
 to be overlooked and taxed exorbitantly to sustain the latter ; or, rather, 
 in most cases, the few capitalists who employ them ? Are the interest 
 and comfort of the former nothing, compared with the latter 1 Give 
 cheerfully to the latter, as I do, all deserved credit ; but are the former 
 twelve millions of human beings possessed of no domestic or home 
 industry to be respected ? Is not their labor as American ? their 
 usefulness as great ? their patriotism and worth quite as proverbial ? 
 
 Yes, sir, you not only try to collect tribute from them by a bill like 
 this, while you in many cases exonerate the manufacturers, in respect 
 to the taxes on foreign imports, but you compel them to pay immense 
 sums more for various domestic manufactures than they would have to 
 pay if the rate of duty on imports were not higher than the revenue 
 standard. Thus, sir, in England it has been calculated that, in con- 
 sequence of taxation of all kinds, — equalling £50,000,000, — the 
 consumers are obliged to pay, on articles not imported, £100.000,000 
 more than they would otherwise be obliged to pay. 
 
 Some have calculated that near seventy millions of dollars were paid 
 here yearly, in consequence of the tax on foreign articles enhancing, 
 to a like extent, the price of similar domestic ones. It may be sug- 
 gested that the manufacturers pay something more, also, in a ratio of 
 their numbers ; yet we must recollect that this is not the case with 
 them, so far as they consume their own fabrics; and that they, in 
 other particulars, get an indemnity in the higher prices of what they 
 sell, and levy it unjustly on the farmer and others, who obtain no 
 indemnity from any quarter. 
 
 On the sea-board the farmer is peculiarly overburdened by this sys- 
 tem ; because, from his position and from habit, he consumes a larger 
 portion of foreign imports than others ; and, so far from being himself 
 protected, even in the home market, as an indemnity, he sees Ohio 
 tobacco and Indiana pork and Illinois flour selling near his own door. 
 This would be right, if all were free trade, and no one interest spe- 
 cially aided. But, when the manufacturer in Rhode Island becomes 
 embarrassed, he resorts to Congress for a higher tariff for relief; and, 
 on the same principle, why should not the Mississippi planter or New 
 Hampshire farmer 1 And why should it not be granted, under your 
 system of partial legislation, in one case as well as the other ? Some 
 say, however, that this kind of tax, if oppressive, is voluntary, and can 
 be avoided by not consuming the article. This argument might have 
 some force where only luxuries are taxed ; but it cannot be tolerated 
 a moment where almost every import is taxed highly which custom 
 and taste render necessary, even to the middling and lower classes, — 
 
TARIFF. 295 
 
 indispensable food and clothing, no less than comforts and ornaments, 
 
 — what is used in infancy, manhood, and old age; needed at our 
 births, marriages, and deaths ; and almost as vital to all classes as air, 
 fire, and water. To argue that it is voluntary to keep or relinquish 
 the use of such articles, is to call it voluntary to surrender your purse 
 to the highwayman when the alternative is your life. 
 
 How would the manufacturers, if now taxed highly, and without 
 any protection, be pleased with a similar, though juster retort, that it 
 was voluntary in them either to begin or to continue the manufactur- 
 ing branches of business, if not profitable ? What makes these high 
 duties more burdensome here to the masses is, that they fall on both 
 food and clothing ; while in England, for instance, they fall only on 
 the former, the latter being cheap, and lightly taxed. 
 
 Again, not only cottons and woollens pay there a low rate of duty, 
 but iron. And the great condiment of all food for most of the animal 
 creation, and the necessary of all classes, there and elsewhere, — salt, 
 
 — while proposed to be taxed here eighty per cent., is in that country, 
 reproached by many as tax-ridden, still free, nobly free, to the cot- 
 tager as well as the peer. 
 
 To preach, also, as some do, that national independence requires us 
 to proscribe everything foreign, is to advocate a return to the condition 
 of savages, and push back civilization to a state something worse than 
 that of the dark ages. While I abominate as much as any one foreign 
 follies and luxuries, and foreign political dependence, it is certain that 
 necessaries and comforts, whether obtained at home or abroad, are still 
 necessaries and comforts ; and the dependence of different nations on 
 each other for what each, by climate, skill, or custom, can produce 
 cheapest, is a source of pecuniary gain to all, and quite as humanizing 
 as is the social dependence of all men in civilized society on each other 
 for many mutual aids, and often becomes the strongest pledge of con- 
 tinued peace. 
 
 But some, in discussing these questions, assert that this view of 
 them is hostile to any protection whatever to manufactures ; and they 
 ask if none is to be granted. On the contrary, I contend that it con- 
 cedes much protection, — quite as great as our fathers looked to after 
 the Revolution, and during the first quarter-century of the present 
 government. It recognizes, first, the incidental protection which agri- 
 culture and commerce have in common with manufactures, in an ocean 
 of one to three thousand miles rolling between us and most of the 
 places where foreign articles are produced. Next, to all manufactures 
 in the interior there is a further protection, by the additional expense, 
 risk, &c, of carrying thither any of the foreign articles. Similar ones 
 made on the spot, when heavy, like lead, iron, salt, and hemp, will 
 often command the whole interior market, without the aid of any duty 
 whatever, fiscal or protective, on the foreign article. 
 
 But, besides these two important protections, there is the natural 
 protection to many articles resulting from climate and soil. This is 
 
296 TABIFF. 
 
 quite enough to make them flourish, without any other. Such are the 
 granite, hay, ice, and potatoes, of the north ; the wheat, Indian corn, 
 pork, and tobacco, of the Middle States or the west ; and the cotton 
 of the south. These need no aid from duties, any more than does hemp 
 or timber in Russia, coal and iron in England, silks and wines in 
 France, gold and silver and the cochineal in Mexico, drugs in Turkey, 
 or tea in China. If we consult nature, as we should, or any peculiar 
 advantages in skill, machinery, or capital, we shall find that those 
 pursuits will prove most profitable, in all nations, which these circum- 
 stances indicate to be congenial ; and if we attempt to force what is not 
 most congenial to our climate, soil, habits, and means, the pursuit will 
 often prove thriftless, even with the aid of high protective duties. The 
 growth will thus often be an unnatural hot-bed and costly product, and 
 the system as unphilosophical and ridiculous as that described by Swift 
 in Laputa, of extracting sunbeams for heat from cucumbers. 
 
 But where a country like this, with a large capital, and liberal 
 revenue in public lands, requires also some moderate addition of income 
 from taxes, — and they are, from convenience, imposed on imports, — 
 a further protection often follows incidentally to agriculture and com- 
 merce, as well as to manufactures. Nobody regrets such a protection 
 when an incident, and when proving equally favorable to each of those 
 great pursuits, somewhat in the ratio of the numbers and capital 
 employed in each. That alone is the protection by the General Gov- 
 ernment, with its limited powers, which Jefferson and Madison could 
 legitimately commend ; and never the unnatural and unjust protection 
 of only one branch of industry, to the neglect or expense of other 
 branches. Such protection, too, becomes constitutional, not as an 
 object of taxation, — no such object being named in any of the grants 
 of power, — but as a mere accidental consequence of taxation. Early 
 as the adoption of the constitution, Hamilton said that "the encour- 
 agement of agriculture and manufactures" belonged to the domestic 
 police of the States. (No. 34, Fed.) One of the incidents of war 
 was to derange commerce, and pet manufactures into exclusive favor ; 
 and then, for the first time, protection per se, and for them alone, was 
 demanded ; and from time to time an increase, till the whole system 
 was broken down by its excesses, in 1833. The doctrine and practice 
 which have prevailed since, till now, have been a gradual return to a 
 system of duties not exceeding twenty per cent., and yielding the pro- 
 tection which would flow from that rate, and the other great advan- 
 tages resulting often from position and climate. There may we stand 
 now, and present, against any excesses, the firm front of principle, 
 established precedents, and sacred compromises. 
 
 Indeed, Mr. Clay himself declared, as late as June, 1840, that a 
 duty of twenty per cent, for revenue, aided by cash duties and a home 
 valuation, would yield a sufficient protection to all kinds of manufac- 
 tures that ought to be persisted in. That apparent change in views 
 by him was highly commendable, and is much in accordance with the 
 
TARIFF. 297 
 
 change which has been going on in England since Mr. Huskisson's 
 exertions in 1825, and which the ablest writers in political science 
 have long advocated ; and which, at last, has there entered the work- 
 shop, and taken possession of the halls of legislation. In the late 
 examinations before the committee on imports, several manufacturers 
 are said to have disclaimed all wish for protection above what would 
 result incidentally from distance and a revenue standard of twenty per 
 cent. ; and the examples of Saxony, as well as Switzerland, have 
 demonstrated the truth of this, by years of manufacturing prosperity, 
 entirely unprotected by special legislation or high duties. 
 
 While we have been deliberating here, in an address to the Ameri- 
 can minister, in Manchester itself, — a great cotton work-shop for the 
 world, — this idea is expressed boldly, as well as eloquently : 
 
 " We trust that the delusive idea of protecting one branch of industry by inflicting 
 injuries upon other branches is fist passing away ; and that, ere long, the abundant 
 products of your country, and the various manufactures of ours, will be freely inter- 
 changed ; that commercial transactions will become as uncontrolled by fiscal restric- 
 tions as are the waves, which, whilst they separate, serve to unite the parent with 
 the daughter country. We feel convinced that the doom of monopoly is sealed in our 
 land ; that even the blindness of party is becoming enlightened ; and that all the 
 wise and good will soon be brought to regret that a single hour should have been 
 allowed to pass without the adoption of the sound principles of free trade." 
 
 England, from her position, small territory, dense population, and 
 vast mines, must chiefly export manufactures, and bring back agricul- 
 tural products ; while we, from our position, our immense territory, 
 and fertile soil, ought chiefly to export agricultural products, and bring 
 home manufactures. We are fitted for each other's opposite wants, 
 instead of running in parallel lines ; and if partial protection be at all 
 excusable there or here, it is there for manufactures rather than 
 agriculture, and here for agriculture rather than manufactures. 
 
 Place, then, taxes on imports, whenever needed, till the proper 
 maximum is reached ; and let all the great interests in society, includ- 
 ing manufactures, receive in this way all the additional protection, 
 beyond their remoteness from other countries, which will thus fall to 
 their lot, — but there halt. That, with steadiness in legislation, and 
 natural advantages, is enough ; more, without them, would be insuf- 
 ficient. Such, alone, is a judicious tariff, whether we regard reve- 
 nue or protection. To go beyond that, for aid to manufactures alone, 
 or any other class, is not only without constitutional warrant, but 
 violates the first principles of equal and just legislation. To go 
 beyond that, for aid to all equally, by imposing higher taxes on all, 
 will, of course, benefit neither in particular, and thus prove useless to 
 all. To legislate thus, not for revenue, but the advancement of par- 
 ticular interests in particular States, is to assume duties which belong 
 to those States, and were jealously withheld from the General Govern- 
 ment, and will prove, as they have heretofore, constant causes of par- 
 tiality and heart-burnings. To do it to furnish a home market, in place 
 
298 TARIFF. 
 
 of a foreign one, is to pretend that one market is better than many, 
 and that a sufficient home market exists for a hundred millions of 
 spare produce, when all engaged in manufactures cannot consume or 
 want two millions of it. To do it for aid to the currency, as is pre- 
 tended, is to suppose that mere barter requires more specie than distant 
 commerce : and that what deranges the issues of the banks, by leading 
 to periodical contraction and expansion, is conducive either to the 
 soundness or uniformity of the circulating medium. 
 
 In short, to do this, and overload with unequal burdens different 
 branches of enterprise and industry, as well as cripple free intercourse 
 between the great family of nations, is to defeat what lies at the true 
 foundation of all sound policy as to legislative encouragement to busi- 
 ness, which is to aid all to sell wherever they can get most, and buy 
 wherever they must give least. 
 
 Without going into many other fallacies on this subject, let me ask 
 what are the great reasons why we should do all this ? Chiefly to 
 protect one class, when embarrassed, to the neglect or cost of other 
 classes equally embarrassed ; chiefly to raise a few more pounds of 
 sugar, where not more than one-third of the cane ripens, compared 
 with Cuba ; to insure the manufacture of a few more yards of calico, 
 at higher cost, like the making of ice in Louisiana, or the growth of 
 pine-apples on the White Mountains ; to make the planters of the 
 south pay five cents a yard more for their cotton-bagging, to help 
 Kentucky ; to force the whole agricultural and navigating interests on 
 the Atlantic to pay sixty to one hundred per cent, more for their iron, 
 to benefit the wealthy iron-masters of Pennsylvania. 
 
 In all these kinds of protection to manufactures it is also the large 
 capitalists and stockholders, more than the workmen, who profit by 
 high duties. And if you possess a right to go as far as this bill does 
 for protection alone, it would certainly prove more efficient for that 
 object to go further, and, as in the ages of monopoly in England, 
 march up to the prohibitory duties ; or, as in France, to absolute pro- 
 hibition. That would also be undisguised; and the people, being 
 obliged in that case to furnish most of the revenue in some other form, 
 would see more clearly for whom, why, and what they are taxed, and 
 would examine more critically the necessity for it. 
 
 Our commercial and navigating interests always suffer nearly as 
 much, in proportion, as agriculture, by high duties on foreign imports. 
 Those imports being the returns for the surplus crops of the farmer 
 and planter, a tax on the returns for the crops when coming home 
 injures him, and the country, in the end, as much as a tax on the 
 crops themselves when going abroad. So a tax on the vessel that car- 
 ries them, included in her iron, copper, cables, and cordage, and in 
 what is eaten and worn by the shipwright who makes the vessel, the 
 sailor who navigates her, and the merchant who owns her, is an evil to 
 the farmer likewise, whose expense in getting his products to a final 
 
TARIFF. 
 
 299 
 
 market, and the proceeds back, is thus vastly enhanced. In this view, 
 their connection is inseparable, and their influence reciprocal. 
 
 Again : as agriculture furnishes the chief materials for our foreign 
 commerce, everything which checks and discourages, or taxes it, 
 diminishes the employment for both commerce and navigation. These 
 last give value to the surplus of the first. These last do not make us 
 so much, or, at the worst, more dependent on foreign nations than 
 they are on us. What we obtain from them with the products of our 
 labor, is likewise the fruit of American labor and American industry, 
 as much as the manufacture of soap and watches here. To restrict 
 our markets, — to lessen our freights, by extraordinary taxation on 
 what is carried, — is not only to disuse our ships, but to discourage 
 production at home for export, and narrow the range of beneficial 
 intercourse, civilization, and Christianity. 
 
 Our whole tonnage for foreign trade was much less in 1830 than in 
 1837 and 1838, partly in consequence of higher duties on imports and 
 the materials of ship-building ; and, whenever the tariff was lowered on 
 some articles in 1830, and on all in 1833, that description of tonnage, 
 and partly from that circumstance, increased rapidly. 
 
 In a like manner, our exports and imports both fell off, or increased 
 slowest, when tariffs were highest, and increased fastest when tariffs 
 were lowest. The latter were perfect thermometers to the former. 
 Thus stood our 
 
 IMPORTS AND CONSUMPTION PER HEAD. 
 
 Imports. 
 
 Uonsumptic 
 
 BEFORE A HIGH TARIFF. 
 
 1792 to 1799 inclusive, about . . . . 
 Per head of population, yearly, about 
 
 1800 to 1807 inclusive 
 
 Per head, near 
 
 SINCE A HIGH TARIFF. 
 
 1824 to 1831 
 Per head 
 
 UNDER A LOWER TARIFF. 
 
 1834 to 1841 
 
 Per head 
 
 $ 471, 000,000 
 
 14.30 
 
 817,000,000 
 
 28.00 
 
 678,000,000 
 7.70 
 
 1,114,000,000 
 10.00 
 
 $320,000,000 
 
 10.00 
 
 375,000,000 
 
 8.70 
 
 500,000,000 
 5.60 
 
 954,000,000 
 8.00 
 
 Exports, domestic increase of, when the duties were low, — 1790 to 
 1795, — increase nearly 
 
 Duty increased, and other taxes, — 1795 to 1800, — lessened 
 
 Tariff modified, and other taxes lowered, — 1800 to 1805, — increased . 
 
 Commercial restrictions, — 1805 to 1810, — no change, by increase or 
 diminution. 
 
 War, — 1810 to 1815, — increased very little 
 
 Peace, and duty not high the last three years, — 1815 to 1820, — 
 increased 
 
 Tariff low, except the last year, — 1820 to 1825, — increased 
 
 Tariff highest, — 1825 to 1830, — lessened 
 
 Tariff lowered, — 1830 to 1835, — increased 
 
 Tariff lower still, — 1835 to 1840, — increased . 
 
 $20,000,000 
 
 9,000,000 
 
 11,000,000 
 
 3,000,000 
 
 6,000,000 
 15,000,000 
 
 7,000,000 
 41,000,000 
 13,000,000 
 
 The increase from 1820 to 1830, under the highest tariff, was only 
 
300 TARIFF. 
 
 about eight millions ; but from 1830 to 1840, under a low tariff, the 
 increase exceeded fifty-four millions. Indeed, such has been the 
 impulse imparted to these under the low tariff of the last eight or ten 
 years, that we have now become the second commercial power in the 
 world. So far from returning to the Chinese prohibitory system, and 
 abandoning all, or most, foreign trade, — or imitating the highest pro- 
 tective country in Europe, which, by such a policy, has made the 
 grass grow in the streets of Spain, and stripped it of commerce and a 
 navy, and sunk it from a first to a third rate power in Christendom, — 
 is it not far better to push onward those high destinies which nature, 
 habit, and position, have long indicated are to be the results of our 
 agriculture and commerce ? — a territory extensive and fertile beyond 
 imagination, to feed an increasing population, and furnish ample 
 exports for ages ; and a length of sea-coast, rivers, and lakes, which 
 give us seamen, vessels, enterprise, and employment, if not overtaxed, 
 sufficient, in a few more unshackled years, to make us first on every 
 ocean, and foremost on the globe, with means for naval defence and 
 naval glory. 
 
 Rather than check this spirit by discouragements such as are 
 directly introduced in this bill, taxing, for the first time in many years, 
 the sheathing-copper for our ships, raising higher than even in 1828 
 the duties on cordage, restricting the period of drawback, and imposing 
 a new transit duty on what is reexported, and then attempting to pre- 
 vent our country from becoming like "Venice, Genoa, and Holland, 
 formerly the depots for all nations, and giving thus so much additional 
 employment to our vessels, — rather than travel back and shut our- 
 selves up in our terrapin shells, — let us pause. 
 
 How can our ship-building and navigation be expected to compete 
 with the English and German, if pressed down with these new dis- 
 criminations against it ? with larger taxes also on all it works up and 
 all its workmen consume, and a shortened period for reexportation, 
 and a new direct tax on this kind of carrying trade of two and a half 
 per cent.? No, sir. The opposite course will make us what we have 
 ever gloried to be, — the friends of true freedom in everything com- 
 mendable. Our example as to this in politics, and in our constitution 
 as to religion and the press, will be tarnished, if we hesitate to carry 
 it out also in our fiscal and commercial policy. 
 
 Of what use is equal freedom in elections, if we are not to have 
 equal freedom in taxes, equal freedom in protection, equal freedom in 
 trade ? This asks no exemption from equal taxes and equal burdens 
 of all kinds. But every high restrictive duty on imports, as well as 
 every additional duty on the materials used in ship-building, or con- 
 sumed by its workmen and navigators, is not only a discouragement to 
 commerce, but, if exclusive, tends to make its interests tributary to 
 manufactures, and paralyzes our exertions to become the principal 
 carriers for the world. The ancient noble spirit in our statesmen, by 
 which that ambition was promoted, in struggling to establish the doc- 
 
TARIFF. 301 
 
 trine that free ships make free goods, — and even in waging war 
 on the most powerful nation of the globe for free trade and sailors' 
 rights, and afterwards offering reciprocal treaties of commerce to all 
 mankind, — was worthy of the proudest days of the best republics in 
 any age. It was open, confident, manly ; and has helped to cover our 
 country with substantial wealth, and unprecedented improvements. 
 
 Let us not, then, retrograde, and pass such a partial, restrictive, 
 and anti-commercial bill as this, and disable ourselves forever from 
 standing forth as the champions of the free trade principle. Let us 
 not check, in any way, the expansion of that commerce which has 
 proved to our country not only so enriching, but so civilizing ; and 
 which, by our private enterprise, as well as our public expeditions, is 
 making us discoverers of new islands, if not continents, and the 
 pioneers in establishing more, — the reign of peace, the arts, and reli- 
 gion, in many of the remotest isles of the Pacific. 
 
 A harsh course to this commerce will not only drive our vessels 
 from the ocean, and blight the inducements to agricultural enterprise, 
 but it will aim a fatal blow at the best foundations of all our national 
 defences and national independence. 
 
 Our army will then lose half its energies and muscle, as it will be 
 manned by starving and feeble manufacturers, driven, in the revul- 
 sions to which their pursuits are exposed, to enlist, or find refuge in 
 the almshouse. Our navy will be crippled and dismantled; for, with- 
 out a commercial marine, there can be no navy ; and, with a palsied 
 commerce, our ships of war will have to be manned by the same 
 enfeebled artisans, rather than the healthy bodies, strong arms, and 
 lion hearts, who have spent their youth on the mountain wave, or 
 breathed the pure atmosphere of hills and valleys. 
 
 Considerations like these show that, if there is to be any partial or 
 high protection for particular pursuits, it should be in favor of agricul- 
 ture and commerce, and against manufactures, rather than the reverse. 
 Those engaged in agriculture, too, always have the means to live, 
 when their surplus will not serve at home or abroad ; but manufactur- 
 ers, in such revulsions, cannot eat their cloths or iron, and must 
 usually fly for existence to the parish poor-house, and be fed on the 
 grain and meat of the unprotected and unfavored farmer. 
 
 The next step will be one equally inconsistent with our true 
 national character and policy, but in strict accordance with this bill, — 
 that is, to impose high duties on foreign laborers, as well as foreign 
 merchandise. What, sir ! we, whose Revolutionary victories were won, 
 in part, by foreigners, — by the Lafayettes, the Paul Joneses, the 
 Kosciuskos, and Steubens, — now prate about our being inundated by 
 the cheap laborers, as well as the cheap labor, of Ireland, Germany, 
 and England ! We, whose forests have been felled, whose canals dug, 
 and railroads laid, — whose bridges, and forts, and public buildings (of 
 which we are so boastful), erected by workmen from abroad, — will next 
 seek to exclude from our shores this very foreign laborer ! 
 26 
 
302 TARIFF. 
 
 Where this anti-liberal and anti-commercial spirit may end, — 
 whether in some debased bondage to castes and classes, like Egypt and 
 India, or in some military despotism, to quell those who dare, like our 
 brethren in one of the Eastern States, try to be free (free in equal 
 rights and privileges), and not submitting to unequal or oppressive 
 taxation of one class or section, to benefit others, — remains to be seen. 
 But, however all the rest may end, I hope, ere long, to see salt and 
 books placed in the free list : the first, cliiefly to lighten the burdens 
 of agriculture, though a relief to all the consuming classes ; and the 
 last, to accelerate the improvement of our whole people, in more easily 
 becoming acquainted with the arts, their social duties, and political 
 rights, as well as in procuring less expensively enjoyments which are 
 virtuous, elevating, and useful. If we will not encourage making trade 
 free, nor the food of the body free, let us put forth one effort for the 
 glory of making the food of the mind free.^ 
 
 TARIFF.f 
 
 As one of the committee that reported this resolution, I was against 
 it, and have heard nothing since to reconcile me to its adoption. I 
 am for action now on the modification of the present high tariff, and 
 for the prompt passage of the bill introduced by the senator from 
 South Carolina (Mr. McDuffie), amended as it may and should 
 be, in some respects, if the motion to postpone does not prevail, so as 
 to mould it into a form more acceptable to most of the great interests 
 and great sections of the country. My object is to present some rea- 
 sons why the exorbitant and partial rate of duties on imports which 
 now exists should not be tolerated a single day longer than is required 
 to make the change judiciously. 
 
 I shall speak to the merits of this proposition solely. I intend to 
 treat it as a practical question, — one vital to twenty millions of people, 
 rather than an abstract theory, or affecting the welfare merely of small 
 regions and small classes. 
 
 We have been asked to rely on facts rather than speculations. Such 
 a course was proper ; and as, in every controversy, a variety of facts 
 
 *For Tables referred to in this speech, see Appendix, A, B, C, D. 
 t A speech on the resolution to postpone indefinitely Mr. McDuffie' s bill to reduce 
 the tariff ; delivered in the Senate of the United States, Feb. 7th and 8th, 1844. 
 
TARIFF. 303 
 
 is involved, appearing often different to different persons, equally hon- 
 est, but not equally inquiring, or connected with the transactions, my 
 great effort will be to throw new light on the facts which bear upon 
 the subject. Settle some of the doubtful facts, sir, and there will be 
 much less difficulty as to principles ; for, while men and events change, 
 principles are eternal. Looking, then, to all the real circumstances 
 connected with the present high and unequal tariff, whether it be a 
 measure for protection or revenue, and the following facts seem to 
 require its amendment without delay. 
 
 In the first place, it could not have become a law, except as a tem- 
 porary measure, in a great exigency. It was voted for by no one as 
 a new experiment, which might require years of experience in order 
 to develop the propriety of its continuance or modification. The sys- 
 tem involved in it had been previously tried for near a generation, and 
 found wanting. It had been in operation till its impolicy and oppres- 
 sions convulsed the Union from its centre to its extremities. It had 
 been deliberately abolished by a union of its former friends and foes ; 
 and, so far from its having now become sacred, forbidding any agita- 
 tion of its character, and requiring us to wait longer for further devel- 
 opments of its good or evil, the speeches of several gentlemen on its 
 passage prove it was intended to be amended at an early day. It 
 passed here by a majority of only one ; and, in order that the Senate 
 may see that no mistake exists in imputing such opinions to some 
 without whose votes here the bill must have failed, I will trouble the 
 Senate by reading to them an extract or two from the debates on that 
 occasion. The distinguished senator from New York (Mr. Wright) 
 declared that it was bad, and loaded with defects. (Appendix to 
 Globe, 953 p., for 1842.) But the only choice ivas between this 
 measure and none at all (955 p.) ; and he felt obliged to act under 
 " the disagreeable alternative of a very bad bill, and no revenue 
 and no collection laws." Another member (Mr. Williams), then 
 the colleague of the chairman (Mr. Evans), who deprecates touching 
 the present tariff, and eulogizes its provisions so highly, voted for it 
 under the deliberate expression that the bill, as a whole, is highly 
 objectionable (957 p.) ; that he would not hesitate to vote against it, 
 if any other provision could be made ; but he supported it to "enable 
 government to continue its operation, until the people shall have 
 another opportunity of selecting agents to represent them in another 
 Congress ; and whatever is wrong in the provisions of this bill {and 
 there is much of it) may then be corrected." 
 
 The senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Buchanan) also had the can- 
 dor to declare the bill to be objectionable. But the choice was, in his 
 view, between that or none, and financial disgrace. "I shall 
 accept (said he) this now, as much the least of two evils, and look 
 forward with hope to better times for an adjustment of the tariff on 
 a scale more consonant with all the great and various interests of the 
 Union, without sections." (951 p.) 
 
304 TARIFF. 
 
 The President also (without whose signature the bill would not 
 have become a law) contemplates, in his message, that a revision of it 
 maj now be proper. 
 
 But, sir, there is a higher authority than all these, with gentlemen 
 opposite, in favor of examining into the provisions of the existing tariff, 
 and correcting any of them, if erroneous. Mr. Clay, in a letter written 
 last September, says, concerning the tariff of 1842 : 
 
 " If there be any excesses or defects in it (of which I have not the 
 means of judging), they ought to be corrected." But as to the tariff 
 of 1828, he was well acquainted with u the circumstances tvhich 
 gave birth" to that. "They are highly discreditable to American 
 legislation;" and that was a "high tariff" " eminently deserving 
 that denomination." Now, those well acquainted with the act of 1842 
 know it to be not only as high a tariff, in many respects, as that of 
 1828, but in some higher ; and if the former was, on that account, 
 discreditable to American legislation, this is worse, and, therefore, 
 should be at once corrected. Other circumstances connected with it 
 were similar. It originated in importunities from only one small class 
 in society ; was partial and unequal in its burdens for their benefits, 
 and tended to exact tribute from the rest to sustain them alone. Did 
 any gentleman, who had not examined the details critically, deem this 
 a mere opinion founded on loose generalities, and consider it impossi- 
 ble that, after the fatal effects which flowed from the high tariff of 
 1828, a majority of any Congress could proceed to renew several 
 duties quite as high, and indeed much higher? Let him, then, look 
 to the recorded facts in our own statute-books, from which a tabular 
 statement has been compiled by me, a few items in which I will take 
 the liberty to read. (See Table No. 1.)* 
 
 Here are eighteen distinct articles, each of which, save one, is higher 
 under the present tariff than left by that of 1828, and Other acts 
 passed soon after. Among them are the important items of cordage, 
 cotton cloths,! cotton bagging, some kinds of glass, iron, shoes and 
 boots, with molasses, crockery- ware, and woollens. If salt and sugar 
 were at a specific rate of duty nominally less, they were burdened 
 higher in proportion to their present value. Many of these articles 
 were great necessaries of life, whether in the log-cabin or palace, or 
 on the vessel's deck freighted with the rich spices and silks of India, 
 or the western keel-boat and gallant steamer loaded with the labors 
 of the hardy farmer across the Alleghanies : and when cordage is now 
 taxed four and a half cents, instead of four, per pound ; steel, two 
 dollars and fifty cents, instead of two dollars, a hundred ; shoes, thirty, 
 instead of twenty-five cents, a pair ; and crockery- ware fifty per cent. 
 
 * Appendix, E. 
 
 t In a subsequent part of Mr. "Woodbury's speech, he referred to one case where 
 printed cottons, under the act of 1842, paid a hundred per cent, more than they did 
 under the high rates of 1823 and 1824. Mr. Simmons expressed a wish to learn how 
 Mr. Woodbury made this out ; and he replied, giving the details. 
 
TARIFF. 305 
 
 more than the former impost, — can any one say, that, if the act of 
 1828 was high or discreditable, or a bill of abominations, this is not 
 higher, and more discreditable ? 
 
 I will not go through all the articles where the parallel is drawn 
 before me in the table, lest it might prove tedious. But there were 
 weighty reasons, beside these, for an early revision of the present tariff. 
 In its general character and design, it was framed, not for revenue, 
 but protection ; and that protection direct, and chiefly to one class of 
 the community, which being a small one, in proportion to the whole, 
 it thus endangered, if not sacrificed, the interests of the many, to aid 
 a few. Whenever any of its provisions have been moulded differently 
 to accomplish this purpose, it is a departure from sound principle ; 
 being a purpose not financial in its origin or tendency, not in con- 
 formity with the sound principles of taxation, nor permissible for other 
 objects under the spirit of our confederated form of government, where 
 no such power is expressly granted, and every power not so granted is 
 reserved to the States and the people. 
 
 I shall not, however, on this occasion, investigate the mooted ques- 
 tion of its constitutionality, because time for such an argument does 
 not exist, without omitting much that tends to demonstrate the pro- 
 priety of amending such a bill, on great principles of justice and 
 equality in legislation older than all constitutions, and paramount to 
 every technical consideration. 
 
 I proceed to offer facts to prove that the present tariff is such a bill. 
 It was prayed for, in many respects, by only one class of the commu- 
 nity — manufacturers. Testimony was taken only as to the influence 
 of many of its provisions to aid one class. The passage of them, in 
 their present form, was advocated as necessary for the protection of 
 that class ; and, however some other considerations as to revenue, or 
 consequential benefits to other classes, may have mingled with the 
 paramount object in giving the present extraordinary form and press- 
 ure to most of the rates of duty, yet the interest and protection of 
 manufactures were the Alpha and Omega in the numerous depart- 
 ures which occur in it from the sound revenue system which existed 
 here from the foundation of the government, until the derangements 
 of industry during the last war. Prior to that event (as I will explain 
 more fully hereafter), the highest range of duties on foreign imports 
 had never swollen above fifteen per cent., with two and a half more 
 for a time, on account of the Mediterranean fund, to raise means for 
 humbling the piratical powers on the coast of Barbary. Those were 
 truly revenue and not protective taxes, except that incidental protec- 
 tion to all classes which always results to all branches of protective 
 industry from any impost, however small, on rival imports from 
 abroad. But the double duties for revenue during the war, with the 
 increased difficulty in obtaining supplies from other countries, had 
 given a new impulse to several domestic manufactures ; and when 
 peace arrived, those engaged in them deprecated the injury likely to 
 26* 
 
306 TARIFF. 
 
 flow from the large import and consumption of foreign articles similar 
 to their own. Accordingly, to protect them, and them alone, and that 
 but temporarily, the addition of near forty-two per cent, was made to 
 several of the duties, as before graduated, on the peace standard for 
 revenue : and, so far from its being pretended that this addition, delib- 
 erately placed on rival productions only, was solely with a view to 
 revenue, it was admitted and proposed to be done directly for the pur- 
 pose of protection, and that chiefly to the manufacturing interests 
 alone. Before me is Mr. Dallas' report, in February, 1816, form- 
 ally declaring that such protection was desirable, and selecting the 
 articles which most needed it, and recommending the amounts of duty 
 on each which he considered likely to yield it. (See 3 State papers 
 — Finance, p. 9.) 
 
 What class, after six years' trial, became dissatisfied with this 
 amount of direct protection, and asked for and obtained more in 
 1824 ? Who again in 1828 ? and who again in 1842 1 
 
 There is no pretence that the further increase of duty in 1824 and 
 1828, on the former protected articles, was demanded or imposed for 
 the purposes of revenue. One of the supporters of the bill of 1828, 
 now a member of this body (Mr. Wright), frankly admitted, in 
 July, 1842, "that the tariff of 1828 was avowedly passed for pro- 
 tection ; and if considerations of revenue had any connection with 
 it, they ivere only incide?ital to the main object of protection" 
 (Appendix to Globe, p. 653, for 1842.) 
 
 As little can it be pretended that similar provisions, asked by sim- 
 ilar persons and for similar objects, in 1842, were not cast into their 
 present unequal, high, and oppressive form, for the same objects as 
 before, — the direct protection of the single class of manufacturers. I 
 admit that we needed more revenue in 1842. But it is manifest that 
 we could easily have obtained as much as now from a duty on foreign 
 imports not averaging over twenty or twenty-five per cent. ; or, if 
 obliged to go higher in any case, under the impression, usually erro- 
 neous, that by going higher a larger aggregate amount can be obtained, 
 it is equally manifest that we ought to have gone higher on luxuries, 
 rather than necessaries ; and on such articles as would throw the tax, 
 according to the ability to pay, on property, rather than the person, and 
 not make taxation doubly odious and oppressive, as is done by this tariff, 
 through its operation almost as a poll-tax, making the poor pay per 
 capita nearly as much to the support of the General Government as the 
 wealthy. Such oppressive provisions were, therefore, not designed for 
 fair fiscal purposes, but for protection to a favorite class, possessed of 
 great enterprise and political influence, I admit, and equal rights with 
 others ; but no more moral, useful, or patriotic, than most other classes 
 of the American people, and having a very small proportion of num- 
 bers and capital to be protected, compared with the whole Union. As 
 the mere revenue standard, in some countries, has not exceeded ten 
 per cent., and in others fifteen or twenty, — and we did not exceed the 
 
TARIFF. 307 
 
 latter during near a quarter of a century, — I propose to show, by 
 figures, that the present duties are, in many vital respects, far above 
 that standard. I hold in my hand a statement of the rate now 
 imposed on several articles above not only twenty but thirty per cent. 
 And I am the more anxious that the Senate should note the numerous 
 and great excesses into which the act runs, from the circumstance that 
 some deny the high protective character of any part of the present 
 tariff; and many, who doubt it, are unable to verify their apprehen- 
 sions with accuracy, because, most of the duties being specific, and the 
 cost of the articles abroad not known, the real percentage of the tax 
 on their value is concealed, and not able to be ascertained, except at 
 the treasury. 
 
 But, fortunately, in 1840, a document was obtained from the treasury 
 department, which gave the cost and charges and quantities of all import- 
 ant articles imported in that year. Thus everybody can reduce the spe- 
 cific rate to one ad valorem for that year ; and are since enabled to do 
 the same, where the cost of the article has not materially changed. 
 In order, however, to verify my own computations, and correct any 
 changes in value since, I have compared my statement with one which 
 has been obtained officially from the treasury department, and it is in 
 this way rendered as accurate as is possible in the nature of things. 
 (See Table No. 2.)* 
 
 What, Mr. President, do you believe has been the general result ? 
 Only four or five, or, at most, a dozen articles on which the commu- 
 nity are taxed over the highest revenue standard of thirty per cent. ? 
 No, sir ; but forty-one articles, — and that without including seven- 
 teen varieties of iron manufacture, and as many more of cotton. 
 These forty-one also include most, if not all, of those great necessaries 
 of life which we import ; and among them seven which are so bur- 
 dened as to pay over fourteen and a half millions of dollars, out of 
 twenty-one that would accrue on imports no larger than those of 1840. 
 (See Table No. 3.)f 
 
 Does the Senate suppose, however, that the duty imposed in these 
 cases merely crossed the true line of revenue a few cents or fractions, 
 and therefore not enough to change the leading features of a revenue 
 bill ? If so, they must be surprised to learn that some descriptions 
 of them reach fifty, eighty, one hundred, and even one hundred and 
 fifty per cent. Thus, boots and shoes pay from fifty to seventy-five 
 per cent. 
 
 What was the duty, also, on coal, used largely on the sea-board by 
 all classes, and especially in the freezing inclemencies of weather now 
 agonizing the poor and distressed of our cities ? Quite sixty-one per 
 cent, (by the official computation of the department), or more than 
 double the highest true revenue rate. The duties on cordage — an 
 article of universal use, in some form or other, from the St. Croix to 
 the Sabine, and even to Oregon — ranged from seventy-one to one 
 
 * Appendix, F. + Appendix, G. 
 
308 TARIFF. 
 
 hundred and eighty-eight per cent. Cottons, which, more or less, 
 helped to clothe all classes, paid from forty to sixty-three per cent. 
 Woollens rose still higher. Sugar, which sweetens the cup of all, 
 swelled to seventy-one and one hundred and one per cent. Salt, 
 which was gloriously free in that country so often sneered at by us as 
 deeply oppressed, paid, by this tariff, near eighty per cent., and some 
 kinds still more ; while iron, one of the great instruments to vanquish 
 the earth, as well as our enemies, and carry on our whole domestic and 
 foreign commerce, is from forty-five to seventy-seven per cent. Indeed, 
 the hammer and the anvil of every blacksmith's shop in every village 
 of the Union are loaded with some of the highest of these duties ; and 
 the oppression from them, in a thousand other forms, is carried into 
 every kitchen and farm-yard of the whole republic. 
 
 Again : if this tariff was not intended for direct protection to man- 
 ufacturers rather than for revenue, why were not its highest duties 
 and greatest collections from luxuries and the elegances of life, rather 
 than necessaries? This is the course elsewhere. In England, for 
 instance, tobacco is made to yield near seventeen millions of revenue 
 yearly, and spirits about thirteen millions by customs, and near 
 twenty-five millions more by excise, — sums ranging not far from our 
 whole income on imports. But we burden highest the prime necessa- 
 ries of life, and collect from sugar, iron, woollens, cottons, linens, 
 molasses, and silks, — most of them indispensable in every cottage and 
 every degree of latitude and longitude over our wide domain, — the 
 great mass of our whole revenue on foreign merchandise. 
 
 Here is a detailed statement, computed on the latest data accessible, 
 and showing that those articles alone probably pay more than three- 
 fourths of the whole. (See Table No. 3.)* I challenge any plausible 
 reason to be assigned for this odious and oppressive discrimination, 
 except that every one of these articles has rival productions here of a 
 manufactured character, intended thus to be directly protected. 
 
 Should a doubt remain that the present tariff was modelled to accom- 
 plish that favorite object to manufacturers, and not to aid at the same 
 time, by like and equal protection, the interests of agriculture, manu- 
 factures, and commerce (which is frequently pretended), let us consider 
 for a moment a fact or two more, which alone are sufficient to silence 
 forever any such pretence. 
 
 What, sir ! Tell the hard-fisted farmer that he is equally watched 
 over and protected by the bill, when almost every production, agricul- 
 tural and otherwise, which is the raw material for a manufacture here, 
 is unprotected — exonerated from any but a small duty, or made entirely 
 free ; and when, at the same moment, the manufacture from that pro- 
 duction is protected highly, and often oppressively, at the expense of 
 the farmer who is obliged to purchase it ? That the Senate may see 
 that this offensive discrimination is not accidental, or confined to two or 
 three cases only, and that it is not a tariff of equal protection to all, I 
 
 * Appendix, G. 
 
 
TARIFF. 309 
 
 have prepared a schedule from the acts of Congress themselves, now 
 before me, from which it appears that, in fifteen instances at least, and 
 as to some very leading articles, the imports of three of which alone 
 exceed, yearly, four millions of dollars, the producer of the raw article 
 has the protection of only one, five, and fifteen per cent, generally, 
 while in every instance the manufacturer working up the raw article 
 has a protection ranging from twenty-five to one hundred and thirty 
 per cent. (See Table No. 4.)* 
 
 Thus, while the farmer gets the protection of only nine per cent, on 
 his raw flax, the manufacturer of it into cloth obtains on that from 
 twenty-five to fifty per cent. And while rough wood gets the aid of 
 but twenty per cent., those who make manufactures from it have 
 thirty ; and while cheap wool was long free, and now has but five per 
 cent, protection, the farmer is obliged to go and pay for protection to 
 the manufacturer, making carpets and cloths for him from the same 
 wool, sixty per cent. He was assisted as to his hides (of which almost 
 every agriculturist raised some) but five per cent., while the manufac- 
 ture of leather from them, which the firmer was compelled to buy 
 for his family, received thirty-five per cent, protection. 
 [Some senators here smiled, and said, Not his own hide.] 
 No, sir ; as to that, he has been skinned so often, and so patiently, 
 the high protectionists seem to imagine that, like the boy's eels, he will 
 continue to bear it without complaint, because he is so used to it. No, 
 sir; they are the hides of the herds that graze on his verdant pas- 
 tures which are thus discriminated against ; — and, though the hemp 
 which may grow in the fields contiguous in Maine and Vermont, as 
 well as in Kentucky and Missouri, is better protected, and so high as to 
 burden much the ship-builder, yet the manufacturers using up that 
 very hemp obtain for their cordage and cotton bagging over a hun- 
 dred, and, in some cases, over two hundred per cent., more than the 
 rate on the raw material. Again : the maker of brass kettles, an arti- 
 cle so widely used, obtains from every purchaser the benefit of a duty 
 of twelve cents a pound, while the raw material is imported free. The 
 boasted protection to the silk-grower is of the same character, when, in 
 household economy, the aged and young may economically raise 
 cocoons and receive fifty cents a pound as a protective duty ; but are 
 obliged to pay the manufacturer on the very article made from those 
 cocoons, and bought for their own wear, a protective duty of five times 
 that amount, or two dollars and fifty cents. The specifications might 
 be much further extended, did time permit; but the table itself is at the 
 service of any gentleman who wishes to see all the cases, and there is 
 annexed an enormous list of articles admitted entirely free, for the benefit 
 of the manufacturer. (See Table No. 4.)* What has been the way 
 in which the farmer was deluded to overlook this system of direct par- 
 tiality against him and his great interests 1 It has been by keeping these 
 unjust discriminations in the back-ground, and pushing forward cases 
 
 * Appendix, H. 
 
310 TAKIFF. 
 
 of agricultural productions on which the duty was high, but which, as 
 the chairman (Mr. Evans) admitted, were articles so abundant here 
 that they needed no protective duties, — no, sir ! no more than the ice 
 and granite of New Hampshire. Hence, when the producer of the 
 raw material here (as in the former cases) finds it more difficult to 
 grow and compete with the producer abroad, he receives less aid, or 
 none ; but when he can easily and abundantly grow an article, and 
 compete with a whole world, without artificial protection, the friends 
 of the American system offer to him very high duties. They sternly 
 withhold what he wants, but kindly bestow what he does not want. 
 It is a curious circumstance, also, that the agricultural articles favored 
 with a higher duty are all those from which little or nothing is man- 
 ufactured here ; and hence the friends of the American system have 
 no interest against their being high. Nor are the duties, in this last 
 class of cases, made high for revenue, any more than for real and 
 needed protection ; because the aggregate imports of the whole eleven 
 articles were, in 1840, but $71,547, yielding a revenue of not over 
 one-third that sum, while the aggregate imports of only three of the 
 fifteen other articles not y protected fully or equally were fifty-seven 
 times larger than all of these. The tendency, then, if not the object, of 
 the duties which are high on agricultural products, is mere show, or 
 visionary. It has been to throw dust in the eyes of the community on 
 this subject, and sustain one of the delusions which has misled so many 
 farmers into the erroneous belief that their interests were, in reality, 
 protected as much as those of the manufacturers. In order that sena- 
 tors may see the particulars on which my remarks to this last point 
 are grounded, here is a schedule of these articles, the duty on each, 
 and the whole imports of them in 1840, — some reaching only the pal- 
 try sum of seven dollars, and some nothing. (Table No. 5.)* Now, 
 sir, if, as a matter of fact, I have proved this bill to be shaped on a sys- 
 tem of high discriminating duties for the direct protection of manufac- 
 turers, rather than all classes, and, in many respects, for that, and not 
 for revenue, it follows, even if it be within the purview of any tech- 
 nical words used in the great charter of our liberties, that it is hostile 
 to the spirit and the compromises which created, and which alone can 
 sustain, that charter ; hostile to the equal interests and claims of great 
 sections, classes, and industrial pursuits ; hostile to the true welfare of 
 the majority of the whole, as a whole ; and hostile to their harmony 
 and peace, as well as the perpetuity of the Union itself. 
 
 I am aware that the preamble of the act of 1790 has been cited as 
 an evidence that the direct encouragement of manufactures was one of 
 the objects of that act. But when the rate of duties contained in it 
 is adverted to (a skeleton of which he held in his hand — Table No. 
 8), fit would be seen that none of them was higher than a moderate 
 revenue standard. Most of them did not exceed five and ten per 
 cent., and consequently nothing could have been intended by them 
 
 ♦Appendix, I. t Appendix, J. 
 
TARIFF. 311 
 
 beyond that incidental encouragement to manufactures which all rev- 
 enue tariffs must yield, when founded on pure revenue principles. Our 
 fathers concluded to encourage manufactures, by collecting a large 
 portion of their revenue from imports, rather than deriving it all from 
 direct taxes and internal duties. Indeed, their rule, like mine, was to 
 collect, if needed, all the revenue from imports, which will yield, with- 
 out going higher in the rates than a revenue standard, and what is 
 consistent with the preservation, in full vigor, of our foreign com- 
 merce. But all wanted beyond that should be obtained from other 
 sources ; and, happily, our lands will usually, with that, yield sufficient 
 for all the expenses of an economical government in time of peace. It 
 is not inconsistent with free trade that the imports help, in a due pro- 
 portion with other property, to pay the public expenses. 
 
 But when, in 1794, and 1798, and 1812, our fathers needed more 
 revenue than could be obtained from moderate duties, — no higher 
 than a revenue standard, — they resorted for the rest to taxes on land 
 and excise. Their actions spoke louder than any words, especially when 
 the latter are open to misconstruction, and they never deemed it 
 proper, under the spirit of the constitution, to encourage manufactures 
 by express prohibitions of foreign articles, or by implied prohibitions, 
 through exorbitant imposts of a prohibitory tendency. On the con- 
 trary, in all the pressure of a heavy Revolutionary debt, the large 
 expenses of a quasi war with France, and our controversies with the 
 Barbary powers, as well as our Indian border foes, they never, as a 
 general rule, though needing more revenue, increased the rates of duty 
 beyond fifteen per cent., or seventeen and a half, including the Mediter- 
 ranean fund. Here is the evidence of the fact (See Table No. 6),* and 
 it is conclusive proof that no such restrictive system for manufactures, 
 like the act of 1842, was ever deemed within the true spirit and policy 
 of the government. It is not a little curious, that, when annoyed by 
 foreign prohibitory imposts, and with their own tonnage also compara- 
 tively small, neither Mr. Jefferson, in his able report, in 1794, on our 
 foreign commerce, nor Mr. Madison, in his celebrated resolutions 
 founded thereon, ever proposed any higher duties than ten or fifteen 
 per cent., except a.s a mere war measure of retaliation; and that never, 
 in fact, till war itself came, in 1812, with all its burdens and horrors, 
 and the American protective system followed in 1816, — aggravated 
 again till it became, in 1828, little, if any, less burdensome and terrific 
 than war itself, — did any of the Revolutionary school of statesmen 
 think proper to impose duties higher than fair revenue ones, or which 
 tended, except incidentally, to protect any one branch of national 
 industry, at the expense of the rest. It is still more curious, that even 
 Hamilton — so much relied on by the manufacturers as an advocate of 
 their system — argues strongly in the Federalist (p. 204) that the 
 power given in the constitution to collect taxes from other sources 
 than imports was meant to prevent such high duties on imports alone 
 
 * Appendix, J. 
 
312 TAKIFF. 
 
 as would yield direct encouragement to manufactures, and injure com- 
 merce and agriculture, as well as revenue, and was with a view to 
 enable Congress, rather than do that, to keep the duties at a revenue 
 standard, and resort for additional means, if needed, to taxes of a dif- 
 ferent character. His words are these : 
 
 " Suppose, as has been contended for, the federal power of taxation -were to be con- 
 fined to the duties on imports ; it is evident that the government, for want of being 
 able to command other resources, would frequently be tempted to extend these duties 
 to an injurious excess. There are persons who imagine that this can never be the 
 case ; since the higher they are, the more it is alleged they will tend to discourage an 
 extravagant consumption, to produce a favorable balance of trade, and to promote 
 domestic manufactures. But all extremes are pernicious in various ways. Exor- 
 bitant duties on imported articles serve to beget a general spirit of smuggling, which 
 is always prejudicial to the fair trader, and eventually to the revenue itself ; they 
 tend to render other classes of the community tributary, in an improper degree, to the 
 manufacturing classes, to whom they give a premature monopoly of the markets ; 
 they sometimes force industry out of its most natural channels into others in which it 
 flows with less advantages ; and, in the last place, they oppress the merchant, &c. 
 &c." — Federalist, p. 204. 
 
 This is noble and manly reasoning, — considering it comes from one 
 so often quoted as favoring the American system, — and is worthy to 
 be written in letters of gold for the perusal of all its indiscreet friends. 
 
 Again : who of his school, who then ever dared to propose absolute 
 prohibitions of foreign rival commodities, as is done in the absolute 
 governments of Europe, and under the powers of the English and 
 French governments, so much more unlimited than ours? Yet what is 
 the difference in principle — in political substance and in morals — 
 between a direct prohibition and one incidental by prohibitory duties 1 
 
 And now, when old reasons for retaliation have mostly become 
 obsolete, — the reasons of infancy in the growth of manufactures, 
 so as to need direct aid, ceased, — we are driven into a prohibitory 
 system more ultra than was ever before attempted in the worst times. 
 Is this anomaly opposed now, or was it, in practice, opposed before 
 1816, because the friends of free trade then or now resist protection? 
 No. They favor protection to the persons and property of all ; that 
 is, equal protection — equal justice. But what has astonished me most 
 is, that in this debate, as well as elsewhere, attempts have been made 
 to make the restrictive system lean on Franklin's staff for support; 
 when, from early life, I had always supposed that the opinions of 
 Eranklin on free trade were decidedly of the Colbert and Adam Smith 
 school ; and that, so far from the free trade notions having originated, 
 since his day, here, and being likely, in the views of the chairman 
 (Mr. Evans), not to survive their authors, I thought they had lived 
 already much beyond their authors abroad ; and, as becoming better 
 understood, were making converts on both continents, among the ablest 
 minds, as well as the great masses of society. In order to see how 
 the real truth was on this controverted point concerning Franklin, and 
 the conclusions to which his great experience and unrivalled sagacity 
 
TARIFF. 313 
 
 had reached on this subject, I have taken some pains to run through 
 portions of his works, and without giving much that is pertinent, will 
 trouble the Senate with a few extracts from them. 
 In volume 6, page 157, he says : 
 
 " We see much in parliamentary proceedings, and in papers and pamphlets, of the 
 injury the concessions to Ireland will do to the manufacturers of England, Avhile the 
 people of England seem to be forgotten, as if quite out of the question. If the Irish 
 can manufacture cottons, and stuffs, and silks, and linens, and cutlery, and toys, 
 and books, &c &c. &c, so as to sell them cheaper in England than the manufac- 
 turers of England sell them, is not this good for the people of England who are not 
 manufacturers ? And will not even the manufacturers themselves share the benefit ? 
 Since, if cottons are cheaper, all the other manufacturers who wear cottons will save 
 in that article ; and so with the rest." 
 
 Page 533 : 
 
 " I am not enough master of the course of our commerce to give an opinion on this 
 particular question, and it does not behoove me to do it ; yet I have seen so much 
 embarrassment and so little advantage in all the restraining and compulsive systems, 
 that I feel myself strongly inclined to believe that a State which leaves all her ports 
 open to all the world upon equal terms will, by that means, have foreign commodi- 
 ties cheaper, and sell its own productions dearer, and be on the whole most pros- 
 perous." 
 
 Volume IV., page 170 : 
 
 " Perhaps, in general, it would be better if government meddled no further with 
 trade than to protect it, and let it take its course. Most of the statutes, or acts, 
 edicts, arrets, and placarts of parliament, princes, and States, for regulating, directing, 
 or restraining of trade, have, we think, been either political blunders or jobs obtained 
 by artful men for private advantage, under pretence of public good. When Colbert 
 assembled some wise old merchants of France, and desired their advice and opinion 
 how he could best serve and promote commerce, their answer, after consultation, was 
 in three words only — ' Laissez nous fair e,' — Let us alone. It is said by a very 
 solid writer of the same edition, that he is well advanced in the science of politics who 
 knows the full force of that maxim, ' Pas trop gouvernor ,' — not to govern too much; 
 Vhich, perhaps, would be of more use, when applied to trade, than in any other pub- 
 lic concern. It were therefore to be wished that commerce was as free between all 
 nations of the world as it is between the several counties of England ; so would all, by 
 mutual communication, obtain more enjoyments." 
 
 As to this article just quoted, Mr. Whately drew up most of it, and 
 Franklin revised and approved it, and it is published in his works. 
 Again, in an essay entirely his own (vol. v., p. 417 and 418), he 
 
 says : 
 
 " Several of the princes of Europe have of late, from an opinion of advantage to 
 arise by producing all commodities and manufactures within their own dominions, so 
 as to diminish or render useless their importations, endeavored to entice workmen 
 from other countries, by high salaries, privileges, &c. Many persons, pretending to 
 be skilled in various great manufactures, imagining that America must be in want of; 
 them, and that the Congress would probably be disposed to imitate the princes above 
 mentioned, have proposed to go over on condition of having their passage paid, lands 
 given, salaries appointed, exclusive privileges for terms of years, &c. Such persons, 
 on reading the articles of confederation, will find that the Congress have no power 
 committed to them, nor money put into their hands, for such purposes; and that, if 
 any such encouragement is given, it must be by the government of some separate 
 State. This, however, has rarely been done in America; and when it has been done, 
 
 27 
 
314 TARIFF. 
 
 it has rarely succeeded so as to establish a manufacture which the country was not so 
 ripe for as to encourage private persons to set it up, — labor being generally too dear 
 there, and hands difficult to be kept together, every one desiring to be a master, and the 
 cheapness of land inclining many to leave trades for agriculture. Some, indeed, have 
 met with success, and are carried on to advantage; but they are generally such as 
 require only a few hands, or wherein great part of the work is performed by machines. 
 Goods that are bulky, and of so small value as not well to bear the expense of freight, 
 may often be made cheaper in the country than they can be imported ; and the man- 
 ufacture of such goods will be profitable wherever there is sufficient demand. The 
 farmers in America produce, indeed, a good deal of wool and flax; and none is 
 exported, — it is all worked up; but it is in the way of domestic manufacture. The 
 buying up quantities of wool and flax, with the design to employ spinners, weavers, 
 &c, and form great establishments, producing quantities of linen and woollen goods 
 for sale, has been several times attempted in different provinces ; but those projects 
 have generally failed, goods of equal value being imported cheaper. And when the 
 governments have been solicited to support such schemes by encouragements in 
 money, or by imposing duties on importation of such goods, it has been generally 
 refused, on this principle, — that if the country is ripe for the manufacture, it may be 
 carried on by private persons to advantage ; and if not, it is a folly to think of forcing 
 nature. 
 
 " Great establishments of manufacture require great numbers of poor to do the 
 work for small wages ; those poor are to be found in Europe, but will not be found in 
 America till the lands are all taken up and cultivated, and the excess of people who 
 cannot get land want employment The manufacture of silk, they say, is as natural 
 in France as that of cloth in England, because each country produces in plenty the 
 first material ; but if England will have a manufacture of silk as well as that of cloth, 
 and France of cloth as well as that of silk, these unnatural operations must be sup- 
 ported by mutual prohibitions, or high duties on the importation of each other's 
 goods ; by which means the workmen are enabled to tax the home consumer by 
 greater prices, while the higher wages they receive makes them neither happier nor 
 richer, since they only drink more and work less. Therefore the governments in 
 America do nothing to encourage such projects." 
 
 But enough of this to remove doubts in the most incredulous. Hav- 
 ing shown that the present tariff was framed for the real protection of 
 only one class, and that this was contrary to the spirit of the consti- 
 tution, and every principle of equal justice in taxation or protection, as 
 well as contrary to the whole practice of the government for the firsf 
 quarter-century of its existence, and when resorted to since had cre- 
 ated intense excitement and wide dissatisfaction, till, after a few years, 
 the Union became convulsed, and the system was abandoned, — I will 
 next ask a few moments' attention to its character as a system, not for 
 protection, but for raising revenue. 
 
 The senator from Maine seemed to consider it a good bill as a revenue 
 act. 
 
 [Mr. Evans observed that, in answering the senator from South 
 Carolina (who maintained that the act of 1842 was destructive to 
 revenue), he had shown it increased revenue, but did not say it was 
 exclusively an act for revenue.] 
 
 Very well, sir ; I am happy to hear the gentleman admit that he does 
 not defend the tariff as exclusively an act for revenue. This vir- 
 tually concedes my former position, that it is, in many respects, a 
 measure for protection. It is one of the peculiarities of this measure, 
 that among manufacturers it is justified as an act for their protection, 
 but in quarters averse to the protective system it is vindicated as a 
 
TARIFF. 315 
 
 mere revenue measure, and in a mixed audience it is defended as 
 being intended for both — a little for each. If the argument anywhere 
 presses hardest against its protective features, then it is insisted that 
 no change shall be made, as it is excellent for revenue ; and if hard- 
 est against its revenue character, then it is said to do so much good for 
 protection, it must not be amended, or even discussed; and if it is 
 unable to stand alone on either hypothesis, then the argument has 
 been, as from the chairman (Mr. Evans), that whatever inequality, 
 injustice, imperfection, or wrong of any kind, is connected with it, is 
 made reparation for by the aid it gives in reducing prices ■, furnish- 
 ing home markets, employing more American industry and less 
 foreign pauper labor ; and, in various ways, more than remunerating 
 the country, as a whole, for any evils it may happen to inflict on some 
 of its parts. 
 
 Now, sir, let us test these matters on facts, and not broad asser- 
 tions. Is it good as a revenue measure? and, if not, what is the 
 extent of the evils it inflicts, whether as a protective or financial sys- 
 tem 1 and are those evils compensated by any of the benefits that have 
 resulted, or are likely to flow from it, if we forbear to amend it ? 
 
 Several remarks have already been made indicating my views as to 
 Some of its objectionable features as a bill for raising revenue. What 
 are the true elements and features of a mere revenue bill 1 In the 
 first place, the leading object of a revenue bill is to obtain revenue 
 equally ; of this, unequally. A tax should be made to bear lightly as 
 possible on consumers ; this is to bear most heavily on them. The 
 particular duties in numerous instances range ten, twenty, and even 
 forty and fifty per cent, higher than the common revenue standard. 
 I do not pretend that, like the dew-point or freezing-point, the finan- 
 cial scale can be mathematically marked, beyond which no duties 
 should rise, on any occasion or under any circumstances. But I do 
 insist that few nations, ancient or modern, have ever deemed it proper, 
 for revenue, to exceed twenty or twenty-five per cent. The accus- 
 tomed rate for that purpose has oftener (as here, from 1790 to 1812) 
 been under twenty than above it ; and when exceeding it, as sometimes 
 in England, France, and Spain, and here since 1816, has usually been 
 done avowedly for purposes of protection, and not revenue. It is 
 now, in Prussia and Germany, no less than Switzerland, seldom as 
 high as twenty per cent. Hence the compromise act of 1833 pro- 
 vided for a gradual reduction of our protective duties to revenue ones, 
 and fixed them at a maximum of twenty per cent. And hence both 
 General Harrison and Mr. Clay, in addresses before the election of 
 1840, expressed their satisfaction with the compromise, limiting 
 imposts to that rate ; because that rate not only would be likely to 
 furnish revenue enough, with the public lands, for an economical 
 administration of the government, but, coupled as it was with cash 
 duties and a home valuation, would incidentally afford a large and 
 equal protection, against foreigners, to all the producing classes, and 
 
316 TARIFF. 
 
 an ample one for any business which it would be profitable for the 
 country, in its present position, to have prosecuted here. 
 
 Do any infer from this that I oppose the collection, in a proper 
 way, of revenue enough, in time of peace, to prevent running in debt 
 (as we lately have done) twenty-seven millions ? or, however anxious 
 to relieve labor and the necessaries of life, to defray all honest debts 
 rather than resort to an odious evasion by repudiation ? or to sustain 
 in due vigor all the useful establishments of the country, with public 
 credit, public faith, and public honor ? Far, far from it. But collect 
 it on revenue principles, and in a true revenue way. 
 
 In the next place, the present tariff is bad as a revenue measure, by 
 attempting to collect more from the owners and consumers of foreign 
 imports than an equal or proportionate burden on that kind of prop- 
 erty. Being often sixty to one hundred per cent, in particular cases, 
 and thirty-seven per cent, on an average, it is much higher than taxes 
 on other property in society, looking either to value or income. And, 
 though, under our double systems of government, I do not contend that 
 all the revenue for the General Government may not be collected 
 from imports, if it does not put them above twenty or twenty-five per 
 cent., — leaving lands and other property to be taxed by the States, — 
 yet imports should pay only a fair proportion. It is another objection- 
 to this bill, as a fiscal one, that if we are to receive under it all the 
 revenue its friends anticipate, we shall collect a larger proportion of 
 the monied taxes of the whole country from customs than it is usual 
 to collect in most other governments. In France, only about thirty 
 millions of dollars (or one-eighth of their whole income) is collected 
 from customs, — over one hundred and eighty millions being from 
 other sources, — while in England, little over a third of the whole 
 taxes come from customs, and, including tithes and the poor rates, 
 probably not one-third. But here, at least half of the whole would be 
 derived from customs, as all our monied taxes in the States are not 
 computed to average over one dollar per head, or eighteen to twenty 
 millions of dollars in the aggregate. If you will, then, push our 
 national expenses so high as not to be able to get sufficient revenue at 
 a rate of twenty or twenty-five per cent., I say it is sound political 
 economy to go for the rest to the other sources of revenue which the 
 constitution has conferred, and for that very purpose, and to act, in 
 this respect, as our fathers were wont to do in 1794, 1798, and 1812. 
 
 But other and paramount objections to the present tariff are, that it 
 taxes articles of trade so high as to tend to break up trade itself; that 
 it taxes necessaries higher than luxuries, — as before explained, that 
 it taxes the person in its operation, rather than property or ability 
 to pay ; and, in many cases, by one specific duty, collects from the 
 consumer, in middling or indigent circumstances, as large a tax on a 
 coarser and cheaper fabric — such as shoes, flannels, etc., worn by 
 them — as on a finer and more costly one of the same name, worn by 
 the rich. The only effectual mode of preventing partiality and 
 
TARIFF. 317 
 
 oppression in such bills is to fix a liberal maximum of twenty or 
 twenty-five per cent. Within that, the duty may well fluctuate, rather 
 than be rigidly horizontal, if revenue objects require and admit it ; so 
 as to relieve necessaries some, if practicable, and favor the needy 
 rather than wealthy, and graduate most, if not all, duties on a scale 
 ad valorem, — so that the people can know the true extent of their 
 burdens, and each pay only in proportion to the value of what he 
 consumes. 
 
 To illustrate the tendency of varying the amount of duty on par- 
 ticular articles beyond a certain ordinary and settled standard for 
 mere revenue, and on revenue principles, do not gentlemen see, that 
 if you can depart from that, and go far above it, for protection to one 
 class (such as the manufacturers) at the expense of others (the 
 farmers), you may, as in England, by the odious corn-laws, depart 
 from it for the benefit of the land-owners, and at the expense of the 
 manufacturers 1 
 
 If such enormous high duties as disfigure the present tariff can be 
 imposed on particular articles even for revenue, much less protection, 
 do not all see that a door is also opened to equal if not greater injus- 
 tice another way ? Cannot a few articles be thus selected for revenue, 
 and others left free, or at a low rate, where the articles selected are 
 consumed chiefly but in one section of the country, or by one class of 
 the community ; and when those being necessaries are not able to be 
 dispensed with? — and .thus a dominant party or section force most of 
 the public burdens on their opponents 1 This is not to be tolerated a 
 moment, even for revenue, on any sound principles of taxation. 
 
 Again : as a revenue measure, it has not yet been able to meet the 
 wants of the government. Deficiencies have already occurred, and 
 been supplied by loans, in a period of profound peace ; and the proper 
 official organ of the government informs us, in his annual report, that 
 more deficiencies are likely to occur, both in this and the ensuing 
 year. Whether the Secretary of the Treasury was correct or not in 
 his estimates (and I know, from experience, there is no little diffi- 
 culty, in periods of fluctuation, in forming accurate opinions as to the 
 future), it was safer for us to take, in the main, the official data. 
 Certainly the tariff has not yet yielded so much, by five millions, the 
 last year, as some of its friends estimated in 1842 ; and if the large 
 returns from New York for January be hastily looked to as a guide 
 for the whole year, the aggregate revenue from customs will, in 
 1844, exceed forty millions of dollars, — exceeding the previous esti- 
 mates of the chairman near twenty millions. 
 
 [Mr. Evans said he disclaimed considering them a guide for the 
 whole year.] 
 
 I think it will be prudent not to consider them so, or we must 
 
 anticipate another ruinous revulsion, ere long. Besides all this, the 
 
 revenue in different quarters has already so fluctuated, under this bill, 
 
 as to vary a million or more, — sometimes lower and sometimes higher 
 
 27* 
 
318 TARIFF. 
 
 in each, — ever since its passage, and precludes any reliance on its 
 steady operation. It is a mistake, too, that raising the duties so high as 
 these are, for protection, is likely to raise much higher the aggregate 
 of revenue than it would be if none exceeded thirty per cent., when we 
 look to its tendency to check and reduce importations, and to encour- 
 age smuggling. Their increase during the last few months has arisen 
 from the impulses given to the commerce of the world by opening new 
 markets, and the low rate of interest for capital to embark in new 
 enterprises, rather than from any benefits to the revenue or business 
 generally, by so high a tariff. 
 
 At the very moment while we are deliberating, the returns of the 
 receipts from customs in England, the last quarter, also show a consid- 
 erable rise ; and of the last year, if deducting the revenue on corn, 
 accidentally high in 1842, a larger rise still. But these results have 
 happened there after a reduction of the rate of many duties, leading to 
 a larger consumption, showing the reverse of what is argued as the 
 cause here. But, in truth, the opening of new markets in Asia, 
 among three or four hundred millions of people, or near half of the 
 whole human race, has done much more, both in Europe and America, 
 to revive business and increase revenue, than any changes in duties, 
 though the reduction of them in England has tended to increase both 
 consumption and revenue. There had been very striking illustrations, 
 in the case of teas and spirits, of an increase of revenue in the aggre- 
 gate, after a reduction in the rate of duties. (See several instances in 
 Porter's View.) I will not detain the Senate by specifying but one, 
 in the case of coffee, which, in England, on a duty of fifty per cent, 
 less in 1840 than in 1824, had become so much more imported and 
 consumed as to yield more than double the amount of revenue. The 
 rise in revenue supposed to have taken place here in a series of years 
 after the increased rate of duties in 1816, and in consequence of it, is 
 another error into which the senator from Maine has fallen, I presume 
 inadvertently ; for the truth is just the reverse, and is a strong proof 
 that a protective tariff like ours tends often to reduce the aggregate. 
 
 Thus the net revenue from customs in 1817 was about twenty-six 
 millions and a quarter, — which, on the credit system then in force, 
 had accrued chiefly on the imposts and tariff in force in 1816. Now, 
 so far from its rising above that sum under the higher duties of 1816, 
 or the still higher of 1824, or even of 1828, it had, in 1818, fallen to 
 about seventeen millions; and had never again equalled twenty-six 
 millions till 1832 ; and then had become larger, not by means of more 
 natural business and of higher duties, but by much larger imports, 
 artificially swollen, to bring home the proceeds of State loans abroad. 
 
 [Messrs. Evans and Huntington asked from what source Mr. W. 
 derived his data as to the duties, since the documents appended to the 
 last report of the Secretary of the Treasury did not give like amounts.] 
 
 I quote from the official receipts and expenditures, published in 
 1842, page 242; and, if the two differ in some details, they both 
 
TARIFF. 319 
 
 agree in the general results I have stated. And as to the increase of 
 imports, and consequently revenue, by means of the State debts, Mr. 
 Gallatin and others have computed that, during eight or ten years, after 
 adding seven and a half millions annually for profits,' freights, &c, on 
 the exports, the aggregate of imports, over and above that, had been 
 near one hundred and thirty millions, or the estimated amount of 
 State loans effected abroad within that period. If we look to naked 
 figures, without exaniining into causes, and extending research over 
 several years, we are likely to be constantly misled ; but, looking to 
 causes, all becomes consistent and reconcilable with sound principles. 
 
 For these reasons, without specifying others, the present tariff is 
 exceedingly defective in its character as a revenue measure, and ought 
 to be amended. But there are other and more particular reasons 
 against its operations on the community, — whether regarded as 
 directly protective or fiscal, — which require its whole form and sub- 
 stance to be modified, and for which it contains no redeeming qualities 
 sufficient to reconcile us to its continuance. 
 
 It is so framed as, in fact, to impose a heavy burden on large 
 classes and sections of the country, and thus to operate in favor of 
 small classes and sections, rather than for the treasury, or the people, 
 as a whole. 
 
 Let us look to the evidence of this. Its average rate of duties is 
 so near forty per cent., that, for convenience in computation, that rate 
 may be used. Now, sir, calculating that under it we import and 
 consume only thirty millions of foreign merchandise similar to what is 
 manufactured here, the tax on that would be twelve millions of dol- 
 lars ; whereas a revenue duty on it of twenty per cent., for the benefit 
 of the treasury, would amount to only six millions, and the other six 
 are paid for the benefit and protection of the domestic rival manufac- 
 tures. 
 
 In the next place, as this tax of forty per cent, usually enhances 
 the price of the articles to that extent, these similar domestic manu- 
 factures are raised also in price in a like proportion. This must be 
 the case, or a higher tariff would be of no use to the makers of those 
 articles. Now, those similar domestic manufactures made and con- 
 sumed in this country equal in value annually about two hundred 
 millions of dollars. Forty per cent, on that is eighty millions ; but, 
 as half of it would be gained by an incidental and necessary, equal 
 and proper protection from a twenty per cent, revenue tariff, the only 
 addition to the public burdens, by the partial and high discriminations, 
 is forty millions, making, with the other six, about forty-six millions 
 paid yearly for the benefit of the manufacturing classes. As those 
 classes constitute only one-eleventh of our whole population, ten- 
 elevenths of the sum is paid by other classes, for the benefit of merely 
 that one-eleventh. This is a monstrous burden imposed on the others, 
 higher than all their other taxes, both to the State and General Gov- 
 ernments, without computing profits on it by wholesale dealers and 
 
320 TARIFF. 
 
 retailers. If this money was carried out of the country yearly, that 
 circumstance would much impoverish it ; but, being only a tribute on 
 some here for the benefit of others here, the money remains within 
 our limits, but still it is deliberately fleeced from some and transferred 
 to others. 
 
 If those others, in such favorite occupations, do not thereby grow so 
 wealthy and powerful as some suppose, it is not for the want of pro- 
 tection enough, but, as will hereafter be explained, from the fluctua- 
 tions in their business caused by these same high profits, and the 
 frequent changes in machinery, and the losses by abortive experi- 
 ments, or the want of skill in the management by some persons and 
 in some places comparatively inexperienced. 
 
 Now, could such a system, so unequal and anti-republican as this, 
 and so oppressive to ten-elevenths of the people, stand a single hour, 
 if the facts were accurately understood 1 No, sir, no ! But the fal- 
 lacy is widely circulated, that the increased duty, rather than enhanc- 
 ing the price of articles, reduces it ; and when that paradox does not 
 gain full faith, from its contradictions to experience and common sense, 
 as well as theoretical reason, it is urged that the apparent beneficiaries 
 of the tax are not alone aggrandized by it, but the whole country 
 made more prosperous, and better able to pay enhanced duties and 
 prices. 
 
 Let us scrutinize this delusion a little. That higher duties make 
 prices lower, is, in the philosophy of the American system, the elephant 
 on which stands their whole globe. It is entirely a discovery, not to 
 say invention, of its supporters. Abroad, the idea is deemed prepos- 
 terous. It is a matter of course in general principles, — and Adam 
 Smith, Ricardo, Huskisson, McCulloch, Tooke, and many others, 
 make their calculations, — that an enhanced duty augments the price 
 just as naturally as that higher rents, or wages, or interest, tend to 
 make an article cost more, — just as naturally as more fuel added 
 increases the fire, more rain raises the streams. 
 
 Franklin, in this country, as we have already seen, says that high 
 duties on the importation enables the manufacturer to tax the home 
 consumer by greater prices. He could draw lightning from the 
 clouds, but he could, with all his ingenuity and skill, draw no other 
 conclusion than this from high duties. It may be sometimes true, as 
 an exception, that in a glut of the market the importer may not be 
 able to sell at an enhanced price, and must then sell at a loss, if at all. 
 Every one can see, however, that this is only temporary and occa- 
 sional. For a new high duty, which, as the senator from Maine sup- 
 poses, may at first raise prices, and thus check sales, will, if they 
 afterwards fall, from the market being overstocked, bring them at once 
 up again, as soon as the supply is less and the manufacture less, as is 
 usual after such a glut. This brief fall in price, too, whenever it hap- 
 pens, will, for a like reason, cause a corresponding fall in the price of 
 the agricultural production to be exchanged for the manufacture ; and, 
 
TARIFF. 321 
 
 in that case, it will require no prophet to foresee that such a fall injures, 
 in its consequences, rather than benefits, the producer. The action of 
 everybody in daily life contradicts the whole position on the other side, 
 that, as a general principle, prices are permanently reduced by higher 
 duties ; or why do persons, after high duties, smuggle ? If they 
 make the prices here lower, the smuggling would be the other way. 
 Why, also, are our tables loaded with memorials asking for drawbacks, 
 or to remit duties on railroad iron, if they make its price lower? Why 
 do nations ever retaliate against others by imposing higher duties, if it 
 makes their articles lower, and hence more in demand for consump- 
 tion ? Indeed, why do the manufacturers themselves ask for higher 
 duties on the manufactured articles, if the price is not thereby increased ?- 
 And why ask for low duties, or entire freedom to the raw material, if 
 it be not thereby made lower? (See Table No. 4.)* And why oppose 
 a reduction, as now, if that reduction would not tend to reduce prices'? 
 What, sir ! have we not the resolution of the high-tariff legislature of 
 Vermont, just offered here, to continue the present high duties on 
 wool 1 And why is this, except that, in their opinion, frankly admitted, 
 the price of that great staple with them has been thereby enhanced 1 
 The whole misconception, beyond the slight temporary exceptions 
 before alluded to, appears to arise from what undoubtedly is a fact 
 in this country, that most manufactured articles have fallen throughout 
 the world since high duties had begun to be imposed, in 1816. But, 
 in the first place, a fall in many of these commenced before 1816 ; in 
 the next place, every sequence was not a consequence ; everything 
 after an event did not happen on account of it, or we might attrib- 
 ute this fall to the war of 1812, or the great eclipse of 1806, as the 
 fall had occurred after both. In cases like these, we must probe to 
 the bottom and eviscerate the true causes and consequences of events, 
 and not virtually take up the irrational, if not absurd idea, that high 
 national taxes of any kind are a blessing, any more than that a great 
 national debt is a national blessing. 
 
 It was, on some accounts, perhaps, unfortunate that this notion had 
 not been discovered earlier, when our fathers considered themselves so 
 much oppressed by a higher tax on tea, and when the French so griev- 
 ously complained and rebelled against the gabelle, or high salt tax ; 
 none of them being so long-sighted then as to dream that the prices 
 were thereby reduced. But, seriously, Mr. President, if any still 
 doubt on this subject, let them look a little into the cautious and well- 
 considered work on prices which I hold in my hand, by Tooke (edi- 
 tion of 1838), not swollen with loose theories, but facts, — recorded 
 and authentic facts, — giving the history and causes of the fluctuations 
 in prices in England, during the last half-century. It never entered 
 his imagination, because they rose generally from 1795 to 1815, and 
 fell generally from 1815 to 1842, that this proceeded at all from lower 
 duties in the first period, or higher ones in the second. The fact as to 
 
 * Appendix, H. 
 
322 TARIFF. 
 
 duties was, in most cases, directly the reverse. No, sir ; the true and 
 general causes of a fall in prices are, first, a greater quantity of the 
 article produced, without a greater demand ; — whether produced in 
 agriculture, by more fertile seasons, better manures or tools: or in 
 manufactures, by improved machinery, with chemical discoveries ; or 
 in both, by more hands released from war and other unproductive 
 employments, and devoted to either of those pursuits; — and, secondly, 
 by a contraction of the amount of the currency, whether paper or 
 specie, by which the price is measured ; while a rise happens by the 
 reverse of these, or an addition to the tax or expense in making the 
 articles, or the opening of new and better markets. Hence, if a fall 
 occurs from one of the first causes, it would be still greater if none of 
 the last intervene to counteract it in any degree, — such as a higher 
 duty, an expansion in the currency, or a new market. But these last 
 may, and do, in some cases, not counteract it entirely ; and then the 
 cry is, that the higher duty lowers the price, when, in fact, the other 
 causes exist and lower it, — and would make it lower still, but for the 
 higher duty. 
 
 How unphilosophical it is, likewise, when good, pertinent, and long- 
 established causes exist to lower prices, to hunt for another cause, 
 not certain or rational, and conjure that up as the true one ! 
 
 But, enough on the reasoning connected with this fallacy, so wide, 
 and so pervading the ranks of the friends to high protection, and 
 which, if removed, the whole fabric must totter to its base. How are 
 the recorded facts, no less than the reasoning 1 Not a single case here 
 and there, and for a month or a year ; but how, on both continents, 
 and for a long series of years, and as to numerous articles 1 I have 
 before me various schedules of prices-current, both in England and 
 America. They all show conclusively that, since 1795, from the 
 causes first named, agricultural products in England have generally 
 risen, though the highest duties have been imposed there for their pro- 
 tection ; they, rather than manufactures, being there the pets or favor- 
 ites for protection with the great landed gentry and aristocracy, that 
 fill the two Houses of Parliament. At the same time, they show that, 
 from the first-named causes, and especially improvements in machinery 
 and in chemistry, manufactures have fallen in price, — and this when 
 the duty was low, as well as when high. (See Tables 7 and 8.)* 
 
 Indeed, the difference between the official and real valuation of 
 exports there, which indicates on the public and authentic records the 
 changes in price since 1690, shows that the whole, from various causes, 
 have fallen, in the aggregate, something like fifty-eight per cent. The 
 writer before me says : 
 
 "We have taken out of the list of exports the leading articles of agricultural prod- 
 uce for three years (1840, 1841, 1842), the value of which we find would have been, 
 in 1694 (one hundred and fifty years ago), £1,557,993 ; hut which have now 
 increased to a value of £3,778,321, being an advance in price of 143 per cent. 
 
 * Appendix, K and L. 
 
TARIFF. 323 
 
 '« We have also taken out some of the leading articles of manufactures for the same 
 time, the value of which Ave find would have been, in 1694, £267,636,717; but which 
 are now reduced to a value of £107,173,382, being a reduction of price of 60 per cent. 
 Thus showing that, while manufactured goods* and minerals have fallen considerably 
 more than a half, agricultural produce has much more than doubled its value. 
 
 " Butter and cheese have risen in price, during that period, 193 per cent. 
 
 " Corn, flour, &c, have risen 161 per cent. 
 
 " Cows have risen in price 209 per cent. 
 
 " Horses have risen in price 267 per cent. 
 
 " Wool has risen in price 169 per cent. 
 
 " While cotton manufactures have fallen in price, during that period, 73 per cent. 
 
 " Coals have fallen in price 60 per cent. 
 
 " Iron and steel have fallen in price 45 per cent. 
 
 "Linen manufactures have fallen in price 36 per cent. 
 
 "And, what is very curious, while wool has risen 169 per cent., woollen manufac- 
 tures have fallen 10 per cent, in price." — Economist, Nov. 4, 1843. 
 
 In the United States, prices-current in Boston and New York, for 
 a long series of years, as to numerous articles, have likewise been 
 examined. They show a general fall in price here of agricultural arti- 
 cles, not prevented entirely even under an expanded currency in 1814 
 and 1836. But this fall has occurred from great and cheap produc- 
 tion on our cheap and fertile and extensive soil ; and could not hap- 
 pen from high protective duties, they having been low on such agri- 
 cultural products as are much imported, or entirely free on several of 
 them. 
 
 These tables showed, further, a fall in some manufactured articles 
 where the duties ranged high, and in others where low. But this fall 
 manifestly happened from improvements in machinery and steam (the 
 great and distinguishing features of the age), or from new mines 
 opened ; and in spite of high duties, rather than being their conse- 
 quences. Think you, sir, that a minimum duty on cottons here has 
 caused the fall in their price in both Europe and America, rather than 
 the inventions of Arkwright in spinning, or Cartwright in weaving, or 
 Watts in steam, any more than the duty here on the raw material 
 has caused its fall two-thirds, rather than the wonderful cotton-gin of 
 Whitney, and our exuberant soil ? The tables compiled from McCul- 
 loch, Tooke, and the prices-current in New York, are at the service 
 of any senator. (Nos. 7, 8 to 11.)* I shall not repeat their details ; 
 but merely state, as most striking refutations of the theory on the 
 other side, that in England the manufactured article of saltpetre has 
 fallen more than most others, — viz., from one hundred and thirty-five 
 shillings per hundred weight, in 1795 to twenty-one shillings, in 1838, 
 — though on a low duty ; and log- wood from eleven shillings per ton 
 to seven, though free ; and salt from six shillings, and during war 
 nineteen shillings, to only one shilling and threepence, in 1838, 
 though then entirely free. The first was manifestly caused by 
 improvements in chemistry, and new discoveries ; and the two last, 
 as in this country, from new and greater supplies, combined with lower 
 
 * Appendix, K, L to 0. 
 
324 TARIFF. 
 
 duties there, and in spite of high ones here on the great condiment of 
 life. 
 
 The tables in second Tooke, 390 p. (edition 1838), show further 
 that the price of timber has risen under a rising duty, and tobacco not 
 risen nor fallen, though taxed with a duty computed by the chairman 
 at two thousand per cent. One would suppose the last high enough, 
 on his theory, to make the price fall next to nothing. 
 
 Here plaster of Paris j though free, and not a manufacture, has fallen 
 as much or more than others, viz., from twenty dollars per ton, in 1811, 
 to only two dollars and twenty-five cents, in 1844 ; and, of course, 
 from other causes than high duties. Indeed, out of two hundred and 
 sixteen articles on which prices had fallen some years since, as large a 
 number were ascertained, by the late inquisitive Condy Raguet, to be 
 such as were free, or on a low duty, as on a high ; thus indicating, 
 with unerring certainty, the great and general operation of other 
 causes. All can remember how the price of sugar fell, a few years 
 ago, here, under a falling duty ; and how it has risen again, like the 
 Vermont wool, and cordage, and cottons, under a higher duty. Not 
 that all articles are falling or rising, in all cases, entirely from the 
 change in duty, but always higher than they otherwise would be if a 
 duty exists, and lower than they otherwise would be if one does not 
 exist. Indeed, the great advocate of the protective system (Mr. Clay) 
 at last virtually conceded away this whole ground, in 1832, by express- 
 ing a willingness to reduce several of the high duties so as to relieve 
 the consumption of the country; but which could not be thus relieved 
 unless high duties had made prices higher, — proving, in these ways, 
 the position that prices of articles are usually made higher to the extent 
 of the duty. It then follows that the consumer of such articles is 
 usually obliged to pay as much more for them on that account. Such 
 is the plain common sense of the case. Such is the doctrine of all 
 the leading economists abroad, as well as of Franklin ; and even Ham- 
 ilton was forced to admit that this was oftenest the case, and when not 
 so, the increase fell on the merchant, and was still more ruinous to 
 him. (See Federalist, before cited.) Mr. Dallas entertained a like 
 idea. (See Report, February, 1816.) And it can never fall on the 
 foreign producer any longer than to affect his present stock in a few 
 cases, till he reduces his production, and thus prevents a glut. 
 
 It then follows that, as a general principle, the enhanced price of 
 the foreign article, and also of the domestic article, is paid by the 
 consumer. This, we have already shown, equals here now, beyond a 
 fair revenue, about forty- three millions of dollars yearly ; and, as the 
 manufacturers constitute but one-eleventh of the whole, ten-elevenths 
 of it is paid by other consumers, and for the benefit of that one- 
 eleventh. As most of these others belong to the agricultural classes, — 
 they being nearly three-fourths of all our population, — the great mass 
 of this enormous burden is thrown on them, and must induce them, in 
 time, as the real facts are well understood, to demolish the whole sys- 
 
TARIFF. 325 
 
 tern of partial protection, and require, as some of us do now, that a 
 tariff for sucli protection be corrected, without unnecessary delay. 
 What does it amount to per head yearly, including their families 1 
 Over two dollars to each man, woman, and child, on an average. 
 What, in the gross, are the present duties on a few separate articles 
 of great, vital, and universal necessity? On iron, at twenty-five 
 pounds per head, it is five hundred million pounds for our whole popu- 
 lation, now twenty millions of people ; and the tax on this, at only three 
 cents per pound, is fifteen millions of dollars, ten-elevenths of which 
 is paid by others than the manufacturers. On sugar, at fourteen pounds 
 per head, at two and one-half cents per pound, the tax is seven mil- 
 lions of dollars more ; and on salt alone, without going into other arti- 
 cles, it is, at a bushel per head, quite a million and a half of dollars. 
 
 As an illustration how this presses on my own State, with a population 
 of about 300,000, and the large mass of them farmers, the tax for 
 iron alone equals $225,000, or four times the amount of the whole 
 State tax; on sugar $109,000 more, and on salt $24,000, — making, 
 on only three articles, an aggregate of more than a third of a million, 
 and near seven times the whole of what is technically our State tax. 
 
 None of our population get relieved from this, except the few who 
 make of these articles as much as they consume. All can see, in a 
 moment, how this prevents the consumer from being able to buy, or 
 enjoy, or lay up so much, with the same money and means, as he oth- 
 erwise could ; for, by the rise of price, he gets but three or four pounds 
 of iron, sugar, &c, for the same money or value of produce, where 
 before he got five, — the cost of the difference going to the manufacturer 
 and the revenue. The whole Union, as consumers, and so far as not 
 makers of such articles, feel the discriminating oppression ; and are 
 thus, in the north as well as the south, the east and the Middle States, 
 as well as the giant west, all suffering under its unequal bearing, by 
 means of the present tariff. 
 
 But look at another aspect of the inquiry, as affecting the producing 
 classes. The producer is usually a farmer, or planter, or manufac- 
 turer, though those connected with the last class are only about a mil- 
 lion and a half to twelve millions and three-fourths connected with the 
 two former. Now, if the producer has to pay forty per cent, more on 
 many indispensable articles which he consumes, it will soon be mani- 
 fest that, unless a manufacturer, and thus indemnified, he suffers doubly 
 under this system, and especially as compared with any other con- 
 sumer. 
 
 I shall not now enter into any technical reasoning about what is 
 called the forty-bale theory, though it would be troublesome to defeat 
 by argument the cogent reasoning of the senator before me (Mr. 
 McDuffie). But this much is demonstrable, that such producers are 
 first burdened and injured by the higher price of what they consume. 
 Whether they purchase it here with money, or bring it home in 
 exchange for what they produce and send abroad, the consequence is 
 28 
 
326 TAKIFF. 
 
 the same, — that they get less in amount for consumption ; and when it 
 is argued that, in such a case, they had better not use foreign articles 
 so raised in price, but bring home money, pray what is to be done with 
 the money 1 — not eaten, nor worn, but some of it exchanged here for 
 necessaries or luxuries ; and, whether of domestic or foreign manufac- 
 ture, enhanced in price so that he cannot procure or enjoy so many of 
 them. It is this excessive taxation^ in all possible ways, on the pro- 
 ducer in England, that tempts Parliament to continue the corn-law 
 duties, with a view to remunerate the agriculturist, by higher prices, 
 thus caused, for his great staples. And yet, after all that, having (as 
 he has almost) a monopoly of food, he grinds the laborer into riots and 
 incendiarism ; while the manufacturer — not so much the pet there — 
 works so near the minimum price necessary to sustain life, that a bad 
 harvest and rise in food, or a rise in cotton and a glut of markets, so 
 as to diminish manufacturing, throws millions upon public charity for 
 their daily bread. Much of these crying evils arise from excessive 
 taxation in various ways, and especially high duties on corn, — some 
 bearing on one kind of produce and some on another, — and all fall 
 there on the humiliated laborer, whether engaged in manufactures or 
 agriculture. The relief there, as well as here, is the great problem ; 
 and it is to be found in reducing and not raising taxation, and furnish- 
 ing both bread and clothing, as well as all other materials, each from 
 the places where they can, in the present state of society, and without 
 forced means, be made cheapest. Then, God's bounties, in every cli- 
 mate and stage of improvement in society, will, by commerce, become 
 interchanged and universally diffused, and the whole human family be 
 blessed, rather than oppressed, by each other's advantages and excel- 
 lences. 
 
 Proceed, then, and lower the highest duties here, and the revenue 
 would still be sufficient ; and, other things remaining unchanged, the 
 laborer, as well as producer, will be able to consume not only as much 
 more as the difference of duty would buy, but industry and the prices 
 of his own products will be so increased to the producer that he will 
 be able to buy much more. A most memorable instance of a change 
 in tins respect occurred in the case of coffee in England, of which, under 
 a high duty of two shillings and sixpence per pound, in 1824, when 
 foreign, and one shilling when colonial, but 8,262,943 pounds were 
 consumed. But the duties being then reduced one-half, the consump- 
 tion, from that and other causes, increased, by 1840, to 28,664,336 
 pounds. [Mr. Evans here asked if England produced any coffee ; to 
 which Mr. Woodbury replied, that she produced some in her colonies, 
 as well as sugar.] It is a remarkable fact, that, the duties remaining 
 high during that same period on sugar, the consumption of it fell off 
 377,302 hundred weight. 
 
 Producers are next suffering by not being able, under high duties, 
 to purchase lands and stock and hire labor to the extent they other- 
 wise might, in order to increase the quantity of their produce. It is 
 
TARIFF. 327 
 
 also certain that, under this system, produce is likely to sell for less, 
 because their markets abroad are exposed to be cut off and diminished 
 much more than under a system of low duties and liberal reciprocity. 
 
 Thus it is that the great agricultural producers in the south and 
 west feel so deeply the evils of this system, having little or no remu- 
 neration for them, or relief from them, as the manufacturers them- 
 selves have, and, in some respects, in the north, part of those living in 
 their immediate neighborhoods. And if it were not for the low price 
 of lands in this country, and their virgin richness and blessed fertility, 
 the distress and prostration would, in past years, with farmers, have 
 been much severer. 
 
 Next, their markets are thus exposed to become cramped or deteri- 
 orated, under retaliations ; and the great principle of trade is acknowl- 
 edged now, by most people, as laid down by Franklin, — that commerce 
 must, in order to nourish durably, consist of mutual exchanges. 
 Writing to a French gentleman, he says, (vol. v., p. 869) : 
 
 '* We are much pleased with the disposition of your government to favor our com- 
 merce, manifested in the late reglement. You appear to be possessed of a truth which 
 few governments are possessed of, — that A must take some of B's produce, otherwise 
 B will not be able to pay for what he would take of A. " 
 
 The evil operation, naturally attendant on a high and discriminating 
 tariff, to injure all markets abroad, is one which presses hard on the 
 friends of such a system. And hence it is a favorite ground assumed 
 by them, that the foreign markets are of trifling consequence to the 
 producer, compared with the domestic or home market, and that they 
 but little affect his prices ; and that their system furnishes a demand 
 so much better for all produced as to atone for the loss of all markets 
 abroad. 
 
 Now, sir, as these positions are deemed, by their authors, great pil- 
 lars to support the protective system, I will ask your indulgence a 
 short time, in order to expose how utterly unfounded they are, on the 
 real facts applicable to them ; and to show afterwards the further evils 
 of this system to navigation and the fisheries, and even to sound man- 
 ufacturing industry, no less than to the great classes of consumers and 
 producers, so as to be entirely unatoned for by any benefits really 
 resulting from it. 
 
 In pursuing this discussion further, Mr. President, in the manner I 
 have proposed, I should be trespassing uselessly on the patience of the 
 Senate, if my best endeavors were not exerted to elicit truth. I 
 would try to settle contradictory opinions as to some facts, by a fuller 
 and more dispassionate consideration of them ; and, if possible, recon- 
 cile a majority to such changes in the existing tariff as are, in painful 
 sincerity, believed by me to be necessary for the preservation of sound 
 principles in taxation, equal justice to all, and the prosperity and 
 peace of the country. 
 
 The idea that our foreign markets have not improved under the low- 
 
328 TARIFF. 
 
 ering duties from 1882 to 1842, compared with what they were the 
 ten years previous, under higher rates, is very erroneous. 
 
 The value of domestic produce exported in 1822 was $49,874,079, 
 and in 1832 but $63,137,470, or an increase of only about twenty- 
 five per cent.; while in 1842 the value was $92,969,996, or an 
 increase of nearly fifty per cent. If the aggregate of these exports 
 in all the first ten years was compared with that of the last, the 
 increase in the last over the first would be nearly one hundred per 
 cent. Some had supposed that this increase had been confined to 
 southern staples alone; but while cotton had augmented, rice and 
 tobacco had been nearly stationary. And the great staples of the west, ■ 
 and Middle States, and north, not consumed by the south while 
 making the cotton, and thus obtaining a larger and better market 
 through the cotton raised and sent abroad, — such as the exports of 
 breadstuffs, pork, lard, beef, butter and cheese, lumber, lead, and even 
 of manufactures, — have augmented. 
 
 Indeed, almost the whole of the fourteen and a half millions of 
 pounds of lead we now send to foreign markets have sprung up 
 within the last ten years ; and, as shown in the table before me, even 
 within the last three our exports of beef have trebled. So of pork and 
 lard, and also of butter and cheese. (See Table No. 12.)* 
 
 Again : an impression had, by some, been sedulously inculcated, that 
 England took little or nothing of our domestic products for herself and 
 her dependencies, and therefore we ought, in retaliation, to tax high 
 her manufactures. I am not the apologist of either England or 
 France, in their ancient commercial policy, in some respects, towards 
 this country ; but it is due to historical truth and justice to admit that, 
 of late years, they take large portions of our surplus produce, being 
 our two greatest markets in the world. 
 
 In respect to England, when buying our productions which are not 
 luxuries, — like tobacco, standing on a peculiar and different basis, — 
 she takes them on duties not usually so high as our own, and recently 
 under several reductions, which we have very illy reciprocated by the 
 present higher tariff. Let us test this by evidence, for I ask nothing 
 on naked assertion. I hold in my hand statements of our exports 
 of domestic produce to England and her dependencies, in 1822, 1832, 
 and 1842. (See Table 13.)t 
 
 They increased about twenty-four per cent, in the first period, but 
 over forty per cent, in the last one ; and they considerably exceed one- 
 half of all our exports of that kind to all quarters of the globe. Is this 
 nothing, as a growing advantage, by way of market, to all our pro- 
 ducers, and to be encouraged by reciprocal liberality 1 — especially when 
 we recall to mind the further fact that she takes even more of us, 
 yearly, than we do of her, to the extent of four or five millions of 
 dollars. Is not this such a favorable balance of trade to us, and such 
 a large market, — more than all the rest of the world, — as to deserve 
 
 * Appendix, P. t Appendix, Q. 
 
TAKIFF. 329 
 
 some little regard and conciliatory spirit 1 Yet the policy of much of 
 the existing tariff is, on the contrary, almost vindictive towards her 
 chief productions. Again, as shown by my friend before me (Mr. 
 McDuffie), she takes of our cotton over $30,000,000 a year, nigh 
 two-thirds of the whole amount exported, — our greatest article sent 
 abroad ; and in wliich not South Carolina alone is interested (as many 
 affect to suppose), but still more Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, 
 with parts of North Carolina, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Arkansas, as 
 well as, indirectly, every other State which furnishes to them supplies, 
 agricultural or manufactured. 
 
 Beside this, and more than one-fifth of our rice exported, she takes 
 over one-third of the tobacco, and has always been one of our largest 
 customers for both ; thus presenting, in spite of her large duties on the 
 last as a luxury, one of the best markets for the great production of 
 still other States, including Maryland, Virginia, Ohio, and Missouri. 
 But it is often alleged that she takes little that is the produce of the 
 free States, and particularly of breadstuffs, pork, beef, &c, — more 
 directly interesting to the central States, those beyond the Alleghanies, 
 — and the agriculture, fisheries, and manufactures, of the east. For- 
 tunately, sir, when we take the trouble to scrutinize the official docu- 
 ments, this delusion becomes entirely dispelled. 
 
 In 1822, when we sent to England and her dependencies not one- 
 third of all our exports of flour, wheat, corn, and other breadstuffs, her 
 harsh system of corn-laws had recently been adopted on the same high 
 protective system in favor of her agriculture which we ourselves have 
 so indiscreetly introduced in the present tariff to aid our manufactures. 
 But, notwithstanding the just complaints against that system, our 
 intercourse through her neighboring colonies, from which the duty is 
 lower, and our proximity to her West India islands, gradually enabled 
 us to send to her and her dependencies, at a profit,* over one-half of all 
 those exports ; and, by 1842, over two-thirds of the whole, and equalling 
 in value fifty per cent, more than all the tobacco and rice sent to them. 
 
 In fine, she takes largely of our beef, pork, and dairy ; also of the 
 products of our forest and the ocean, and even of the factory, as well 
 as of raw cotton and grain. And her increased and increasing demands 
 for most of these, if not repulsed and thwarted by high tariffs, rendered 
 this consideration a momentous one, not only to the south, but to all 
 the grain-growing States, whether on the Atlantic or on the rivers and 
 lakes of the mighty west, and gave it an interest to every farmer and 
 fisherman, and many a mechanic, in the valleys and on the hill-tops, 
 on the sea-shores and in the villages of the busy north. Without 
 dwelling too long on details, the value of beef now taken by her is 
 double what it was in 1822 ; the pork and lard, near two hundred per 
 cent, more ; and the butter and cheese, near six times as much ; while, 
 from our forests, she purchases near one-fourth of what we export in 
 lumber, and six-sevenths of all our tar and other naval stores. 
 
 [Mr. Benton. Please to repeat that.] 
 28* 
 
830 TARIFF. 
 
 Yes, sir. She takes quite six-sevenths of all our naval stores 
 exported ; and though that is important to your native State (North 
 Carolina), another fact is becoming still more important to the State 
 of your adoption, — to Missouri, — and also to Illinois, — that, instead 
 of now importing most of our lead from England, we supply from our 
 own mines, on account of their natural fertility, and not by hot-bed 
 protection, firstly our own great wants, and next, send it across the 
 equator, — double, with it, both the Cape of Good Hope and Cape 
 Horn, and supply China, as well as the Sandwich Islands of the Pacific ; 
 and last, but not least, send to England herself near one-sixth of the 
 whole we now export, while in 1822 she took not a pound, and in 
 1832 but twenty-two dollars' worth. 
 
 From our fisheries she takes, also, half the sperm oil we export, 
 instead of nothing in 1822, and but a pittance in 1832. But let me 
 ask the gentlemen on the other side if even the manufacturers would 
 be quite as well situated as to a market for their eight or nine millions 
 of exports, if England and her dependencies were not open to many of 
 them? She has admitted even our cotton manufactures into India, 
 and some of them were used to help to clothe the very troops that 
 marched to Afghanistan. She takes an increasing quantity of our 
 domestic salt in Canada ; from one to two hundred thousand dollars' 
 worth of our nails in her West Indies ; more and more of our sperm 
 and tallow candles ; a third of a million of our manufactures from 
 tobacco ; and very considerable proportions of the soap, leather, shoes, 
 boots, &c. &c, which help to swell the exports of our domestic manu- 
 factures. 
 
 But, not to be tedious on this point, mark the contrast, also, in the 
 present rate of her duties on many of these articles. On the greatest, 
 — cotton, — only seven and a half per cent. ; on lard, only seven per 
 cent. ; on wheat, into Canada, only seven cents per bushel ; on beef 
 and pork, but two cents a pound ; and cheese, but two and a quarter 
 cents. This will not be much over twenty per cent, on the whole of 
 them, and some calculators have been enabled to push her average duties 
 higher on articles which we raise only by including tobacco, — which is 
 taxed high there as a luxury, and to bear on the rich, — and some other 
 articles, such as spirits and cider, which could not fairly be taken into 
 the account, we ship so little of them to England, any more than cot- 
 ton cloths, though only taxed fifteen per cent. ; woollens, but ten per 
 cent. ; linen, fifteen per cent. ; and iron, but eight per cent. 
 
 Embracing corn, and their higher duty on our direct export of it to 
 England, the average rate on the first class of articles would not rise 
 to twenty-five per cent., as wheat, at the average price there, pays 
 only about thirty or thirty-two per cent, duty, ranging lower or higher 
 by a sliding scale, as the price there may rise or fall. To show what 
 great advances she has recently made in relaxing her restrictive policy 
 by reducing her duties on articles which were high, and many of which 
 greatly interest us, I have her old and new tariffs before me, and have 
 
dUFOR-' 
 
 
 TARIFF. 331 
 
 placed several instances in parallel columns, for convenience in refer- 
 ence, if any senator chooses to examine the matter further. (See 
 Table 14.)* 
 
 Perhaps one reason, among others, why the corn duties have not 
 been more relaxed, is the continued high discrimination which we still 
 persist in against manufactured articles such as she produces. And, 
 as those duties there are a great engine of wrong and suffering towards 
 starving millions, and help to fill her almshouses and prisons, — lead- 
 ing to barn-burning, and mobs, and thefts, for vengeance or existence, 
 — there is little doubt that a relaxation there is desirable to many 
 others as well as the toiling millions, and that reciprocal legislation by 
 us, in the spirit of her last tariff, would help to hasten a further reduc- 
 tion, and open a much larger vent for our grain and meats, at enhanced 
 prices. A reciprocal arrangement of such a character can be effected 
 by legislation as well, if not better, than by treaty. The two countries 
 are, in truth, fitted to consume largely of each other's surplus, sold by 
 each (as it is), at cheaper rates than it can be produced by the other, — 
 she selling her manufactures of cotton cheaper, by machinery, skill, 
 capital, and low wages ; we, our cotton, grain, meats, and other mate- 
 rials, cheaper than hers, in consequence of a soil costing less and 
 producing more, as well as being more lightly taxed. Nature and 
 circumstances fit us both for mutual interchanges, on mutual low 
 duties, to the mutual advantage of both, as much as do the tastes and 
 formation of the two sexes suit them for each other's happiness. She 
 needs, even on the present limited consumption, near two million 
 quarters of wheat yearly from abroad. This alone gives a market for 
 a quantity equal to the sixteen million surplus bushels of Ohio ; and, 
 if we supplied the whole, though at the reduced price of one dollar and 
 twenty-five cents per bushel, when the average in England is one 
 dollar and seventy-five cents, it would be a gain of near four millions 
 yearly. But the quantity consumed would be greatly increased by a 
 reduction in the duty and price. The quantity taken beyond what 
 is now taken, beside great additions to the meats, might reasonably be 
 estimated at forty or fifty millions of bushels, a considerable portion 
 of which we could furnish, as well as the north of Europe. 
 
 [Mr. Huntington inquired if Mr. W. estimated our crop of grains 
 at only fifty millions of bushels, or stated that England took two- thirds 
 of it all.] 
 
 By no means, sir. The whole crop exceeds five hundred millions 
 of bushels, including all the grains, and exceeds eighty-four millions 
 of wheat alone ; and England, of course, takes only two-thirds of all 
 we send abroad. I have not been talking of a market abroad for all 
 our agricultural productions, — as those alone equal from six to eight 
 hundred millions of dollars yearly, — but of their surplus. Those pro- 
 ductions, after supplying the wants of fifteen or sixteen millions of 
 people engaged in or connected with the production of them, and three 
 
 * Appendix, R. 
 
382 TARIFF. 
 
 or four millions more connected with commerce and other pursuits, 
 yield a surplus of near one hundred millions of dollars in value ; and, 
 as that finds abundant and high markets abroad, or otherwise, it affects 
 the sales and prices of all which is transferred from producers to con- 
 sumers at home, and serves to enrich or impoverish the whole country. 
 The present tariff, I have shown, tends to drive us from the best 
 foreign markets for the disposal of those surplus products ; to lessen 
 the number of those markets, as well as their demands, by provoking 
 duties against us, which are higher, and more embarrassing and inju- 
 rious, by way of retaliation. It tends to injure us not only in Eng- 
 land and France, but in Germany also, where the tariff usually does 
 not exceed twenty per cent., and in Prussia is intended to be kept down 
 still lower; and where, as in South America and Asia, — great and 
 growing markets for many of our productions, — the imposts are light 
 compared with our own. 
 
 Doing all we can by negotiation to correct inequalities against us 
 elsewhere, let us, then, in the true and redeeming spirit of morals and 
 sound legislation, proceed to do right ourselves in respect to the tariff, 
 to set a good example of revenue duties, and then urge with effect, as 
 we may, in England and Erance no less than Germany, a reciprocal 
 liberality in all such cases as are not now mutual, or are not precluded 
 by a local policy as to luxuries. 
 
 But if other nations should not at once meet our reduction in duties 
 by corresponding ones on their part, we shall still, though ill requited 
 by foreigners, be gainers from our own moderation, under the great 
 principle that all consumers here will, by our reduction, pay less for 
 what they buy from abroad ; and the producers here will be better able 
 to compete with others in the markets of the whole world, and will sell 
 more, and will make more money on what they do sell, as the produc- 
 tion of it here, under lower duties on all they consume, will cost them 
 less. 
 
 The only rainbow which now tinges the gloom is the hope that the 
 tariff of 1842 may become in this way mitigated, if not abandoned 
 here, and then still more abroad ; and that improved foreign markets 
 will be thus encouraged in Europe and South America, cooperating 
 with the vast one just forced open in China, under a duty not ranging 
 there, on an average, so high as twenty per cent., and through which 
 alone we may be able to aid more in supplying a population, equal to 
 half that of the whole human race, with whatever our mines or man- 
 ufactures or agriculture can furnish, agreeable to their taste or suitable 
 to their wants. 
 
 And what, sir, is offered in reply to all the dangers and losses a 
 perseverance in this system exposes us to in our greatest foreign mar- 
 kets in Europe ? A new and better home market, instead of them. 
 This is another of the plausible and deluding positions that reconcile 
 many to the restrictive system, but which cannot stand the test of 
 scrutiny or facts. There is a charm to the hearts of all in the word 
 
TARIFF. 333 
 
 "home." But do not the articles of comfort and necessity we procure 
 abroad from all regions help to increase the charm of home, as well as 
 what we raise or make nearer? — the tea and coffee we drink from the 
 Indies? the sugar we eat from Brazil? the clothes, and salt, and iron, 
 we use from Europe ? Are they from all climes not procured by 
 means of our labors at home, as well as the other articles we buy, that 
 are made here? But, in an economical or pecuniary view, it is 
 reiterated, again and again, that the home market is the best, and an 
 ample substitute for others. Can gentlemen dwell on this, when so 
 vast a quantity of our productions, consumed at home, is never sold, 
 but used by those raising or making them ? Think you that, for the 
 rest, which the producers may desire to exchange or sell, the home 
 market of one or two millions of people only, connected with manufac- 
 tures, is as great as that abroad, of near eight hundred millions, 
 circling, as our commerce does, with that surplus, to every zone and 
 every sea, — and better and better still as would become the foreign 
 markets, if we only encouraged more and more the principles of a freer 
 trade with them ? Recollect, too, that the home market is and always 
 has been first supplied ; but still it has proved, and always will prove, 
 to be utterly insufficient for all we raise. Instead of being the best 
 market for our surplus of a hundred millions yearly, it is no market 
 at all for it ; and, but for the foreign markets, the whole would perish 
 on our hands ; or the industry of the country could become so 
 paralyzed as not to produce it, and obtain all the necessaries and com- 
 forts it brings back in return, and showers over every fireside. So 
 far from the home market being a substitute for the foreign for all 
 these vast surplus productions, it is filled and glutted, and can take 
 no more of them before they become a surplus. That position, then, 
 is entirely indefensible. Others talk of the near exchanges in the 
 home market being much more profitable to the producer. But how 
 is the fact ? He may, to be sure, quickly exchange a bushel of wheat 
 with a neighboring manufacturer for a shovel, each valued at a dollar. 
 But if, in the freer trade and more open market abroad, under a low 
 duty, the shovel, equally good, could be bought for eighty cents, — 
 taking off half the present average forty per cent, duty, — and his 
 wheat sold twenty per cent, higher, or at a dollar and a fifth, will he 
 not be forty cents better under the low duty ? And after all the 
 freight and charges, though equalling half the difference, if the village 
 merchant performs both of these operations for him, and takes his 
 wheat and lets him have the shovel as quick as the manufacturer 
 could, is he not still a gainer of twenty cents on a dollar ? and are not 
 all the great channels, and means, and instruments of commerce, at 
 the same time, more employed and invigorated by more freights? 
 But others may argue that, by means of the restrictive system, man- 
 ufacturers will increase so much faster than farmers that the home 
 market for domestic produce will enlarge so as speedily to consume all 
 the usual surplus, though it will be at a lower price, probably, and 
 
334 TARIFF. 
 
 furnishing manufactured fabrics at a higher price, as before shown, if 
 a high duty is continued as necessary to protect them. But every 
 one who scrutinizes our commercial records knows that experience 
 teaches just the reverse of this. The surplus productions, that the 
 home market cannot purchase and consume, have increased, rather 
 than diminished, since this restrictive system was in force. Under it, 
 instead of its becoming less necessary to go abroad, it has become 
 more necessary. In a country with such immense quantities of fertile 
 land at low prices, the agricultural productions increase faster, far, 
 than the manufactures ; and every addition to our agricultural popu- 
 lation, which is made at the rate of four per cent, yearly, augments, 
 rather than diminishes, the surplus, as each new member of society 
 here, instead of being, as in some countries, a new burden, and eating 
 up a part of what the others have, or need, becomes a producer, and, 
 ere long, adds yearly to the common income much more, on an 
 average, than he consumes. Gentlemen seem blind to this beautiful 
 and encouraging peculiarity in our national position, and which should 
 justly render our country long a real asylum for the famished of all 
 nations ; and they find it difficult to get rid of European and Asiatic 
 ideas, where agriculture is stationary, and every new birth tends to 
 produce scarcity and suffering. Look at the official figures in con- 
 nection with these supposed facts. In 1816, by imposing higher 
 duties, we were assured that an additional and better home market 
 would speedily be created by an increase in manufactures, and all our 
 surplus productions would be consumed here, and profitably, and the 
 country become independent of foreign markets, and of the pauper 
 labor of Europe. How has this prediction been verified? So far 
 from happening, in the next eight years, ruin overspread the country, 
 and the home market utterly failed as to our surplus. Again : the 
 duties, in 1824, were raised still higher, with a promise that the hope 
 would then be fulfilled, under great additions to our manufactures. 
 They were said to be on the eve of taking root. But, in only four 
 short years, again disappointed in the growth and sufficiency of the 
 home market, came the higher tariff of 1828 ; and again in 1842, to 
 run another disappointing round, comes a tariff still higher than that 
 of 1828. In the mean time, to test, by the actual official figures, how 
 poorly the home market has grown in a whole quarter of a century, so 
 as to absorb all or most of our surplus, it appears that this surplus, 
 now required to be exported or to rot on our hands, is near a hundred 
 per cent, more than it was twenty years ago ; and, as before shown, 
 the aggregate of it exported during the last ten years is more than 
 double what the aggregate was in the previous ten. Even during the 
 greatest height of the duties, it appears, by the tables used on the 
 other side, from 1821 to 1832, — the period when the duties began 
 to be reduced, — the surplus, instead of being more and more used up 
 here and purchased in the home market, increased from $43,671,894 
 to $63,137,470 —about fifty per cent. 
 
TARIFF. 385 
 
 At this rate of progress in the home market (taking off all our 
 surplus), it would not be effected till doomsday; and, indeed, would 
 yearly grow worse and worse, instead of better and better. But if 
 any senator supposes that it is possible, under this new and higher 
 tariff, in the face of these recorded facts, to tempt so many more into 
 manufacturing as to augment their demand somewhat faster and check 
 somewhat the production, what, in the mean time, is to become even 
 of the reduced surplus and the owners of it, till the whole is yearly 
 absorbed ? And what but ruin — widespread and inevitable ruin — 
 must gradually overshadow and overwhelm the whole of them? No, 
 sir. Our reason, our experience, our common sense, when applied to 
 this novel condition, show that, beyond all the home market can take, 
 a surplus from agriculture will, on the contrary, grow as our settle- 
 ments grow ; and more and more need foreign markets, till our people, 
 if remaining free and united, cover the spaces between the Mississippi 
 and the Rocky Mountains, and thence to the Pacific, moving westward, 
 as a branch of the Caucasian race, to the furthest limits of the globe. 
 Saying nothing now of Texas or Canada, this growth in agriculture 
 will never halt till a denser population, and older skill, and greater 
 capital, divert a larger proportion profitably and naturally to such 
 manufactures as can flourish here without artificial stimulus. Let me 
 entreat gentlemen not to overlook these unerring indications of the 
 present utter insufficiency of the home market, because we happen to 
 do what is so much relied on in this debate — consume a hundred 
 thousand bales of cotton more than we did ten years ago. Can they 
 forget that we produce probably a million more bales than we did ten 
 years ago, or as much in all as it was then estimated was grown in 
 the whole world ? And what is to become of the additional nine hun- 
 dred thousand bales beyond all the larger home market takes, unless it 
 is sent abroad ? And do they not see, by the very last arrivals, that 
 England, in a single year, has bought and consumed half as much 
 more of our cotton as the whole wants of our home market ? Even 
 France consumes fifty per cent, more of our cotton than all our home 
 market; though, in 1831, the manufacturers themselves estimated that 
 we then used as much of it as she did. Hence, in point of fact, the 
 French market alone, beside the greater increase in England, has far 
 outstripped, in its demands and wants of this article, all our boasted 
 home market. 
 
 But if we were generally to compare markets for raw cotton, — the 
 home and the foreign, — when, in fact, it is not a comparison, but a 
 clear gain of all the foreign ones, what is the result ? The foreign 
 took, last year, two million two hundred thousand bales, to only 
 about three hundred thousand consumed at home, — or more than 
 seven times as much ; and the greater demands of England alone are 
 such, that she makes two hundred and fifty millions' worth yearly of 
 cotton fabrics to our forty-seven and a half millions, or five hundred 
 per cent. more. 
 
336 TARIFF. 
 
 A senator on the other side has talked of the great home market of 
 England for her own manufactures, and has held it up as an example 
 to us. But does he not know that, after supplying all her home 
 market, she has a surplus of manufactures, for which she must and 
 does find other markets in her foreign possessions or in foreign coun- 
 tries, and large and numerous ones, or she would not live unprostrated 
 a single year 1 She exports from two hundred to two hundred and 
 thirty millions of dollars a year of surplus manufactures, beyond all 
 her home market, independent of other domestic productions, equal to 
 near seventy million dollars more. All this immense sum would 
 become lost. — the articles valueless, — if she did not find or provide 
 foreign markets for it. This is, in truth, as to principle, the example 
 that should be held up for us. 
 
 She has negotiated, and colonized, and fought, for a century or 
 more, to extend the foreign markets, to consume her products ; and, 
 without those markets, would have continued what she before was, — a 
 second or third rate power in Europe, — or would long since have sunk 
 under her wars and debt, instead of being, as she is now, the prepon- 
 derating power in the world. Assisted by those markets, she has been 
 enabled to add not only possession after possession there, but in Africa 
 and America ; and empire after empire in Asia and Australia, until 
 her landed capital away from home is valued at more than half its 
 great amount there, and her tributary population away is more than 
 tenfold the rest ; all of it exceeding one hundred and eighty millions. 
 Thus, while the annual produce of Great Britain alone is only about 
 $2,500,000,000, she has one of near $4,400,000,000, including her 
 dependencies ; and, while the population of most European countries 
 consume, per head, only about two-thirds of a shilling's worth of her 
 manufactures, and we but seventeen shillings per head, her colonies in 
 America consume thirty-one and a half shillings' worth per head, 
 those in the West Indies seventy-two, and those of British origin in 
 Australia two hundred and thirty-five, and thus indirectly help much 
 to build up and sustain her vast industry at home. 
 
 What we, too, would have been, but for our foreign markets, was 
 forcibly shadowed forth during the embargo of 1808, and the non- 
 intercourse in 1809, and in a remoter degree during a part of the war 
 of 1812. All those measures may have been proper, looking to high 
 political considerations ; but what did the farmer and ship-owner think 
 of the blessings and excellences of a home market alone, during the 
 period when little was sent abroad 1 For many years, beside England 
 and France for large foreign markets for our greatest staples, what 
 should we have been without still others, — without breaking into the 
 formerly prohibited possessions of Spain in America, without a more 
 enlarged intercourse with the vast empire of Brazil, without more 
 extensive markets in Germany, and our vessels exporting our products 
 more and more to remotest Asia and the isles of the Pacific ? Waiv- 
 ing further illustrations on this, it could hardly be credited that the 
 
TARIFF. 33T 
 
 protective system was so obstinately adhered to, when it not only 
 tended to injure all foreign markets, and throw us on the insufficient 
 home one, but to drive from the ocean much of the ships and navi- 
 gators and capital engaged in transporting these surplus productions 
 to those markets in almost every region, and bringing back, in return 
 for them, the spare comforts and necessaries of every other people. 
 
 The injurious influence of this high system of duties on our whole 
 navigation, domestic as well as foreign, was capable of demonstration. 
 It had often been boasted of as an antagonist system to that of foreign 
 trade ; and the arguments to justify it had been not only such as we 
 have been refuting, but that the navigating interest, as a whole, would 
 not suffer, if cut off from abroad, in a considerable degree, because the 
 coasting trade would be so much more augmented as to make up for 
 all loss in that which was foreign. A moment's examination, however, 
 will show the whole of this to be equally delusive with the idea that, 
 by a high tariff, a new and better home market is substituted for the 
 foreign. 
 
 In the first place, the increased duty over twenty per cent, on the 
 imported hemp, iron and cordage, which enter into ship-building, has 
 been carefully computed to equal at least five dollars a ton. This, on 
 our whole tonnage of 2,092,360 tons, would be an additional tax, as it 
 is repaired and rebuilt, of $10,461,800. If the whole is renewed in 
 five years, on an average, the new burden would equal annually 
 $2,092,900. If gentlemen spread the renewal over more years, the 
 proportion is only varied. Almost half of this tax falls on the tonnage 
 engaged in foreign * trade, and the rest on that in the fisheries and 
 domestic navigation. There is no difference thus far in favor of the 
 latter; while the former, as to repairs, can sometimes gain a little 
 advantage over the latter, by being able to supply sails and cables 
 abroad not so highly taxed. 
 
 To show the force of this new burden more strongly by an illustration 
 on a smaller scale, readily comprehended, and coming nearer home to 
 the business and bosoms of my constituents, take the tonnage of New 
 Hampshire, which is mostly confined to the one small port of Portsmouth, 
 whose population is between seven and eight thousand. Its foreign 
 tonnage alone is about fifteen thousand, on which five dollars increased 
 duties amounts to seventy-five thousand dollars ; and which, spread 
 over five years, for such repairs and renewals as are equal to its present 
 value, would be yearly about two dollars per head for the whole popu- 
 lation of that town. This is as much as all their other taxes united. 
 But, in the next stage of its evil operation, it falls heavier on the foreign 
 than the domestic trade ; for the tonnage in that, costing more than it 
 otherwise would, cannot afford to carry freights so low as it otherwise 
 might, and must charge higher to the owner of the produce and mer- 
 chandise, and thus devolve a part or all the increased tax on them, or 
 submit, as it does in most cases, under the competition of vessels from 
 abroad, not so highly taxed, to carry freights at the old or a still lower 
 
338 TARIFF. 
 
 price. The raiser of the produce might be pleased to find transporta- 
 tion cheaper, if effected fairly, and in free and equal competition; 
 but must regret to see it at the expense of the navigator, and under a 
 system of vicious legislation, -which makes it lower virtually, by dis- 
 criminating duties against our own citizens, and in favor of foreigners. 
 
 Let our own citizens in honest and useful pursuits have, at least, 
 an equal chance with others. No onerous burdens, — an open sea, a 
 flowing sail, and a fair fight, in industry and enterprise, and not a 
 novel kind of navigation act, made by ourselves, favorable to for- 
 eigners, and hostile to Americans. The day for great exclusive priv- 
 ileges to navigation had long gone by, as unnecessary, both in this 
 country and England ; and Cromwell's famous navigation act, however 
 extolled by the senator from Maine, had, in the time of it and since, 
 been regarded by many as impolitic, and had virtually been abandoned 
 in England the last twenty years, in several important respects. 
 Dutch pride had been humbled by Blake before it passed, and Dutch 
 prosperity had been sapped by her wars and high taxes, rather than 
 by British legislation. It would be idle for England or this country, 
 or any other power, ever to expect durably great prosperity by legis- 
 lation, however full of bounties or restrictions, unless their people are 
 islanders or fishermen, or have natural facilities in naval stores and 
 harbors for extensive commerce. 
 
 Our tonnage has seldom been more flourishing, except during the 
 calamitous wars of Europe, than under our low duties, most of the 
 time, from 1830 to 1840. It increased ninety-five per cent., while 
 the English, in that period, our great rivals, increased but forty-nine 
 per cent,, and the French only fifty; while during the last year it 
 has declined in quantity, besides being much less profitable. By the 
 operation of high restrictions, the exports, too, are expected to be 
 lessened, through an increased home market. The system has natu- 
 rally that tendency, in conformity with its design, as we have seen in 
 the official returns, by the exports proving nearly double as much, 
 under ten years of falling duties, as ten of high ones. But the boast, 
 by some, that if it cuts off agricultural exports, it makes and substi- 
 tutes as many manufactured ones, has been verified very badly ; as, 
 while the former, in ten years, has added twenty millions, the latter 
 has added but two or three, and the cotton manufacture only half a 
 million. The foreign imports and exports are intended to be dimin- 
 ished by the very essence of the system. Especially is it aimed at 
 the imports, intending to substitute in their stead domestic products 
 of a like character. Such, too, has been the effect of it here. When 
 it got into full operation after 1818, the imports began to fall off; and 
 they never rose, during the full continuance of the system to 1833, so 
 high again as in that year, though swollen much, from time to time, 
 by the foreign loans to the States, brought home in merchandise. 
 
 Again : under its operation the past year, the imports have fallen, 
 in the aggregate, near eleven millions, and of the consumable commod- 
 
TARIFF. 339 
 
 ities, and such as pay much freight, over thirty millions ; there being, 
 I understand, near twenty millions of the free goods this year in 
 specie over and above the quantity in 1842, and, indeed, over what 
 has been reexported this year. Do the navigating interest lose noth- 
 ing by this reduced quantity and value of the imports to be freighted, 
 — considering, also, at the same time, that the whole exports in 1843 
 have become less, by four to five millions, than in 1842 1 
 
 But, while the tonnage engaged in the foreign trade is undergoing 
 this loss of values to be carried both ways across the ocean, beside the 
 still greater loss in reduced prices for freights, the chairman says the 
 inward freights have been better. If he means, by that, our ships 
 have brought home a larger portion of all imports than usual, I do not 
 see anything in that to indicate improvement ; because they being cut 
 off, by a high tariff, from bringing home iron, hemp, etc., as much as 
 usual, have been glad, rather than come home in ballast, to take any- 
 thing at little profit. 
 
 [Mr. Evans said he meant that the price of freights was higher.] 
 
 By no means, generally. For where thirty or forty shillings a ton 
 has been got formerly for some freights from Liverpool, it has, I 
 understand, in certain cases, in 1843, been brought for eight shillings ; 
 and where a penny per pound has once been got for carrying raw cot- 
 ton to Europe, half a penny only has of late been obtained in many 
 cases, and a hundred vessels are now probably waiting in New Orleans 
 for freights. 
 
 But how fares the coasting trade, which is to be so greatly pro- 
 moted by such a tariff"? The owner of the tonnage in that, whether 
 on the sea-board or our inland seas and mighty rivers, is, to be sure, 
 protected from foreign competition. But he must suffer to the whole 
 extent of the increased cost of his vessel, and carry at the same price 
 for freight as before ; or, if he raises the freight so as to indemnify him- 
 self, will only shift a large burden from his own shoulders to those of 
 the producer or consumer, already so oppressed ; and, instead of any- 
 body being benefited by the high duty except the manufacturer, an 
 additional tax falls on most, if not all others. The tax, too, reacts 
 sometimes on the hardy ship-builder. If his materials cost more and 
 he can sell no higher, it equals from a million to three-fourths a year 
 on the tonnage built in 1842 ; and, as the business will thus diminish, 
 must extend its baleful influences to the lumber-man, the timber- 
 grower, and all the mechanical trades engaged in ship-building and 
 repairs. But look a little further at the next step in its bad conse- 
 quences. 
 
 How is the remuneration for all this to occur in the increase of the 
 domestic tonnage? Does that, as is estimated, have more to carry, 
 and further, than it did when the foreign trade was larger 1 So far 
 from it, all the domestic agricultural produce which is sold at New 
 York, Boston, and Providence, is brought no further from the west 
 or south, and its returns are carried back no further, than if the addi- 
 
340 TARIFF. 
 
 tional consumption supposed to be caused near those places had been 
 transported abroad, or the additional manufacturing products made 
 near, and to be sent back to the south or west, came from abroad. 
 But the whole foreign freights of it, and all the persons and capital 
 and profits of true American origin and character connected therewith, 
 are frustrated, and the nation paralyzed, not only in one of its great 
 arms of industry and means of rearing seamen for maritime defence in 
 war, but nothing whatever gained in place of those vital losses by any 
 enlargement of our domestic tonnage. More, sir. As the system 
 expands, the manufacture is calculated to spread nearer to the south 
 and west, and establishments to spring up on the slopes of the Alle- 
 ghanies, and many of the tributaries to the Mississippi and the lakes. 
 All can see that, as these approach nearer the raw materials which 
 they consume, — whether cotton, corn, flour, meats, or other articles, — 
 the domestic transportation, both to and fro, is shortened, and requires 
 less time, capital and employment for the home tonnage. 
 
 Pray tell me, then, whether the effect of this system on the navigat- 
 ing interest, foreign or domestic, be not highly injurious, an unmiti- 
 gated evil ; and what there possibly can be in it to atone to the com- 
 mercial classes for its destructive influences. 
 
 The constitution itself was formed chiefly to protect our foreign 
 commerce ; as the framers of it, whether farmers, merchants, or plant- 
 ers, saw that on the success of that commerce depended the value of 
 all the surplus crops, the ease and cheapness with which they reached 
 good markets. The vessel was like the cart and wagon to hasten the 
 crop onward to a good market ; and the lower the cost of the vessel, 
 the less it was taxed, and the more markets it would freely resort to, 
 the higher would be the prices obtained for the cargo, and more 
 reduced the expense of getting home their returns. If good highways, 
 bridges, and canals, and railroads, are a public blessing, and to be 
 sought for their benefit in internal commerce, so are all improvements 
 by steamboats, faster sailing vessels, cheaper building, and lower 
 duties, and less vexatious regulations, — equal blessings to the producer 
 and consumer, no less than to the navigator. The blow struck, then, 
 by this restrictive system to the commerce of the country, whose num- 
 bers and capital are nearly as large, if not larger, than those of the 
 manufacturers, and a very valuable and useful and indeed national 
 interest, in the view of the framers of the constitution, is a blow fall- 
 ing, at the same time, with as much, if not greater force, on all the 
 producers and consumers of the country. 
 
 The hardy and adventurous fisherman feels it the most, both as 
 navigator and producer of a new article of food. He gets no addi- 
 tional drawback or bounty on account of the higher duties and greater 
 cost of his vessel, and has to sustain the shock after a considerable 
 depression in the prosperity of his business. Computing the whole 
 tonnage in the fisheries at 210,000, the loss on that, in a few years, 
 must be equal to $1,050,000, while the exports of dried fish (his 
 
TARIFF. 341 
 
 gains as a producer) have almost ceased, and the whole business in 
 whaling suffered rivalship and loss from the manufacture of lard oil. 
 
 If the hog, then, is painted in the west as devouring the whale, 
 and if the white fish of the lakes are transported to the east, and sold 
 even in sight of the flakes of our coast, as has happened the last sea- 
 son, so be it, if the result of equal laws and fair competition. But do 
 not neglect or oppress that class whose numbers, though so noiseless, 
 exceed all in the cotton manufactures of the whole Union ; and were 
 deemed so national an object by our fathers, forming a nursery not 
 only for our commercial marine, but our gallant navy, and who aided 
 so ably in the capture of Louisburg (under a commander whose tomb 
 and dwelling-house are near the mouth of the chief harbor of my 
 State) ; and even mingled with Rodgers' rangers, and helped to con- 
 quer Quebec ; and poured out their blood like water on the decks of 
 Paul Jones, in the Revolution, as well as in the hardest sea-fights of 
 Hull, Bainbridge and Decatur, in the late war. Rely on it, sir, 
 always, in all exigencies, will they be found at their posts ; and will 
 compare in morals and worth, no less than daring courage, with any 
 class of the north. The policy of England, on the contrary, has been 
 to continue carefully to cherish her fisheries, as well as navigation. 
 Her annual income from this source is computed at twenty millions of 
 dollars ; while ours, at only half that, and under depression, was to be 
 further prostrated by the renewal of this restrictive policy. England, 
 also, so far from increasing the burdens on her navigation, when 
 embarrassed, has sought out new markets for it to visit, new prod- 
 ucts to be carried, and lowered the duties on all it consumes. Hence 
 her tariff on hemp was low, and had been reduced, — on timber a trifle 
 if from her colonies, and on iron merely nominal. 
 
 But, beyond all this, the policy of our present tariff aimed at the 
 destruction of the reciprocal treaties we possessed as to tonnage ; and, 
 in that way, would destroy the noblest carrying trade of the world. It 
 breathed hostility to everything savoring of free trade, because a 
 standing censure on their discriminating course. These treaties had 
 already been threatened again and again, though without them we 
 could claim no transportation of anything but exports of our own pro- 
 ductions, as all other nations had a like right to carry the export of 
 theirs. This would give us, in practice, only half the freights of all 
 our exports and imports, and half the number of ships or tonnage 
 engaged in our foreign trade. Many seem to believe we do not pos- 
 sess so great a proportion as that now, and a change is called for by 
 the opponents of free trade ; and a hue and cry is raised, that most of 
 our foreign commerce is in foreign bottoms ; and that English naviga- 
 tion, in particular, is yearly crowding us from the ocean. But how 
 is the naked truth ? and what are the losses and dangers the restrict- 
 ive system is exposing us to ? Setting aside the colonial intercourse 
 between us and the British provinces (which rests on peculiar princi- 
 ples, and, by frequent entries and clearances with passengers and 
 29* 
 
342 TARIFF. 
 
 steamboats, and little freight, has a fallacious appearance as to entries, 
 though, in fact, we carry three-fourths of the freights), the American 
 tonnage entering and clearing abroad is nearly treble in quantity that 
 of all the rest of the world ; and the freights we brought home were, 
 in 1842, valued to the extent of $88,724,280; and all others only 
 $11,437,807. Those we carried out were quite three-fourths. These 
 are near the proportions for some years. Who, after so many state- 
 ments to the contrary, can look but with amazement on the compari- 
 sons in the table in my hands, compiled from official returns, of the 
 greater number of entries by American than foreign vessels, from each 
 of the great powers in the world, in 1842, as well as most of the 
 smaller ones, except two, and think what must be the tendency of a 
 system which would exchange this four-fifths for only half of the trade 1 
 (See Table No. 15.)* 
 
 We, from all the world, except the British colonies, had 4259 ves- 
 sels entering here, and all other powers but 916 : we, from England 
 herself, 614 ; she, and all other foreigners thence to us, but 370 : we, 
 from France, 406 vessels, and all others thence but 74 : we, from 
 Spain, 1500, of which two-thirds were from Cuba ; to all others, 82 : 
 we, even from Brazil, about which so much has been said, 174 ; and 
 all others but 26. And, indeed, in all quarters of the globe, there are 
 only two small governments — Sweden and the Hanse Towns — in 
 which the balance is against us, and that balance, in both of them inclu- 
 sive, not so much as it is in our favor with the small republic of Texas, 
 in our own neighborhood. Yet those two trifling exceptions are often 
 inconsiderately thrust forward as conclusive evidence of the general 
 operation of the reciprocal system on our foreign tonnage. Leaving 
 other interesting details, I would only add, that another evil conse- 
 quence from annulling the reciprocity system would be to destroy the 
 whole of our carriage of all the ten to twenty millions which we 
 yearly export of articles of foreign origin. Besides this, it will cut 
 off a profitable and large branch of the carrying trade, nothing of 
 which appears on our official records. It is of this character. Prob- 
 ably 100 to 150 American vessels clear yearly, from Cuba to various 
 parts of the world, with sugar, molasses, and coffee, whose cargoes 
 make no part of our commercial statistics. Many more clear also 
 from Brazil, and some from various other ports in both hemispheres, 
 with cargoes for various quarters, of which we learn nothing, except 
 by foreign statistics and consular returns, or by the profits at some 
 future period brought home in valuable imports. Something like 
 thirty of our vessels have yearly gone with freights to those very Hanse 
 Towns ; some to Antwerp and Trieste, and others still to other ports 
 in the Baltic, from Brazil and Cuba, who, without the principle of our 
 reciprocal treaties, could not thus carry a ton of foreign produce. Let 
 the northern ship-owner, then, look to consequences, before he longer 
 approves a policy likely to end in the destruction of much of this supe- 
 
 * Appendix, S. 
 
TARIFF. 343 
 
 riority on our part, in the indirect as well as direct carrying trade, and 
 in a commercial marine second only to one power in the known 
 world. 
 
 Let the farmer of the mammoth west and of the central States look 
 to this, and the manufacturer, as well as the navigator, of the north. 
 Why, sir ? Because this very trade, which makes a market for bread- 
 stuffs, lard, fish, and most of our exported manufactures, in Cuba, Mex- 
 ico, and Brazil, does it only because the sugar, coffee, and molasses, 
 obtained in exchange, have been, in a great degree, shipped to the north 
 of Europe, and their proceeds returned here in those very articles of 
 foreign iron and hemp which the present tariff and its anti-commercial 
 policy tend to reject. 
 
 I hasten to the last consideration intended to be urged on this occa- 
 sion, which is, that a tariff like this is not founded on a policy likely 
 to be useful permanently to the true manufacturing industry of the 
 country. What that branch of industry really needs is a natural 
 adaptation in the climate, raw material, or mines of the country, to 
 aid the particular business pursued ; and a steady, durable, incidental 
 protection, by collecting, on revenue principles, a suitable portion of 
 revenue from imports. This, too, had better be moderate and dura- 
 ble, with equal regard to all interests, than high and vacillating under 
 party excitement. It had better, even for the manufacturer, be inci- 
 dental to a clear revenue power and practice, than direct and high in 
 the exercise of a protective power of doubtful character ; and had better 
 be equal to all interests, as well as manufactures, so far as incident to 
 a just impost on imports, than be unequal, and thus exposed to changes 
 and unpopularity, as partial on the one hand, and oppressive on the 
 other. Such a moderate and stable protection as this to manufactures 
 I never shall resist, any more than did our fathers in their early tariffs, 
 raising all their revenue in that manner (rather than by direct taxes) 
 which they needed and could obtain, without going above the revenue 
 standard, and thereby injuring commerce, agriculture, and other great 
 interests. Manufactures, under that system, flourished wherever the 
 country was fitted for them ; and the sagacity of such men as Frank- 
 lin and Jefferson saw that they would continue to grow, if lucrative, 
 considering our state of society ; and that they would succeed best, not 
 by unnatural but natural aid, and would push forward steadiest, under 
 their own enterprise and vigor, by moderate duties, and the wants of 
 the country, rather than by being driven ahead of them by forced 
 marches under legislative favor. They did not follow the shiftless sys- 
 tem of running to the government for everything, any more than did 
 the farmers, lawyers, or doctors, any of whom, when in trouble, might 
 as well ask public legislation to assist them. On the contrary, the 
 reliance of all men should be on their own energies and skill, and local 
 advantages, looking — as Sir Robert Peel at last sensibly advises the 
 Tamworth farmers to do, after experiencing the evils of a different 
 course — more to their manures, and less to government. 
 
344 TARIFF. 
 
 Even in 1791, many of the manufacturers (and especially the 
 household ones) had acquired a strong foothold among our people. 
 They were enabled to supply nearly as large a proportion of our wants 
 then, in cottons, woollens, soap, cabinet-work, potters' ware, paper, oils, 
 candles, &c, as they do now. 
 
 Mr. Dallas, also, in 1816, considered many manufactures as fully 
 established, — woollens, cottons, and linen, in some districts, supplying 
 " two-thirds, three-fourths, and even four-fifths," of their wants. But 
 after the war and individual enterprise had multiplied great corporate 
 establishments for making cottons and woollens, which had not pre- 
 viously been so thrifty, the system of direct protection was demanded 
 and acquiesced in for a temporary object, to break the fall, or make the 
 transition easier to a state of peace, but under a strong expectation 
 that its continuance would be limited and temporary. The history of 
 its influence since, even on many manufactures, is well known to have 
 developed many mischiefs. First, it has been very fluctuating ; the 
 high protection and large profits at first tempting too much capital and 
 too prematurely into such business, and thus soon reducing profits, 
 and leading to clamorous demands for duties still higher ; and then, in. 
 hundreds of instances of the finer branches of manufactures, after a 
 series of additional protections, becoming inflated, till the bubble burst, 
 and deplorable bankruptcies followed. It was a kind of intemperate 
 excitement, that only required, in time, additional stimulants, till 
 means and patience were exhausted, and the patient sunk; while 
 other manufacturers, not brought into being that way, and a few of 
 those with agents of great foresight and skill, managed so as to con- 
 tinue through every revulsion, and yield fair profits. These last would 
 continue to do the same under a revenue tariff, with the aid of its steady 
 and durable incidental protection. In the next place, all can see that, 
 if the increased duty makes the manufacture very profitable, it may 
 soon become a political hobby to sustain or enlarge it, in order to grat- 
 ify those interested. Or, if speculative rather than political manufac- 
 turing mingles with honest enterprise in procuring for it additional 
 protection, a sale of the stock is made before a large diversion of cap- 
 ital and persons into this most profitable employment takes place, and 
 reduces the income lower than the general standard, and often throws 
 the loss, as in the mania about merino sheep and moras multicaulis, on 
 unsuspecting purchasers. Besides this, if the manufacture be new, 
 and the owners inexperienced, or have skilful competitors abroad, and 
 countries to contend with where labor and capital are much lower, the 
 business longer established, and where improvements in machinery are 
 frequent, the enterprise will become a most hazardous and changeable 
 one. It is my serious belief that, from such causes, and various abor- 
 tive experiments, and a want of skilful agents, and little omissions to 
 procure early improvements and the best workmen, &c. &c, more 
 capital has been lost in the last twenty years, in the manufactures of 
 cotton and woollen in New England alone, than the whole capital 
 
TARIFF. 345 
 
 which is left in those branches, or the whole debt at the close of our 
 Revolution. • Some of us there can speak feelingly and experimentally 
 on this subject. At the same time, I neither conceal nor deny, that, 
 from skilful attention and other fortunate circumstances, others have 
 made large profits. But, as a whole, what have the Union, and espe- 
 cially New England, gained, in the long run, by such a system ? They 
 have gained, I admit, by those manufactures which grow without the 
 aid of a hot-bed system; they will continue to gain by them. So 
 have they gained by household manufactures of wool and cotton, where 
 pursued at leisure moments, and by the decrepit or young, not fitted 
 for much other employment, though unprofitable otherwise now, on a 
 large scale, without the aid of modern machinery. But, under the 
 first circumstances, they are often economical, healthy, moral ; and it 
 is they which Mr. Jefferson so eloquently commends as late as 1812, 
 and Franklin as early as 1784. 
 
 The theory of the old and true policy was to let industry, of its 
 own accord, and not by artificial exertions, pursue what was most nat- 
 ural to our state of society, the free genius and institutions of our peo- 
 ple, and their position on the surface of the earth ; not seeking to 
 raise tropical fruits for our markets in the temperate zone, or to make 
 our population live merely on exhilarating gas and champagne. What 
 do gentlemen imagine has been the decline in such manufactures, after 
 all the machinery and hot-bed aid to others, — and others, too, whose 
 great use of machinery, it is argued, sinks the household labors into 
 insignificance and loss ? Why, sir, though the prices of the last are 
 little affected by the tariff (they being mostly made to use, and not to 
 sell), yet, by the census, the "family -made goods," mostly wool and 
 flax, equal yearly near $30,000,000. They are stated at $29,023,- 
 380 ; when the great woollen establishments, about which our halls 
 have been so loudly and frequently besieged, yield only $20,696,999 ; 
 and the cotton establishments, noisier than their own spindles, yield 
 but $46,350,453. This is near half as much household, as both 
 cotton and woollen, of the great separate establishments. These 
 returns are, doubtless, imperfect in some degree, but equally so as to 
 both kinds. To see, also, how little the whole manufactures of the 
 country have increased in the aggregate during thirty years, with such 
 vast governmental protection, they are now returned at only $239,- 
 836,224, when, in 1810, they were computed at $117,694,602, and 
 when the cottons, in 1831, were estimated by their friends at $40,- 
 000,000, and have increased since but little more than six; and in 
 1810, with wool and flax, were estimated as high as they are now 
 alone, except six to seven millions ; and when the other manufac- 
 tures which sprung up before the protective system in 1816 have 
 increased much faster in proportion, and those great industrial pursuits 
 less protected, and even in some respects oppressed, have in agricul- 
 ture probably quadrupled their annual produce, and nearly trebled 
 the exports of domestic origin, after supplying any additional home 
 
346 TARIFF. 
 
 market. They have risen from $42,366,659, in 1810, to $113,805,- 
 634, in 1840. This is because the last is a congenial, suitable, and 
 healthy employment ; and the other, in most cases, is artificial, prema- 
 ture, and sickly. 
 
 Let it not be said that I wish to see the gains by modern machinery 
 and steam abandoned, where these last can be used for large purposes, 
 and with profit. But I would not see them attempted where the state 
 of society, capital, and skill, is not favorable to compete with others in 
 the use of them, without ruinous risks and losses, unless bolstered up 
 by high duties and taxes. I would buy and use such manufactures 
 whenever cheapest and best ; but for numerous home wants, in a new 
 and agricultural country, like much of ours, why not take what is 
 produced by such establishments and improvements elsewhere, beyond 
 what can be furnished through the frugal aid of household life ? Why 
 tempt our own people, by bounties, into the heated atmospheres of 
 great establishments, forced into being often prematurely here, by 
 high duties, and at the expense of other large classes ? What com- 
 mendation can be bestowed on these, in a country young and enter- 
 prising, over the bracing air of the ploughman's field, or the rosy 
 exercise of the dairy, or the transportation of the products of both 
 over the mountain wave, and throwing the line and harpoon in every 
 sea ? Most persons point to New England as the best illustration of 
 the great profits by the protective system. But, beside the mischiefs 
 already alluded to as incidental to it, what has she gained from it in 
 other respects, when all her population connected with her great cotton 
 establishments would not fill a single county in several of our States 1 
 when the fisheries alone support greater numbers 1 when many of 
 her sons are, in their habits, almost as web-footed as the sea-fowl 
 which fly over their heads 1 when, if not diverted from agriculture, 
 and navigation, and the fisheries, her hill-sides would probably have 
 been ploughed nearer their tops, her swamps more thoroughly drained, 
 her manures improved, additional inventions in raking, threshing, 
 reaping, and sowing, sought out, or the present ones discovered sooner; 
 her fisheries doubled, and grown to what they are in England, and her 
 ships still more and more carrying the surplus produce of much of the 
 civilized world? 
 
 Her population and capital would, in that event, have been as large, 
 if not larger, than now ; and quite as hardy, moral, useful, and Amer- 
 ican, as it is now ; and by moderate and regular profits, far less tempt- 
 ing to inroads on our frugal habits, and on our primitive morals, now 
 exposed to smuggling and all its train of demoralizations. 
 
 To be sure, we have the flourishing villages that were often referred 
 to. But, in one of them, a whole crop of early proprietors had lost 
 their investments ; in another, the church was deserted, and the dwell- 
 ings and factory buildings desolate; and in the interior, numerous 
 other cases existed of dilapidation and ruin to early establishments, 
 called prematurely and unskilfully into being by the bounties of your 
 
TARIFF. 347 
 
 high protecting duties. And it was melancholy to reflect, that even 
 where some establishments had prospered, and cities clustered around 
 them, it had been at the loss of the more remote country, — draining it 
 often of capital as well as enterprise and labor, and causing decline 
 and desertion in one place, to produce business and display in another. 
 Suppose, then, that their profits are great in some establishments, 
 and the wages of labor, as well as dividends on capital, high. Sup- 
 pose, too, that there, in the vibrations of traffic, prices, and markets, 
 some have yielded exorbitant profits ; yet they cannot long continue to 
 do it steadily, without tempting (where everything is so open and 
 free) other labor and other capital to flock to them, and equalize their 
 profits to what are made in other branches of industry. The whole 
 business in cottons, woollens,- iron, &c, on a large scale, depends so 
 much for profits on little improvements in machinery and chemistry, 
 &c, that the perils and reverses at times appal the stoutest heart; 
 while, on the contrary, the large gains from machinery, which have 
 been referred to by the chairman, are not permanent to that class, but 
 temporary to them, though permanent and useful to the world at 
 large. Others soon come in and employ them also, till the rate of 
 profits is but little higher than in other pursuits. Hence, granting 
 that England has not merely the labor of two millions, but over fifty 
 millions of men, in her cotton machinery alone, and that of three hun- 
 dred millions of men in all her manufactures, — with machinery so 
 perfect, that, if not talking, it tells when a thread breaks, or the water- 
 power vacillates, — has not France, also, and Germany, and the United 
 States, no less than her people, burst down the barriers of patents and 
 the restrictions against the export of machinery, and let in all nations 
 to the benefits of it, and reduced the profits of those using it to near 
 the standard in other pursuits, unless raised higher, for a time, by 
 discriminating and partial duties? Dr. Faustus, when he invented 
 the type, might, like any other monopolist, profit much for a while by 
 keeping the improvement secret, and adhering to old prices ; but, soon 
 as the invention becomes known, or the monopoly broken down, the 
 individual gains in printing, as well as other business aided by ma- 
 chinery, had to stand little, if any higher, than those in employments 
 not so aided. And pray tell me, sir, as a question of profit to the 
 whole country by machinery in manufactures, and aids not derived 
 from labor, is there no profit also to the whole by labor-saving ma- 
 chinery in agriculture, — the plough and the scythe, — by raking with 
 horse-power, and threshing, and even reaping and cleaning grain, the 
 same way ? But, much more, is there nothing in the dews and rains, 
 and winds and sunshine, with which God has blessed peculiarly, and 
 always will bless, his chosen race — the tillers of the soil ? — nothing 
 to aid the country in navigation, beyond labor and capital ? — 
 nothing in the oceans, lakes, and rivers, that cover three-fourths of 
 the globe, for highways to the seaman and merchant 1 — nothing in the 
 winds, which blow freely to waft him 1 — nothing to the country in the 
 
348 TARIFF. 
 
 fisheries, beyond labor and the vessel? — nothing in the shore and 
 bank treasures of the finny tribes, growing for the adventurer without 
 pay or expense ; and the whales which, unhired, await his coming in 
 every sea? Opening the earth to all profitable employments, the 
 bounties of Providence naturally attract more to agriculture, not only 
 from its healthfullness, but safety, and its best guards against famine 
 and disease, so incident to crowded manufacturing. In the worst 
 revulsions, the surplus of grain and meat can help to sustain life ; but 
 neither cottons, nor woollens, nor iron, can be eaten, when markets fail, 
 or war cuts off other supplies. 
 
 In another point of view, the supposed gain to this country by the 
 use of machinery in great manufacturing establishments becomes, in 
 truth, only a question between the expediency of having them used 
 here, where dearest, least understood, or least perfect, and abroad, 
 where it is the reverse. 
 
 So, if we go to the statistics of the late census, similar results are 
 demonstrated. It is imperfect in some respects, and conclusions some- 
 what different are drawn by different persons. But, after being revised 
 and corrected, the gains in manufacturing, though high, are probably 
 not much higher than in other pursuits, if we deduct what is added by 
 the discriminating duties. Without that deduction, they reach near 
 one hundred and sixty dollars yearly, on an average, to each person 
 employed and connected with them; whereas, in agriculture, they 
 yield but sixty-two dollars, or less than half, and in navigation only 
 eighty dollars. 
 
 [Mr. Evans here denied that he had stated the earnings in manu- 
 factures to be so high.] 
 
 No, sir ; but the official returns, when duly revised, state this ; and 
 it can be accounted for fully in no other way than the protection they 
 enjoy, — great, even on a twenty per cent, duty, and much more on 
 one of eighty or a hundred. 
 
 [Mr. Evans said a deduction for interest on capital in manufactures 
 should be made.] 
 
 So it might be in all other pursuits, as well as this, when you come 
 to divide the gross produce between the capitalist and the laborer. 
 But it happened that the capital was larger per head in agriculture 
 than in manufactures ; it being two hundred and thirty-five dollars 
 each in the first, and two hundred dollars only in the last, though in 
 navigation it was higher, being three hundred and three dollars each. 
 (See Tables No. 15 and 16.)* 
 
 Gentlemen may take whichsoever horn of the dilemma is most agree- 
 able ; and if the profits are no higher, after the reduction of the gain 
 by high duties, than in other pursuits, there is no advantage to the 
 whole country by the forcing system. We pay for all we get. But 
 if they are higher after it, then the forcing is not necessary, besides 
 its being partial and wasteful in order to aid them. 
 
 * Appendix, S and T. 
 
TARIFF. 349 
 
 Many, however, urge that manufactures ought to be encouraged by 
 a costly protective system, because their labor and business are so 
 much more American than any other. The additional persons it 
 employed in this country, it was argued, increased the public pros- 
 perity and independence enough to counterbalance all the evils of so 
 unnatural and burdensome a system. Now, sir, a little analysis will 
 expose the folly of this assumption. When more persons were tempted 
 by war duties and privations, and then by the high discriminating 
 tariffs which followed, to embark in manufactures, whence came they? 
 They were either imported foreigners (against whom, however, he 
 nurtured no idle prejudices), or they were Americans, previously 
 engaged in agriculture, commerce, and the fisheries. 
 
 Now, did this change in pursuit of a thousand Americans increase 
 the number of Americans before existing ? It was still but a thou- 
 sand in the new employment. And did the change make their 
 labor and capital any more American than it had been before, by 
 going from agriculture to manufactures ? So, if a portion of our 
 present manufacturers, under lower duties, should quit these for the 
 plough, the counter, or the deck, where they or their fathers before 
 labored, would they, by this restoration, cease to be Americans, or 
 their industry cease to be American ? By no means. And the prej- 
 udice excited by partisans against the foreign or pauper labor of 
 Europe, in order to color the truth as to the case just stated (but 
 which, it is perceived, has no concern with it, as, after and before the 
 change, the labor of the same persons is just as American, and just as 
 little European, as it was before), is a prejudice which is to operate 
 only when beneficial to them, and never when hostile to their interests. 
 They never reject the pauper labor of Europe, if it emigrates here 
 and works at lower wages in their establishments ; but they invite it 
 hither, and hunt for it in Canada. They never reject it, if it comes 
 here in the shape of new improvements in their machinery or dyes ; 
 but they send agents across the Atlantic to buy and import it. In fine, 
 they never reject, but discriminate in favor of it, as compared with 
 other articles, if it comes here as a raw material useful to manufactures. 
 
 The beggarly lazzaroni of Naples may labor to collect rags for paper, 
 and it is all very well for the manufacturer to encourage it by a low 
 rather than prohibitory duty, and make the community pay a high 
 one on the paper manufactured from them. The convict laborer of 
 New Holland, and the slaves of Morocco, may shear cheap wool and 
 send it here free, or at a pittance of duty, to be used by the manufac- 
 turers, while those who use the woollens made from it must pay a high 
 tax on them. Even the Indian toil of Chili or Buenos Ay res may 
 throw the lasso and collect hides at small expense, and the manufac- 
 turers are willing to benefit at the lowest duties on them by all that 
 pauper labor, and charge us high for the leather made from them ; 
 and act similarly by the labor of the serfs of Russia in raising hemp, 
 which, though paying a higher duty, pays one not half so high as is 
 30 
 
350 TARIFF. 
 
 imposed on us for the manufacture of it ; and, without giving more 
 instances, the very garments we wear are colored in part by indigo, 
 cultivated by the slave labor of India, admitted free here ; though the 
 garments are taxed high, and though it is an American production, 
 and once considerably raised in the Southern States. Hence, there is 
 no indemnity for the other injuries of the protective system, by its 
 employing or encouraging, in these ways, either American labor or 
 capital ; but, on the contrary, a direct discrimination in favor of the 
 pauper labor all the world over, to the injury of all American labor 
 at all competing with it, or which might compete with it, if protected 
 by as high a duty as is imposed on the manufactures from it. And 
 why not shield our labor in one case as fully as in the other : and by 
 a like duty, if any of it is devoted, or would then be, to such produc- 
 tions ? And if the farmer (not now financier) of Andalusia should 
 ask for more protection for his pine-apples and grapes, could he not 
 defend the prayer in aid of his American labor and capital quite as 
 plausibly as some parts of the present system are defended ? 
 
 To show, in other respects, how little averse its friends are to the use 
 of foreign labor and foreign products, when useful to them, and that 
 entirely free, let me refer the Senate to thirty or forty such articles in 
 the act of 1842, — a list of most of which is appended to Table No. 4.* 
 
 The only escape from all this is a mere question of dollars and cents 
 in profit and loss by manufactures, over other pursuits ; and not the 
 plausible but exploded one, that they are more American, and there- 
 fore more patriotic. But as to those greater gains, we have already 
 attempted to explain how, in the long run, the species of manufactures 
 raised up by high protection has not been durably productive of large 
 profits to the whole engaged in them, or of advantage to the commu- 
 nity as a whole. 
 
 If the restrictive system, then, employs no more American labor 
 and capital than would be employed in other pursuits and in profita- 
 ble manufactures here, without it, — if it uses foreign labor and foreign 
 products, whenever more beneficial to the manufacturers themselves, — 
 if, in fine, it yields no greater profits to the whole country, as a whole, 
 no greater ability and prosperity, than without it, — I entreat gentlemen 
 to point out how it is more patriotic, or useful, than other pursuits, so 
 as to produce those great advantages, in a general point of view, which 
 are supposed, by some, to counterbalance the many evils already 
 explained. The only specific position left in their favor, unexamined, 
 is, that they tend to make us independent, as a nation, of other coun- 
 tries. It is not independence in producing instruments and munitions 
 of war, and for national defence, as many erroneously suppose ; since 
 those we have long made for ourselves, and the duties, high or low, 
 are of little consequence ; but it is independence for the necessaries 
 and comforts, as well as some of the luxuries, of every-day and peace- 
 ful life. Yes, sir; this kind of independence is gravely urged as 
 
 • Appendix, H. 
 
TARIFF. 351 
 
 momentous to the nation, and for other classes, when the manufac- 
 turers themselves go to foreign countries for all their raw materials, 
 dyes, and machinery, when obtained there cheaper; when they are 
 dependent, and it is a part of their system to remain dependent, on 
 foreign countries for much of their hides, hemp, cheap wool, indigo, 
 and hundreds of other articles, because they obtain them at lower 
 prices there. Can gentlemen forget that this is an admission of all 
 we contend for, which is to be dependent on other countries for manu- 
 factures themselves, no less than other articles, when we can obtain 
 them there cheaper, and only then ? 
 
 On this principle, we only ask leave to amend this partial system 
 so that we may go for fine cottons and woollens to England and France, 
 where long experience and skill, and great capital, enable them to make 
 such articles cheaper than here, and where improvements, too, are rapid 
 and great. So, when dependence here between different classes and 
 pursuits is commended by eloquent arguments in favor of diversity 
 of pursuits and sweet interchanges of industry, is it forgotten that, 
 under our system, this variety and kindness would still remain to a 
 useful extent, and be, by our commerce, diffused wider to all people 1 
 It is this mutual dependence among inhabitants of all nations, as well 
 as of the same, which is the great nurse of commerce, and wealth, and 
 civilization. It divides among them the surplus of each, as well as all 
 their arts and learning, and other excellences. It is the path-finder, 
 not only to mutual gain, but a purer religion, and higher prosperity, 
 and more durable peace, the world over. Foreign nations thus become 
 as dependent on us as we on them; — not political dependence, which is 
 often inadvertently confounded with this, but social and commercial 
 and literary dependence, which is the best guaranty of progress in 
 human affairs. 
 
 It is folly to suppose that we, or any other nation, can unite success- 
 fully within itself the productions and manufactures of all others, all 
 climates, and all stages of civilization ; that we, or England, can raise 
 as cheap and usefully the drugs of Turkey as Turkey herself, or the 
 fruits of Spain, or wines of France ; or they compete with England in 
 making iron, or with us in raising cotton or pork, or making lead. 
 And hence, while we ought not to become fanatics or visionaries, 
 attempting to concentrate everything in one spot (which alone could 
 be effected by Deity, but never yet, for wise reasons, has been done 
 even by Him), let us be content to buy all we need where it can 
 without force be produced cheapest, whether at home or abroad ; and 
 sell all we do not need where it will bring most, whether at home or 
 abroad. In this way, we shall follow out the apparent dictates of 
 Providence, in giving advantages, in some things, to all climates and 
 people, to be exchanged with others through the blessings of free com- 
 merce, and thus adopting the best apparent method of increasing our 
 prosperity, and extending civilization, and securing peace throughout 
 the world. 
 
352 TARIFF. 
 
 While all has changed and is moving onward, are we to go back, and 
 cling to the dark restrictive systems of a ruder civilization 1 Are we 
 prepared to take the backward step, so as to protect, by discriminating 
 duties, the old channels of commerce by the Euphrates and the Isthmus 
 of Suez, and again to build up Tyre, Alexandria, and Yenice, rather 
 than doubling the Cape of Good Hope 1 Are we to tax higher the use 
 of steam in navigation, so as to encourage oars and sails ? 
 
 By officious legislation, sir, are we to stop all improvement ; and, 
 while this new power in commerce is bringing all nearer, and making 
 every people better acquainted with each other's wants and abundance, 
 — not only transferring St. Louis to Pittsburg, and New Orleans to 
 Charleston, but Europe as near as Halifax in days of yore, — are we 
 to counteract these new facilities for more intimate, enlarged, prosper- 
 ous and free trade, and, while the Celestial empire itself is opening its 
 ports under the progress of the age, virtually block all foreign ones up 
 to us and ours, forever, by a more stringent and restrictive policy on 
 our part? 
 
 Much more must we beware of pushing this selfish system so as to 
 operate not equally on one great people, but invidiously on sections 
 and classes. Still more must we beware of such an unjust course 
 among ourselves, and under our peculiar form of government, founded 
 and to be sustained only on mutual concessions, mutual sacrifices and 
 gains, and what should be durable and faithful compromises. Beware, 
 sir, of seeking to escape from such compromises, — though in technical 
 legislation not forever binding, — lest all amicable and honorary 
 engagements become stripped of much of their moral force, and we 
 seem punic in appearance, if not in reality. Beware, too, of a perma- 
 nent return to that system which has once been abandoned for its perils 
 to all held holy in our political brotherhood. Beware of tearing open, 
 to fester anew and worse, old wounds that had been mostly healed, and 
 which wrong is inflicted by the exercise of such doubtful powers as will 
 justify the wildest schemes of internal improvement ; for that general 
 welfare which can be set up by the interested in defence of all extrav- 
 agances can justify distributions of the public treasures or public 
 lands, and end in the assumption of two hundred millions of State 
 debts. Beware of a policy, constitutional or otherwise, whose tendency 
 is like that which, in the British corn-laws, now agitates our parent 
 country to its centre. 
 
 Above all, sir, let us, like the senator from Maine, read the injunc- 
 tions of the farewell address of the father of his country against the 
 causes of disunion, as well as disunion itself. Let him read and re-read 
 the injunctions of that warning voice against the spirit of partiality and 
 encroachment towards fraternal rights; against the inroads that 
 fanaticism, or avarice, or party, in the domineering spirit of powerful 
 majorities, may be tempted to risk. Let him tell them to beware as 
 to inconsiderate memorials here to dissolve that hallowed Union on 
 account of one of the compromises which led to it ; and, above all, to 
 
NAVAL SCHOOL. 353 
 
 Beware how petitions are encouraged which, under the distresses of 
 War, formerly were confined to a faction, and died, on their way hither, 
 at the news of peace. Beware how such petitions are now encouraged 
 to stalk into this very hall, from State legislatures, and urge us to 
 unsettle the great compromises on which the Union itself rests, and 
 which, if prostrated, may lead not only to separation, but scenes of 
 border warfare, if not servile conflagration and carnage, such as never 
 before crimsoned the pages of history. 
 
 NAYAL SCHOOL * 
 
 Mr. Woodbury's remarks on the naval school were substantially 
 as follows : 
 
 He stated that the first and indispensable point, with a young officer, 
 was, whether he could bear the exposure and roll of the ocean. If he 
 could not, all expense in educating him for the service was lost. Hence, 
 the first order long had been, and should continue to be, an order to 
 sea. After that experiment, if the constitution and taste of the indi- 
 vidual proved suitable, it was not only proper to give him aid by lit- 
 erary and scientific instruction on ship-board, but, when off duty, 
 on shore. The deck of the vessel, however, was the best school- 
 house or academy to begin with ; and there, to mingle explanations and 
 reading with actual experiment. Even on shore, the teaching should 
 be rather to occupy suitably his leisure hours, and advance him in his 
 naval pursuits, than to give him land habits or land tastes. The 
 naval officer should be a sailor, — an informed, intelligent, moral, and 
 intellectual sailor, if you please, — but still a son of the ocean, and dedi- 
 cated, heart and soul, for life, to all its arduous duties, great exposure 
 and high responsibilities. In truth, his true home is on the moun- 
 tain icave. 
 
 It was no more proper to send the army officer or the cadet at West 
 Point to sea, than to keep the naval officer much on shore, and attach 
 
 * A speech in favor of establishing a Naval School; delivered in the Senate of the 
 United States, August 10, 1842. 
 
 30* 
 
354 NAVAL SCHOOL. 
 
 him strongly to shore scenes and shore pursuits. The most abhorrent 
 idea to a genuine tar is a land-lubber. Hence, the school for his leisure 
 hours, while not afloat, should be, as it had been for many years, on 
 or near salt water, and attached to some navy-yard. 
 
 Mr. W. had no great objection to changing a receiving- ship (the 
 usual place for instruction) to a fort or barracks, or other suitable 
 building connected with some naval station; though, in some respects, 
 a vessel had advantages for illustration of nautical terms, and for form- 
 ing nautical tastes and habits. A vessel should be used for short 
 experimental cruises frequently, even if the school was on shore. But 
 he entertained a decided opinion that the whole establishment should 
 be under naval officers, naval discipline, and the jurisdiction of some 
 naval station. And so far from admitting to the school any not offi- 
 cers, or officers before having seen sea-service, he felt confident that 
 abuses would creep in, and the whole scheme prove abortive, if either 
 of those courses was tolerated. Such, in a few words, were his general 
 views on this topic. Assured as he was that this school would be 
 conducted on the principle he approved, his vote would be given for 
 the bill. 
 
 There was a mistake in supposing that the difference of pay in the 
 navy and the commercial marine created the present difficulty in pro- 
 curing a full supply of seamen. On the contrary, when promptly 
 paid and humanely treated in the navy, sailors generally preferred it 
 to the merchant service. They had better medical attendance when 
 sick, and pensions when disabled ; and there was an honest pride in 
 wearing the insignia of their country, and serving under its public flag. 
 It was regarded as' an honor, and justly so. But the difficulty lay 
 deeper. Our commercial marine had greatly increased in the last ten 
 years, and the growth of our tonnage there had created a large addi- 
 tional demand for seamen in the domestic as well as foreign trade. At 
 the same time, the navy had been so augmented recently as to require 
 nine or ten thousand seamen, instead of only five. Tins was the true 
 source of most of the difficulty. 
 
RE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 355 
 
 RE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS.* 
 
 If I understand the substance of all the objections to the ratification 
 of the present treaty, whether expressed in resolutions or debate, it is 
 this: 
 
 First, that the government of the United States does not possess 
 the constitutional right or power to purchase Texas, and admit her 
 people into the Union. Next, that the present government of Texas 
 alone has not the right or competency to make such a cession of her 
 territory and sovereignty. And, finally, that it is not our duty at 
 present to complete the cession, even were the right on both sides 
 clear. 
 
 This seems to me to be the whole case, when stripped of details and 
 perplexing appendages. I shall examine these positions separately, 
 and I trust with that fairness and dispassionate spirit which belong to 
 a question so momentous to our own country, as well as a sister 
 republic ; a question, too, on which I speak as the organ of no admin- 
 istration or party, but above and beyond them all, as an independent 
 senator of an independent State, and trying to regard her interests, 
 and those of the whole Union, in the long vista of the future, no less 
 than at the present moment. 
 
 Some deny the constitutional power to purchase any territory 
 situated without our original limits ; while others deny not only that, 
 but the power, at any time, to admit such territory and inhabitants 
 into the Union as States. 
 
 Both of these powers have been exercised in the cases of buying 
 Louisiana and the Floridas, and afterwards of admitting the three 
 States of Louisiana, Arkansas, and Missouri, carved out of the former 
 territory. They have, therefore, long been regarded as settled ques- 
 tions, till the opposition to them in this chamber, by the senators from 
 New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island (Messrs. Miller, 
 Choate, and Simmons), has burst forthwith such vehemence, that 
 it may be well to advert to a few principles and authorities in their 
 support. 
 
 I do this the more readily, as the pretence that such a purchase 
 and admission into the Union are unconstitutional is the only plausi- 
 ble justification for the otherwise treacherous or fanatical cry of 
 disunion, which so often deafens our ears. That cry originated on 
 an occasion almost identical with this, when the act for admitting Lou- 
 isiana as a State, in 1811, was pending. 
 
 In the debate on that occasion, a member from Massachusetts over- 
 flowed with such threats, till he was called to order for his violence, 
 
 * A speech on the treaty for the re-annexation of Texas to the United States ; deliv- 
 ered in the Senate of the United States, June 4, 1844. 
 
356 RE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 
 
 and escaped censure, on an appeal from the Speaker's decision against 
 him, only from a conviction, in some of his opponents, that his threats 
 would prove harmless. It was then the memorable saying was first 
 uttered, which is now ringing again in our ears from the same class 
 of politicians and from the same State, but with less point and .elegance 
 in these degenerate days. Mr. Quincy said : - 
 
 " If this bill passes, it is my deliberate opinion that it is virtually a dissolution of 
 the Union ; that it will free the States from their moral obligations ; and that, as it 
 "will then be the right of all, so it will be the duty of some, definitely to prepare for 
 separation, — amicably if they can, forcibly if they must." — (See National Intelli- 
 gencer, Jan. 19, 1819, and Lambert on Rules, p. 74.)* 
 
 It is true that the madness of faction can threaten disunion on the 
 smallest as well as greatest occasions, and may at times venture on 
 it, unless deterred by a dread of the halter ; but it is equally true that 
 there is no more real occasion or justification for it now, than there 
 was when so much vaporing passed off harmlessly, in 1803 and 1811, 
 about Louisiana, or than there was in the purchase of Florida in 1819, or 
 the admission of Missouri in 1822. If those purchases and admissions 
 were constitutional, so are these ; and in order to allay the renewed 
 excitement on this point (honest with many, I have no doubt), the 
 patience of the Senate is asked a few minutes. : 
 
 The words of the third section, article fourth, of the constitution, are.: 
 "New States may be admitted by the Congress into the Union.' 7 This 
 is the whole that bears on the point now under consideration, and is 
 broad and explicit enough to cover all cases deemed expedient and 
 proper by Congress, whether situated without or within our original 
 limits. I admit that Mr. Jefferson, not having been a member of the 
 convention which framed the constitution, did at first consider it 
 doubtful whether, by construction, this power ought not to be confined 
 to States within our former limits ; and he even went so far as to have 
 a clause for the amendment of the constitution prepared, to cover the 
 case of Louisiana. But, after full examination, and conferences with 
 others, it is inferable as certain that he became convinced such an 
 amendment was unnecessary, as it was abandoned, and he not only 
 
 * The democratic party, notwithstanding, passed the bill by a vote of seventy-seven 
 yeas to thirty-six nays. The former included those sterling republicans, the Craw- 
 fords, Macons, Calhouns, Bacons, Cutts, Fiskes, and even Clays and Roots ; while 
 the latter were made up of the Quincys and Wheatons, and the Hales and Wilsons, 
 who then stood at the head of the federalism of the east. The original treaty had 
 been ratified in a like manner by twenty-seven republican yeas and seven federal 
 nays. How is the division of opinion on this subject now ? At a whig anti-annexation 
 meeting in Worcester, Massachusetts, a resolution was recently adopted " to separate 
 the free States from the others, if annexation prevailed." And ten members of the 
 House of Representatives, headed by Messrs. Adams, Giddings and Slade, issued a 
 manifesto, last year, declaring that annexation " would be identical with dissolution 
 of the Union." — (See Niles' Register, p. 175, for May 13, 1843.) 
 
 The Boston Times of the 1st inst. says, likewise, " The abolitionists passed a vote 
 last evening to dissolve the Union." 
 
RE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 857 
 
 » 
 completed the treaty, but signed the act of Congress establishing terri- 
 torial government over what had been purchased ; and Mr. Madison, 
 with his republican coadjutors in 1811, became convinced that the 
 power, now and then questioned, clearly existed, or they never could 
 have supported the act for the admission of Louisiana as a State. In 
 truth, so fully had their opponents become of a like opinion on this 
 point, that the admission neither of Missouri nor Arkansas was 
 resisted on this account; and the purchase of Florida, in 1819, was 
 approved as constitutional by every senator, federalist or republican. 
 
 The reasons for a change in opinion with some undoubtedly were, 
 that the words in which the power was conveyed to Congress were 
 unequivocal and explicit in favor of its widest scope ; that they had 
 been made more so in the progress of the constitution through the con- 
 vention ; and that this was known to have been done so not only to 
 include one foreign territory, in the case of Canada, which had been 
 specially provided for in the articles of the old Confederation, but to 
 embrace all the contiguous British, or Spanish, or vacant regions, 
 whose future union with us might afterwards be mutually desirable. 
 
 The framers of the constitution were men who looked deep into the 
 future, and had no design to strip themselves of any high national 
 powers or destinies. 
 
 When it was objected by some, in debate, in 1811, that, on this con- 
 struction, States might be admitted, not only contiguous, but in the 
 West Indies, South America, and even Europe, the reply seemed 
 sensible and pertinent, that, on the American theory of self-govern- 
 ment, no reason existed why we should not be allowed to admit any State 
 that would conform to our representative system, and whose union with 
 us should, by the majority of both countries, or the proper authorities, 
 be considered mutually advantageous ; and that we might well wish to 
 extend the blessings of our government as widely as practicable. 
 
 So far as convenient and beneficial, the whole world may thus 
 become partners, says Mansfield's Political Grammar (pp. 143 and 
 144). This extended construction of the power has proved a salu- 
 tary one. (Story's Constitutional Class Book, p. 98.) It is settled 
 beyond practical doubt. (Duer's Outlines of Constitutional Jurispru- 
 dence, p. 186.) 
 
 Such is the view in Tucker's Blackstone. (Ap., vol. I., p. 278.) 
 And the Federalist itself looked to the clause for admitting new States 
 generally as designed to include foreign territories adjoining us. (See 
 No. 43.) 
 
 So Mr. Macon said, in the debate as to Louisiana, that the consti- 
 tution was designedly made broad, so as to admit such a foreign ter- 
 ritory and government as Canada, when agreeable to both : because 
 the^ territory and people within our limits were already within the 
 Union, and entitled to be, under old compacts, treaties, and cessions. 
 
 Such also was the view of Mr. Jefferson, under the Confederation 
 (vol. I. Life, p. 398). 
 
358 RE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 
 
 Indeed, how could wars be prosecuted for wrongs inflicted, and just 
 indemnity obtained, if any conquests of territory made could not be 
 held ? They can. be, and become a part of the nation. (1 Peters' 
 Rep., p. 542.) And if so, are we to treat them, in due time, and when 
 fit, as equals and component parts of the Union, or exhibit the 
 shameful injustice, as well as impolicy, of keeping them in a disfran- 
 chised and humiliating servitude ? 
 
 In 3 Story on Con., 193, it is laid down that "the General Govern- 
 ment possesses the right to acquire territory by conquest or by treaty." 
 Again, 190-1 : " The constitutionality of the two former acquisitions 
 (Louisiana and Florida), though formerly much questioned, is now 
 considered settled beyond any practical doubt." 
 
 It was objected, in 1803, that, under the form of a cession, we may 
 become united to a more powerful neighbor or rival, and be involved 
 in European or other foreign interests and contests to an interminable 
 extent, (p. 157.) 
 
 But the reply was, that "the right to acquire territory is an incident 
 to sovereignty." (p. 159.) 
 
 Every government that ever yet existed possesses a competency to 
 add to its territory. It ceases to have the functions of an independent 
 nation, if it cannot, by treaty or discovery, obtain new boundaries for 
 convenience, or new lands for culture, or new ports for commerce ; 
 and, as before suggested, it is stripped of the national function of 
 acquiring territory, when assailed by unjust war, and holding it either 
 for indemnity, or profit, or security. And if we can acquire it, reason, 
 as well as the words of the constitution, requires us, in due time, to 
 make States out of it, and admit them into the Union. (160.) Story 
 says, in a note to this page, that the Hartford Convention proposed 
 to prevent such admission, unless by a vote of two-thirds of both 
 Houses ; and, by a report in that body, indirectly denied the authority 
 to admit States, or any territory without our original limits. But this 
 doctrine has slept with that convention since, it is believed, till revived 
 by Mr. Adams, in his Texas speech, in 1838, in Congress, and his 
 political address in New York, in 1839. 
 
 How little ground exists for such a doctrine, even in the opinion of 
 the greatest constitutional lawyer of his own party, may be seen by 
 looking to 3d Story, pages 160, 161 : 
 
 " Sec. 1283. The more recent acquisition of Florida, which has been universally 
 approved or acquiesced in by all the States, can be maintained only on the same prin- 
 ciple, and furnishes a striking illustration of the truth, that constitutions of govern- 
 ment require a liberal construction to effect their objects ; and that a narrow inter- 
 pretation of their powers, however it may suit the views of speculative philosophers, 
 or the accidental interests of political parties, is incompatible with the permanent 
 interest of the State, and subversive of the great ends of all government, the safety 
 and independence of the people." 
 
 This construction does not, as the senator from New Jersey argues, 
 prevent the blessings of liberty from being enjoyed by the posterity 
 
KE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 359 
 
 of our fathers as they designed; because there is enough at the 
 bounteous table for all that posterity, and any new associates. All 
 such can participate with them in that freedom, as they do in the air, 
 water, and sun, without loss to either, and without exclusiveness and 
 misanthropy. 
 
 In truth, our whole history serves to demonstrate the wisdom, on 
 general as well as constitutional principles, of expanding our limits 
 with the vast increase of our population and wealth. Such expansion 
 prevents many of the evils of too dense a population, and secures the 
 predominance of the safe, virtuous, and republican pursuit of agricul- 
 ture. It is said that we have a Sparta, and let us adorn it. But is 
 there never to be an escape from the infant shell, nor any enlarge- 
 ment of the shell itself to suit the growth of the animal within 1 Is 
 our Sparta to be confined forever to a garden spot or single planta- 
 tion, a single city or a few barren acres, as in Greece, with iron only 
 for money, black broth only for food, and our sons taught steal- 
 ing as an accomplishment, instead of spreading over half a continent, 
 improving the sciences and the whole arts of the civilized world, covering 
 remotest oceans with our commerce, and helping to spread, abroad and 
 at home, superior education and a purer religion ? Thank God, the 
 scales fell from our eyes on this subject more than a quarter of a cen- 
 tury ago, when Louisiana was purchased ; and, instead of trying to 
 replace them, if we are able to preserve Oregon, — gained both by dis- 
 covery and purchase, — and to recover Texas, we can, in another half- 
 century, not only again, as has been done, double our States, and 
 nearly quadruple our wealth, numbers and power, but adorn, improve, 
 and secure forever, all the fair inheritance with which we are blessed. 
 
 When we look to analogies abroad of cases of whole territories and 
 governments being ceded and annexed to other governments, whether 
 monarchies or republican confederacies, they cluster thickly. 
 
 France herself is made up of a union of what was once different 
 kingdoms. So of Spain ; so of Great Britain ; so of Germany. In- 
 deed, England not only re-annexed Wales, — the favorite and just term 
 now, — but admitted Scotland, as well as Ireland, into a union with her, 
 including government and the whole territory. The word re-annexed, 
 as now applied, is as old as Blackstone, who says : " The territory of 
 Wales being then entirely re-annexed (by a kind of feudal resump- 
 tion) to the dominion of the crown of England." (Vol. I., p. 94.) 
 
 But, in confederacies, Switzerland has added and rejected various 
 separate cantonments, with their whole government and territory. So 
 of Holland, or the Netherlands ; and so of the Mexican confederacy 
 itself, now including one State formerly attached to Guatemala ; so of 
 Colombia ; so of Buenos Ayres ; sometimes adding new States, both 
 territory and government, and sometimes amicably or violently sepa- 
 rating. Indeed, several of the old thirteen colonies, now States, were 
 originally obtained by England by treaties of cession. 
 
 In the Mexican constitution (see 2 Kennedy, 427), the power of 
 
360 RE- ANNEXATION OE TEXAS. 
 
 their Congress is no broader than ours. It is to admit new States to 
 the Federal Union or territories, incorporating them in the nation ; and 
 under it one has been admitted which never before belonged in any 
 sense to Mexico. 
 
 Hence, whether we look to the words of the constitution, or to the 
 practice under it, or to the analogies of other governments, whether 
 American or European, the constitutional right to annex is undoubted. 
 
 All which the constitution requires to admit States is the assent 
 of Congress. Whether a treaty is also necessary to annex a territory 
 seems questionable, unless it is regarded as done by a contract with a 
 foreign power, which is usually commenced in the form of a treaty, 
 and the terms thus settled with more convenience in the first instance. 
 But there can be little doubt that, while the assent of Congress is 
 alone sufficient, and is alone necessary by our constitution to admit a 
 new State, it is proper to be given, after a territory is bought by treaty, 
 to the payments to be made under it, and to the organization of its 
 new government and relations ; and, if so given without a treaty, may 
 answer every object of reason and principle involved. 
 
 But the idea that, in these cases under our constitution, it is neces- 
 sary to have the assent of each State in the Union as a separate State, 
 or the people of each (and, indeed, as Mr. Adams supposed in 1804, 
 of conventions in each State, — 4 Elliott's Debates), except as both are 
 represented in Congress, and then only a majority of their representa- 
 tives in each branch to a law, or of two-thirds of the Senate to a 
 treaty, is not justified either by any language or precedent. No dif- 
 ferent assent than this last was asked in 1803, or 1811, or 1819, or 
 any other occasion whatever. And the only analogy in support of it 
 seems to be a practice in Holland to require the assent of the States 
 separately to the admission of new States ; when, in truth, the 
 practice there originated in an express clause in the confederation to 
 that effect. (See it in 2d Davies' Hist, of Holland, p. 76.) 
 
 So another express clause in the old Confederation required the 
 assent of nine States out of thirteen, in certain cases. When annexa- 
 tion was declined in 1837, it was on other grounds ; and this point is 
 explicitly stated by Mr. "Van Buren, who was then President, to be 
 no objection. In a constitutional point of view, the opposition "of a 
 considerable and respectable portion of the community" as others 
 argue, cannot rightfully defeat annexation, if there be a majority of 
 Congress in favor of the measure ; though such an opposition, and 
 their reasons, would be entitled to respectful consideration, as in all 
 other controverted cases. I admit that the wishes of the people 
 should possess much influence, and it is desirable to know them before 
 action on important measures ; but they are not, by the constitution, 
 required to be first consulted, before Congress or the treaty-making 
 power can negotiate for territory. It was never dreamed of in the 
 purchase of Louisiana and Florida, nor in the former attempts to 
 purchase Texas, in 1825, 1829, and 1835. 
 
RE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 361 
 
 But, if it were otherwise, the senator from Missouri admits that ten 
 or twelve millions, out of fifteen of our free population, are in favor of 
 the annexation. A majority of more than two-thirds here, and of all 
 the voters in Texas but ninety- three, as stated by their commissioners, 
 would then seem quite enough of the people themselves, in both coun- 
 tries, to satisfy the most fastidious. 
 
 How much some gentlemen are likely to obtain by the advice of the 
 people before they act, however it is wished, can be ascertained from 
 the extraordinary resolution to throw twenty thousand copies of the 
 treaty and correspondence before the public, because "the will of the 
 people ought to be consulted on them ;" and yet refusing to wait a 
 reasonable time to learn that will, and proceeding, the very next day, 
 before a single copy was printed for the people, to discuss and decide 
 on the measure. 
 
 On motion of Mr. Walker, to amend the amendment proposed by 
 Mr. Crittenden, by adding at the end thereof the following : and that 
 a reasonable time should be given to hear from the people after this 
 publication, before the final decision of the Senate upon the treaty — 
 
 It was determined in the negative, — yeas 15, nays 28. 
 
 Having endeavored to show our constitutional right to purchase the 
 territory of Texas, and to unite its people in our government, and 
 having thus tried to remove the great obstacle to the ratification, which 
 blocks up the threshold of our inquiries, I shall consider the next 
 point, which is the right of Texas to make the cession, and enter into 
 the Union. The objection to the form of doing this business, on both 
 sides, I will examine hereafter, as I am at present looking merely to 
 the great principles involved in the authority to take and to cede. 
 
 It is contended by several who oppose the treaty, that Texas is not 
 in a competent condition to make this cession without the assent of 
 Mexico or Spain, — some former master or tyrannical step-mother. 
 Spain, it is believed, is pretty well silenced on this point by the great 
 lapse of time since she has made any war on the territory of Texas, 
 and any claim to govern her ; or she is silenced by her recognition of 
 the independence of all her American provinces. But how is it with 
 Mexico ? On what rest her claims to be consulted before the cession, 
 so far as regards the power and capacity of Texas ? 
 
 In the first place, the right of Mexico to Texas as ever having been 
 an integral portion of her territory, and much less a portion of it since 
 the independence of Mexico herself was acknowledged by Spain, is 
 very questionable. 
 
 According to the opinions of such jurists and diplomatists as Jeffer- 
 son, Madison, and Monroe, — of Livingston, Clay, and Adams (in 
 1818), — Texas was within the limits of Louisiana, when bought by 
 us in 1803, as clearly "as the island of New Orleans." I shall not 
 fatigue the Senate with details on this. But Texas had been discov- 
 ered and settled by the French in 1685, five years previous to any 
 Spanish settlement. (Marbois' Hist, of Louisiana, 107.) It had been 
 31 
 
362 RE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 
 
 viewed as ''the cradle of Louisiana." (4 Jeff. Life, 60.) It was in 
 the grant by Louis to Crozat, in 1712. (1 Laws, 439.) After ceded 
 to Spain, in 1761, its boundaries became unimportant; but when 
 retroceded to and occupied by France, in 1800, she claimed as for- 
 merly, and delivered it to us by her officers, in 1804, as extending 
 west to the Rio del Norte. It was boasted by Don Onis, the Spanish 
 minister, who negotiated the treaty of 1819, after his return, that by 
 his ability and tact it had been procured from us. Mr. Forsyth to 
 Adams, July 30, 1820, says that Don Onis " endeavors to show that 
 the treaty of cession of Florida ought to be considered as a treaty 
 of exchange of Florida for Texas, a country more extensive, fertile, 
 and valuable." The Spanish government itself seems to have 
 instructed their minister that we might retain it, if no better terms 
 could be procured. (See Erving's Expose.) And Mr. Gallatin, after 
 laborious research, before 1810, became convinced the territory was 
 ours ; and our posts had, therefore, as early as 1806, been extended 
 beyond the Sabine to Nacogdoches, one of the remotest settlements of 
 much size. (1 Laws, 437.) And Galveston itself was temporarily 
 occupied by us, in 1817. (4 State Papers, 297. See more fully on 
 this, Marbois' History of Louisiana; 4 State Papers; 4 Jeff. Life, 
 60 ; 2 Foote's History of Texas, 397, 376 ; 1 do., 194 ; 2 Kennedy, 
 445 ; 1 Clay's Speeches, 82 and 93.) 
 
 Under what pretence, then, can Mexico claim it? In 1819 we 
 ceded it to Spain, not Mexico ; and if, as some incorrectly maintain, 
 Mexico was then revolutionized, she of course got nothing by this sub- 
 sequent cession to Spain rather than herself. But if, as was the 
 truth, Mexico never became independent of Spain, even by declaration, 
 till February 24, 1821, though before torn by intestine divisions, all 
 avowing loyalty to Spain, she claimed her independence only two days 
 after the treaty of 1819 was finally ratified by us, and before Spain 
 was notified thereof, or had taken possession of the territory, or had 
 annexed it to Mexico ; and months before Mexico got possession of the 
 government of the country. 
 
 This is one view of the weakness of the claim of Mexico. Another 
 is, that Spain had previously made claim to Texas; and, "under 
 the Spanish government, Texas was a separate and distinct province. 
 As such, it had a separate and distinct local organization." (See 1 
 Foote's History of Texas, p. 62.) When, therefore, her people, 
 between 1821 and 1824, revolted from old Spain and declared them- 
 selves independent, and formed a new constitution and political organ- 
 ization, whether always before belonging to Spain, or given to her by 
 our cession in 1819, they acted as a separate, free, sovereign and 
 independent State, as much as did New Hampshire or South 
 Carolina in 1776. Then, fifteen thousand people, probably (besides 
 Indians), occupied her territory. As such, she continued in a revolu- 
 tionary condition, till, Iturbide being shot, she joined the Mexican con- 
 federacy, with Coahuila, in 1824 ; and, with her, as a separate inde- 
 
RE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 363 
 
 pendent State, continued in the confederation, under certain specified 
 terms, till 1834 and 1835 ; though she wished a separate State govern- 
 ment in 1832, having, in October of that year, held a separate conven- 
 tion from Coahuila, to form a separate constitution, and blocked one 
 out ; and sent Austin with it and a petition to Mexico, setting forth 
 the reasons for separation. (2 Kennedy, 19 to 22.) He proved 
 unsuccessful, and was imprisoned ; and, in 1834 and 1835, when the 
 confederated rights of Texas were violated by Santa Anna, her peo- 
 ple oppressed, her State legislature abolished, and the confederacy 
 dissolved, a consolidated government was erected on its ruins, October 
 5th, 1835, and she refused, as was her sovereign right, to enter into 
 the new government. (See the decree, 2 Kennedy, 111, 89, 61.) She 
 continued during 1835 to contend manfully against the usurper, and 
 to sustain her independent rights, till the final victory of San Jacinto, 
 in April (26th), 1836, crowned her efforts. 
 
 Her constitution, early as March 11th, 1827, and while in the 
 confederacy with Mexico, used this emphatic language: Texas "is 
 free and independent of the other United Mexican States, and of every 
 other foreign power and dominion." (See 2 Kennedy's H., 444 p., 
 Ap.) And again : after stating that she has joined the confederacy for 
 certain specified purposes, the constitution declares that, for all others, 
 Texas " retains its liberty, independence, and sovereignty." 
 
 What justifiable pretence, then, has there been since, for Mexico to 
 attempt to dragoon a separate and independent State into a new form 
 of government, or into subjection to her tyranny ? What right of 
 Mexico has she violated ? The wrong is on the other side ; and it is 
 Mexico, to whom she owes neither duties nor allegiance, that is usurp- 
 ing a control over her affairs not justifiable either by sound principles 
 of constitutional law or the great axioms on which the right of our 
 own States and their people rest. 
 
 Let it be remembered, also, that Texas, beside being an independent 
 sovereign State ever since the original revolution in 1821, and the first 
 Mexican constitution of 1824, had entirely separated from the confed- 
 eracy, when it was dissolved in 1835, as she had a right to, one to 
 two years before the independence of Mexico herself was acknowledged 
 by Spain, in December, 1836. 
 
 Texas had attempted independence, and half a year after, at San 
 Jacinto, resisted Mexican occupation and control ; and hence, may not 
 have been included in Spain's recognition of Mexico alone. 
 
 Bring these facts home to our own system of government. Look at 
 the analogies and rights. Read the eloquent and indignant remon- 
 strances of Texas against the assumed authority over her, in her new 
 declaration of independence, and new constitution, in 1836, and our 
 hearts cannot but burn within us at the worse than British dictation 
 and oppression which are claimed and attempted to be exercised over 
 her ; and if cause of just war exists at all, it is on the part of Texas, 
 and against Mexico, rather than the reverse. 
 
364 RE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 
 
 But if any consider this view of the case as in some respects not 
 tenable, we invite their attention to another aspect of the subject, 
 which strengthens much the right of Texas to make this cession, and 
 be received into the Union, and enjoy all its benefits, as proposed by 
 this treaty. 
 
 When we purchased Texas within the limits of Louisiana, in 1808, 
 we engaged, by treaty with France, to perform the solemn duties set 
 out in the third article, first Laws, p. 136. 
 
 " The inhabitants of the ceded territory shall be incorporated in the Union of the 
 United States, and admitted as soon as possible, according to the principles of the 
 federal constitution, to all the rights, advantages, and immunities, of citizens of the 
 United States i and, in the mean time, they shall be maintained and protected in the 
 free enjoyment of their liberty, property, and the religion which they profess." 
 
 Now, if any of the people of Texas reside on territory then within 
 the boundaries of Louisiana, this obligation remains in full force, unless 
 France has released us from it, or those people have relinquished it, 
 and do not now desire its fulfilment. 
 
 I concede that we may have done acts which bar or estop us, both 
 morally and politically, from making any further rightful claim over 
 them, against their consent; but have they ever become constitutionally 
 divested of their right under that treaty provision 1 
 
 I have already proved that the territory of Texas was geographically 
 within the limits of Louisiana ; and whatever may be her present true 
 boundaries, it is well known that the people of Texas now asking 
 admission reside on that part of her territory conceded by all not to 
 be west or north of her old limits. 
 
 The obligation imposed on us in 1803, then, — how have we become 
 exonerated from it ? In no way, I apprehend, unless by the treaty 
 made with Spain in 1819, ceding all our territory west of the Sabine, 
 and thus ceding away Texas herself. To understand the precise char- 
 acter of that treaty, it is necessary to notice that it was not, as many 
 have hastily supposed, a treaty merely defining, with particularity, 
 limits before general and uncertain between contiguous nations. 
 
 But, turning to the third article (6 Laws, 616), it will be seen that, 
 after describing a line north from the mouth of the Sabine, and then 
 north-west and west to the South Sea, "the United States hereby 
 CEDE to his Catholic Majesty, and RENOUNCE forever, all their 
 rights, claims, and pretensions, to the territories lying west and south 
 of the above-described line ; and, in like manner, his Catholic Majesty 
 cedes to the said United States all his rights, claims, and pretensions, 
 to any territories east and north of the said line ; and for himself, his 
 heirs and successors, renounces all claims to the said territories for- 
 
 ever." 
 
 Besides fixing some boundaries before doubtful, the treaty of 1819 
 was thus manifestly one of cession ; as much so, on our part, of Texas, 
 as on the part of Spain of the Floridas, the same language being used 
 in both cases. The territory then being very large, and its inhabitants 
 
RE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 365 
 
 several thousands, it was neither constitutional nor right to cede them 
 away, and deprive them of their claims to be admitted into our Union 
 under the Louisiana treaty, without first asking and obtaining their 
 consent. Neither of these was done ; and whatever acts they have 
 since passed, under a supposition that their claim had by us been 
 legally extinguished, are not to injure or debar them, in forum con- 
 scientice, — in sound morals or just principles, — from now request- 
 ing, as they virtually do by this treaty, a reunion and admission to all 
 the privileges before stipulated to be allowed them. These positions 
 are so important as to justify some further proofs that the treaty of 
 1819 was then regarded on both sides as one of cession. The message 
 of Mr. Monroe, in December, 1819, says "we had ceded valuable 
 territory ;" and Mr. Clay, in 1820, declares that we unadvisably 
 ceded the country west of the Sabine to the Rio Del Norte. So 
 Mr. Adams, before the ratifications w T ere completed (May 3d, 1820, 4 
 State Papers, 684), says of the United States, "their right of terri- 
 tory was, and yet is, to the Rio Del Norte;" and (in February, 
 1821), "these concessions on the part of the United States were 
 great ; and the treaty was a treaty of l mutual cessions ' (4 State 
 Papers, 703) ; in the words of Don Onis, it was a treaty of exchange 
 of Florida for Texas, — a country more extensive, fertile, and valu- 
 able." 
 
 The propriety of that exchange or cession is a very different ques- 
 tion ; and, however proper most of it may, as early as 1806, have 
 seemed justifiable to one House of Congress, and the whole of it advis- 
 able to all of the other House, and the President, in 1819, yet with 
 the knowledge we now possess of the value of Texas, and the land 
 ceded on the sources of the Red river and the Arkansas, as well as of 
 the better terms which might probably have been procured of Spain, 
 the cession is much to be regretted. 
 
 But before complaining too severely of those who participated in the 
 making of the treaty, and in its ratification, by having obliged us not 
 only to pay five millions of dollars for Florida, — a country that has been 
 called mere sand-banks and swamps, — but to cede the whole of Texas, 
 larger and richer than three Floridas, it may be well to advert to one 
 or two considerations. The title of what we ceded was controverted, 
 however improperly ; but that of what we obtained was uncontroverted. 
 The extent and character of Texas were then little known or appre- 
 ciated ; while the importance of the possession of Florida by us, with 
 a view to the free navigation of the Mobile and Apalachicola, was 
 thoroughly understood, as well as its benefits to the rich countries 
 above, of having American depots and outlets for their produce near 
 the ocean, and additional guards to the domestic tranquillity of the 
 south, and the security of her peculiar property and institutions. These 
 circumstances induced Mr. Jefferson, as early as the attempt to buy 
 Louisiana, to seek to obtain the Floridas also. (4 State Papers, 
 738—9.) 
 
 31* 
 
366 KE-AKN T EXATION OF TEXAS. 
 
 It is not a little curious that, in the original instructions, they 
 extended only to the buying of that part of Louisiana consisting of the 
 island of New Orleans, or all east of the Mississippi, and including, 
 at the same time, the Floridas ; but neither Texas nor anything else 
 west of the Mississippi. (See Doc. 102. 19th Con., 1st "session, to 
 the Senate, dated 20th May, 1824. The following numbers refer to 
 letters in that document : Nos. 462, 460, 466, 468, 471, and 476. 
 See also 2 State Papers, pages 537, 541, 516, 520, and 529.) 
 
 The value put there on the different objects of purchase is signifi- 
 cant, as for New Orleans alone the minister was to give three-fourths 
 of the whole sum, and for the Floridas the other fourth ; but only 
 half as much for East as for West Florida, if obtaining but one of 
 them. (See page 743, Doc. 102.) At one time we even proposed 
 to guarantee to Spain the west side of the Mississippi (Madison to 
 Pinckney, May 11th, 1802, No. 462, as above), should she cede to 
 the east side. 
 
 The cession of the whole province of Louisiana was rather a pro- 
 posal from Bonaparte, than ours ; — fearing lest, in an approaching war 
 with England, she might seize the rest ; and urging, as a reason for 
 it, that the rest, if not wanted by us, could be sold by us to some 
 other power. (2 State Papers, 552, Livingston to Madison, No. 476, 
 in document above.) How fully and authentically does this fact repel 
 all the libellous imputations then and since made against Mr. Jefferson 
 and us, for seeking Louisiana (including Texas) from ambition and 
 the love of aggrandizement ! But after Louisiana was obtained with- 
 out Florida, the latter was still regarded as so essential, that, on a 
 message by Mr. Jefferson, of a confidential character, in January, 
 1806, Congress itself, in secret session, matured a law appropriating 
 two millions of dollars to enable him to make the purchase ; and the 
 object of the law was concealed from foreign scrutiny and intrigue, by 
 entitling it " An act to defray any extraordinary expense which may 
 be incurred in the foreign intercourse between the United States and 
 foreign nations." (4 Laws, p. 5, February 13, 1806.) 
 
 In order to aid in that negotiation, the following memorable resolu- 
 tions were passed in the House of Representatives, in secret session ; 
 and are, in truth, I apprehend, the whole foundation of the subsequent 
 cession of Texas in 1819, whose demerits have been the object of so 
 much animadversion. There had been instructions before to make 
 the Colorado the western boundary, if every difficulty could thus be 
 adjusted with Spain, and the Floridas obtained; but an absolute 
 refusal to cede any part of Texas or Louisiana east of the Colorado. 
 (See fully on this 2 State Papers, pages 626 to 666, containing let- 
 ters from July, 1803, to May, 1805, to and from our ministers at 
 Madrid.) 
 
 Here are the resolutions : 
 
 "Resolved, That r dollars be appropriated by law towards defraying the 
 
 expenses which may be incurred in the purchase of the Spanish territories lying on 
 
RE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 367 
 
 the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico, and eastward of the Mississippi, to be paid 
 out of any money in the treasury not otherwise appropriated, and to be applied under 
 the direction of the President of the United States, who shall have authority, if neces- 
 sary, to borrow the said sum, or any part thereof, in behalf of the United States, at 
 a rate of interest not exceeding six per centum per annum, redeemable at will ; and 
 shall cause an account thereof to be laid before Congress, as soon as may be. 
 
 "Resolved, That an exchange of territory between the United States and Spain is 
 deemed by this House to be the most advantageous mode of settlement of existing dif- 
 ferences respecting limits between the United States and the court of Madrid ; and 
 that any arrangement between the two governments which shall secure to Spain an 
 ample barrier on the side of Mexico, and to the United States the countries watered by 
 the Mississippi, and to the eastward of it, will meet the approbation of this House." 
 (See House Journal for January 14, 1806, Appendix, pages 437 and 458.) 
 
 The negotiation was at once renewed, with a view to buy the Flor- 
 idas, or get them in exchange, on those or better terms. (See 3 State 
 Papers, pp. 539 and 540, March 13, 1806, Madison to Bowdoin.) 
 
 In truth, so vital to self-preservation and peace was the possession 
 of them regarded, not only in 1806, but in 1811, that the forcible 
 occupation of it in the latter year was authorized by Congress, as 
 will soon be more fully explained. And again, in 1820, Mr. Monroe 
 advised another forcible occupation, if Spain longer refused to ratify 
 the treaty of cession in 1819, which the Senate had already ratified 
 unanimously. After this retrospect, and much more that need not 
 now be detailed, I can readily conceive that, not only in 1806, but in 
 1819, when the extent and value of Texas were less known than now, 
 and when the Floridas were so much nearer some of the old and well- 
 settled States, and their possession so highly appreciated on other 
 accounts than their soil, — that such a resolution could be easier 
 passed by Congress, and easier complied with by the executive, than 
 now. 
 
 In the then infancy of the republic, and the comparative ignorance 
 of the sources of some of the tributaries of the Mississippi and the vast 
 western extent of Louisiana, the west side of that river was much lower 
 appreciated than it deserved ; and only one State was contemplated to 
 be established on that side, and a large reserved territory to be held 
 for the Indians. (4 Jeff. Life, 51.) 
 
 But, we had hardly parted with Texas, before the explorations and 
 enterprise of our people, under the blessings of peace, unfolded more 
 as to the extent and fertility of that region, and the remote sources of 
 many of our beautiful rivers ; and it was soon discovered that we had 
 failed to retain even what Congress had originally intended in the res- 
 olution should not be ceded, — that is, all the land on all the tributaries 
 of the Mississippi. 
 
 A large and valuable tract on the Red and Arkansas rivers was 
 parted with, either through want of correct geographical information, 
 or other causes now unknown, and conflicting with the resolution. 
 
 Hence, in a few months, inquiries arose in Congress whether more 
 had not been ceded than was proper ; and a resolution was offered by 
 Dr. Floyd, to ascertain if Spain had not empowered her minister to 
 
368 RE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 
 
 go further west with the line, and if that fact was not kno^n to the 
 Secretary of State. (Journal of House of Representatives, January 
 27, 1820, p. 176—7.) 
 
 Hence, too, as soon as April, 1820, Mr. Clay offered the resolu- 
 tions now in my hands, calling in question the legality of the cession, 
 as well as its expediency. I will read the first one : 
 
 " Resolved, That the constitution of the United States vests in Congress the power 
 to dispose of the territory belonging to them ; and that no treaty purporting to alien- 
 ate any part thereof is valid, without the concurrence of Congress." 
 
 Hence, not only were efforts made by him and Mr. Adams, as early 
 as 1825, to regain the whole country by a purchase from Mexico, and 
 again in 1827, and again in 1829 by General Jackson and Mr. Van 
 Buren, and thenceforward till 1835, when Texas declared her inde- 
 pendence, but, in the Senate, Mr. Preston, in 1838, offered another 
 resolution, that the original cession in 1819 was "of evil precedent, 
 and questionable constitutionality." 
 
 Without going further now into the historical data connected with 
 this branch of the inquiry, it must be evident that, if the cession in 
 1819 was void from any cause, Texas, being within the original limits 
 of Louisiana, ought now to be, under the stipulations of the treaty of 
 1803, protected in her religion, indulged in all the rights of American 
 citizens, and as soon as possible admitted into the Union on equal 
 terms with all other new States. I do not go for technicalities for or 
 against this view of the subject ; nor am I disposed to allow little spe- 
 cial pleading, by estoppels or forms, to prevail against her moral 
 claims on us, — her substantial and legitimate rights. How are the 
 merits, then ? France has never released us from the obligation, in the 
 treaty with her, to admit into the Union all the territory then within 
 the limits of Louisiana. Texas has never been asked to release us. 
 Could we, then, become exonerated by our own acts alone ? Certainly 
 not, as we are out one party to the contract. 
 
 No principle is better settled than that a government of limited 
 powers, having once acquired territory, or admitted States into its 
 Union, cannot sell portions of them to foreign powers. There is no 
 such grant in the instrument, — there is no such practice. The dis- 
 posal of the fee in wild land to individuals and companies is all the 
 power in selling territories or States which has been exercised, in other 
 cases, under this authority. But in no case has the jurisdiction or 
 sovereignty over the people in territories and States, whether few and 
 small or numerous and large, ever been exercised, without that express 
 assent of the parties in interest previously obtained, which, on element- 
 ary principles, can confer any right, or ratify any transaction. Here 
 the territory was large enough to be consulted, and its population, — it 
 being, beside Indians, quite fifteen thousand, probably, in 1819. It 
 had been seven thousand when Pike visited there, twelve years pre- 
 vious. Hence, while Vermont would be admitted into the Union by 
 
RE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 369 
 
 the assent of a majority in Congress, after 1789, yet we did not con- 
 sider Congress, or the President and the Senate, competent to cede a 
 part of the territory of Maine, in 1842, without asking her previous 
 consent. Hence, early as 1793, Mr. Jefferson, and others of General 
 Washington's cabinet, doubted whether any part of the north-western 
 territory could be ceded even to the Indians, and much less its juris- 
 diction to any foreign power. (See 1 Jefferson's Life, page 409. 4 
 Jefferson's Life, page 479.) 
 
 The old Congress of 1786 (4 Secret Journal, page 100) held that 
 the United States possessed no power, by a treaty, to convey a part or 
 parts of the territory of the United States west of the Alleghanies ; 
 and Vattel (book 1, chapter 21, section 260) holds, that only the 
 nation, or its representatives, and not the prince, or treaty-making 
 power, can cede territory ; and it seems well settled . in England, 
 that no part of the realm can be dismembered or alienated, without the 
 consent of parliament, as well as of the king. (Book 116, chapter 2, 
 section 10.) Mr. Sheffley, in debate (National Intelligencer, Janu- 
 ary 5, 1811), pronounced the opposite view, as to a part of a State, 
 " a doctrine spurned at by all." 
 
 Mr. Clay maintained, in 1820, that it could not be done without 
 the assent of Congress ; but the better opinion is, that the territory or 
 State ceded must consent, and not Congress alone. 
 
 The cession, then, of both jurisdiction and soil in Texas, in 1819, 
 without the previous consent of its actual inhabitants or territorial 
 government, was irregular and imperfect. Whatever subsequent acts 
 might be regarded as a technical acquiescence in the cession, it was 
 still, in point of law, erroneous, and must be a departure from treaty 
 stipulations, unless we now, when requested, admit them to all the 
 privileges originally promised. There can be no doubt, if these posi- 
 tions are well supported, that they are fully competent to ask our 
 assent to the retrocession and reunion ; and thus, without regard to 
 forms, do in substance all which is necessary on their part to perfect 
 the measure. But, while contending for this in their behalf, on great 
 principles of moral and political obligation, I would not do injustice to 
 any other power with whom we inadvertently made new and incom- 
 patible engagements. Though those engagements are, according to 
 Vattel, inoperative, — the first treaty being valid over a subsequent one 
 which conflicts with it, — yet any injury done by annulling the subse- 
 quent cession ought to be remunerated to the party suffering. But 
 that party, whether Spain or Mexico, have now no cause of complaint, 
 and suffer no loss by this construction ; because, since that cession in 
 1819, and while it remained de facto in force, Spain, in December, 
 1836, relinquished all her claims over Mexico, if not Texas ; and the 
 latter has been independent of Spain for more than twenty years, and 
 for more than ten years has resisted the usurpations of Mexico over 
 her rights as a separate and sovereign State, and for eight years has 
 declared and maintained her independence as to the whole world. 
 
370 RE- ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 
 
 There "will be, then, a great moral fitness and beauty in the disposi- 
 tion of human affairs, if now, after the lapse of a whole generation, we 
 should be able, by the re-annexation of Texas, to meet the wishes of 
 her people in being admitted to the blessings of our Union, and 
 should, at the same time, fulfil our own previous treaty stipulations in 
 their favor ; and, without injury to any rights of others, should regain 
 a territory so vital to so many interests of all sections, and so long 
 and so devoutly sought for by such a succession of statesmen and 
 patriots. 
 
 The solemnity or inviolability of the treaty of 1803 is quite as 
 great as that of 1819 or 1828, or any other since, and its obligations 
 on this subject are both prior and paramount. 
 
 But, supposing that both these views are untenable, — and, for the 
 sake of argument, indulging a moment in the idea that Texas was not 
 embraced within the limits of Louisiana, or, if so, was legally ceded to 
 Spain, and afterwards became an integral part of the Mexican empire, — 
 had she not, when the terms of her confederacy with that government 
 became wantonly violated, her citizens imprisoned, and her privileges 
 outraged, — had she not a right to assert and maintain her independ- 
 ence 1 Would she not have been false to her American blood, not to 
 have done it on the field of San Jacinto, as well as down to the pres- 
 ent moment? 
 
 Among the long list of grievances and usurpations set out in the 
 declaration of her independence (Senate document, No. 415, June 23, 
 1836), was this: that Mexico "has dissolved, by force of arms, the 
 State Congress of Coahuila and Texas," as well as denied liberty of 
 conscience, and committed piracies on her commerce. For such as 
 these she made that declaration, and has since sustained it with the 
 rifle and the bayonet. 
 
 On the American system of politics, had she not a right to separate, 
 for such abuses and violations of duty on the part of Mexico 1 Listen 
 to the doctrine, — which some seem to forget, but which is laid down 
 in our own Declaration of Independence, — on this subject, penned 
 by Jefferson, and sanctioned by Franklin, Hancock, Adams, and their 
 patriot coadjutors : 
 
 "When a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably 4 the same 
 object, evinces a design to reduce them (the people) under absolute despotism, it is 
 their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards 
 for their future security." 
 
 What is the American system, as adopted by my native State, and 
 most of the others in the Union 1 
 
 " The people of this State have the sole and exclusive right of governing them- 
 selves, as a free, sovereign, and independent State," &c. 
 
 " All government of right originates from the people." 
 
 " Whenever the ends of the government are perverted, or public liberty manifestly 
 endangered, and all other modes of redress are ineffectual, the people may, and of 
 
RE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 371 
 
 right ought to, reform the old, or establish a new government." (See the New 
 Hampshire constitution.) 
 
 See also 2 Barlemaque, p. 128, stating that a people may, for a 
 good cause, always revolt and change their government. 
 
 Mr. Clay's speech on the recognition of the independence of South 
 America, and Mr. Webster's on that of Greece, are full of these doc- 
 trines, however heretical their views may be on some other questions. 
 
 By this (the true American system of politics) man is regarded as 
 a free agent, possessing a right to self-government. We hold that 
 communities may not only change their form of polity, but divide and 
 erect a separate institution, when oppressed, and driven, by a series of 
 wrongs, into revolution and independence. Mankind, in our theory, 
 do not hold their rights from kings or royal charters, or holy alliances, 
 but from God ; and far from its being proper to sympathize with, and 
 defend, oppressive governments in re-conquering revolted subjects, it is 
 false to our own course in the Revolution to dream of it ; and the 
 hearts of the whole American people should burn at tyranny, — should 
 sympathize with the suffering, invigorate public opinion in their favor ; 
 and, as soon as duty may permit, after their independence has become 
 in fact established, through a new government instituted, and new 
 laws and rulers selected, and stability and quiet given to their national 
 affairs, we ought to acknowledge both their de facto and dejure exist- 
 ence, — their full right to come into the family of nations, and exer- 
 cise all the powers of independent sovereignties. The other side of 
 this question is the British or European side. Theirs is the doctrine 
 of eternal allegiance ; ours, that of free agency and self-government. 
 Theirs is the doctrine of the Divine right of kings ; ours, that of the 
 Divine right of the people. Theirs is the doctrine of tyranny over the 
 mind and conscience, — the reign of it upheld by the bowstring, the 
 inquisition, and standing armies; ours is the doctrine of liberty, 
 upheld by reason, intelligence, and sound morals. In some respects, 
 the struggle between these principles has been going on since civiliza- 
 tion has been much diffused, and especially between colonies and their 
 parent country, — the former striving for privileges commensurate with 
 their growth and rights. It is the child become a man, and claiming 
 the authority and immunities of a man ; and is to be countenanced, 
 rather than proscribed. All people thus situated, in all time, — 
 whether Carthaginians from Tyre, Greeks from Egypt, Marsellois and 
 Syracusans from Greece, Spaniards from Borne, North Americans 
 from England, or South Americans from Spain, — all have thus acted, 
 and been thus recognized and sustained ; and so must be Texas. But 
 we were destined to open the drama on the new continent. " 
 
 The colonial system thus prostrated here in 1776, and a new gov- 
 ernment like our own springing up on its ruins, astonished the powers 
 of Europe, as well as all the Old World, as much as the original dis- 
 covery of America by the great world-jinder who breathes in marble 
 by Persico in front of the capitol. Yet, forsooth, we hear it now 
 
372 RE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 
 
 gravely argued that a people like those in Texas cannot, dejure, cede 
 their territory, or unite with us in government ; but must first, with 
 due humility, ask leave of Mexico, or submit to be reconquered by 
 her and have the conveyance emanate from her, in order to have it 
 suit our opponents' modern American notions of self-government ; and 
 all this, though Texas revolted for as good cause as we did from 
 England, though she has established as good a constitution and laws, 
 and though she has maintained them all firmly and unimpaired for 
 years, and has been recognized and negotiated with as a sovereign and 
 independent nation by all the great powers of Christendom ! Yes, 
 kings, at the Congress of Vienna, may cede principalities and powers, 
 extinguish old or create new governments, and transfer the people like 
 sheep ; or kings alone may partition Polands, and blot out obnoxious 
 dynasties and empires from the map of the world, — as England does, 
 over and over again, in India; — but a sovereign people and their estab- 
 lished government, by a vote almost unanimous, are to be held incompe- 
 tent to cede their territory and change their government. And this 
 is to be held, also, by us Anglo-Americans and Spanish-Mexicans, who 
 exist as nations only by revolts and changes of their own governments ; 
 and, furthermore, that, if we dare only by peaceful negotiation to take 
 the cession, it ought to call down on our presumptuous heads all the 
 horrors of foreign war. 
 
 What are the more specific points in this objection interposed by 
 senators in debate ? 
 
 First, that, though independent and sovereign, the republic of Texas 
 is not competent to cede its whole territory, though it might be to 
 cede a part. And it is urged that, in the case of Louisiana and 
 Florida, only a part of Spain and France was ceded. 
 
 But how absurd does such an objection appear, when, if Texas owns 
 200,000,000 of acres, she might legally cede 199,999,999 acres, but 
 not that and the other acre ; or she might legally cede a quarter of it 
 at one time, another quarter at another, and so through the whole, 
 except the last ! No, sir ! she is neither entirely independent nor 
 entirely sovereign, if incapable of conveying the whole. Such are the 
 principles of national law. 
 
 " A free people, or a king, may alienate their territory, in part or in full.'' — Gro- 
 tius, 2 b., ch. 6, sec. 7. 
 
 And if in full, then the union of their people with our form of gov- 
 ernment follows as a matter of course, unless they choose to emigrate 
 elsewhere, and join some other government, or form a new one on some 
 vacant portion of the earth, like that of JEneas and his companions 
 from Troy, or Dido from Tyre. And if the people and the independ- 
 ent republic of Texas are, for this reason, not as competent to unite 
 with us entirely as they are to cede only a part of their territory, then 
 the absurdity would seem to follow, that they never can be competent 
 for admission into the Union, though recognized by Mexico, and no 
 
RE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 373 
 
 shadow of war existing, till they become qualified by abandoning their 
 independence, repudiating republicanism, and, as a servile dependency 
 or re-conquest of the monarchs of Spain or Mexico, be sold merely as a 
 portion of their territory to the United States. 
 
 When senators contend that this cession of the whole destroys the 
 ceding government or nation, and is hence impracticable and unprece- 
 dented, they forget that the nation may still hold together and migrate, 
 or may agree to unite with the neighbor to whom their territory 
 has been conveyed ; and that this is neither unusual nor unreasonable. 
 Pray tell me, did not Rhode Island unite with us all her territory, 
 and all her people, and all her government, rather than a part ; and 
 thus became annexed to that Union whose constitution she before had 
 refused to aid in forming, and refused to adopt, till in all quarters 
 denounced and reproached by your fathers, and till legislative penalties 
 and burdens were threatened to her by the administration of Washing- 
 ton himself? But, notwithstanding this, does the senator (Mr. Sim- 
 mons) admit, as he argues about Texas, that Rhode Island was 
 incompetent to unite with us 1 that she came in only under the threats 
 of Congress, and hence it was void? or that her u lone star" (all the 
 other old States being then under a new constitution without her) 
 became, by a junction with them, blotted out, extinguished, and her 
 sovereignty destroyed ? Just as much in her case as in that of Texas ; 
 and, as I have shown before, and will ere long again, just as much, and 
 no more, as new provinces and their whole governments were destroyed 
 by uniting with Holland, and others with Switzerland, and others with 
 Central America, and others with us. 
 
 It is true that, if the republic thus ceding and uniting is under 
 obligations to others, she cannot thus become rid of them ; but they 
 remain on her, or the whole government to which she is joined. Such 
 are her obligations by treaties, and her liabilities or exposures for 
 wrongs, or for claims, however unjust, by other powers. But that 
 does not impair the full right to make a cession, though it may affect 
 the expediency and duty of us to take it, if the liabilities are very 
 onerous, or her belligerent dangers very imminent. 
 
 We will look into that soon, after disposing of the question of the 
 right to cede the whole. The only other point in the objections I have 
 heard urged against that right is the claim still set up by Mexico to 
 rule over Texas. But, however that claim may be obstinately per- 
 sisted in, I contend that, after all which has taken place, and now 
 exists, it does not impair the right of other nations to take such cession, 
 or of Texas to make it. Please to note the distinction. 
 
 The incident that a war may be waged by any belligerent against 
 any purchaser of territory from the other belligerent, does not impair 
 the right to sell ; for the vendor may have owned the territory for 
 centuries, and been recognized by its antagonist, as well as the rest of 
 the world. But it does influence the expediency of buying, and more 
 especially if the belligerent conveys all his territory, and unites his 
 32 
 
374 KE-ANKEXATION OF TEXAS. 
 
 government with another ; because, in that event, I admit that the risk 
 of such claims, and such hostilities as exist, — all the incumbrances, — » 
 are assumed. Yet this is the whole, and is no impeachment of the 
 independent and sovereign right to convey ; — that right Texas has, if 
 she possesses the usual attributes of a nation. 
 
 She is one (as before explained in a recent letter of mine on this 
 subject) in such manner and form, no less than substance, as, in my 
 apprehension, justifies other nations in treating her as a de jure as 
 well as a de facto government, and competent, under the principles of 
 popular liberty, and the soundest international law in both hemispheres, 
 to cede her territory or unite her government to another, without 
 asking the consent, or giving just cause of war to any power. 
 
 What are the common-sense tests on this subject 1 If size of terri- 
 tory, she is as big as France, and as large as any four of our own 
 States. If population, she has one ranging, by different estimates, from 
 two to three hundred thousand people of all kinds. If a regular con- 
 stitution of government and code of laws, she has both. If a uniform 
 administration of justice, and the rights of conscience secured to all, 
 rather than the protection of the Catholic religion alone, as in Mexico, 
 she enjoys them. She has troops and ships of war. She has had her 
 independence acknowledged by the United States, by Great Britain, 
 France, Holland, Belgium, and, indeed, all the great powers of Chris- 
 tendom not under the sway of the Holy Alliance ; and she has treaties 
 of commerce and international agents with most of them. 
 
 No towns, castles, or counties, have there been held by her old 
 enemy in doubtful or divided empire. Her revolution is not in embryo, 
 but full grown ; not going on by preparatory steps, but finished, stable. 
 Not distracted by rival constitutions, rival chieftains, and rival armies, 
 such as long desolated many Spanish provinces, but domestic harmony 
 and peace reign throughout. Their prisons are not filled with political 
 victims. Order, and law, and the rights of property, are respected ; 
 and neither taste, nor education, nor sympathies of any kind, are 
 lingering round their former government, and smoothing the way to 
 the remotest thought at reconciliation. But Texas has other qualities 
 and characteristics as a nation, showing her competent to enter into 
 any contract or arrangement with other nations, as fully as the oldest 
 power of Europe. Besides having been for several years admitted, in 
 all respects, into the great family of nations, she is liable for her own 
 wrongs to them ; and is held so, and not Mexico, as appears by her 
 treaty of indemnity to us in 1838. She is authorized to seek redress 
 for injuries to herself, and not Mexico for her ; and she has, in this 
 way, and by treaties binding her commerce, limits, soil, and jurisdic- 
 tion, been much wider acknowledged, and longer in the independent 
 government of herself, than had Bonaparte, in France, when he sold 
 Louisiana to us. Such, I admit, was not the position of her affairs 
 when annexation was proposed and declined in 1837 ; but their affairs 
 have made great strides since ; and one unfortunate mistake with some, 
 
RE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 375 
 
 in the consideration of this topic, appears to be in not reflecting enough 
 on the changes in her relations and national maturity and stability, 
 made by the progress of time and events during the past seven years. 
 It is manifest that, if a people have, by sound principles, a right to 
 self-government, and, when oppressed, can, like the United States, 
 properly revolt from England, or Mexico from Spain, or Texas from 
 Mexico, and having declared their independence, do maintain it till 
 they give, as in this case, all the usual indications among nations of 
 manhood, — discretion, power, justice, and order, — the question of their 
 de jure sovereignty thus becomes as clearly settled in respect to all 
 third persons as their de facto sovereignty. The assent or acknowl- 
 edgment of their old masters does not constitute the right, but merely 
 admits it ; as the minors or apprentices, claiming to be adults and free, 
 and acting as such, derive their rights from the facts of the case, 
 whether acknowledged or not by those to whom they were once in 
 subjection. The world must otherwise become divided into mere holy 
 alliances, with all their monopolizing dogmas, on the one hand, and on 
 the other only such as they consider mere rebels, pirates, and banditti ; 
 breaking up, in this way, all reform or progress, and yielding to the 
 claim of the Divine right of kings over all the human race, till volun- 
 tarily relinquished. The war of opinion on this question was settled 
 in favor of the people, after sixty years of desolation and carnage, on 
 the plains of Holland ; again at Lexington, Saratoga, Yorktown ; again 
 in Europe, after deluging France in blood ; again and again on both 
 slopes of the Andes, as well as in Mexico herself, on a basis never 
 again to be shaken in the New World. 
 
 Moreover, she has a body of intelligent and talented men, of the true 
 Saxon race. And if all these do not constitute a State, what does 1 
 Not kings, garters, and titles of nobility, — not high- walled battlements, 
 nor moated gates, — but "men, high-minded men, who know their 
 rights, and, knowing, dare maintain." 
 
 The last objection under this head is, that, though she may be a de 
 facto State, she is not one de jure ; and therefore possesses no com- 
 petency to make the cession. 
 
 What is a de facto government, as contradistinguished from a de jure 
 one ? It seems to be argued that one merely possesses power, regard- 
 less of right, or without reference to right. The other not only 
 possesses it, but rightfully, under good authority, reasons, or laws; 
 for jure means only one or the other, as occasion requires. Thus, 
 Cromwell's government has been called a de facto one. But, without 
 reference to his ultimate rights in respect to the Stuarts, many other 
 nations made treaties with him, as rightful head of England, in less 
 than one year after he became protector. Such as that with Denmark, 
 September 15th, 1654, when he had been protector only from Decem- 
 ber 16, 1653, and in 1654 with Sweden, Portugal, and France. (3d 
 Col. of Treaties, 67.) 
 
 The possession of power, I grant, must not be merely momentary, 
 
376 RE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 
 
 and unsettled or changing, but apparently firm. (Martin's Laws of 
 Nations, b. 7, chap. 1.) And he was well known to multiply his 
 treaties, in order to strengthen his claim of right. 
 
 In this way he soon became so fully seated in power, and the nation 
 so acquiescent, and the Stuarts so incapable of disturbing him, that 
 his treaties of alliance and cessions, as well as other treaties, — like 
 those of Bonaparte to us of Louisiana, in less than two years from 
 his acknowledgment by other powers, — must be regarded as right and 
 valid. What Stuart or Guelph since have dared to violate any of 
 Cromwell's treaties, as not made by a de jure government, so far as 
 respects all foreign powers ? What Bourbon has, since 1803, ventured 
 to attempt to vacate Napoleon's treaties of cession with us, as well as 
 other powers, for not being made by a de jure government, looking to 
 the rest of the world? 
 
 But there is much more in the present case as to the de jure gov- 
 ernment of Texas, if we regard its origin and our own system of pol- 
 itics. Texas has been, as we before intimated, an independent and 
 sovereign state, with an excellent separate constitution, near twenty 
 years. Her union, during a part of this period, with the Mexican 
 confederacy, does not alter this. She has since broken no obligations 
 as to that confederacy, but they have all been broken by her oppress- 
 ors ; and these last are the real rebels and overthrowers of the con- 
 federacy, and not she. Texas had reason, authority, and law, all to 
 resist the assaults of Mexico for enslaving her to a new and consolidated 
 system. She had never entered into any such system. Her efforts 
 to maintain her independence, under those assaults, have been as right- 
 ful as ours in 1776. She has, since 1836, been independent even of 
 the confederacy, and been a de jure, as well as de facto, sovereign 
 government; and though, in 1837, the union with her might have 
 been more likely to expose us to war, and hence not prudent, it would, 
 in the other view, as de jure, have been perfectly justifiable, if her 
 government then had appeared to be settled, mature, and efficient. 
 
 It is most extraordinary that the right of Texas to cede to us her 
 territory without the consent of Mexico should now be doubted by those 
 who, in 1825 and 1829, did not question the right of Mexico, dejure 
 as well as de facto, to cede Texas without the consent of Spain. 
 
 How stood the facts then as to details ? Mexico, though revolution- 
 ary, and with internal disturbances, under Spanish supremacy, between 
 the Creoles and others, from 1810 to 1821, yet never sought nor 
 asked independence of Spain ; and both parties vied in loyalty to her, 
 till Iturbide's defection, and the declaration of independence, made at 
 Iguala, 24th February, 1821. (4 State Papers, 848, 835, and 1 
 Foote's History, 94, 96, 99.) The troops and power of Spain were 
 driven from the capital and most of the cities during that year ; but 
 the castle of Ulloa, at Vera Cruz, continued in the possession of the 
 mother country, when we recognized her independence in 1822, and 
 when we first applied to re-purchase Texas in 1825, as extending to 
 
RE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 377 
 
 the Rio del Norte. The constitution of Mexico admits that her inde- 
 pendence never commenced till 1821, being " given in Mexico, \th 
 October ■, 1824, fourth year of independence :" (2 Kennedy, 443.) 
 Yet, in only one year after the adoption of this constitution, only four 
 after her independence was declared, and but three after it was recog- 
 nized by us, — all short of what prevails in Texas now, — Messrs. 
 Adams and Clay thought she had the de jure right to cede territory 
 to us, without asking the consent of Spain, and without heeding the 
 adoption of any war then existing. 
 
 How could that be legitimate, if Texas, after being an independent 
 State near twenty years, and separated from Mexico eight years, can- 
 not now be allowed as de jure competent to negotiate for selling her 
 territory, without the consent of Mexico? Like facts apply to 1829 ; 
 and they are appealed to now, not for taunt or recrimination, but as 
 evidence that the ablest minds then, and the most experienced diplo- 
 matists, had entire confidence that such a cession as is now before us 
 could be accepted with propriety, and vindicated before the morality, 
 religion, and law, of the whole civilized world. 
 
 The only other differences material to the argument are, that in 
 1825 Mexico had been recognized by not half so many other nations 
 as Texas has now, and had maintained her independence for 
 only about half as long a period ; and that the revolution in Mexico 
 was then progressing, not in all respects finished ; her independence 
 unsettled, not firm ; her soil invaded and occupied by her enemy, not 
 free from hostile feet; her laws despotic, not liberal; her people 
 agitated by internal broils and factions, not united or peaceful ; and 
 Santa Anna's government much like what Bolivar considered his in 
 Peru — not settled, but a camp ; " for," said he, " my administration 
 can only be called a campaign" A fortiori, then, can Texas 
 cede now de jure, if Mexico could then. But another difference, still 
 more potential in its influence rather than argumentative in force, is, 
 I admit, that nobody then stood behind Spain to back her up ; while 
 now we see, or seem to see, the shadows of England's thousand ships 
 of war in the wake of Mexico, and hostile to our success from other 
 causes too deeply well known to need recapitulation. 
 
 What do gentlemen on the other side, as lawyers and publicists, 
 hold as the true doctrine on this subject of de facto and de jure gov- 
 ernments ? Let us be plain and explicit with each other. Was not 
 Cromwell's protectorate, after established and recognized by other 
 powers, a de jure as well as de facto government in respect to 
 them? And could he not legally have ceded territory, as well as 
 received cessions, until the Stuarts and their partisans renounced 
 their claims ? Did foreign powers treat with him, or with the exiled 
 family 1 So with Napoleon : was he not de jure as well as de facto 
 emperor, as to the rest of the world, until the Bourbons and their 
 partisans should recognize him ? Was he acknowledged and treated 
 with, or Louis XVIII. in banishment? Neither he nor Cromwell 
 32* 
 
378 KE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 
 
 was ever able to transfer territory and impose obligations on either 
 England or France, by the doctrines on the other side, though 
 all history and national law have settled the fact the other way. 
 Some doubted the de jure right of Don Miguel when in power de 
 facto, and others that of Joseph Bonaparte in Spain, and even of 
 Louis Philippe now in France ; but were they, and are they, not all 
 regarded as de jure to make and receive cessions while in power, and 
 acknowledged by other nations, however soon most of them, as well as 
 Cromwell and Bonaparte, became dethroned? 
 
 But the senator from Massachusetts says there are three stages in 
 reaching de jure power. First, a revolution ; second, a recognition 
 by others ; and, thirdly, an acknowledgment by the old authorities, or 
 an utter abandonment by them of their claims. But neither such 
 acknowledgment nor such abandonment took place by the Stuarts as 
 to Cromwell, or the Bourbons as to Bonaparte ; and yet their acts 
 have de jure bound both England and France as to all other nations. 
 
 It is just so as to a revolution like Holland, Mexico or the United 
 States, or, in one view, Texas ; separating a portion from the old gov- 
 ernment, and forming of it a new one, and declaring its independence. 
 Does nothing but the acknowledgment of the parent power, or an utter 
 abandonment of its claims, enable the separated and independent por- 
 tion to perform dejure acts as a nation, and bind its people and acquire 
 rights for them of the rest of the world, as if a de jure government ? 
 Certainly. Certainly Holland, Mexico, and the United States, all, as 
 well as Texas, have claimed to be de jure long before such acknowl- 
 edgment or abandonment. Holland dated her independence seventy 
 years before Spain recognized it. 
 
 Our independence dates from 1776, and not its recognition by 
 England in 1783. So that of Mexico from 1821, and not 1836, its 
 recognition by Spain. So Belgium, from 1830, and not afterwards, 
 when recognized by Holland. And so does Texas from 1836, and not 
 any future period, when Mexico may admit it. 
 
 All of them have acted on such a claim before a recognition by the 
 parent government as right ; and our assumed power to resist oppres- 
 sion, and establish new forms of government, without the consent of 
 our oppressors, is mere vapor, and the American system baseless, if 
 that assent, express or implied, is necessary to make our acts as to the 
 rest of mankind de jure. Popular governments are never inclined to 
 such nice distinctions, especially when these are unfriendly to popular 
 rights. But I admit that the recognition of a new government, or the 
 second stage in the gentleman's growth to a dejure condition, does not 
 require other nations to go further unless they please, and depart from 
 a neutral position, or by any act not required by public duty become 
 exposed to actual war ; and that it has been customary with other 
 nations, including ourselves, not to go any further. (4 State Papers, 
 846, 848.) But this grows out of the absence of any motive usually 
 to go further, and out of the pendency of a belligerent State between 
 
RE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 379 
 
 the old and new nation, in which we might become uselessly involved ; 
 and not from the fact that the new nation is not dejure, as well as de 
 facto, a sovereign power as to all other nations, and, as such, compe- 
 tent de jure to do all which other belligerents may. Herein lies the 
 error or fallacy of the reasoning on the other side. Martin's Law of 
 Nations, p. 77, substantially confirms these views, by holding that if 
 a government is established de facto, foreign powers have no right to 
 say it is not one de jure. 
 
 A recognition of independence of another power, standing alone, 
 obliges our courts to treat them so, and to give them and their citizens 
 all rights of property, and jurisdiction, and sovereignty, as in any other 
 case. It is dejure, as well as de facto, in the most critical and solemn 
 forum of another nation. (1 Kent, 25.) 
 
 Yet some senators, after all, seem to think it but " an armed 
 insurrectioyt," or, as Russia denominated the independence of Mexico 
 and South America, but " criminal combinations" of seditious sub- 
 jects against their legitimate kings. But it is neither the American 
 side of the question, nor that espoused by Mr. Webster himself. 
 
 " Mexico," says he, " may have chosen to consider, and may still choose to con- 
 sider, Texas as having been, at all times, since 1835, and as still continuing, a rebel- 
 lious province ; but the world has been obliged to take a very different view of the 
 matter. 
 
 " And, it must be added, that the constitution, public treaties, and the laws, oblige 
 the President to regard Texas as an independent State, and its territory as no part of 
 the territory of Mexico." (See Letter of July, 1842.) 
 
 Nor is this merely theoretical. On two occasions, we have prac- 
 tically recognized the power of the de facto governments on the west 
 of us to be de jure, so as to make permanent compacts with us con- 
 cerning the boundaries of their territory, long before they were 
 acknowledged as sovereign by the parent country. 
 
 Thus, January 12, 1828, we completed with Mexico a treaty 
 regulating the limit of the territory contiguous to us, without asking 
 the consent of Spain, though she then made urgent claim to Mexico, 
 though the latter had been independent but seven years, and though 
 her separate sovereignty had not then been acknowledged by Spain, 
 and was not till 1836. 
 
 So, again, in 1838, April 25, we made a similar treaty of limits 
 with Texas, as to her territory, without consulting Mexico, and when 
 her de jure rights were as much in question as now. Some have 
 asked, if the right to cede was clear in 1837, as well as now, why the 
 proposal then was not accepted ? Simply, because the danger of war 
 was then greater, and the hope of permanent independence was less. 
 
 The character and prospects of the war with Mexico in 1837 were 
 very different from the condition of things now ; and our exposure 
 much greater then to be involved in difficulty of taking a cession so 
 soon after one great invasion, and amidst the prospect of another, and 
 
380 RE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 
 
 ■without any long abandonment, as now, of a regular war on Texas for 
 many years. 
 
 The government of Texas was then, also, less settled, less firm, less 
 likely to be permanent, less ripened, less recognized by all Christen- 
 dom ; and her claims less on the sympathies and interference of other 
 friendly powers, by alliances or cessions, to put an end to barbarous 
 maraudings, as well as oppression ; and the authority of Mexico was 
 less to enforce any pretensions over a territory so much longer inde- 
 pendent, acknowledged by others, matured in her institutions, and, by 
 the lapse of time, emancipated from her vain efforts at control. The 
 statute of limitations bars most debts and claims in five or six years ; 
 and much more than that has elapsed here. 
 
 The whole real difficulty resolves itself into one, not of a right now 
 to sell or cede on the one part, and we to buy on the other, but 
 one as to the just and probable consequences of the transaction, con- 
 sidering the relations actually existing between Mexico and Texas, 
 whether belligerent or not ; and, if belligerent, whether justly so or 
 not. It follows, then, that, if an independent sovereignty, Texas can 
 cede rightfully her whole territory, as well as a part, and unite her 
 government, as well as territory, with us, if she pleases. Such acts 
 are done constantly in Europe and here, both in republican confed- 
 eracies and monarchies, as before shown ; and Vattel, as cited by the 
 senator from Illinois (Mr. Breese), recognizes the principle fully. 
 
 Having discussed the right to receive and the right to cede Texas, 
 the next question is, whether, as a duty, the treaty for the annexation 
 ought not to be ratified. Are the reasons for it not ample, and our 
 duty clear ? The presumption certainly would be that, unless strong 
 public objections exist, no nation would decline the offer of a large 
 addition to its territory, population, and power. More especially does 
 such a presumption arise, when the territory is contiguous and con- 
 venient, if not necessary; has been long sought for, under three or four 
 different administrations ; is governed by institutions and laws similar to 
 our own, and inhabited by a people most of whom have a like origin, 
 education and religion, with ourselves ; and concentrate their affections 
 and wishes on a reunion with the great national family from which 
 they sprang. 
 
 I am not one of those disposed to exaggerate the advantages of such 
 a union to us ; nor would I, on the contrary, scoff at the objections 
 which are entertained — and honestly, without doubt — by many 
 against it. But, in weighing the latter, I trust that we may be able 
 to free ourselves from some prejudices and apprehensions, suited to 
 other forms of government, rather than a representative confederacy ; 
 and be a little less local in policy and timid in action than if we were, 
 as once, but three millions of people, and had confined our explorations 
 to Lake Champlain and Cape Cod, rather than stretching west on our 
 own soil to the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Ocean. 
 
 Not forgetting the enlarged duties, as well as interests, that have 
 
HE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 381 
 
 devolved on us by our new position, let us examine, dispassionately, 
 both the reasons for and the objections against the annexation pro- 
 posed, as a moral and political duty. For, though the right to take 
 and to make the cession may on both sides be clear, our duty may not 
 require an assent to the ratification ; and I am frank to say, that if I 
 regarded the treaty as a mere pecuniary speculation, like the calcula- 
 tions of the senator from Rhode Island (Mr. Simmons), my hopes 
 would not be great for profit or credit ; or, if I looked at some of the 
 reasons assigned for the measure in the correspondence, or the 
 prudence of some of the agents employed, or the patriotism of some 
 taking deep interest in the question. But these, and many formal 
 exceptions, seem scarcely suitable to the magnitude of the subject, and 
 the high duties and national honor and interests which are at issue. 
 One of the most prominent of these interests is the importance of 
 Texas to the United States for security to the commerce of the west 
 and south-west, through the mouth of the Mississippi river. The 
 freedom of that commerce was a topic which, as long ago as under the 
 old Confederation, agitated the whole country. It then introduced the 
 first geographical division of parties between the south and the north ; 
 in which the latter, unfortunately, was quite as strenuous in resisting 
 efforts and sacrifices to obtain that freedom, as it is now in resisting 
 those to secure it, after having been obtained. 
 
 A few circumstances in the agitation of that age indicate strongly 
 prejudices and contests not very unlike the present one. 
 
 Sir. Gorham, of Massachusetts, "avowed his opinion that the shut- 
 ting the Mississippi would be advantageous to the Atlantic States, and 
 wished to see it shut." (Madison Papers, p. 609.) 
 
 But Virginia extended over Kentucky, and claimed all the north- 
 west ; while North Carolina also crossed the Alleghanies into Ten- 
 nessee. Hence the south, at that early day, became the champions 
 of western interests, no less than southern ones. 
 
 And though Mr. Aymer, apparently concurring with Mr. Gorham, 
 "thought the encouragement of the western country was suicide on 
 the part of the old States" (3 Madison Papers, p. 1446), and though 
 the vote of seven States was at first procured to proceed in the nego- 
 tiations with Spain, without insisting on the free navigation of the 
 Mississippi, yet Mr. Jefferson wrote that the navigation of the Missis- 
 sippi we must have. (1 Jefferson's Life, p. 433.) And Mr. Jay at 
 last admitted our right to it was good. (4 Secret Journal, p. 451.) 
 And the old Congress, before breaking up, in September, 1788, 
 solemnly 
 
 "Resolved, That the free navigation of the river Mississippi is a clear and essential 
 right of the United States, and that the same ought to be considered and supported 
 as such." (4 Secret Journal, 453, September 16, 1778.) 
 
 In the convention, while forming the constitution, Governeur Morris 
 frankly stated that " the fisheries," and the "Mississippi" — security 
 
382 RE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 
 
 to them, — " were the two great objects of the Union." (3 Madison 
 Papers, 1523.) 
 
 The whole question, as a national one, was then settled. That was 
 the embryo of the present crisis. The duty to secure became as 
 imperative as had been the duty to obtain. A million and a half of 
 square miles of territory, and what are now nine millions of people, on 
 the waters of the Mississippi and her tributaries, were foreseen, and 
 were to be shielded in peace as in war ; and tranquillity to their insti- 
 tutions, no less than safety to their property of every kind, were in 
 advance solemnly guaranteed, and were never to be neglected. On 
 this implied pledge your public lands have been sold there and settled. 
 
 It is not necessary, at this part of our inquiry, to detail all the 
 steps since taken, under the constitution, to carry out faithfully one of 
 those great objects of the Union connected with the Mississippi. Spain 
 resisted and intrigued against all this. She was one of the last to 
 accede to our independence, and to make any treaty of limits on the 
 south as to the Florida line, from fear of our revolt proving an exam- 
 ple contagious to her American colonies. It is said, by one of our 
 most learned historians, that a document exists in which she was 
 advised by her prime minister then to allow the whole of them to 
 become independent, except her West India Islands ; and if that advice 
 had been followed, which subsequent events, with the loss of millions 
 of life and treasure, show to have been so wise, our present difficulties 
 as to Texas would probably never have arisen. She pursued the 
 opposite policy, and, after the peace of 1783, sought to push her 
 claims even on the Mississippi, as high up as the Ohio river, and as 
 far east as the Alleghanies. And, after driving her from these pre- 
 tensions, and then from Florida and Louisiana, her descendants hold 
 on upon Texas with a death-gripe ; and long after their ability to sub- 
 due it, or its value to them can make it an object in itself at all desir- 
 able. Both freedom and security to the navigation of that mighty 
 river were once placed wholly within our grasp, by the purchase of 
 Louisiana. 
 
 I say this under the impression that the western boundary of Lou- 
 isiana, on the Gulf of Mexico, truly extended to the Rio del Norte, as 
 heretofore shown. Any border enemy was then flung off to a safe dis- 
 tance from the great outlet of near half the exports of the whole 
 Union. New Orleans, the magnificent depot of the entire valley of 
 the Mississippi, was then shielded from hostile surprise. Our trade 
 with the West Indies and Europe, left more open and unannoyed, and 
 the vast population on the western waters, now nine, and, ere a cen- 
 tury more, to be ninety millions of people, — treble the numbers of 
 either France or England, and more than treble their size in ter- 
 ritory, — was thus to be better protected, not only in their commerce, 
 but in their lives and honor, from both the hostile tread and hostile 
 machinations of an encroaching enemy. The security thus gained 
 from the Indian scalping-knife was an additional motive, and every 
 
RE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 383 
 
 cradle in the west witnessed a sounder sleep when the tomahawk could 
 be removed further off, and forts and greater distances were interposed 
 between the log-cabin and the savage torch. 
 
 I say that all this was accomplished with the boundary then 
 obtained, and was in some degree lost without it, having, as we had, 
 a foreign foe and foreign Indians so near us as the Sabine and 
 the Red rivers. The great American captain of our age, with hun- 
 dreds of others, have staked their skill and reputation on this; and 
 hence that boundary, if once owned by us, should never have been 
 parted with in 1819 ; or should be regained the first favorable and 
 just opportunity, as has been since constantly attempted again and 
 again, and as is now amicably within our power, by ratifying the 
 treaty under consideration. We have already seen that it is no new 
 idea that freedom of commerce is of little value without its security. 
 
 It is no new project that a line further west than the Sabine is vital 
 to its security, as well as important for protection in war, both against 
 civilized and savage foes. 
 
 It is no new vagary, that when our fathers, in 1786, finally resolved 
 on their right to the free navigation of the Mississippi, they also, in 
 the same act, and by the same dauntless spirit, meant to enforce that 
 right till successful, and to defend it, also, when once acknowledged, 
 as they afterwards did in many an Indian war, as well as on the 
 bloody fields of New Orleans. It is no new principle of national law, 
 that it then became the duty of the whole Union to look over the lux- 
 uriant regions west of the Alleghanies with the same affection and aid, 
 and lavish on them a like deference and regard, as on other parts of the 
 Union ; and that only half our obligations would be discharged in 
 procuring a free navigation of the western waters, if not following it 
 up with procuring security to that navigation and the immense inter- 
 ests connected with it. Such men as Messrs. Gorham and Clymer 
 had, or ought to have, outgrown their more narrow views and sectional 
 prejudices. The west and the south-west were, by the tide of emigra- 
 tion, becoming bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. In taking 
 honest pains to give them protection as well as prosperity, the position 
 of things has so changed, that the north and east, and Middle States, 
 are in truth giving them to their own families, or the playmates of 
 their youth. Even if selfishness prompted a different course in 1 785, 
 it will, if enlightened, concur in the course recommended in 1844. 
 Let me particularize a single illustration of this, among thousands of 
 like cases scattered over the east, and, indeed, the whole Atlantic 
 States. 
 
 On one of the hill-tops in the interior of New Hampshire, only two 
 generations ago, dwelt a true, enterprising, industrious New England 
 family. Are they still confined to their native mountains, and their 
 interests and affections centred only there? On the contrary, sir, 
 some of them are felling the forests in the mighty west ; others plant 
 in the sunny south : one is pushing his fortunes in the Empire State ; 
 
384 RE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 
 
 another in Michigan ; another in Mississippi ; another on the rich soil 
 of Alabama : and thus their homes and their fortunes, their anxieties 
 and their patriotism, are limited only by their country's extent and 
 welfare. The next generation will probably see some of their descend- 
 ants in Oregon or Texas, and breathing the balmy air of the Columbia 
 or Rio del Norte. 
 
 Such, sir, is the destiny of most of the people of this leading repub- 
 lic of the New World, presenting a form of government as novel and 
 striking as was the continent itself when discovered by Columbus, and 
 developing a mission on earth, by this branch of the Anglo-Saxon race, 
 which, while the school-house and village church, side by side, mark 
 their progress, will never be completed till they reach the Pacific. The 
 mass of them are not, as they wander, either fanatics or bigots, but 
 conform to all local institutions like peaceable citizens, till reason and 
 experience are able to work salutary changes. 
 
 How much more is it our duty to receive these persons into the 
 Union, when an opportunity offers, than the French of Louisiana, or 
 the Spaniards of Florida ! However worthy, in many respects, the 
 character of the latter, yet all must see that the moral fitness, the 
 education, habits, and religion, of most of our kin in Texas, render 
 them more suitable for an intimate alliance with us ; and that their 
 republican form of government makes the Union more appropriate 
 than what we have already overcome in receiving those in Louisiana 
 and Florida, educated under monarchies. Another important conse- 
 quence of the purchase of Louisiana was to give greater quiet to the 
 commerce and people on all the tributaries of the Mississippi, as well 
 as on its own great channel. But, parting with Texas, we lost in the 
 same treaty the sources of the Arkansas and Red rivers, as well as 
 large tracts of land adjoining ; and, unless re-annexed, a door is 
 opened for constant annoyances and collisions between us and those 
 higher up on the stream, and one cardinal benefit of the original 
 purchase is entirely relinquished. 
 
 The treaty presents at the same moment a fortunate occasion to do 
 that, as well as enforce better the guaranties of the constitution ; to 
 promote " domestic tranquillity" in the south and south-west, no less 
 than the west and east. The property and domestic institutions of the 
 former, however different from those at the north, were secured as 
 amply under the old Confederation as those of any other region. So 
 are they by the present constitution ; so are they by all our legislative 
 and judicial decisions ; and so must they continue to be, till the com- 
 promises of the constitution are wantonly violated, or the Union dis- 
 solved. Hence the losses or capture of their property in slaves have 
 often been indemnified; their escape into other States has been 
 redressed by a surrender of them ; and the domestic tranquillity 
 designed for all the States, as set out in the preamble of the constitu- 
 tion as one paramount object for its adoption, has again and again been 
 
KE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 385 
 
 sought to be secured, in times of excitement and peril, precisely as 
 they are likely to be by the ratification of this treaty. 
 
 In 1811, the executive was empowered by Congress, after careful 
 deliberation in secret, to take possession of Florida by force, with a 
 view to preserve more undisturbed the domestic relations and quiet 
 of the south. So, in 1810, Mr. Madison, of his own motion, took 
 possession of the country east of Lake Pontchartrain to the river 
 Perdido ; for this, among other objects, that need not be repeated. 
 Though his course was then denounced as war by his opponents, yet 
 Congress, by an act in 1812, ratified it, and annexed that tract to the 
 State of Louisiana ; and did this without asking the consent of Spain, 
 or of the people of the United States, or of the inhabitants of the 
 soil, and while many of them were in a state of actual revolt. 
 
 Again : in 1820, for the same, among other objects, when the 
 treaty for the cession of the Floridas remained wrongfully unratified 
 by Spain, Mr. Monroe recommended to Congress the immediate occu- 
 pation of that country by virtue of legislation ; and this was prevented 
 only by the subsequent ratification and peaceful delivery of it, without 
 rendering an actual resort to violence, on our part, necessary, after it 
 had been proposed. . 
 
 In short, the south stood shoulder to shoulder with us in the Involu- 
 tion, with this property and these institutions. They came into the 
 Union with them on equal terms ; they have so remained for half a 
 century, and so must they continue, till injustice or fanaticism or trea- 
 son violate all the sacred compromises of all we hold dear. 
 
 The ratification of this treaty is also vastly important to our whole 
 people in an industrial point of view. It gives to us enough additional 
 territory for four or five large States, immediately contiguous ; and 
 some of them, by their location on the ocean, with fine bays and 
 immense rivers, virtually Atlantic States in their habits and inter- 
 course ; an increase of near a third of a million in our population, 
 and a near and rich outlet for the overflowings of the other States, 
 swelling, as they must in the next fifty years, to more than most of 
 the kingdoms of Europe in their mighty masses. The annexation of 
 Texas, in its influence on all the great branches of industry, is not 
 merely a western or southern question, but one deeply interesting to 
 every quarter of our common country, — whether it promotes that 
 industry by opening to agriculture more fertile soils and genial climates, 
 or by forming a wider home market for manufactures, or by furnishing 
 new articles of commerce, and new bays and rivers for the free navi- 
 gation of western steamers, as well as coasting and freighting vessels 
 from the east. Our independence of other countries, by more lands, 
 more fitted to sugar, fine cotton, and rice, and even coffee, would thus 
 be greatly promoted. 
 
 On this and other kindred topics I shall not, on this occasion, 
 enlarge ; believing that a very strong case of duty to take the cession 
 33 
 
386 RE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 
 
 is made out, unless it be counterbalanced by some of the objections 
 which have been urged in this debate. 
 
 I proceed at once to examine, in some detail, the most prominent of 
 these objections. 
 
 The annexation is opposed by some, on the ground that it will make 
 our territory too large ; but experience has evinced that a representa- 
 tive republic can, with convenience and efficiency, extend over limits 
 far wider than from the St. Croix to the Rio del Norte. Indeed, by 
 the aid of railroads and steam, the Union, with Texas included, will 
 be far more accessible, in all its parts, either for business or govern- 
 ment, than it was at the Revolution, with only thirteen States, and 
 those all situated on the narrow belt of the eastern declivity of the 
 Alleghanies. And this objection, if tenable, should have been urged, 
 and prevailed, before we purchased either Louisiana or the Floridas. 
 
 How groundless, in connection with this, is the objection by some 
 senators (Messrs. Miller and Choate), that duty does not require 
 assent to the cession, because it is the lust for " territorial aggrandize- 
 ment" which now prompts us; when the whole we seek was not 
 only obtained two generations ago, but was justified then by such 
 men as Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, and advocated since, and 
 attempted to be regained, by such men as Adams, Clay, and Jack- 
 son ! Or because, as imputed by the senator from New Jersey, we 
 wish to seize Texas now as " spoils of victory," " as a conquest by 
 treaty ;" when, in truth, she comes into an equal union of rights and 
 privileges, from friendship and mutual interest, — from choice, — and 
 suited for it by education and principles, and gaining quite as much 
 by it as we, or as Rhode Island gained by uniting with us after 1789, 
 or as Scotland gained by her union with England near the commence- 
 ment of the last century ! 
 
 To repeat again some of my remarks on a former occasion : 
 
 " The annexation has been opposed as not a duty, because inclining the balance of 
 political power in our system too much in favor of the west and south. But the same 
 course of reasoning would strip us of all our great domain on the Pacific Ocean, — a 
 country never to be surrendered while an American whaler visits its waters, or an 
 American emigrant chooses to fish, hunt, or plant, on the banks of the Columbia. It 
 would also, from like apprehensions as to the balance of power in the north, prevent 
 any future peaceable annexation of the Canadas, so ardently contemplated by our 
 fathers from the commencement of the Revolution ; and it would heretofore have 
 defeated the purchase of the Floridas by Mr. Monroe, and of Louisiana, including 
 Texas, by Mr. Jefferson; and would not only cast censure on them and their venera- 
 ble coadjutors, for thus deranging the balance of power then, but would add reproach 
 on Messrs. Adams and Clay, for attempting to regain Texas in 1825 and 1827, and 
 on General Jackson and Mr. Van Buren, for a like attempt in 1829; and, what is 
 still worse, by this course of reasoning, for seeking, as was done in 1835, by General 
 Jackson and Mr. Forsyth, to obtain a vast tract of additional country still further 
 south and west, from the forty-second degree of latitude to the thirty-seventh, and 
 stretching towards the setting sun, over that degree, across the entire continent. 
 But, in truth, the durable interests of the whole Union are believed to have been 
 looked toon those occasions, as now; and the theoretical balance of power, if adverted 
 to at all, can never endanger the practical workings of our system, which will always 
 produce greatest harmony when least influenced by any sectional jealousies or local 
 
RE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 387 
 
 prejudices; and "which will always be most attractive, strongest, and most flourishing, 
 where freest, unless liberty and progress are mere phantoms of the imagination." 
 
 More than all this, Texas, if added to the Union, may well be 
 regarded, for ages, if not forever, quite as much northern as western 
 and southern, in many of her principles and tastes. Her position on 
 the ocean, her numerous and large rivers near, her culture of sugar 
 and rice, as well as cotton, her easy intercourse with the West Indies 
 and the north, make her an Atlantic State for most purposes, and will 
 connect her people, in their intercourse and commerce, and views of 
 political economy, very closely with the Atlantic portion of the Union ; 
 and perhaps more intimately with the northern parts of it than many 
 
 " It is opposed by others on account of the badness of some of the reasons assigned 
 for it; as if a good measure ought to be rejected because any one may please to urge 
 some weak reasons for it. By others, because a few of its advocates are suspected of 
 being interested in the question ; as if that could impair the usefulness of the annex- 
 ation itself, or was not always an incident to almost every question of great magni- 
 tude. And by others still, because the auspices under which the measure is now 
 proposed are disliked ; as if the necessity or value of a gift or purchase depended 
 upon the character of the agents employed. 
 
 "It is resisted by many for the reason that slavery exists in Texas. That is an 
 institution, to be sure, which most people born at the north are, like myself, averse 
 to. But those who respect the constitution and the Union remember that it is an 
 institution which our parent country, before the Revolution, forced upon both the 
 north and the south; which, after being more deeply interwoven through the social 
 and political systems of the latter, the rest of the States did not hesitate to confed- 
 erate with her in fighting the battles of independence; nor to counsel with her heroes, 
 patriots, and statesmen, informing the present constitution; nor to associate with 
 them in carrying out its great destinies ; nor in guaranteeing their property and rights 
 in common with the rest, then and during the half-century since, in peace and war, 
 and in weal or woe. 
 
 "However deprecated by many of us, we know that none can legally abolish the 
 institution but those who possess it; and that while this has already been done, since 
 the Revolution, by nearly half of the old States, it may continue to be done by Texas 
 herself, as well as others, sooner or later, when their sense of duty and safety may 
 permit it, if left tranquilly to the exercise of their own rights. What effect the annex- 
 ation of Texas will really have on this measure seems to be doubted by some of its 
 opponents, among whom the most distinguished thinks it will add more free than 
 slave States. But, however that may be, the friends of annexation believe that, while 
 a rejection of it must leave the institution of slavery just as it is, without mitigation, 
 the acceptance of it cannot add to the whole number of slaves now in Texas and the 
 United States together; and, if dispersing that number over a wider space, will grad- 
 ually tend to make their freedom less expensive and more easy in any one State; or, 
 if concentrating them further south than now, will render voluntary emancipation 
 more northwardly still speedier and safer. Whether such considerations have pre- 
 ponderated before, in overcoming this objection, with many of our most eminent 
 friends of liberty and philanthropy, I know not; but certain it is that it did not 
 prevent Mr. Jefferson and his northern democratic friends from purchasing Louis- 
 iana, including Texas herself, in 1803; nor Florida from being bought by Messrs, 
 Monroe and Adams, in 1819; nor Texas again from being negotiated for by Messrs, 
 Adams and Clay, in 1825 and 1827; and by General Jackson and Mr. Van Buren, 
 in the summer of 1829 ; the decree of Mexico for abolishing slavery in her posses- 
 sions not being issued till September 15, 1829." (See 4 Blunt's Annual Register, 
 p. 147.) 
 
 It did not prevent us from keeping Texas, with all her slavery, for 
 
388 RE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 
 
 sixteen years, and then exchanging her for another slave territory. 
 Is it not safer to act with such men on a great national question? men 
 of all parties, coincident on this single measure, notwithstanding the 
 objection as to slavery ? Much safer than to indulge rashly in a dis- 
 regard of every precedent and principle adopted in respect to it during 
 half a century. 
 
 International interferences, or encouragements, to destroy the domes- 
 tic or political institutions of each other, are alike mischievous, whether 
 attempted by us against her church-and-state system and monarchical 
 government, or by England, or the world's convention in sight of her 
 Parliament, against any of our institutions. Without going into details 
 on this unpleasant topic, these officious complaints about us tend to 
 plunge the world into a state of constant warfare, rather than promote 
 durable peace and civilization. 
 
 Even the despot Santa Anna talks of keeping up hostilities against 
 Texas in order to put down domestic slavery there ; and Ali Pacha, 
 in Egypt, while amidst all his tyrannies he has the address towards 
 England to profess the emancipation of his slaves, renews yearly a 
 frontier slave-hunt, to recruit his armies, navies, and household. 
 
 What is this objection, when made among ourselves so pertinaciously, 
 but a violation of Washington's farewell injunction against encouraging 
 sectional prejudices and sectional divisions ; and of Jefferson's depreca- 
 tions, in the Missouri controversy, against the drawing of "a geograph- 
 ical line, coinciding with a marked principle, moral and political;" and 
 which, if countenanced, would, in his opinion, constantly sink deeper 
 and deeper, and never be obliterated, except by disastrous results, 
 which he did not wish to live long enough to witness ? (4 Jefferson's 
 Life, 324 p.) 
 
 Declaring, as we have so often, that Cuba shall never be allowed to 
 go into the possession of another power, I should like to know what is 
 to be done with slavery there, if the island is ever occupied by us. 
 And if becoming a territory or a State, on what principle is it to be 
 so, except that applied to Louisiana, Florida, and therefore to Texas % 
 Are we to have whites under our dominion not free, nor ever to be 
 admitted into the Union on equal principles 7 
 
 I will only add, in order to avoid misapprehension, that so far from 
 feeling opposed to the termination of slavery by all legal, safe, and 
 constitutional means, none could rejoice more heartily than myself to 
 see it thus ended, the world over ; and among the whites, as well as 
 blacks ; — among the disfranchised, the serfs and paupers, of Europe, 
 and even the dark Hindoos, as well as the sable sons of Africa ; — not 
 confining my sympathies to color or name, but to real degradation 
 among the whole human race, and to their relief by introducing grad- 
 ually a superior state of intelligence, religion, and rights, rather than 
 by a rash crusade against law and order, and the public peace. 
 
 Others still object to the form of the cession, holding it to be insuf- 
 ficient, unless made by an act of Congress, and hence it is not our 
 
RE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 389 
 
 duty to take the cession by this treaty. Various technicalities as to 
 the power of treaties have been urged against the present proceeding, 
 such as the want of existing parties till the act is completed, and the 
 absence of legislative as well as executive sanction to the union of the 
 two countries. But the people of Texas still continue a separate 
 independent government, competent to contract and hold their rights, 
 not only till the treaty is ratified by our government and their own, 
 but till an act of Congress, there and here, passes to enforce many 
 provisions, which, in their nature, as in many other treaties, are 
 imperfect and inoperative till that takes place. And if the sanction 
 of their people to a union like this, given at the same time their con- 
 stitution was adopted, by an almost unanimous vote, was supposed to 
 be obsolete, I should think it prudent to take their opinion again before 
 the proceedings are deemed complete. Then, and not till all this is 
 concluded, an actual delivery of possession takes place, and is neces- 
 sary to the validity of the cession. (1 Kent's Com., 177.) Nor 
 even after that is Texas extinguished, as some have argued ; she is 
 still in political being, as a territory of the Union, and with full claims 
 to enforce her rights, in due time, and on equal terms, to become a 
 State. 
 
 An act of legislation in the form of a compact is no stronger than a 
 law of Congress carrying the treaty into effect by establishing a terri- 
 torial government, and making the proper appropriations and provi- 
 sions. If these are done, then our people have assented through their 
 proper and accustomed agents for such purposes ; and Congress has 
 assented, as well as Texas, both its government and people. We shall 
 stand towards each other in all these respects, and shall continue to, as 
 we and our new separate States and territories do. The matter has 
 thus duly commenced with a treaty. We take by it one step. A 
 treaty, too, is the usual instrument for making agreements with for- 
 eign powers. It is defined to be " a compact of accommodation relat- 
 ing to public affairs." And if enforced by an act of Congress carrying 
 its provisions into effect, it will have all the form and substance, in its 
 course to completion, which any legislative compact of union between 
 countries before in domestic relations could possess in England or 
 here. 
 
 Some confusion has arisen on this point, I apprehend, from not 
 adverting to the circumstance that, in this case, the ceded territory 
 and its government are foreign, and not like those using legislation 
 alone, already in some degree connected as domestic members of the 
 same sovereign, like Scotland and Ireland. And so far from Texas 
 being thus conquered, or annihilated, or degraded, or defrauded, she 
 is elevated to our own platform ; her privileges gained are quite equal 
 to ours ; her star is placed in our galaxy, rather than extinguished ; 
 and the union is alike honorable and advantageous to all concerned. 
 
 Another new objection has been pressed, that the cession contains 
 too much land; and is thus not a duty, but a wrong, and exposes us to 
 33* 
 
390 RE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 
 
 unavoidable collisions with other powers. But, unfortunately for this 
 ground, the cession does not describe any particular quantity of land, 
 or extend the limits of Texas to any specified boundaries whatever. It 
 merely, in speaking of its extent, says, "all its territories." We can 
 hold, then, or claim, only "all its territories," — its true and rightful 
 boundaries, be they more or less. So was it with the purchase of 
 Louisiana, without any other limitations ; and Bonaparte declined to 
 make any specific ones, when asked (See Marbois' History of Louis- 
 iana), but for a reason directly the reverse to that which existed here, 
 "the boundary being left without specification" here in order to avoid 
 difficulty. (See the Texian documents.) 
 
 The better opinion certainly is, that the old Texas run west to 
 the mouth of the Rio Del Norte, on the gulf; though Mr. Jeffer- 
 son, as a compromise, was willing to stop at the Nueces or Color- 
 ado, and even the Guadaloupe ; and General Jackson, in 1829, pro- 
 posed to buy only to the centre of the desert between the Nueces and 
 the Rio Del Norte ; but in 1835 he wished to go quite to the latter, 
 as did Messrs. Adams and Clay, in 1825 and 1827. (Doc. House 
 of Reps., Sept. 1837, on Texas, 2 Foote's History, 393.) 
 
 Most people considered the line to run north on that river only to 
 the mountains, though the legislature of Texas, by a law, have claimed 
 to run to its source. But Texas, by a mere law, could acquire no 
 title beyond what she conquered from Mexico, and actually governed. 
 Hence, though her law includes more than the ancient Texas, she 
 could hold and convey only that ; or, at the uttermost, only what she 
 exercised clear jurisdiction over. As to that, there is and can be no 
 eventual contest ; and the deed of cession, like one by an individual 
 at common law, would practically pass no more than was owned ; and 
 under it the grantee would get no more if he could, and could not if 
 he would.* 
 
 * The law of Texas, including in her claim more than she actually occupied, doubt- 
 less originated very innocently, in the following section of the compact by Santa Anna 
 with President Burnet, in 1836, agreeing solemnly that Texas should extend not only 
 to the mouth of the Rio Del Norte, but thence to its source : 
 
 "Fifth. That the following be and the same are hereby established and made 
 the lines of demarcation between the two republics of Mexico and of Texas, to wit : 
 The line shall commence at the estuary or mouth of the Rio Grande, on the western 
 bank thereof, and shall pursue the same bank up the said river to the point where the 
 river assumes the name of the Rio Bravo Del Norte, from which point it shall pro- 
 ceed on the said western bank to the head waters or source of said river, — it being 
 understood that the terms Rio Grande and Rio Bravo Del Norte apply to and desig- 
 nate one and the same stream. From the source of said river, — the principal head 
 branch being taken to ascertain that source, — a due north line shall be run until it 
 shall intersect the boundary line established and described in the treaty negotiated 
 by and between the government of Spain and the government of the United States, of 
 the north ; which line was subsequently transferred to and adopted in the treaty of 
 limits made between the government of Mexico and that of the United States; and 
 from this point of intersection the line shall be the same as was made and established 
 in and by the several treaties above-mentioned, to continue to the mouth or outlet of 
 the Sabine river, and from thence to the Gulf of Mexico." (See 2 Foote's His., 314, 
 compact between Texas and Santa Anna, in 1836.) 
 
RE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 391 
 
 Another reason assigned why it is not our duty to accept this ces- 
 sion is, that the Senate, by ratifying the treaty, do, in conjunction 
 with the President, declare war ; when, by the constitution, it cannot 
 be declared without the consent of the whole of Congress. This 
 entirely falls to the ground, if my views are right, that all treaties like 
 this are inoperative till a law of Congress passes to carry them into 
 effect. For then, before its validity is perfected so as to produce war, 
 the whole of Congress assents. Even in England, an act of Parlia- 
 ment is necessary to give effect to some treaties, as was held here in 
 Jay's treaty in 1796, and in other treaties after the late war, as 
 well as in the treaties for purchasing Louisiana and the Floridas. 
 Whenever money is to be paid, or officers appointed, and a territorial 
 government organized, an act of Congress is indispensable to complete 
 its operations. Hence, without going into the question, how wide a 
 range of discretion exists in passing or not passing such an act, war is 
 not declared or waged till Congress chooses to do it by a subsequent 
 act. If, before that, it is commenced against us wrongfully, as it may 
 be on this or any other occasion, Congress still retains the power to 
 repel it or negotiate. On the very theory upon the other side, the 
 act of the President and Senate alone, so far as regards war, is beyond 
 its authority, and nugatory by the constitution. How, then, can the 
 President and Senate alone make or wage a war ? and how ill-grounded 
 are the fears that, by ratifying the treaty, the Senate compromises the 
 country in hostilities ! • : : - - ; . 
 
 The Senate and President can form a treaty of alliance ; but the 
 country cannot, and will not, thereby be plunged into a war, unless 
 Congress assent. So, on the other hand, they form a treaty of neu- 
 trality or of peace ; and yet the country will not and cannot be retained 
 in a state of peace, if Congress pleases to declare war. (See 4 Jeffer- 
 son's Life, page 498.) 
 
 At the utmost, in this case, the President and the Senate cannot 
 adopt anything which does not exist; and, therefore, as only a liability 
 exists to war, they can adopt but a liability, and not war itself; and 
 that liability is neither just in itself nor countenanced by the rest of 
 the world. The utmost which the ratification accomplishes, even 
 were the treaty operative without an act of Congress, is to adapt or 
 expose ourselves to the state of things which exists now between 
 Mexico and Texas. 
 
 We will soon endeavor to show that this state is now but construct- 
 ive war ; that its actual renewal would be unjust ; that the conduct- 
 
 And some articles in the newspapers, very ably written, in 1829, had also insisted 
 that the country ceded and lost by us in 1819 contained 225,000,000 of acres. 
 Whereas the whole land claimed by Texas, rightfully or wrongfully, and in actual 
 possession or not, and whether too much or too little, . is only 203,320,000 acres, 
 according to the official map before us; and that number of acres claimed in 1829 
 cannot be obtained without going to the utmost limit of the boundaries since laid 
 down on this map, on the south and north and east, as well as west. 
 
392 RE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 
 
 ing of it, if as formerly, is contrary to the law of nations ; and hence, 
 so far from assuming what is either dangerous or just, we shall per- 
 form a national duty to interfere in this matter by negotiation, and 
 hazard something, if necessary, to prevent a recurrence of more such 
 bloodshed, as well as restore tranquillity and durable peace to this 
 quarter of the globe. 
 
 Some have magnified the danger of war, and even proclaimed it as 
 war itself, that the President has ordered a portion of our army and 
 navy to the points which will be most exposed, in case Mexico com- 
 mences threatened hostilities against us, or the renewal of old ones 
 against Texas. 
 
 But these movements are all with a view to the preservation of 
 peace, rather than the waging of war. They are precautionary and 
 prudent, rather than belligerent. The officers are in all cases expressly 
 forbidden to engage in hostilities, but required merely to watch and 
 report facts. The same was done in 1829, by Gen. Jackson. (See 2 
 Kennedy, 242, 265, and 276.) And in 1837, by Mr. Van Buren; 
 and at the east on the disputed territory, as well as in Texas beyond 
 the Sabine. The chief difference is, that in this case more forbear- 
 ance and caution appear, and not a single line of boundary is allowed 
 to be crossed, nor a gun fired, without authority of Congress, nor a 
 single dollar of new expense incurred. (See the official document.) 
 In 1810 we had the first edition of this cry of war, for marching 
 troops. That was a much stronger case; for Mr. Madison then 
 marched troops into a disputed territory, and used force to get posses- 
 sion of it. He was met with the same complaint of war and assump- 
 tion of the powers of the two Houses. 
 
 Mr. Horsey, one of the ablest federalists, exclaimed : 
 
 " Sir, what is the nature and import of this proclamation ? In my humble con- 
 ception, both legislative and war. War, because it directs the occupation of this ter- 
 ritory by a military force. The regular troops of the United States are ordered to 
 march, and aid the militia, if necessary. 
 
 " Legislative, by annexing it to Orleans territory." (See Nat. Int., 1st January, 
 1810.) 
 
 But no impeachment was ever presumed on, for that or other sup- 
 posed misbehavior, except that James Madison, the great expounder 
 and practitioner under the constitution in our most trying times, was, 
 by Cyrus King, denounced as, in his estimation, deserving a halter, 
 and by Josiah Quincy, who, I believe, obtained one vote, solitary and 
 alone, in favor of his impeachment. 
 
 The use of the army and navy by the executive, in time of peace, 
 may often expose the country to war ; but it is not, and cannot be, a 
 declaration of war on our part, as that can only be made by Congress. 
 True, in 1831, the administration sent a part of the navy around the 
 globe, and attacked and burnt a town a,t the antipodes. But it was 
 not a declaration of war ; on the contrary, it was provident protection 
 in peace of our citizens and their commerce. And though it might 
 
RE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 393 
 
 have been deemed by others a cause of war on us, and a matter of 
 impeachment here, as was threatened, yet it was, in truth, none the 
 less right and justifiable, both under our own constitution and the 
 laws of nations. I advised it then, and gave the order ; and would do 
 it again, under like circumstances. 
 
 The next and the most alarming objection, with many, to its being 
 our duty to take the cession of Texas, is, that we are thus assuming an 
 actual war, or are in danger of becoming involved in actual hostilities. 
 If this were the truth, it would then surely behoove us not to risk 
 these without counting the cost, or finding, after careful examination, 
 that our duty to take the cession was, under all the circumstances, 
 paramount to all such dangers. 
 
 Though war be undoubtedly a great calamity, standing by itself, 
 yet it is often much preferable to dishonor ; is often expedient for self- 
 preservation ; and, at times, is demanded by the highest obligations of 
 national honor and duty. 
 
 Let us, then, first see whether the danger to which we are exposed, 
 by taking the cession, has heretofore been deemed sufficient to prevent 
 our taking it. In 1825, Spain and Mexico were at war, and the for- 
 mer in actual possession of the most important fortress of the country ; 
 and in 1829, poured her troops into Mexico in flagrante hello. And 
 that state of things was even urged by our government as an addi- 
 tional inducement to Mexico alone to cede Texas, rather than regard- 
 ing it, as would seem now, an insuperable obstacle to a proper cession 
 without the consent of both belligerents, or without our becoming 
 involved in hostilities which it may not be our duty to risk. 
 
 Some seem to doubt the existence of as much war then as now, and 
 would thus break the great and acknowledged force of these two cases, 
 as precedents directly in point. 
 
 But how are the recorded facts 1 
 
 Beside many statements in the public press, cited by the senator 
 from Mississippi, showing the actual war then, there are many other 
 proofs. 
 
 Mr. Clay, May 10th, 1825, while negotiating, exhorted Russia to 
 make Spain acknowledge the independence of her colonies, and restore 
 peace, instead of the war then known to be raging. He threatened 
 that otherwise the provinces should send privateers on the coast of 
 Spain, and capture Cuba, "towards terminating the existing contest 
 between Spain and her colonies." (Blount, 83 p.) He urged the 
 emperor to lend his aid towards the " conclusion of the war between 
 Spain and her colonies." (Letter to Middleton, 89 p., Aug. 27, 1825.) 
 The castle of Ulloa — the key of Mexico— was then in possession of 
 Spain ; and yet no forbearance or objections were then entertained on 
 account of the claims, interests, or complaints, of Spain. 
 
 Further than this : how stood the case in 1829 ? Then, our Secre- 
 tary speaks of the particularly threatening attitude of Spain, and the 
 " policy to part with a portion to obtain means to defend the residue." 
 
394 HE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 
 
 (P. 15, House Doc, No. 40, Sept. 1837.) The President not only 
 admitted the existence of actual war with Spain in September, 1829 
 (Niles' Register, 71), but our government, beside the above argu- 
 ment, founded on the existence of hostilities, despatched a naval force 
 to the coast of Mexico to protect our commerce during the war. And 
 the Mexican Secretary of State subsequently, in a public enunciation, 
 made it a topic of complaint against the United States, that our admin- 
 istration, under the distractions and perils of their conflict with Spain, 
 — or, to use his own words, while engaged "in repelling the Spanish 
 invasion, — had pushed for a cession of Mexico, under the hope that 
 Mexico would then part with Texas more readily." (See the docu- 
 ment in Adams' speech, in National Intelligencer of 19th July, 1838.) 
 Yet no apprehension of being involved in a war then obstructed our 
 negotiations, and was deemed sufficient to obviate our duty to obtain 
 the cession. Nor was any apprehension then felt that our duty was 
 violated by taking the cession from Mexico during an actual war with 
 Spain, and eight to ten years before the latter made any recognition 
 of the independence of the former. Nothing was communicated to 
 Spain asking her consent ; no offer was made to her of compensation ; 
 nothing deprecated as to her hostility. 
 
 And who ever then heard, as now, that a purchase from Mexico 
 would be perfidious towards unoffending Spain ? a breach of the solem- 
 nity of our treaties with her 1 or an exposure of ourselves to the con- 
 demnation of the civilized world, as grasping and ambitious ? 
 
 But, aside from these precedents, showing the sense of duty which 
 urged onward to this acquisition both Messrs. Adams and Clay, as 
 well as Jackson and Van Buren, notwithstanding the actual war then 
 raging, it may be well to ascertain whether any actual war exists now, 
 as well as whether one has of late been waged, in a manner to justify 
 its long continuance, either against Texas or any power that may 
 become allied to her. All the categorical assertions that an actual 
 war has been carried on by Mexico for eight years past, and with 
 great vigor and success (Mr. Choate), and in a humane form beyond 
 even that pursued usually by either England or France, are disproved, 
 not only by the ministers of Texas, entitled by their stations to full 
 credence, but by Mr. Webster himself, in his grave official character as 
 Secretary of State. 
 
 Let us read what he, as well as they, state on the point of an actual 
 war during that eight years : 
 
 " From the time of the battle of San Jacinto, in April, 1836, to the present 
 moment, Texas had exhibited the same external signs of national independence as 
 Mexico herself, and with quite as much stability of government ; practically free 
 and independent, acknowledged as a political sovereignty by the principal powers of 
 the world, no hostile foot finding rest within her territory for six or seven years, and 
 Mexico herself refraining for all that period from any further attempt to reestablish 
 her own authority over that territory." (Webster, July 1, 1842, to Thompson.) 
 
 Yet, in the face of this, the Senator from Massachusetts (Mr. 
 
RE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 395 
 
 Choate) speaks of the "tremendous vigor with which Mexico had 
 carried on the war;" and "her effective success;" and her "armed 
 occupation " of Texas. 
 
 Again, Mr. Webster says, after the battle of San Jacinto, " The 
 war was from that time at an end." 
 
 In another letter (of April 5, 1842, Webster to Thompson, 4th 
 Senate Document, No. 325, in 1842, p. 13), he says : 
 
 " No effort for the subjugation of Texas has been made by Mexico from the time of 
 the battle of San Jacinto, on the 21st April, 1836, until the commencement of the 
 present year ; and during all this period Texas has maintained an independent gov- 
 ernment, carried on commerce, and made treaties with nations in both hemispheres, 
 and kept aloof all attempts at invading her territory." 
 
 Again, Mr. Webster says to Mr. Thompson, 31st July, 1843 : 
 
 " It is contemplated by this government to remonstrate in a more formal man- 
 ner with Mexico, at a period not far distant, unless she shall consent to make peace 
 with Texas, or shall show the disposition and ability to prosecute the war with 
 respectable forces.'" 
 
 Finally, 22d June, 1842, Mr. Webster to Thompson, says : " Noth- 
 ing is more probable than that the reneival of the war between Mexico 
 and Texas would," &c. 
 
 He states " the President's clear and strong conviction that the war 
 is not only tiseless, but hopeless, without attainable object; injurious 
 to both parties, and likely to be, in its continuance, annoying and 
 vexatious to other commercial nations." 
 
 This is quite enough from one Secretary, and he the senator's 
 political friend, to show the impotent and irregular and censurable 
 character of the hostilities as designed for any re-conquest. Similar 
 were the views of his successor. 
 
 Mr. Upshur to Mr. Thompson, 27th July,. 1843, says, also, that 
 " the present hostilities are not regular, and hardly civilized ; tend only 
 to harass, and not subdue. Mexico should assert and maintain her 
 supremacy, or generously abandon the claim." 
 
 " She has a right to re-conquer; but her right must be enforced 
 seasonably, or be abandoned for the peace and commerce of the rest 
 of the world." 
 
 The views of the Texian authorities correspond with this : " Never, 
 since 1836, has Mexico attempted anything of the character of a gen- 
 eral invasion of Texas, or conducted the war upon any plan calculated 
 to test the superiority of the two nations upon the field of battle, and 
 bring the war to a close by the arbitrament of arms." (Confidential 
 document, 12th and 15th pp.) 
 
 How justly, then, can it be said : 
 
 " Scarce a hostile foot, even from Mexico, profaned her soil, from 1836, when Santa 
 Anna publicly stipulated with her to end the war, to 1842." 
 
396 RE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 
 
 This, if no more, was to be expected, after his pledges and compacts. 
 The express engagement made by Santa Anna, May 18th, 1836, to 
 put an end to the war, and obtain the recognition of her independence 
 by Mexico, is at length in Niles' Register, 414 p., for Aug. 1836. 
 (2 Kennedy, 233.) See his reasons for it, in his letter to Houston, 
 and conversation here. (Niles' Register, 9th and 23d April, 1842.) 
 The compliance with it since, so far as regards any regular war, or one 
 in any degree competent or designed for a re-conquest, is the only apol- 
 ogy he can have for not surrendering himself and his troops again to 
 Texas, for a failure by Mexico to fulfil the rest of it. Honor and 
 morality forbid his conduct in not returning, unless he intended virtually 
 to end the war, in pursuance of his engagement. 
 
 The declarations made by him in this city confess all thfe. So those 
 made after his reaching home, and when free from any suspicion of 
 fear or duress, confirm the same aspect of the case. In a letter which 
 he addressed to General Jackson, dated at Columbia, Texas, July, 4, 
 1836, he says : 
 
 " When I offered to treat with this government, I was convinced that it was useless 
 for Mexico to continue the war. I have acquired exact information respecting the 
 country, which I did not possess four months ago. I have too much zeal for the 
 interests of my country to wish for anything which is not compatible with them. 
 Being always ready to sacrifice myself for its glory and advantage, I never would 
 have hesitated to subject myself to torments or death, rather than consent to any com- 
 promise, if Mexico could thereby obtain the slightest benefit. / am firmly convinced 
 that it is proper to terminate this question by political negotiation.'" 
 
 During the eight years past, and especially within the last two, at 
 times, there have been a paper war and marauding ; and, to put an 
 end to the irregular and occasional incursions that have sometimes 
 happened during that period, an armistice has been proposed by 
 Mexico, which, being exceptionable in its terms, is reported never to 
 have been ratified by Texas. So that the question (whether it may 
 be aided by an armistice which admits a temporary peace, — and, in the 
 case between Holland and Spain, lasted twelve years, and was suc- 
 ceeded by a durable peace, — or maybe embarrassed by it, as some 
 suppose, by its implying the existence of a previous war) is probably 
 free from this difficulty ; and if Texas is taken by us now, we take 
 with her neither an existing war nor probably any existing armistice. 
 
 The documents communicated to us lately show that the armistice, 
 so much talked of, has never been ratified by the two governments ; 
 and it is evident that no regular war existed, to be suspended by an 
 armistice. 
 
 The Texian ministers, speaking of the supposed armistice, say : 
 
 " The negotiations having thus terminated, and this agreement being held to be 
 null and void, there is at present no subsisting arrangement of any character between 
 Mexico and Texas." 
 
 Our own minister at Mexico entertains the same views : 
 
KE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 397 
 
 " Mexico, Feb. 2, 1844. 
 ********* 
 
 "lam informed that the negotiation with Texas for peace is not only broken off, 
 but that the armistice has also been suspended. You •will remember that, from the 
 beginning of this matter, I expressed the opinion that nothing would come of it. It 
 was only a device on the part of Santa Anna to relieve him from the difficulty in 
 which he had involved himself by his threats and promises of re-conquering Texas, 
 which he knows perfectly well is impossible. There may be other marauding forays, 
 like that of General Well, retreating more rapidly than they advanced; but as to any 
 regular and reasonably sufficient force invading the country, the thing is impossible, 
 and will not be attempted. They cannot raise money to support such an army two 
 months. 
 
 " My opinion is, notwithstanding all their vaporing and gasconade, that the most 
 agreeable thing to Santa Anna would be an authoritative interposition of our govern- 
 ment to put an end to the war, as he would then say that we were too strong for them 
 to contend with." 
 
 An armistice, when made by governments, and not military men, as 
 this was, acknowledges the separate national existence and rights of 
 each, and thus virtually surrenders the point in controversy. Such 
 was that with Holland and Spain. 
 
 To make any state of things a war for the purpose of re -conquest, it 
 must be with a will and a force adequate to the object, or apparently 
 so. It must be something beside proclamations, and the occasional 
 murder of non-combatants, and piratical plundering; it must be a 
 public force, and not, as Cowper says, words, or " a duel in the form 
 of a debate." 
 
 Grotius (book 1, chap. 1, p. 38) defines war, from Cicero, to be 
 " a dispute by force." And though custom may call the state or dis- 
 position to use force a war, yet common sense seems to look to the act 
 of force as alone real war. 
 
 But the entire cessation of hostilities from 1836 to 1842, and the 
 occasional as well as contemptible incursions since, indicate the aban- 
 donment of any war of re -conquest, and are not that species of hostilities 
 which, in their character, keep up a claim of right, or can be recog- 
 nized, on any principles of national law, as precluding other nations to 
 consider Texas, both de jure and de facto, a sovereign State. Much 
 less are we likely, by a union with Texas, to be involved in actual 
 hostilities, when none are waging, — when none could probably avail 
 anything of good to Mexico, and when none have occurred at all 
 adequate to re-conquest for near half a generation. 
 
 If, as the senator from Missouri correctly stated on the 1st instant, 
 Mexico is utterly unable to conquer Texas (the opposite opinion from 
 that expressed by the senator from Massachusetts), — if an invader 
 would, by her own resources, be driven like chaif before the whirlwind, 
 and a defeat of him be deemed a mere holiday, — pray inform me what 
 kind of a petty, wretched, uncertain war, do we risk by uniting with 
 Texas ? and how little it should stand in the way of our high duty to 
 take the cession ? What kind of a contemptible war do we assume or 
 risk, either in this way or by presenting any constitutional aid, if 
 invaded while the ratification of the treaty is pending? Who believes 
 
398 RE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 
 
 any such invasion will be attempted, now or hereafter, when so disas- 
 trous will be the consequences to Mexico, even by Texas alone 1 
 
 The danger in the path of our action is not only uncertain, remote, 
 and small, but it is of a mere constructive war, that has been prosecuted 
 without just cause, and which both France and England, as well as 
 ourselves, have informed her ought not to be prosecuted longer. Eng- 
 land, since 1840, has been under obligations, by a treaty of mediation 
 with Texas, to procure an abandonment of the claims of Mexico. Mr. 
 Pakenham, April 19th, 1844, in confidential Doc. No. 8, says : 
 
 "It is a •well-known fact that her (Great Britain's) most zealous exertions have 
 been directed towards the completion of that independence, by obtaining its acknowl- 
 edgment at the hands of the only power by which it was seriously disputed." 
 
 But why such zealous exertions for Texas, if she was not right 1 
 Again, Lord Aberdeen says : 
 
 " We (Great Britain) put ourselves forward in pressing the government of Mexico 
 to acknowledge Texas as independent." (Letter 20th Dec, 1843, — ditto 40th page.) 
 
 Why press Mexico to abandon her cause, if it was correct ? 
 
 If Mexico, then, will not abandon any thought of further hostilities, 
 — if she will not listen to the advice of foreign powers to acknowledge 
 Texian independence, — if she persists obstinately in disturbing the 
 peace and commerce of the rest of the world in the Gulf of Mexico and 
 its neighborhood, — if she chooses to rely on the logic of kings, the 
 ultima ratio re gum, rather than the judgment of the chief powers 
 of the civilized world, — it will not be our fault, but hers, if any fur- 
 ther hostilities ensue. The fortune of war must then be ours ; and 
 craven indeed would be our spirit to flinch from it. 
 
 But if we turn a moment to the history of the past, we shall find 
 that nations generally have not made cessions in a time of war by the 
 party in full possession a ground of war upon the purchaser; and 
 much less have they been accustomed to do it after such intervals of 
 hostility, such protracted feebleness in the contest, such numerous and 
 high remonstrances against it from the rest of the world, as exist in 
 the present case. I will select only three or four cases. 
 
 In 1685, after several years of revolution in Holland against Spain, 
 and only five years after the declaration of independence by the former, 
 Queen Elizabeth, by a treaty, loaned money and troops to aid her, and 
 took a cession in mortgage of several towns and fortresses to indemnify 
 her. This was sixty-three years before their independence was 
 acknowledged by Spain ; and it was five years after that before Spain 
 chose to involve her in the general war, on this or any other account. 
 (See 2 Davis' Hist, of Holland, 175 and 235.) 
 
 Again, in 1658, Dunkirk was conquered from Spain by France and 
 England, and given to the latter. In 1662, October 17, it was ceded 
 by Charles II. to Louis XIV., by treaty; and by the 8th article it 
 was stipulated that, if the King of Spain, from whom it was taken " by 
 
RE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 399 
 
 right of arms," should try to regain it in two years, England was to 
 furnish "a considerable fleet" to defend it; but none after two years. 
 (1 Col. of Treaties, p. 121.) And did the aid ever become necessary? 
 
 Again, in 1712, Denmark, in a war with Sweden, took the Duchy 
 of Bremen and Verden from the latter, who had held it under a treaty 
 since 1648, and sold and ceded it to the Elector of Hanover, who was 
 then George I. of England, and who held it without Sweden ever 
 presuming to make it a cause of war with Hanover or England. (2 
 vol. Puffendorfs Summary, p. 202, 246, 256-8.) 
 
 Lastly, and directly in point, Guatemala was acknowledged inde- 
 pendent in 1824, under the name of " United Provinces of Central 
 America." Chiapus, which had before belonged to Guatemala, chose 
 to act independent of Guatemala, and, against her consent, at length 
 offered to unite with Mexico, and was admitted, and remains there. 
 This was in 1835. (See pp. 113 and 117, 2 Ken.) So, in private 
 life, and by the common law, a party in possession of land can convey 
 and deliver it properly, without imputations of fraud and conspiracy, 
 as lavished here ; and outstanding claims by third persons must be 
 abandoned, or peacefully prosecuted against the new occupant and 
 trespasser. In Martin, b. 1, c. 1, and b. 8, c. 5, the true doctrine is 
 laid down, that a State is free and sovereign, if it governs itself, and 
 acknowledges no superior but God. Then others may not only 
 acknowledge such a State as sovereign and independent, but take 
 grants of territory from it, and even aid it, if its cause be just, and it 
 is in possession. The opposite party will usually complain; and, 
 unless policy forbid, will at times seek to recover the land, or retaliate ; 
 but seldom, if ever, in protracted troubles like this. If Texas had 
 injured us, and refused redress, since her independence was recognized 
 in 1837, could we not rightfully have made war on her, and, if con- 
 quering, hold her territory, if possible, as against Mexico and the whole 
 world ? Surely. And this settles the whole question of the de jure 
 right of cession or transfer ; for conquest is only one mode of transfer, 
 rightfully, by the law of nations. We have obtained indemnity from 
 her by one treaty since 1836, and established even boundaries with 
 her by another. But how this has been done with her rightfully, and 
 not Mexico, if Mexico is the de jure government, it would be difficult 
 to explain. 
 
 Regarding the territory of Texas as conquered by its people from 
 Mexico, which some do, then their sovereignty to it is completed by 
 the full assent of its population ; and their cession is valid by a like 
 assent of them, as well as their government. (2 Burlemaque, p. 309.) 
 
 In war, the title of all property seized on either side is considered to 
 be in the actual possession ; and, if afterwards sold to a third person, 
 or third power, the title passes, and it passes beyond recovery, if of 
 movables ; and if of immovables, cannot be regained, unless by con- 
 sent, or unless the original owner chooses to risk for it war (1 Burle- 
 maque, 297), and succeeds in the war. (2 Wheaton, 289.) 
 
400 RE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 
 
 Nor is it any breach of treaty with Mexico to take such a cession, 
 in such a case. It is the right and usage of nations to do it. They 
 must deal with Texas as a dejure as well as de facto government, — 
 as of full age, and possessing in the family of nations equal rights and 
 power with other nations. The doctrine jus postlimiiiii does not 
 apply, unless the original owner gets into possession (2 Wheaton, 112) ; 
 and a "modification of the rule may be required in practical applica- 
 tion " even then, if a civil revolution is mixed up. (Grotius, b. 3, ch. 
 6, sec. 4.) But there is no breach of treaty, there being no guaranty 
 of territory in any of our treaties with Mexico, though once our min- 
 isters were instructed to make such a guaranty to Spain of her territo- 
 ries west of the Mississippi. Yet it is competent for Mexico to make 
 the cession and union of Texas with us, until her claims are relin- 
 quished, a cause of hostilities towards us ; though, under all the cir- 
 cumstances of the right of the contest being in Texas, as before 
 explained, it is not a just cause. Where a revolt has occurred, and its 
 independence been acknowledged, third powers may treat it, when in 
 possession of separate sovereignty, as independent in all respects ; and 
 if former masters complain, it is without cause. So it is competent to 
 aid such power while in " possession of independence," as we must if 
 uniting with Texas ; but if the secession be unjust, the old masters 
 may complain, and resort to force, " as policy or anger may prompt," 
 but not if secession be just. (Martin's Law of Nations, p. 80, b. 3, 
 ch. 2, sec. 10.) 
 
 But though exposed in such case to some belligerent hazards, they 
 are usually encountered when duty prompts ; and much more readily 
 if the hazards, as here, are remote, doubtful, — founded, as here, in 
 injustice on the part of the ancient claimant, and prosecuted in a bar- 
 barous and unjustifiable manner. 
 
 Let me not be misunderstood. In one aspect of the case, as all the 
 territory of Texas is ceded, and her government united with ours, we 
 may be held jointly responsible for all that Texas is now liable to 
 severally. 
 
 I am free to admit that, though actual hostilities do not now exist, 
 and of course will not now be assumed by us if uniting with Texas, 
 yet Mexico can obstinately persist in claiming her allegiance forever, 
 — may refuse to recognize her independence for centuries, and threaten 
 everlasting war. But before actually recommencing hostilities, she 
 will be likely to look a little to public opinion and her true policy, 
 under all the facts of the case, and will probably come to the conclu- 
 sion that a war renewed after all the circumstances just recapitulated 
 can hardly be deemed a just war, or receive any countenance from the 
 intelligence and civilization of the rest of the world. It is certainly 
 preferable not to come in collision with any nation, under any preten- 
 sions, however ill-founded, if they can be overcome by reasonable 
 remonstrance or friendly solicitation. But, if all these have been 
 exhausted in vain by us and the leading powers of Europe, to persuade 
 
RE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 401 
 
 Mexico to recognize the independence of Texas, the safety of interna- 
 tional intercourse and the claims of humanity will compel the rest of 
 the world to perform their duties to others, and sustain their own 
 national rights. 
 
 Under all the circumstances, then, we not only possess rights to 
 secure our frontiers more effectually in both peace and war, and pro- 
 tect our institutions and commerce from all disturbances, but it is our 
 duty to do it when voluntary and amicable opportunities exist ; and 
 we should beside be justly exposed to severe censure, as the leading 
 power on the American continent, if we longer neglect to extend more 
 decisive influence in favor of a weaker and wronged people, our neigh- 
 bors and kin ; and to interpose effectually to put an end to inhuman 
 aggressions upon them, and to restore peace, commerce, and civilized 
 conduct, on the theatre of the new world. 
 
 The rules of national law are clear on this point ; and, in the first 
 place, as to the interposition for stopping a contest which has been 
 conducted with inhumanity. 
 
 I fearlessly assert, that if the condition of things which has existed 
 since 1836 is to be dignified by the name of a public war between 
 Mexico and Texas, it has been conducted in such a predatory and 
 uncivilized manner, that if, by a friendly union with Texas, we become 
 exposed to it, and it is renewed, we shall perform a great public 
 Christian and international duty, by thus taking it on ourselves and 
 ending it. 
 
 Mixed up with this is often the consideration that the contest has 
 been carried on so long as to disturb too much the peace, commerce, 
 and interests of the rest of the world ; and, in this way, tends not only 
 to the gradual destruction of one or both of the belligerents, but sacri- 
 fices the mutual rights of others to free trade and tranquillity, and 
 makes them victims to foolish obstinacy on the part of the combatants. 
 
 This is unreasonable, and may, by compacts between other nations, 
 or the magnanimous impulses of one, be ended, if practicable. 
 
 Let us first listen to what Chancellor Kent says against such mis- 
 behavior in war. In 1 Kent's Com., 90, he denounces, as contrary to 
 national law, the "making slaves of prisoners." (Cites Grotius for 
 this and Montesquieu, as saying " that the laws of war gave no other 
 power over a captive than to keep him safely.") So, page 91, plunder 
 of private property on land is forbidden in war ; and especially you are 
 " not to disturb the cultivators of the soil." 
 
 Hear Mr. Webster, also, on that point (in Doc. 10, confidential), in 
 his letter to Thompson, part of which I have before cited for another 
 purpose : 
 
 " You will take occasion to converse with the Mexican Secretary, in a friendly 
 manner, and represent to him how greatly it would contribute to the advantage as 
 well as the honor of Mexico to abstain altogether from predatory incursions, and 
 other similar modes of warfare. Mexico has an undoubted right to re-subjugate 
 Texas, if she can, so far as other States are concerned, by the common and lawful 
 means of war. But other States are interested, — and especially the United States, a 
 
 34* 
 
402 RE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 
 
 near neighbor to both parties, are interested — not only in the restoration of peace 
 between them, but also in the manner in which the war shall be conducted, if it shall 
 continue. These suggestions may suffice for what you are requested to say, amicably 
 and kindly, to the Mexican Secretary, at present ; but I may add, for your informa- 
 tion, that it is in the contemplation of this government to remonstrate in a more for- 
 mal manner with Mexico, at a period not far distant, unless she shall consent to 
 make peace with Texas, or shall show the disposition and ability to prosecute the war 
 with respectable forces." 
 
 Let me explain how the remonstrance in a more formal manner 
 against the Turkish mode of waging war in Greece upon women and 
 children, farmers and vineyards, in 1827 (427), was conducted by 
 the great European powers. It was by laying the English, French, 
 and Russian fleets alongside of the semi-barbarians, from whose decks 
 the ravaging troops had been disgorged, and blowing up and otherwise 
 destroying four sail-of-the-line, fifteen frigates, fifteen corvettes, nine 
 brigs, three fire-ships, and numerous transports, being the whole Otto- 
 man fleet of near one hundred vessels, and a loss of human life unpre- 
 cedented in maritime contests. (2 Blount, 428.) 
 
 Hear Mr. Webster again on the right for us to interfere : 
 
 "Indeed, although the right or the safety of none of their own citizens was con- 
 cerned, yet if, in a war waged between two neighboring states, the killing, enslaving, 
 or cruelly treating of persons, should be indulged, the United States would feel it to 
 be their duty, as well as their right, to remonstrate and to interfere against such a 
 departure from the principles of humanity and civilization. These principles are 
 common principles, essential alike to the welfare of all nations ; and in the preserva- 
 tion of which all nations have, therefore, rights and interests. But their duty to 
 interfere becomes imperative in cases affecting their own citizens. 
 
 "It is therefore that the government of the United States protests against the 
 hardships and cruelties to which the Santa Fe prisoners have been subjected. It 
 protests against this treatment in the name of humanity, and the law of nations ; in 
 the name of all Christian States ; in the name of civilization, and the spirit of the 
 age ; in the name of all republics ; in the name of Liberty herself, enfeebled and 
 dishonored by all cruelty and all excess ; in the name and for the honor of this whole 
 hemisphere, it protests emphatically and earnestly against practices belonging only 
 to barbarous people, in barbarous times. 
 
 " Every nation, on being received, at her own request, into the circle of civilized 
 governments, must understand that she not only attains rights of sovereignty, and 
 the dignity of national character, but that she binds herself also to the strict and 
 faithful observance of all those principles, laws and usages, which have ^ obtained 
 currency among civilized states, and which have for their object the mitigation of the 
 miseries of war." (Webster, April 5, 1842.) 
 
 " No community can be allowed to enjoy the benefit of national character in mod- 
 ern times, without submitting to all the duties which that character imposes. A 
 Christian people who exercise sovereign power, who make treaties, maintain diplo- 
 matic relations with other States, and who should yet refuse to conduct its military 
 operations according to the usages universally observed by such States, would present 
 a character singularly inconsistent and anomalous." (Webster, April 5, 1842.) 
 
 Let us stop, then, if possible, by this alliance with Texas, the fero- 
 cious and cruel course of Mexico ; her barbarous warfare on women 
 and children ; the letting loose of Indian butchery and conflagration ; 
 the assaults by a convict banditti for plunder ; the shooting, in cold 
 blood, of prisoners of war, or immuring them in dungeons and chains. 
 I would remember that Lord Chatham appealed to the very tapestry 
 
RE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 403 
 
 on the walls of Parliament to frown on them for an indulgence in any- 
 such barbarous practices, as the portrait of the father of his country, 
 on that wall, would now frown on us, if we justified such practices. 
 
 Belligerents have no right to ask from neutrals respect to belliger- 
 ent conduct, unless it be of a Christian character, and such as is toler- 
 ated by the laws of civilized nations. But, on the contrary, they are 
 justified in an armed neutrality, or in leagues, or alliances, to put an 
 end to such inhumanities, as well as to their longer disturbance of the 
 sympathies, commerce and peace, of other nations. 
 
 But enough as to the principles applicable to such a case, which 
 justify us in risking even war, if necessary, to end these outrages. But 
 I regret that one senator (Mr. Choate) has denied the existence of 
 such atrocities on the part of Mexico, and has treated her as a most 
 republican and "unoffending" power. * 
 
 Indeed, sir, Mexico has been eulogized as a nation that has carried 
 on a constant and humane war with Texas, and, at the same time, 
 with much skill and success. What, sir ! The success of eight mil- 
 lions of people against one-third of a million ; and, after seven years, 
 have not regained a single acre of land, but lost armies and chiefs by 
 capture, and implored the clemency and release of them from the hand- 
 ful of lion hearts, and eagle eyes, and brave arms, which, nerved by 
 freedom, have stood up valiantly against oppression till the present 
 moment ! 
 
 But let us see how the facts accord with that senator's views. The 
 evidence as to the moral and civilized conduct of Mexican warfare, as 
 described by Mr. Van Zandt officially, and whose high and recognized 
 station here entitles him to full credence, is this : 
 
 " Mexico has been depredating upon the property of our exposed and defenceless 
 frontier; murdering the inhabitants in cold blood, or forcing them away into a loath- 
 some and too often fatal captivity ; inciting the numerous tribes of hostile Indians, 
 who reside along our northern frontier, to plunder our exposed settlements ; stimu- 
 lating them to the most cruel and barbarous massacres and inhuman butcheries even 
 of our defenceless women and children, and to commit every excess of savage war- 
 fare." (Con. Doc, pp. 12, 15. Van Zandt to Upshur.) 
 
 Listen, next, on the facts, to Mr. "Webster. In a letter to Mr. 
 Thompson, he speaks of (31 January, 1843) " predatory incursions 
 
 *In the debate, it was averred that the rights of conscience and religion had never 
 been invaded by Mexico, and were similar under both governments, and protected in 
 one as well as the other. With a view to correct this, and to show that Mexico, if 
 unoffending, is not exactly the bulwark of our religion (at least of the Protestant 
 religion of the east) , I add an extract from the constitution of each on this subject : 
 
 " No preference shall be given by law to any religious denomination, or mode of 
 worship, over another; but every person shall be permitted to worship God according 
 to the dictates of his own conscience." (Texian constitution, doc. 415, p. 16, H. of 
 Rep., June 24th, 1836.) 
 
 " The religion of the Mexican nation is, and will be perpetually, the Roman Cath- 
 olic Apostolic. The nation will protect it by wise and just laws, and prohibit the 
 exercise of any other whatever." (Mexican constitution, 2 Kennedy's History, p. 
 422.) 
 
404 RE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 
 
 in which the proclamation and promises of the Mexican commander are 
 flagrantly violated, non-combatants seized and detained as prison- 
 ers of war, and private property used and destroyed." Yet the 
 senator from Massachusetts (Mr. Choate) doubts all this, has no 
 sympathy nor complaint for this, but eulogizes Mexico as humane, 
 ' ' unoffending," and successful, — yes, humane! Though, when Mr. 
 Thompson remonstrated with Mexico for predatory forays, &c, the 
 minister virtually confessed the whole, by vindicating it, in saying 
 " that prisoners taken were not entitled to any of the privileges of 
 prisoners of war, but that they were rebels, and would be so treated," 
 &c. (10 p. Doc. Confidential, March 14, 1843.) 
 
 Hear Mr. Webster further as to the facts about some other prison- 
 ers: 
 
 " The privations and indignities to which they were subjected, during their march 
 of two thousand miles to the city of Mexico, at the most inclement season of the year, 
 were horrible ; and, if they were not well authenticated, it would have been incredi- 
 ble that they should have been inflicted in this age, and in a country calling itself 
 Christian and civilized. During many days they had no food, and on others only- 
 two ears of corn were distributed to each man. To sustain life, therefore, they were 
 compelled to sell, on their way, the few remnants of clothing which their captors had 
 left them ; but, by seeking to appease their hunger, they increased the misery which 
 they already endured from exposure to the cold. Most dreadful of all, however, sev- 
 eral of them, disabled by sickness and suffering from keeping up with the others, 
 were deliberately shot, without any provocation. Those who survived to their jour- 
 ney's end were many of them afflicted with loathsome disease ; and those whose 
 health was not broken down have been treated, not as the public law requires, but in 
 a manner harsh and vindictive, and with a degree of severity equal, at least, to that 
 usually inflicted by the municipal codes of the most civilized and Christian States 
 upon the basest felons. Indeed, they appear to have been ranked with these, being 
 thrust into the same dungeon with Mexican malefactors, chained to them in pairs, 
 and when allowed to see the light and breathe the air of heaven, required, as a com- 
 pensation therefor, to labor, beneath the lash of a taskmaster, upon roads and public 
 works of that country." 
 
 Though the senator from Massachusetts may discredit all the enor- 
 mities so feelingly described by his friend, the late Secretary of State, 
 and may think the hostilities to be now humane and successful, and 
 Texas, if not protected or ceded to us, likely, ere long, to be re-con- 
 quered by Mexico, can he, on reflection, think of that event with so 
 much apparent and unmingled satisfaction ? What, sir ! Our brethren 
 and children, decoyed there by new and liberal colonization laws of 
 Mexico, and then stripped of their privileges, their constitution vio- 
 lated, and their rights of conscience invaded, and their Saxon blood 
 humiliated, and enslaved to Moors, Indians, and mongrels ! When 
 prisoners of war and non-combatants, are they to be plundered, shot, 
 or imprisoned in dungeons like felons, and compelled to labor like 
 slaves f Is all his sympathy and patriotism to tell them, if disliking 
 that, they may submit to the holy-alliance claims of Mexico, or take 
 refuge under the power of England — re-colonized to the power their 
 fathers defied, and re-subjected to a monarchy and established church 1 
 I do not profess to use his words, but to show the tendency of his 
 
RE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 405 
 
 argument. Will the senator from Missouri concur with him in this 
 view 1 No, sir,— no ! In another part of his speech, the senator 
 from Massachusetts admits that much blood is yet to be spilt there. 
 However near the re-conquest appears to him, under so vigorous a 
 war of eight years, by eight millions of people against two or three 
 hundred thousand, — and if much more is to be so spilt, — why ought 
 not all of us to seek, by the ratification of this treaty, to prevent the 
 calamity and the unchristian stain of it on civilization, as well as save 
 our kin from the ignoble bondage, as I regard their re-subjugation, 
 but the great blessings, as he seems to consider them, of an early 
 re-conquest by the free, enlightened, and unoffending Mexicans ? 
 
 But there are other views of the existing relations between Mexico 
 and Texas, which render the re-annexation not only free from exposure 
 to any actual or just war, but an act of high national duty for relief 
 to a weak and oppressed neighbor. Thus it is repeatedly laid down, 
 by writers on national law, that nations may properly assist each other 
 when their rights are violated, whether, in consequence of such viola- 
 tion, they change the old rulers or old government, or divide and 
 declare a part independent. (Kent, p. 24 ; Vattel, B. 2, ch. 4, sec. 
 56.) Vattel hence approves "the case of the Prince of Orange as a 
 justifiable interference" in the affairs of England; and Kent says, 
 "The assistance that England gave to the United Netherlands, and 
 the assistance that France gave to this country during the war of the 
 Revolution, were justifiable acts, founded in wisdom and policy." 
 And Spain herself, once, through her governor in Florida, claimed 
 from us the enforcement of this principle. 
 
 Governor Folch (December 2, 1810, 3 State Papers, 396) asks 
 our aid to expel insurgents, as "the United States, who profess the 
 exercise of equity, cannot exempt themselves from taking part with 
 the party unjustly oppressed" In national, as well as personal 
 conflicts, the duty of others to interpose and protect the weak and 
 oppressed, is a principle of human nature. (1 Martin's Law of Na- 
 tions, p. 80.) It is instinct, — it is justified by reason; and sympa- 
 thy, carried into action in such cases, tends to ennoble our common 
 origin and destination; and, if the case is one even of doubtful charac- 
 ter, humanity turns the scales in favor of the weak. 
 
 The relief must, of course, be rendered against the party in the 
 wrong, — as we have already shown Mexico to be, not only on the 
 American principles of self-government, but on those of a just resist- 
 ance to her arbitrary outrages, and the uncivilized manner of her past 
 hostilities, and the opinion of most of Christendom against her further 
 efforts to conquer Texas. The former has been aggressive — the lat- 
 ter only defensive. The former feels power and forgets right, while 
 the latter has never asked either authority, privileges, or treatment, 
 but such as our fathers before them fought and bled to establish. It 
 is a prominent object, in many treaties, to consult, not only the " com- 
 mon tranquillity of both nations," as an object (1 Col. of Treaties, p. 
 
406 RE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 
 
 122), but the rights of humanity and civilization among the rest of 
 the world. I am no alarmist, nor shall I contribute to any panic 
 debate ; but, in my opinion, it is always the right, and at times the 
 duty, of every nation to interpose, not only to urge the cessation from 
 an unjust war like that of Mexico, but, if need be. to form treaties, and 
 supply troops and means, for its suppression. I would dissuade from 
 interference like that of the Holy Alliance, to prevent a people from 
 exercising the power of self-government. I would justify no Copen- 
 hagen seizures of the vessels of an unoifending neutral. Nor would 
 I wander over the world to distant nations, to redress grievances con- 
 cerning which our knowledge was limited, and with which neither our 
 interests nor tranquillity were much connected. This would, in some 
 cases, as it has with England, border on political quixotism. But on 
 my own continent, — on my own frontier, — as to a people of my own 
 stock and faith, and a territory once and for a whole generation my 
 own, — I would not hesitate to form a peaceful alliance, and, if need 
 be, to exercise every national influence for protection to the weak and 
 oppressed. 
 
 Let me entreat senators to recollect, for a moment, how often this has 
 been done, even by crowned heads, whose tendency has been more for 
 war than republics, and in ages less civilized even than this ; and by, as 
 well as against, some powers who, in the very treaties, were so near 
 ruder periods as, among other titles, to retain that of "King of the 
 Goths and Vandals." 
 
 Thus, as early as 1585 and 1591, are such treaties to be found in 
 modern times. (1 Chalmers' Treaties, and 3 Collection of Treaties.) 
 In 1659, February 3, a treaty was made between Richard Cromwell 
 and Louis XIV. to mediate between Sweden and Denmark, and 
 if these powers would not make peace, to help Sweden ; and if France 
 or England was, in consequence of it, attacked, they engaged to make 
 their defence a common cause. (3 Col. of Treaties.) Another, of 
 similar tenor, "'for obliging the northern kings to make peace," was 
 entered into May 21, 1659, by France, England, and the United 
 Provinces. They were to use their fleets, if necessary, and to try, 
 through their ambassador at Denmark and Sweden, to secure their 
 commerce in the Baltic, free and undamaged, (p. 191.) Another, on 
 the 24th of July, 1659, between England and the United Provinces, 
 was "for inducing Sweden and Denmark to make peace," and which- 
 ever power did not consent to it in a fortnight was to be induced 
 by using their fleets against her (p. 197) ; and another still was made 
 August 16th, of the same year, between some of these powers, "for 
 procuring a peace " between the others, by the employment of their 
 navies in concert, if necessary. 
 
 Elizabeth, by assistance to the Netherlands in various ways, helped 
 to secure the triumph of the Protestant religion, and to build up the 
 naval power of England, so as to triumph over Philip's invincible 
 
RE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 407 
 
 armada. She made a treaty of alliance with them near forty years 
 before Spain acknowledged their independence. (1 Chalmers, p. 123.) 
 
 Again, in 1603, her successor, James I., and Henry IV. of France, 
 entered into a compact to mediate with Spain for the recognition of 
 the independence of Holland ; and in the event that the parties could 
 not be reconciled on just terms, they made the important stipulation to 
 aid the side least stubborn, and aid each other, if assailed by Spain. 
 (1 Col. of Treaties, 128 and 9.) 
 
 In 1668 (1 Col. of Treaties, 136), a triple alliance was made 
 between Charles II. of England, and Charles II. of Sweden, and 
 the Netherlands. They professed to feel much grief at the calam- 
 ities of the war which had involved most of Christendom ; and pro- 
 vided that, if Spain would not accede to what they thought reason- 
 able terms, and end those calamities, they would take u rnore efficacious 
 measures P (p. 141.) If England or the Netherlands were attacked, 
 the number of ships and troops to be mutually furnished was arranged, 
 and the King of Sweden, on certain subsidies, was to assist ; and if 
 France proved unreasonable and stubborn, he was to " side with Spain, 
 and make war against France." (p. 145.) 
 
 Can any of us forget, also, without more details as to earlier ages, 
 the memorable alliance by France to aid us in 17T8, when weak and 
 oppressed, and which, as before seen, the soundest writers on national 
 law have justified ? 
 
 In 1825 (September 20th), Mexico and Colombia made a similar 
 treaty for mutual defence and independence, against Spain. (26 and 
 29 Niles' Reg., p. 356.) 
 
 And the celebrated Congress of Panama was projected for a like 
 purpose, among others. Indeed, by the last arrivals, the British 
 writers in politics are, on this same principle, excusing the recent 
 interference of England in favor of the people of Scinde, and against 
 its princes. Speaking of the latter, the Foreign Quarterly Review 
 for January, 1844, says: "They were, in reality, tyrants; and, in 
 delivering the inhabitants of Scinde from their yoke, we were per- 
 forming good service to humanity," &c. 
 
 No more signal instances exist in modern times of this interference 
 of other powers to assist the oppressed and terminate protracted hos- 
 tilities, — injurious to the common interest of the world, — than those 
 memorable ones as to suffering Greece in 1827, as to Belgium in 
 1831, and Turkey in the Syrian war by Ali Pacha in 1832. 
 
 Though some of the Holy Alliance were engaged in these humane 
 enterprises, yet others united with them ; and the object of the whole, 
 so far from being similar to that of the Holy Alliance, and hostile to 
 changes of government by the people, was, in the case of Greece and 
 Belgium, for protection under those changes, and to end a struggle 
 which might be protracted and useless against them, as well as dan- 
 gerous to the general peace of Europe. 
 
 The former case was deemed one of so justifiable an interference 
 
408 RE-ANXEXATION OP TEXAS. 
 
 here, as well as abroad, that 
 said, by one of our whig annalists, to have " hailed the first news of 
 the victory of Navarino, throughout civilized America and Europe." 
 And the distinct object then for the movements of the allied powers, 
 as shadowed forth in their treaty of July 6, 1827, was to restore 
 peace to Europe ; and, though the Greeks were considered by them to 
 be in a state of revolt against their lawful sovereign, yet they were 
 desirous to protect them from destruction and the ravages of a bar- 
 barous system of warfare. (3 Blount's Reg., 228 and 9 ; 6 do., 158.) 
 
 In the case of Belgium, the five powers, England, France, Austria, 
 Russia, and Prussia, agreed to a protocol, on the 4th of November, 
 1830, by which they required a cessation of hostilities on both sides, 
 and a virtual recognition of the independence of Belgium. This was 
 done, though the revolt had existed scarcely a single year. 
 
 -But the peace of much of the world was likely to be disturbed, and 
 its industry and commerce most injuriously deranged ; and hence they 
 felt justified to interfere, and did interfere, even to aid the revolters. 
 Both England and France despatched their fleets to succor the weaker 
 power ; and as a check to the obstinacy of Holland, in still persevering 
 to lay waste villages and burn farm-houses, they demolished the citadel of 
 Antwerp, after a bombardment one of the most remarkable in history. 
 
 The other case was equally striking, in some respects, having been 
 an interference to protect the Mahometan. Yes: the slaveholding 
 Turk against revolting subjects, many of whom, in Syria and Egypt, 
 were Christians. 
 
 England, Russia, and France (all boasted Christian powers, and so 
 ardently enlisted in favor of abolition), united and mediated, not by 
 words only, but Russia by the bayonet and cannon, to shield the infi- 
 del slaveholder from the destruction, and restore peace in that quarter 
 to Asia and Africa, as well as Europe. They looked to the rights of 
 commerce and the tranquillity of Christendom, and the great interests 
 of peace, rather than to creeds of belief or domestic institutions. 
 
 So, again, in the case of the revolting Greeks ; they united to aid 
 even republicans and rebels, under certain conditions. 
 
 After all this, shall we, the leading power on the continent, see our 
 Christian as well as republican brethren in Texas harassed longer 
 by barbarous hostilities.; and, in a just cause, not sustain those who 
 have so long and valiantly sustained themselves, when monarchies 
 abroad do it, even for Mussulmans, rebels, and democrats ? Shall they 
 do it for these more distant, and we not for our nearest neighbor and 
 kin ? Shall they, whose trade has been fighting, interfere efficiently 
 for peace in aid of a just struggle, and we who profess peace, and to 
 be the disciples of the Prince of Peace, not lift a finger to restore it ? 
 Have we lost our sympathies, our humanity, our religion, and nei- 
 ther incline nor dare to do our duty, from fear of envious censure ? 
 
 How much did considerations like some of these rally all Europe 
 to band together in driving Napoleon to Elba and St. Helena, and 
 
KE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 409 
 
 thus restore peace, and order, and prosperity, to the desolated cities 
 and fields of most of Christendom ! These are not war measures, but 
 peace measures. Nations, like individuals, are often to be blessed if 
 peacemakers ; and that not only by the use of arguments and entrea- 
 ties, but force, if required. Both should thus interpose, if death, or 
 ruin, or serious injury, is likely to happen to others, as well as them- 
 selves, by a continuance of hostilities, as the rights of peace are para- 
 mount to those of war, and such interposition is the more quickly to 
 restore commerce and public tranquillity. This suppression of further 
 conflicts is proper between parties who either do not use proper means 
 for ending them seasonably, or who outrage the laws of civilization in 
 their mode of warfare. The object of such interference is speedier and 
 surer repose to the world. It deserves encouragement from the friends 
 of peace and sound morals, as well as of improving industry and free 
 trade. It is philanthropy, rather than selfish aggrandizement; and 
 merits applause, rather than the denunciations witnessed on this occa- 
 sion against those who are anxious, by the ratification of this treaty, 
 to stop the further effusion of human blood, the waste of money, and 
 obstructions to agriculture and commerce too long growing out of the 
 past ruinous relations between Mexico and Texas. 
 
 Finally, let it not be forgotten that it is our duty to take this peace- 
 ful and voluntary cession, even if a risk of war ensues, provided that 
 we ourselves are thereby likely to escape from serious injury through 
 foreign influences. Much more can those vindicate it who believe it 
 necessary to actual self-preservation, or the security of the institutions, 
 property, and commerce, of any portion of that great republic, one and 
 indivisible, whose " domestic tranquillity" and welfare the constitu- 
 tion itself was made in part to guarantee. 
 
 Thus, while France subdues Algiers or seizes on islands in the 
 Pacific, and while England invades China and India and Africa, we 
 look on without intermeddling, except by uniting in that public opin- 
 ion and public judgment of the rest of the civilized world, which finds 
 so much to condemn in some of these aggrandizing and violent meas- 
 ures. But let these foreign powers, in their restless ambition, approach 
 Cuba on the south, or Texas on the west, and our own hearths and 
 altars become endangered ; and the pervading instinct of self-preser- 
 vation, no less than interest, will, at times, require us to act. In such 
 case, if need be, we must take more efficacious measures than to talk. 
 We must even arm, rather than have powder magazines of all kinds 
 placed around our frontiers, and the safety of property, revenue, and 
 all the commerce of the mighty west, jeoparded. The precautions 
 taken and the resistance made on our part, in such a case, cannot 
 justly be called intermeddling in the internal conflicts of parties in 
 another government. Nor is it a struggle, like many in centuries 
 past, to preserve the old balance of power, and check the undue enlarge- 
 ment of a neighbor, which remotely, and in time, might prove injuri- 
 ous ; but it is to repel danger to ourselves, quite certain, if not imme- 
 o5 
 
410 KE- ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 
 
 diate ; and that from a quarter already hemming us in and round at 
 every point of the compass. We can, in such cases, on sound princi- 
 ples of national law, not only take precautions to prevent the catas- 
 trophe, as is now proposed, for that and other reasons, by a peaceful 
 and voluntary purchase of the territory, but can, if we please, lawfully 
 interpose and aid the party which is just in its efforts for self-govern- 
 ment, by making with it alliances, or a union of territory, institutions, 
 and exertions. 
 
 Hence, in 1 Kent's Commentaries, p. 22, while he justly speaks 
 against the interference of one nation to change the government of 
 another, at the same time he says, " Every nation has an undoubted 
 right to provide for its own safety, and to take due 'precaution 
 against distant as well as impending danger." 
 
 A memorable case occurred in 1810, showing under what degree of 
 danger and apprehension so careful a man as Mr. Madison felt justified 
 to seize on a neighboring territory in possession of Spain, and without 
 an act of Congress. 
 
 In the National Intelligencer, December 28, 1810, a letter from 
 New Orleans speaks to this effect of the terrtiory east from New 
 Orleans to the Perdido : 
 
 " The country, at least as far as the Perdido, ought to he taken possession of hy 
 the United States ; and if there should be the most distant probability of East Florida 
 falling into the hands of any European power whatever, we should, without hesitation, 
 fix our standards at St. Augustine and Pensacola. The province, of itself, is of little 
 value, but it is one of the keys to the Mississippi. Power placed there will control 
 the commerce of the western world." 
 
 And in the presidential message of December, 1810, Mr. Madison 
 announces his movements to take possession to the river Perdido ; as 
 there was an unadjusted claim, and a revolution, and we could hold 
 till an arrangement was made with Spain. 
 
 Spain had been left in possession till the claim to it by us was set- 
 tled by negotiation ; but her power had been resisted by insurgents, 
 and subverted ; and Madison ordered out troops and took possession 
 of it, without waiting for any new law by Congress, because a situa- 
 tion was " produced exposing the country to ulterior events which 
 might essentially affect the rights and welfare of the Union." 
 
 If force was opposed to us, the United States troops were instructed 
 to repel it, except from any place still in Spanish occupation. (Int. 
 December 5, 1810.) 
 
 In his message he says Congress will make u whatever provision 
 may be due to the essential rights and equitable interests of the 
 people thus brought into the bosom of the American family." 
 
 He thought a crisis had arrived " endangering the tranquillity 
 and security of our adjoining territories" &c. (See his procla- 
 mation.) 
 
 In 3 State Papers, p. 394-9, is Mr. Madison's message at length, 
 and the letters as to that part of West Florida. 
 
EE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 411 
 
 From the whole it appears that by force we occupied east to Per- 
 dido, not because it was claimed by us, but because the Spanish 
 authority had been ''subverted by a revolutionary proceeding, and 
 the contingency of the country being thrown into foreign hands had 
 forced itself into view." 
 
 A few of Mr. Clay's remarks on that occasion were so intrepid in 
 spirit, and showed so well the dauntless energy of him and his then 
 republican friends towards all opposition, whether from abroad or at 
 home, that they deserve special remembrance. It was such conduct 
 then, and in 1811, 1818, and 1820, on kindred topics, that paved the 
 path on which he has since walked to such wide fame : 
 
 " I have no hesitation in saying, that if a parent country -will not or cannot main- 
 tain its authority in a colony adjacent to us, and there exists in it a state of misrule 
 and disorder menacing our peace, — and if, moreover, such colony, by passing into the 
 hands of any other power, would become dangerous to the integrity of the Union, and 
 manifestly tend to the subversion of our laws, — we have a right, upon eternal princi- 
 ples of self-preservation, to lay hold of it. This principle alone, independent of any 
 title, would warrant our occupation of West Florida. 
 
 ** We are told of the vengeance of resuscitated Spain. If Spain, under any modifi- 
 cation of her government, choose to make war upon us for the act under considera- 
 tion, the nation, I have no doubt, will be willing to meet the war. But the gentleman 
 reminds us that Great Britain, the ally of Spain, may be obliged, by her connection 
 with Spain, to take part with her against us, and to consider this measure of the 
 President as justifying an appeal to arms. Sir, is the time never to arrive when we 
 may manage our own affairs without the fear of insulting his Britannic Majesty ? Is 
 the rod of British power to be forever suspended over our heads ? Does Congress put 
 on an embargo to shelter our rightful commerce against the piratical depredations 
 committed upon it on the ocean, we are immediately warned of the indignation of 
 offended England. Is a law of non-intercourse proposed, the whole navy of the 
 haughty mistress of the seas is made to thunder in our ears. Does the President 
 refuse to continue a correspondence with a minister who violates the decorum belong- 
 ing to his diplomatic character, by giving and deliberately repeating an affront to the 
 whole nation, we are instantly menaced with the chastisement which English pride 
 will not fail to inflict. Whether we assert our rights by sea or attempt their main- 
 tenance by land, whithersoever we turn ourselves, this phantom incessantly pur- 
 sues us. 
 
 "lam not, sir, in favor of cherishing the passion of conquest. But I must be 
 permitted to conclude by declaring my hope to see, ere long, the new United States 
 (if you will allow me the expression) embracing, not only the old thirteen States, 
 but the entire country east of the Mississippi, including East Florida, and some of 
 the territories to the north of us also." 
 
 There is another illustration, on that very frontier, as to what kind 
 of danger to our property must exist in order to justify forcible inter- 
 position, and from which it can readily be inferred how much less or 
 remote danger would make it our duty to interpose by a peaceful pur- 
 chase, even if some risk of unjust retaliation against us should accom- 
 pany the transaction. In the House of Representatives, on the 8th 
 of January, 1811, in secret session, a resolution was passed, authoriz- 
 ing the President, in either of two events, to take possession of the 
 Floridas. (2 Executive Journal, pp. 180, 181.) The steps were 
 adopted from the "intimate relation of the territory" to the United 
 States, with an eye "to their security and tranquillity" and con- 
 
412 RE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 
 
 sidering the " peculiar situation of Spain and of her American prov- 
 inces;" and it was resolved that we could not, "with indifference," 
 " see it pass from the hands of Spain into those of any other foreign 
 power." (p. 175.) See Mr. Madison's message recommending the 
 step, though it was then denounced by a few of his political oppo- 
 nents as " robbery and ivar" while others vindicated it on high 
 principles of national law. (National Intelligencer, 5th January, 
 1811.) 
 
 The British minister then protested, and intimated that we acted 
 " from ambitious motives ," or by a desire of foreign conquest and 
 territorial aggrandizement. How exactly does the senator from Mas- 
 sachusetts now tread in the footsteps of the British minister ! Mr. 
 Foster urged further that the United States, under this pretext of a 
 claim, "cannot expect to avoid the reproach which must follow the 
 ungenerous and unprovoked seizure of a foreign colony, while 
 the parent State is engaged in a noble contest for independence" 
 at home, &c. (2 State Papers, 543.) 
 
 Mr. Monroe replied to Foster, July 8, 1811 (543), and, not admit- 
 ting the right of England to interfere, repels the motives imputed, 
 though too common abroad. 
 
 Again, November 2, 1811, he says we had claims for spoliations, 
 &c, on Spain, long unsatisfied ; looked to East Florida, as means near 
 for indemnity; and could not allow them to go out of our reach, "ivith- 
 out injustice and dishonor to ourselves ; and no other power could 
 take East Florida, but from hostile views to us." Hence the act of 
 Congress was passed, empowering possession to be taken in certain 
 events. (2 State Papers, p. 544.) He adds : The United States 
 "have been persuaded that remissness on their part might invite 
 the danger, if it had not already done so, when it is much their 
 interest and desire to prevent it." (p. 544.) 
 
 Much more of detail on this can be seen in the volumes referred to, 
 and our own files, as well as in the National Intelligencer of June 
 20th, 1811. And it is not the least remarkable coincidence, that the 
 first appearance of some of these documents was then, as now, by an 
 unlicensed publication of them in a newspaper in Connecticut, proba- 
 bly from the confidential copy of some senator, with a view to make 
 political capital against Mr. Madison, and by which the Intelligencer 
 justly remarked "the public interests were wantonly disregarded." 
 These cases are all those where force was used or contemplated, and 
 urging excuses for it. But, in that of Texas, we have used no force, 
 and propose to use none, unless unjustly attacked ; and will not the 
 reasons already recapitulated excuse defence when attacked, if they 
 then excused force in the first instance ? 
 
 In 1820, it was again recommended by President Monroe, the Sec- 
 retary of State being Mr. Adams, to pass a law to take possession of 
 the Floridas, notwithstanding the treaty ceding them had not been 
 
RE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 413 
 
 ratified. Some of the reasons urged in the public prints were, the 
 necessity of them for safety to the Southern States, for better protec- 
 tion against insidious interference from abroad, and the contempt, as 
 well as injustice, attached there to the Spanish power. (Niles' Reg- 
 ister for 20th December, 1820, and 18th March.) 
 
 Let it not be said, as differing from the present case, that we then 
 had claims against Spain unsettled ; for we now have important ones 
 against Mexico. 
 
 These may be considered by some as bold measures. They were 
 recommended, at least, by bold men, — men who knew their rights and 
 always dared to maintain them, however menaced at home or abroad. 
 They only looked for the path of duty, and, when found, moved for- 
 ward in it, swerving neither to the right nor left, from attempted 
 intimidation or foreign intrigue. As an example for us on this occa- 
 sion, let us look to the practical exposition of their principles in J.803, 
 as well as in the cases of 1810, 1811, and 1820, just referred to. 
 
 The apprehension of any difficulty with Spain, who remonstrated 
 against our right to purchase Louisiana, did not deter our patriot 
 fathers, in 1803, from accomplishing that ever memorable duty and 
 glorious act of policy ; and as little did the apprehension of a seizure 
 of it by England, in her war with France, then breaking out, alarm 
 them from their purpose. Much less should such fears swerve us 
 from the still higher and more numerous obligations that urge us 
 onward to a peaceful acquisition, not made in the spirit of aggrandize- 
 ment, but, beside other good motives, to restore what was our own 
 near half a century ago, and what, by Jefferson and Madison, with 
 the whole Congress and country, except a small disaffected party, was 
 vindicated as a purchase just and necessary for national security and 
 national prosperity. 
 
 On what ground can any part of the European world presume to 
 interfere with our amicable compacts with neighboring States on this 
 continent ? And on what just ground are we to be deterred from what 
 is right, honorable, and peaceful, in managing our own affairs, because 
 displeasure happens to be expressed at it by " Mrs. Grundy," or Lord 
 Brougham, or Daniel O'Connell'? What if the exhortation of one of 
 them came to us last evening across the Atlantic, trying to rally the 
 whole British empire to interfere at once to prevent the annexation 
 of Texas 7 
 
 England forgets that she recognized our independence more than 
 half a century ago ; and one would think that it was nearly time now 
 for her oligarchy to refrain from intermeddling in our affairs. She is 
 in an admirable position to denounce our thirst for acquiring territory, 
 when she has added encroachment to encroachment, till her forts and 
 factories encircle the whole globe almost as closely as her light-houses 
 do her coast. 
 
 As to such tirades, and the threatened scorn or censure of the 
 world at large on us for the transaction, I cannot refrain from 
 35* 
 
414 RE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 
 
 recalling to your minds the eloquent sentiments uttered by Mr. Clay, 
 in 1820, when the recognition of the South American provinces was 
 under consideration, and when the reproaches of transatlantic rivals 
 were held up in terrorem against us. 
 
 " On a subject of this sort, Mr. C. asked, was it possible we could be content to 
 remain, as we now were, looking anxiously to Europe, watching the eyes of Lord 
 Castlereagh, and getting scraps of letters doubtfully indicative of his wishes ; and 
 sending to the Czar of Russia, and getting another scrap from Count Nesselrode ? 
 Why not proceed to act on our own responsibility, and recognize these governments 
 as independent, instead of taking the lead of the Holy Alliance in a course which 
 jeopards the happiness of unborn millions ? Mr. C. deprecated this deference for for- 
 eign powers. If Lord Castlereagh says we may recognize, we do ; if not, we do not. 
 A single expression of the British minister to the present Secretary of State, then our 
 minister abroad, he was ashamed to say, had moulded the policy of our government 
 towards South America, — an expression which, like Mr. Adams' definition of repub- 
 licanism, had been construed to mean anything or nothing. We look too much 
 abroad, Mr. C. said ; you may find our minister in England at one time at the door 
 of the Horse-guards, and the next moment in Paternoster-row purchasing literature 
 for this country. Our institutions, said Mr. C, now make us free ; but how long 
 shall we continue so, if we mould our opinions on those of Europe ? Let us break 
 these commercial and political fetters ; let us no longer watch the nod of any Euro- 
 pean politician ; let us become real and true Americans, and place ourselves at the 
 head of the American system." 
 
 Even two years earlier, in a speech of the 24th of March, 1818, he 
 exhorted us to make the lead in favor of the revolted and oppressed 
 provinces of Spain, in "defiance of the Divine right of kings to rule." 
 If we erred, it was better to err on the side of human liberty. He 
 was " not a propagandist," but had sympathy for such a people ; and 
 would recognize them, and act further, " as circumstances and 
 interest require" (Vol. I. of Speeches, p. 85.) If we were our- 
 selves independent, we ought to be "guided by American policy," 
 and " obey the laws of the system of the new world." (p. 88.) 
 
 In doing this, as I have recently remarked on another occasion, if 
 war be' threatened, or actually comes, it will be gratifying to reflect 
 that it comes wrongfully, and might come so in any other difficulty, — 
 even for the mere acknowledgment of Texian independence, as was 
 menaced by Spain in a like case, and by Santa Anna himself for still 
 slighter reasons. But whatever nation, heeding threats or exposure to 
 unjust war, is tempted by the dread of them to turn aside from the 
 path of duty, humanity, and honor, is itself unfit to exercise independ- 
 ent powers, and should be re-annexed to her ancient masters. 
 
 So far from this shrinking having marked our course, even under 
 more threatening dangers, in 1810, 1811, and 1820, we went still 
 further in 1823 than before ; we avowed a determination to interpose 
 ourselves, if any new foreign power should presume only to colonize 
 anywhere on this continent, and hence much more if in Cuba or Texas, 
 in our near neighborhood ; because, more than ten years previous, it 
 had been foreseen and stated, that if a new foreign power should take 
 possession of Cuba, the whole Mississippi valley will be at her mercy. 
 (Nat. Int. July 8, 1811.) 
 
RE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 415 
 
 "We united in the Congress of Panama, even before Mexican inde- 
 pendence had been acknowledged by a single European power; one 
 object of which was " firmly establishing the independence of each of 
 the American republics." (Canaz Letter, 96, Appendix, 4th Blount.) 
 
 Another object was to concert measures to prevent Europe from 
 colonizing further in any part of the American continent. (Saloza to 
 Clay, Nov. 2, 1835, p. 92, Appendix.) 
 
 And this rested in part on the idea that such a colonization would 
 endanger the independence and safety of all the new republics. 
 
 In 1825, under Mr. Adams' administration, Mr. Clay, as Secretary 
 of State, seems to have been authorized to state officially, not only 
 that " we cannot allow a transfer of the island (Cuba) to any Euro- 
 pean power," but that the Mexicans have been dissuaded not to attack 
 Cuba in the war with Spain, lest it might lead to consequences dan- 
 gerous to the domestic tranquillity of the south. (Clay to Middleton, 
 Dec. 26, 1825 ; Blount's Register, 91.) 
 
 It therefore not only became a common object in this continent to 
 prevent new foreign settlements and influences here, but w T e labored to 
 enlist friendly powers in Europe to sanction it ; and succeeded in con- 
 vincing England that it was her duty, as well as ours, to prevent any 
 nation abroad from aiding Spain to re-conquer her revolted provinces. 
 (2 Wheaton, 81 to 89.) 
 
 But, so far from this countenancing any force or intrigues from 
 abroad, to control any of the new republics here, it aimed in principle at 
 the defeat of such attempts, as well as of ordinary colonization. It tries 
 to secure to all America self-government, free either from European 
 diplomacy or European arms. If Texas, or any other republic, 
 chooses to cede a part or all her territory, and unite with other sister 
 States in government, what right has Great Britain or France to 
 interpose, more than we have with the voluntary union of Ireland with 
 England, or the voluntary separation of Belgium from Holland ? 
 
 A war in Europe may arise from the change of masters over 
 a single city or province ; but it is a war in her own brotherhood or 
 system, and neither connects itself with changes in Asia, though of 
 dominion there over empires, nor recognizes American interferences 
 in Europe or Asia, more than we admit of European ones here. Mr. 
 Madison says, Europe has, in many respects, a system of policy and 
 interests almost peculiarly her own, and disconnected from other 
 quarters of the globe. The danger of foreign interference, and of col- 
 lisions with other nations than Mexico, is really more imminent, if we 
 postpone annexation, than if we complete it forthwith. In this last 
 case, the door is shut to European tactics. Threats, jealousies, or 
 favors, intrigues and appliances of all kinds, will be superseded, and 
 future struggles or blood to secure ourselves on that frontier, worse 
 than anything now probable, will all be obviated. 
 
 In closing these remarks on officious interference from abroad, 
 and manufactured public opinion abroad, I say, unhesitatingly, that 
 
416 RE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 
 
 if we are to be calumniated for exercising a constitutional right to 
 purchase, treat, and unite with an independent nation, in procuring 
 again an empire in size, which we once owned, and is occupied by our 
 own brethren, — for doing this by peaceful negotiation, and for mutual 
 benefits, rather than by rapacity or fraud, — and for exposing ourselves 
 to no just cause of war, but, on the contrary, terminating a predatory 
 and barbarous contest in behalf of liberty, independence, religious 
 freedom, the Anglo-Saxon race, and the progress of humanity and 
 civilization, — I, for one, am ready to appear at the bar of public opin- 
 ion, and stand prepared to abide the calm judgment of both cotempo- 
 raries and posterity. 
 
 Some senators have deemed it a duty not to take this cession on 
 account of our relations with Mexico, and the fear which ought to be 
 entertained of her vengeance. But it is a mistake to suppose that, by 
 this cession, if our former positions have been maintained, we thus 
 violate the solemnity of our treaties with Mexico. It is no violation 
 of them to consider the territory of Texas as not Mexican, but as 
 belonging to another power — to Texas herself. So says the late 
 Secretary of State ; and so said, in 1838, our treaty of limits with 
 Texas. Even if Mexico chooses to involve us in war on that account, 
 we are not guilty of such a violation, any more than we were by our 
 quasi war with France in 1798, and our real war with England in 
 1812 ; as we then had solemn treaties of peace with both of those 
 powers existing, as sacred and in full force as now with Mexico. 
 
 It is begging the question to call our conduct on any of these ques- 
 tions a violation of our treaty obligations. 
 
 As little should we be terrified from duty by the apprehension of 
 Mexican power, when exercised unjustly ; though almost every speech 
 on the other side begins and ends with war, — not only threatened, but 
 war approaching, — war almost in our midst. But we should fear a 
 neglect of duty to our own country and Texas much more than the 
 proivess and success of Mexico, which have been so exaggerated, 
 while, in truth, so lame and impotent as, during six years past, to kill 
 a few women by Indians and convicts, and capture one judge and two 
 or three travelling editors of newspapers, but not retain a single foot 
 of land or a single fort. And, though some of the gentlemen who 
 engaged in this debate seemed almost to see merchants fleeing, 
 property sequestrated, commerce plundered on the ocean, cities 
 sacked, and Santa Anna ready to plant (as he once threatened) the 
 Mexican standard over our heads on the dome of our Capitol, yet, 
 unfortunately, that hero has heretofore so misbehaved in peace as to 
 have driven most of our traders already from his dominions, and to 
 have neither power to come here by water, except in borrowed vessels, 
 nor disposition to march eastward again by land over the territory 
 near the field of San Jacinto. 
 
 How long it would take Mexico to re-conquer Texas when allied 
 with us, after the attempts so vain and so long on her unallied, it is 
 
RE- ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 417 
 
 not very difficult to compute ; and I think the nerves of our wives and 
 daughters, and the cradles of our infants, may be kept tolerably calm 
 under this new panic. On the contrary, Mexico has every induce- 
 ment to pursue a policy entirely different, and more worthy her nat- 
 ural position. 
 
 She has a noble opportunity, on this occasion, to withdraw from her 
 further claims with dignity, and honor, and courtesy. It is not neces- 
 sary that she should formally admit what has so long seemed apparent 
 — her inability to re-conquer Texas; but merely acquiesce in the 
 independence of a territory, whose people were mostly invited there 
 from the United States by new colonization laws, in order to aid her 
 in defence against Indian aggressions, — whose education, habits, and 
 religion, do not accord with hers, and are unsuited to harmonize under 
 her system. — and, as before fully show T n, have rightfully resisted it ; 
 and, in fine, whose valor and success have excited the sympathies and 
 confidence of most of the world. For the sake of meeting the wishes 
 of the great powers of that world, and restoring quiet to its commerce, 
 as well as peace, what is there derogatory in saying she will no longer 
 stand up against the public opinion of Christendom 1 Spain having 
 done the same by Mexico, and England by us, no feeling of pride is 
 injured, nor the slightest humiliation involved, while at last she may 
 win some glory by becoming the pacificator of much of the new 
 continent. 
 
 Let us not, then, cling to this twig, or dwell on that small flaw, — 
 hang a doubt on one loop, and an old prejudice on another. But 
 group a ll these strong incentives to action together — add the political 
 force of one to the moral strength of the other, and the urgent 
 national interests in future, as well as now, so deeply involved, to the 
 whole, and then weigh them en masse ; and if they do not show a 
 heavy preponderance of duty on us to take the cession immediately, 
 I must confess my inability to weigh properly either evidence or 
 principles. 
 
 It is, however, well known that a portion of this body deem our 
 right to acquire, and the right of Texas to cede, clear ; and our duty, 
 at some time, to carry the measure into effect equally clear ; and yet 
 entertain doubts whether the present moment is most suitable for that 
 purpose. To such I would, in conclusion, submit a few suggestions. 
 
 The annexation of Texas has been deemed desirable now by our 
 executive, as well as the government of Texas ; and a treaty has been 
 finished to that effect, to be ratified within six months. Without 
 strong reasons, what has been duly commenced, as of national magni- 
 tude, should be completed. 
 
 Again : Texas has been invited to institute proceedings, and close 
 the treaty ; and, without strong reasons, she ought not, in this stage of 
 the business, to be disappointed and repudiated. 
 
 The reasons acting on the executives of both countries — the proper 
 organs to commence such measures — have been sufficient and urgent, 
 
418 RE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 
 
 and requiring, in their view, immediate annexation. It is well known, 
 also, that many of the objections hitherto prevailing, as to the stability 
 and ripeness of Texian independence, and as to the probability of 
 re-conquest by Mexico, have been much weakened, if not entirely 
 removed. Public opinion, too, has had more time to be developed, 
 and has been fully disclosed in favor of annexation now, by public 
 meetings and resolutions, by memorials and correspondence, infinitely 
 more decisive and longer than when it was negotiated for in 1825 or 
 1829, or when it was offered in 1837. A rejection now is likely, also, 
 to be construed as if casting dishonor on Texas, after inviting her 
 action and concurrence in the cession and proceedings so far. 
 
 We have been trying to accomplish the re-annexation for more than 
 twenty years ; and now, when peaceably within our grasp, can it be 
 wisdom to let it escape, for reasons of form, or ceremony, or party 1 
 If it be a mere question of time, as some urge, then why not seize 
 time by the forelock 1 Why, in the language of the late national con- 
 vention, not do it "as soon as practicable"? Delays, also, are dan- 
 gerous, lest offence be taken on the other side, and the proposition be 
 never resumed. So a delay here may lead to alliances and guaranties 
 elsewhere, though not probably to re-union in government with a mon- 
 archy. Re-annexation may be thus defeated long, if not forever, as 
 well as a dangerous foreign influence planted on our borders, which 
 will not only peril our domestic institutions and property, as the Tex- 
 ian constitution is open to change on all subjects, but rob us of the 
 control of the Gulf of Mexico, and girdle us around from New Bruns- 
 wick to the Sabine, in a more iron and deadly gripe than that contem- 
 plated by France before our Revolution. 
 
 I say nothing here on the disclaimers of England as to abolition 
 designs with us, when she has avowed them as to the whole world, — 
 has encouraged them in Brazil and Texas, if not on the La Platte, — 
 has sheltered our slave criminals in her provinces and islands ; but I 
 do say that our country, and our whole country, cannot see with indif- 
 ference the wall she is closing up around us. Cuba at her mercy on 
 the south whenever war approaches, the Gibraltar of the Gulf of Mex- 
 ico ; the Bahamas on the east, bristling with cannon ; Halifax, Que- 
 bec, and Maiden, with munitions and soldiery, on the north-east and 
 north ; the Rocky Mountains on the west barricaded, and the mouth 
 of the Columbia fortified by her Hudson's Bay Company ; and last, 
 but not least, Texas on the south-west, forced almost insanely by us 
 into her influences and protection, if not close alliance. Even in this 
 debate, some senators (Mr. Choate) have considered the re-conquest 
 of Texas by her old oppressors as probable, unless annexation to us 
 speedily takes place, and yet refuse that annexation, and complacently 
 foretell that there is another mode of escaping subjugation by accepting 
 British aid, and, I presume, of course, with it, British abolition con- 
 ditions, as well as British control. Beside these indications of the 
 evils likely to result from delay, and beside the readiness of Mexico to 
 
RE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 419 
 
 continue her persevering efforts to thwart us in the object of annexa- 
 tion, by any cooperation with England, we have already had a fore- 
 taste, since 1837, of the gratification felt in the British public at our 
 short-sightedness in not uniting earlier with Texas, and the sanguine 
 hopes of their future influence there which have thus been excited. 
 The Edinburgh Review of 1841 says : 
 
 " The United States, in refusing to admit Texas into their confederation, have 
 rejected an otfer which, in all probability, will never again be made to them ; and 
 Texas becoming, as years pass by, more and more attached to its own institutions, its 
 own distinct policy, and its own national policy, and its own national character, will 
 speedily regard the United States with some of those feelings of jealousy which 
 nations always learn to entertain towards their nearest and most powerful neighbors. 
 The commercial interests of Texas, and the antipathy to the northern portion of the 
 United States which she inherits from her kindred of the Southern States, will always 
 tend to unite her with Great Britain." 
 
 After detailing the advantages of a close alliance between Texas and 
 Great Britain, the Review adds : 
 
 " The bonds of ancient kindred may thus be knit with fresh strength, and the 
 independence of Texas create only a wider diffusion of the British race and British 
 sympathies." 
 
 After going over the inducements existing, both in Texas and in the 
 United States, to the conclusion of a treaty, and remarking that the 
 signature of it "need not surprise any one," the London Herald thus 
 speculates : 
 
 " Such a treaty would (unless the consent of Santa Anna thereto have been pre- 
 viously obtained, — a most unlikely event) lead to a rupture, if not to hostilities, 
 between the United States and Mexico ; and even if it did not produce immediate war, 
 would most certainly foster the ' mission ' to overrun Mexico which even now has 
 possession of a large proportion of the Anglo-Americans. In a quarrel arising from 
 such a cause, England and France would have a right to interfere, if only because 
 annexation affected their acquired interests in Texas. It is the policy of both coun- 
 tries to support Mexico as a counterpoise to the United States; and England has 
 an especial ground for the preservation of Texian independence in its influence on 
 Canada." 
 
 Suppose that Mr. Jefferson had listened to delay in the purchase of 
 Louisiana for only a single month, the war being renewed between 
 England and France, would have made it a prey to British superiority 
 at sea ; and all the evils now deprecated as to the security of the com- 
 merce and cities of the Mississippi, and the domestic tranquillity of the 
 south, would have been earlier felt, and earlier agitated the whole 
 Union. (See Marbois' Hist, of Louisiana.) 
 
 What is the bearing of the new correspondence on this subject ? It 
 is most significant. It discloses the fact that Texas deems a new and 
 formidable invasion from Mexico, when she hears of this treaty, to be 
 so probable as not to be willing to enter upon making it without assur- 
 ances of aid from us, if the exigency occurs while the negotiations are 
 pending. So much is certain, that if we reject the treaty, or delay it, 
 
420 RE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 
 
 and the invasion comes, Texas must be satisfied that no just aid can 
 constitutionally be granted by us. What, then, must be her next 
 resource 1 Will it be to take the field, and wade through carnage, 
 expense, and conflagration, to repel it victoriously alone, as she doubt- 
 less may, according to the experienced judgment of the senator from 
 Missouri 1 Certainly, rather than submit to Mexican re-conquest and 
 Mexican chains ; but certainly not, if she can avert both the carnage 
 and the chains, with honor, by an arrangement with England or 
 France, after making the first offer to us, and experiencing a humili- 
 ating refusal. In a single month after such refusal or delay, it will 
 be wise and natural for her to guard against new contingencies, though 
 not to become an integral part of the British or French monarchies, 
 and abandon her republican institutions and independence, but to receive 
 the guaranty of one of them against Mexican oppression. Of course, 
 it would be on such terms as are honorable and acceptable to both par- 
 ties, and leave no motive for renewed negotiations with us ; on such 
 terms as will secure life and property, restore peace to her industry 
 and commerce, grow cotton for England independent of us, — a most 
 vital object to her, — improve the finances of Texas, and fill up her 
 rich domain, not by us and ours, and to our benefit and glory, 
 but with millions from other quarters of the world, who have so 
 long been repulsed by her hitherto embarrassed and unsettled rela- 
 tions. If, then, a more intimate union is ever to take place with us, 
 it is my solemn conviction that "now's the day and now's the 
 hour." 
 
 These apprehensions are so far from being visionary, that numerous 
 similar arrangements, by more powerful States, with youthful and 
 small republics, have occurred and continued for centuries. 
 
 How striking in the case of the Hanse Towns and other free cities 
 of Germany ! How momentous, at times, in that of the Swiss can- 
 tons ! in that of Geneva, — Genoa ! How desirable to us once, when 
 the protection and assistance of France were obtained under certain 
 mutual guaranties, but without our becoming a part of France, or a 
 dependency, or ever feeling disposed, however much pressed, to renew 
 our governmental relation with England, though attached to her by 
 origin, education, and religion, almost as strongly as the people of 
 Texas can be to us ! 
 
 The correspondence before us, published as well as unpublished, 
 proves that these gloomy apprehensions, if the present golden 
 moment be not seized, are likely soon to be realized. Not so much, I 
 admit, by rapacity, as by intrigue and interest elsewhere (as evinced 
 by Mr. Huskisson, in debate, as long ago as 1830), and thus to place 
 in the hands of another foreign and rival power a possession more 
 dangerous to all our western as well as southern interests and com- 
 merce than Cuba herself, — Cuba, which, for twenty years, has been 
 publicly tabooed by our Presidents and Secretaries from all foreign 
 interference. If we postpone at all, then, let me ask to what time ? 
 
KE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 421 
 
 to what 4th of July are we to wait for the occupation of this, as of the 
 north-eastern territory since lost 1 Our people are as acquisitive in 
 their propensities, and especially about lands, as most others. Hence, 
 when peaceful restorations of what was once our own, and, from its 
 great value and importance, should never have been parted with, are 
 offered, they would hardly justify that procrastination which may again 
 be the thief to rob them of the prize. 
 
 The instincts of a great people are also seldom wrong ; and those 
 of ours have long run in the channel of sympathy for the down- 
 trodden, — especially their own relatives and neighbors, — attachment 
 to those daring to be free ; and knowing what confidence, courage, and 
 strength, were inspired into our fathers, in their struggle for independ- 
 ence, by the kindness and approbation of others, they will always be 
 true to those instincts; and as far as justice, honor, and right, may war- 
 rant — which they are believed to do here — immediate annexation, they 
 will march fearlessly up to the line of duty. 
 
 If we look further, the dominion of the whole American continent 
 will be seen to be at stake. Shall it rest in America, or in a small 
 island on the coast of Europe '? Shall it be in a republic, or a mon- 
 archy ? In us and our posterity, or in our oppressor and rival ? 
 
 The commerce of America, — the great surplus commerce of both 
 worlds, — on what does it chiefly depend ? and where and whence 
 shall it flow ? Under whose guidance ? whose protection ? Look 
 into these matters as connected with this question, and decide whether 
 we shall, in truth, be independent in substance, or only in form ! Ex- 
 hibiting self-confidence, liberty, and defiance, somewhere else than on 
 our lips ; or stoop in action to temporize, vacillate, and delay, if not 
 succumb to other powers ! * 
 
 * There is another speech of Judge Woodbury on this subject, but it is omitted in 
 this selection. We have omitted, also, a speech on the Tariff, which may be found in 
 the Congressional Debates. 
 
 36 
 
REPORTS. 
 
REPORTS. 
 
 ON THE SAFE-KEEPING OF THE PUBLIC MONEY. 
 
 The arrangements for keeping the public money which had been 
 in successful operation for a few years previous to the passage of the 
 cleposite act of 1836 became partially embarrassed by carrying into 
 effect some of its provisions. But the enforcement of them all, where 
 not entirely perfected, was in seasonable progress in May last, when 
 the department was compelled, by the act, to give notice to such of the 
 selected banks as had suspended specie payments that they could no 
 longer be considered as general depositories of the public moneys. 
 (See circular I.)f 
 
 A list is annexed of all before employed in that capacity which have 
 been discontinued. (K.) f 
 
 After due inquiries to procure other depositories, in conformity to 
 the act, the department has completed the appointment of only one. 
 This, and four more that have not suspended, with one that has 
 resumed specie payments (making six in all), constitute the present 
 bank depositories for general purposes. A schedule of them is added. 
 
 (L.)t 
 
 During the inability to obtain specie-paying banks at other points, 
 
 the treasurer — being required, by the closing part of the 8th section of 
 
 the act, to keep and disburse the public money according to the laws 
 
 before in force — has done it in conformity to the very wide discretion 
 
 which existed when no rules were in force that had been prescribed 
 
 by Congress, except to "keep" and " disburse the same" under the 
 
 general superintendence of the Secretary of the Treasury. A part of 
 
 it has, therefore, been kept in special deposit in this city, a portion 
 
 of it in the mint, and the residue with the officers collecting it, until 
 
 * From the Report of the Secretary of the Treasury ; made September 3d, 1837. 
 t Printed with the Report, September 5, 1837. 
 36* 
 
426 ON THE SAFE-KEEPING OF THE PUBLIC MONEY. 
 
 it was wanted for public purposes, or until it accumulated in such 
 sums at any point as not to be, probably, wanted there for such use. 
 (See two circulars, M and N.)* In the first case, it has, from time 
 to time, been applied to the payment of creditors, by drafts on the 
 receivers or collectors : and in the last, the excess has been directed to 
 be temporarily placed with banks not remotely situated, and in special 
 deposite for safety, until wanted for expenditure elsewhere, or until 
 some new legislation shall take place in relation to it. 
 
 Under these circumstances, the department would respectfully sug- 
 gest some provisions which may be more specific, and may be required 
 for the safe-keeping and disbursing of the public moneys. 
 
 In the present condition of the government and the country, two 
 systems are proposed, either of which, it is believed, may be practicable 
 and adequate to the exigencies of the crisis. One is, an enlargement 
 and adaptation of the system partially employed since the suspension 
 of specie payments, so as to make it answer all necessary purposes. 
 This could be effected merely by assigning to our existing officers and 
 establishments some additional duties. 
 
 The treasurer, at the seat of government, — the mint, with its branch 
 at New Orleans, and another which has been contemplated, and is 
 much needed at New York, for other purposes, — collectors of the 
 customs, and receivers of money for the sales of land, as well as post- 
 masters, — might all be directed to keep in safety, not only the public 
 money collected by them, but all actually placed in their possession, 
 by transfer or otherwise. As fiscal agents, they might also be required 
 to pay over and transfer it for such public purposes as may be author- 
 ized by Congress, and under such regulations as the treasury depart- 
 ment from time to time may prescribe. Indeed, the third section of 
 the post-office law of 1825, with the bond taken under it as to the 
 agency of the postmasters, is, perhaps, already sufficiently broad for 
 that class of officers. At points like New York, and a few others, 
 where a likelihood existed that the sums would permanently be large, 
 but which, under a reduced revenue and expenditure, would seldom 
 occur, authority might be given to appoint the clerks now acting as 
 cashiers or tellers under the collectors and receivers, or other more 
 suitable persons, to act as keepers and paymasters of the public money. 
 But they should be made independent of the collectors and receivers, 
 and placed under the like tenure of office, and under suitable bonds. 
 Additional means of safety, and such additional but limited compensa- 
 tion to any of the above officers, might be provided, as the increased 
 risk and labor might render just ; but in only a few cases would these 
 last be much augmented at any place. 
 
 Taking the year 1834 as furnishing a specimen sufficiently large of 
 the probable business in future connected with the general operations 
 of the treasury department, but, of course, not including the separate 
 
 * Printed with the Report, Sept. 5, 1837. 
 
ON THE SAFE-KEEPING OF THE PUBLIC MONEY. 427 
 
 establishment of the post-office, the whole number of warrants issued 
 in that year was a little under five thousand ; and, though differing 
 much in actual amount, averaging about five thousand dollars each. 
 This would be less than twenty warrants a day, and hence would 
 require less than one per day to be paid in each of the twenty-six 
 States. They differed, in fact, from four per day in this district, and 
 two per day in New York, which were the highest numbers, to only 
 one per week in several of the States. (See Table P.) * The busi- 
 ness at each office daily, or even weekly, in making payments of the 
 drafts, would, therefore, be very little. If more than one draft issued 
 on a warrant, the business would be increased in that proportion, unless 
 the whole payments were reduced, as is probable, hereafter, to sixteen 
 or seventeen millions yearly. 
 
 In regard to the risk, five millions in the treasury at any one time, 
 if all placed in the hands of collectors and receivers, would not, on an 
 average, exceed thirty thousand dollars with each of the present 
 number. 
 
 But if the amount, besides one million in the mint, was chiefly in 
 the hands of half the present number, which would approach nearer to 
 the probable result, the sum with each would still be less than most 
 of the existing bonds of receivers ; and when exceeding theirs, or those 
 of the principal collectors, the excess, in most cases, could be readily 
 prevented, or reduced, by being drawn out to pay creditors, or be con- 
 veniently transferred to the treasurer of the United States, at the seat 
 of government, or to the mint and its branches. Until one of the 
 latter is authorized at New York, the substitute, before mentioned, of 
 one of the present officers in the customs there as an independent 
 keeper and paymaster of the public money, could be adopted, and, if 
 deemed prudent, be extended to any other similar place. 
 
 In this mode, the present number of officers connected with the col- 
 lection and disbursement of the revenue throughout the United States 
 need not be at all increased. Nor will it become necessary, except in 
 a few cases, to augment their compensation. Twenty or thirty thou- 
 sand dollars a year would probably cover the whole additional expense 
 of every kind. 
 
 The other system to which the attention and consideration of Con- 
 gress are respectfully invited, is a new organization, by means of 
 commissioners or receivers-general, to gather the collections to more 
 central points, and keep and disburse there a large portion of the public 
 money, or such as could not be kept safely and expended conveniently 
 in the hands of the collecting officers. Such an organization might be 
 at only three or four of the most important points ; or it might be 
 made more extensive, and the number enlarged to eight or ten. This 
 could be arranged, in all essential particulars, substantially in the 
 manner which is now in very successful practice in some of the most 
 
 * Printed with the Report, September 5, 1837. 
 
428 OjST the saee-keepixg of the public moxey. 
 
 enlightened and opulent governments of Europe, and as was urgently 
 recommended by this department as early as 1790. (See extract 0.) * 
 The /)nly material difference need be, to pay out more of the money 
 near the places where it is collected, rather than first to transmit most 
 of it to the seat of Government. This organization of fiscal agents 
 would be advantageous as a separate establishment for this business 
 alone, and as an independent check on most of those collecting the 
 revenue. But it would require some addition to the present number 
 of officers, and, in the first instance, would more increase the public 
 expenses. 
 
 But the whole addition of principal officers need not exceed ten. 
 Nor would the increased annual expense to the government probably 
 amount to over fifty or sixty thousand dollars, as the system would 
 enable both the war and navy departments to dispense with several 
 of their agents for making local disbursements. The danger of any 
 losses will be nearly the same under both plans. It is impossible to 
 conduct the affairs of government, or the ordinary transactions of 
 society, without trust and risk of some kind. But one great object, 
 wherever pecuniary confidence is reposed, should always be to require 
 the best safeguards which appear reasonable ; and in either of these 
 systems, as hereafter explained, the amount trusted can be more easily 
 kept from becoming excessive, and the hazard of losses, affecting the 
 deposite agent by his lending or trading, be fully obviated, by the 
 strict prohibition of both the latter, under severe penalties. 
 
 Our direct losses from either collecting or deposite agents have 
 always been comparatively small. Those by the former, it is believed, 
 have not equalled those by the latter ; though the latter, being banks, 
 have usually in the end paid most of their deposites. The losses by 
 the former are also supposed not to have exceeded one-fifth of those on 
 the bonds of merchants for duties, and probably not one-eighth of those 
 from the purchasers of public lands, under the credit system. 
 
 Occasional and strict examinations of the money on hand, where 
 large in amount, would furnish a strong safeguard beyond the char- 
 acter of the officer, and the property of himself and sureties, and which 
 it might be provided should be made by a committee of Congress, or in 
 any other mode deemed most eligible to constitute an effectual check. 
 
 The plans which have been explained as to fiscal agents are 
 suggested for consideration, under a belief that either is appropriate in 
 the present posture of affairs ; that they require but slight changes in 
 our existing laws or usages ; and, whatever objections can be adduced 
 against them, will, at the same time, be found to possess many signal 
 
 They will not, so much as some other modes of keeping the public 
 money, expose the treasury to disappointments and delays, through a 
 dangerous partnership of interest, or the use of that money for private 
 
 * Printed with the Report, September 5, 1837. 
 
ON THE SAFE-KEEPING OF THE PUBLIC MONEY. 429. 
 
 or corporate purposes. As the vicissitudes of trade or speculation 
 affect the persons Avho borrow from the public banking depositories, the 
 evil consequences must sometimes inevitably reach and embarrass the 
 treasury itself. Nor, on the other hand, will these modes, like our 
 former one, cause frequent injury to those who, trading on the revenue 
 of the government, are subject to be most pressed to refund it when 
 least able. It is believed, likewise, that the funds of the treasury can 
 be always more readily commanded in a legal currency, and the hopes 
 of its creditors not defeated, nor its faith violated so often, if the money 
 is not loaned out, either in full or in part, but, as in other countries, 
 is retained in specie or its equivalent, and in the actual custody of 
 officers exclusively fiscal. In other countries, the public money is 
 believed to be seldom, if ever, chargeable to the treasurer, till it is 
 either paid over on some draft, so that he can get credit for the pay- 
 ment (and which mode is practised somewhat in England, as well as 
 here, and extensively in France), or lodged, not in deposit in any 
 bank, but in his own possession at the seat of government. In the 
 former mode, the systems now proposed, and especially the first one, 
 would operate so as to disburse at each point most of the public money 
 collected near, and would thus enable the treasury to command its 
 resources with less delay ; the money not being previously paid over 
 at some distance, and to a separate set of agents, as has usually been 
 the practice here in the use of banks ; nor much of it transported 
 inconveniently to the capital, as has usually been the practice else- 
 where. This mode would thus possess one of the greatest excellences 
 in any fiscal system ; which is, to pay over quickest to the public cred- 
 itor, and with the least official complexity, whatever is collected from 
 the public debtor. 
 
 Besides these advantages, others would be, that the money in the 
 treasury, under both of the plans submitted, can always be more easily 
 kept down to moderate dimensions by reductions in the revenue, and 
 by temporary investments of an occasional surplus, as there will be no 
 antagonist interest connected with it, wishing for loans and the use of 
 surpluses, and thus cooperating to prevent a reduction. 
 
 The existing establishments and officers, whenever convenient, would 
 be employed without a double machinery, or the organization of a new 
 system of agents. Executive control would be diminished rather than 
 increased by them, because any additional officers will be selected, not 
 by the President alone, nor the treasury department, as the banks 
 now are, but virtually be designated by Congress, and the principal 
 incumbents appointed by the consent of the Senate. They would also 
 remove all ground for the objection sometimes urged against the for- 
 mer system, that the executive alone exercises an extensive patronage 
 and great monied influence through a host of bank presidents, direct- 
 ors, and stockholders, scattered through every section of the country, 
 and selected without the assent or check of either House of Congress 
 in any particular case, and making loans of the public money from 
 
430 ON THE SAFE-KEEPING OF THE PUBLIC MONET. 
 
 considerations merely political or official. A very wide discretion will 
 be thus restricted, and a prolific source of suspicion and imputation of 
 favoritism and partiality be entirely stopped. 
 
 The officers, under the plans proposed, will likewise be amenable 
 exclusively to the General Government, and not be embarrassed, like 
 the officers of the banks, by conflicting duties and interests in respect 
 to the States ; nor involved in those collisions, jealousies, and recrimi- 
 nations, often attendant on that position. 
 
 The independent and harmonious action of each government in its 
 appropriate sphere will thus be more fully secured. The local institu- 
 tions, as a general principle, will be left to the care and uses of the 
 several States which established them, without interference on the part 
 of the General Government, and to be regulated or discontinued, as 
 deemed most useful under their own State policies, and most con- 
 ducive to the original purposes of their creation. Nor would any 
 general monied corporation, aside from the grave doubts which exist as 
 to both its constitutionality and general expediency, have been likely, 
 in such a crisis as that of the war of 1812, or perhaps that of the last 
 spring, to have proved a much safer public depository than those local 
 institutions. Though more convenient in form for fiscal purposes than 
 they, and free from some objections as to want of symmetry and 
 accountability which obtain against them, yet, if chartered on usual 
 principles, and judging from experience here as well as abroad, it must 
 have failed, in a trial like those, to have sustained either our pecuniary 
 operations or its own, in strict good faith and in due vigor. 
 
 Without entering into details to illustrate this position, it is neces- 
 sary to notice only the single circumstance, that the Bank of England, 
 during a severe war, suspended specie payments near a quarter of a 
 century, and that neither of the two United States Banks existed so 
 as to be obliged to encounter such a peril. But since the last Spring, 
 the notes of the second one, to the amount of several millions, have 
 been allowed to sink into the mass of irredeemable and depreciated 
 paper, though issued under all the high securities and sanctions of a 
 charter from the General Government, and with very large funds, still 
 under the control of officers and trustees deemed by the stockholders 
 exceedingly skilful, and bound by both law and contract to redeem 
 those notes in specie, and on demand. 
 
 The systems which have been proposed in this report, if adopted, 
 could not be expected to continue entirely exempt from losses by that 
 unfaithfulness or casualty to which all trusts in human affairs are 
 exposed. But they may be surrounded with strong safeguards, and 
 would very probably soon be enabled to answer in a satisfactory man- 
 ner every purpose of the government, in its condition so different in 
 many respects from that which formerly existed, and which was the 
 paramount cause urged for the incorporation of our two former United 
 States Banks. Its finances are not now burdened with a national 
 debt of from seventy to one hundred and thirty millions, and, besides 
 
ON THE SAFE-KEEPING OF THE PUBLIC MONEY. 431 
 
 our ordinary expenses, with the annual payment, on account of prin- 
 cipal and interest, of from ten to sixteen millions, to be first widely 
 collected, and then transferred and disbursed at only a few points on 
 the sea-board. It is now with a yearly revenue reduced from thirty 
 and forty millions to near twenty, and probably soon to be only six- 
 teen or seventeen, and with a course of expenditure which can readily 
 be diminished so as not much, if any, to exceed the revenue in a nat- 
 ural state of business. In large sections of our country, and in such 
 a state of business, this expenditure happens nearly and very conven- 
 iently to correspond in amount with the receipts in the same sections. 
 
 We are, likewise, reposing in peace, with very superior means of 
 communication, whether by mail or personal intercourse, and with a 
 greatly increased and increasing portion of gold in the currency, to 
 render distant transfers and payments more easy. It is manifest, 
 therefore, that our fiscal concerns will be greatly lessened in amount 
 as well as difficulty, unless we shall be visited by wars or other 
 scourges involving us in debts and embarrassments of an aggravated 
 character, and which, fortunately, no sufficient reason appears for 
 anticipating at an early day. 
 
 Under the proposed arrangements, the transfers from certain points 
 could be often effected, when required by the department for public 
 purposes, not only with ease, but so as greatly to facilitate the domes- 
 tic exchanges, in the mode of employing drafts suggested in a subse- 
 quent portion of this report. In a more natural and ordinary state of 
 receipts and expenditures, like that in 1834, the transfers required to 
 a great distance would not exceed two or three millions during the 
 year; and almost the whole of them were, at that time, in such a 
 direction as to yield a profit, rather than be expensive to the banks 
 which made them. 
 
 If the treasurer were required to receive payment in advance, at 
 certain convenient points, for all lands sold, as has once been the con- 
 struction of the act of 1820, the probability is, that very soon all the 
 unfavorable transfers rendered necessary would become quite unim- 
 portant in amount, and less expensive than the transportation of specie 
 and paper has been heretofore, from the distant land offices to the 
 nearest deposite banks, before much of it was paid to the public cred- 
 itors. It will be seen that, by these modes of keeping the public 
 money, it would not be indispensable to employ any banks as a pre- 
 scribed part of the system, although it might sometimes be convenient 
 to use them as individuals do, and as subordinate fiscal officers often 
 do, in other countries, for the deposit and transfer of large sums, and 
 particularly for special deposites, when looking merely to safety and 
 an early occasion to use the money. 
 
 No act of Congas, until the charter of the last Bank of the United 
 States in 1816, required the public money in the treasury to be kept 
 on deposit in any bank whatever. The whole subject was left to the 
 discretion of this department. Even that charter permitted the Sec- 
 
432 LOSSES FROM BANKS AND BANK-PAPER. 
 
 retary of the Treasury to remove the deposites from the Bank of the 
 United States, when he thought proper. 
 
 In the supplemental report from this department, in 1834, on the 
 keeping and disbursing of the public money, a state of things like the 
 present was adverted to and considered. It was observed, in regard to 
 such an occurrence, that it will then "become necessary to devolve 
 these duties on some receiver or collector already in office, or on some 
 safe agent not now in office, as has been the practice for years, in this 
 country, in paying pensions at convenient places, near which there was 
 no State bank or branch of the United States Bank, and as has long 
 been the usage in some countries of Europe, by having the revenue in 
 certain districts chiefly received, kept and transmitted, through private 
 agents and brokers." 
 
 But it was added, that " though the fiscal operations of the govern- 
 ment could, undoubtedly, still proceed through the personal agencies 
 before mentioned," and without any banks, State or national, yet "it 
 would be at some inconvenience and increase of expense, unless reme- 
 died in a manner that may hereafter be developed ; and would not, in 
 the opinion of this department, and in the present condition of things, 
 be so eligible a system as the present one; because banks, though 
 exposed to some dangers and evils, and though not believed to be 
 necessary for the fiscal purposes of any government, and much less of 
 one in the present happy financial situation of ours, are frankly 
 acknowledged to be, in many respects, a class of agents economical, 
 convenient, and useful." 
 
 LOSSES FROM BANKS AND BANK-PAPER* 
 
 Treasury Department, February 11, 1841. 
 Sir : The following report is submitted, in compliance with a reso- 
 lution which passed the Senate on the 7th ultimo, in these words : 
 
 "Resolved, That the Secretary of the Treasury he directed to communicate to the 
 Senate, at as early a period as practicable, in a detailed and tabular form, all the 
 information in the power of his department in answer to t^c following questions : 
 
 * Report made while Secretary of the Treasuvj, Feb. 12, 1841; showing, in com- 
 pliance with a resolution of the Senate, the losses of the General Government, and by 
 the people of the United States, from the use of banks and bank-paper. 
 
LOSSES FROM BANKS AND BANK-PAPER. 433 
 
 " 1. What amount has the Federal Government lost, from its organization to this 
 time, by the employment of banks, by the use of bank-paper, or by its connection in 
 anywise with banks, including the depreciation of bank-paper ? 
 
 " 2. What amount the people of the United States have lost, from the commence- 
 ment of the government to this time, by the failure and the suspension of banks, and 
 by the depreciation of bank-paper, by the loss and destruction of bank-notes, and by 
 the existence of banks and the use of bank-paper generally. 
 
 " 3. What have the people and government of the United States paid, directly and 
 indirectly, to the aggregate banks of the United States, for the use of those institu- 
 tions, annually, for the last ten years ? 
 
 " 4. What proportion of the stock of the several banks of the United States is at 
 this time owned by foreigners ? " 
 
 Several of these inquiries involve considerations which cannot easily 
 be presented in the "detailed and tabular form" desired in the reso- 
 lution. Again : many of them require explanations and limitations, 
 or qualifications, that could not, amidst the pressure of numerous 
 other engagements, and within the short period of a few weeks, be 
 accurately prepared, even in the shape of notes to statistical state- 
 ments. Most of them, also, are in themselves incapable of much cer- 
 tainty, and can only be approximated by a few ascertained data, and 
 the best estimates formed upon them which the imperfect character of 
 the materials that can be procured, and my own want of leisure, may 
 warrant. But all the information in possession of the undersigned, 
 bearing on the matter of the resolution, and susceptible of being 
 brought into the form required by its provisions, will be submitted at 
 this time, accompanied by such notes as seem to be necessary to pre- 
 vent misapprehension, and give useful explanations as to the calcula- 
 tions. The rest must be left to future research and computation by 
 others. The whole might fill volumes ; since what is now presented, 
 instead of exhausting the subject, is only enough to excite thinking 
 and inquiry elsewhere. 
 
 As the data themselves, and the grounds or principles adopted in 
 the estimates, are usually given, an opportunity will exist for others to 
 judge of their approach to accuracy, and, so far as imperfect, to cor- 
 rect them, hereafter, on more certain information. 
 
 It is evident, by the language of the resolution, that, under the 
 word "loss," or "lost," to the government and the people, are meant 
 the gross losses, without computing or deducting any supposed benefits 
 by the banking system. From this circumstance, and the fact that 
 any such benefits are not required to be computed, they are not inves- 
 tigated and reported on under any of the different heads of inquiry. 
 It is further manifest, from the same circumstances, that, by the word 
 "loss," or "lost," are meant to be embraced those losses sustained by 
 any portion of the people, without deducting the unusual gains made 
 at the same time by the directors and other persons immediately con- 
 nected with banks, or by brokers and speculators. The computations 
 are, therefore, founded on that hypothesis. 
 
 Table A contains the answer to the first inquiry, which is in these 
 37 
 
434 LOSSES FROM BANKS AND BANK-PAPER. 
 
 words: "What amount has the Federal Government lost, from its 
 organization to this time, by the employment of banks, by the use of 
 bank-paper, or by its connection in anywise with banks, including the 
 depreciation of bank paper?" It presents the losses under this head 
 as follows : 
 
 From the employment of banks as public depositories, previous to 
 1837, and since 1837, separately ; 
 
 From their notes taken and not redeemed previous to 1837, and 
 since; and 
 
 From depreciation on their notes taken between 1814 and 1817, 
 inclusive, and since. 
 
 It then gives the computed interest on the whole, and the aggre- 
 gate. 
 
 Various other considerations, as to indirect losses from the connec- 
 tion of the government with banks, could be suggested under this 
 inquiry ; but as the results would not depend on actual returns, but 
 be very hypothetical, they are omitted, except an allusion to some of 
 them in a note to this table. 
 
 Indeed, I do not propose to embody in this report any of the results 
 computed in any of the tables. 
 
 They are subject to so many limitations and contingencies, requir- 
 ing explanation, that it seems more proper to consider them merely in 
 connection with the notes furnishing the explanation. 
 
 Tables B 1 to B 5 exhibit data in reply to the second inquiry, 
 which is : " What amount the people of the United States have lost, 
 from the commencement of the government to this time, by the fail- 
 ure and suspension of banks, and by the depreciation of bank-paper, 
 by the loss and destruction of bank-notes, and by the existence of 
 banks and the use of bank-paper generally." 
 
 B 1 contains the number of banks in the United States that failed 
 between 1789 and 1841, so far as the same can be ascertained and esti- 
 mated, with the amount of their capital. 
 
 There is added to them such portion of the banks now suspended as 
 are expected never to resume again. 
 
 B 2 contains the losses to the community by the failures before 
 mentioned, as computed on their capital, circulation, deposites, and 
 balances owing. 
 
 B 3 contains the losses to the people, computed on "the depre- 
 ciation of bank-paper," in the case of banks that have suspended 
 specie payments, but are not entirely failed or broken ; and the loss, 
 by such depreciation, on deposites and balances in those banks. 
 
 B 4 contains the estimated " losses and destruction of bank-notes " 
 by accidents, &c. 
 
 B 5 exhibits an aggregate of the losses computed under the whole 
 of the second head of inquiry. 
 
 Besides those specified in the former tables, many indirect and sev- 
 eral general injuries have occurred from " the existence of banks," 
 
LOSSES FROM BANKS AND BANK-PAPER. 435 
 
 such as counterfeit notes ; increased interest paid for loans ; premiums 
 to brokers for exchange of bank-paper ; expansions and contractions 
 of issues, leading to ruinous fluctuations in prices, augmented expend- 
 itures in living, sacrifices of property, &c. &c. Most of them are 
 adverted to in this table and the notes, but are often too conjectural in 
 their amount to be reduced to any tabular data, and are sometimes 
 mixed with benefits that have, in part, counterbalanced them, though 
 not easily to be computed in figures. 
 
 Table C contains data in answer to the third inquiry : u What have 
 the people and government of the United States paid, directly and 
 indirectly, to the aggregate banks of the United States, for the use of 
 those institutions, annually, for the last ten years?" 
 
 It first presents the average amount of capital and discounts of all 
 the banks in the United States during the last ten years, and the 
 amount of their estimated gross annual income during that period. It 
 then computes such part as may be considered more than six per cent, 
 on their capital; and, also, more than that and their reasonable 
 expenses. 
 
 These furnish almost the only tangible data for ascertaining what 
 seems to be desired under this head. 
 
 I have merely added some computations of a part of the cost of the 
 present banking system to the community "during the last ten 
 years," caused by various losses incident to its operations, as explained 
 in Table B 5. 
 
 Table D contains a reply to the fourth and last inquiry : " What 
 proportion of the stock of the several banks of the United States is, 
 at this time, owned by foreigners?" 
 
 It gives all the facts in possession of the department bearing on this 
 point, with estimates thereon ; which, though formed on data some- 
 what imperfect, are probably near the truth. 
 
 Table E is a statement on the amount of currency in, or circulation 
 of, bank-notes and specie in this and other countries, at different peri- 
 ods. It was originally published by Congress, from a report of this 
 department made by the undersigned in December, 1834. It has 
 been revised, and some addition of other facts, since procured, are pre- 
 sented, both in the body of the table and in the notes annexed. This 
 is done, because its contents are referred to so frequently for some of 
 the data on which parts of the computations in the preceding tables 
 are grounded. Respectfully, 
 
 LEVI WOODBURY, 
 
 Secretary of the Treasury. 
 To the President of the 
 
 Senate of the United States. 
 
436 LOSSES FROM BANKS AND BANK-PAPER. 
 
 A. 
 
 Losses sustained by the Federal Government, by the Employment 
 of Banks and Bank-paper, before the Year 1837, and since. 
 
 Loss estimated by the treasury department on the 
 
 depreciation of bank-notes received prior to 1837, c$>5,500,000 
 
 Loss appearing on the books of the treasury by banks 
 
 as depositories prior to 1837, about . . . 900,000 
 
 Loss estimated by using banks as depositories since the 
 
 year 1837, «100,000 
 
 Loss estimated on bank-notes taken and not redeemed 
 
 prior to 1837, 80,000 
 
 Loss estimated on bank-notes taken and not redeemed 
 
 since 1837, M0,000 
 
 Aggregate, 6,620,000 
 
 Computed interest on the aggregate, .... 8,872,000 
 Total principal and interest, 15,492,000 
 
 a This is an estimated loss upon nearly $400,000 due by the late deposite hanks to 
 the treasurer and disbursing agents. This, it is hoped, will prove more than the final 
 loss on the books of the department. 
 
 b This is an estimate upon about $100,000 of bank-notes in the possession of the 
 government, or belonging to it, though the loss on them may turn out to be less. 
 
 c Estimated, by Mr. Gallatin, at more than four millions. (See " Considerations 
 on the Currency and Banking System," p. 51.) My computation was made a few 
 years ago, and founded only on the discount or depreciation of the bank-notes once 
 and at first received for duties, lands, and loans; and it may be too small for all 
 kinds of losses under this head, as it differs so much from the estimate made by the 
 Committee of Ways and Means (House of Representatives) in 1830. Considering 
 that the prices paid for provisions, services, &c, were also much higher during the 
 suspension, the committee are likely to be more near the truth regarding the indirect 
 losses, if not the direct ones. 
 
 Loss estimated by that committee, on the depreciation of bank-notes received prior 
 to 1817, $34,000,000. (See Report of the Committee of Ways and Means, House of 
 Representatives, April 13, 1830, explanatory of this.) In this aspect of losses, the 
 committee are supposed to take into consideration the facts, that, after August, 1814, 
 loans were made to the government in irredeemable paper, at a high premium, and 
 which loans were finally discharged in specie, or its equivalent. For example : One 
 hundred dollars in specie, or its equivalent, were used in 1824 in redeeming a certifi- 
 cate of stock issued in 1814 for $100, and for which only $88 had been received by 
 the government; and that in bank-notes, at a discount then of seven to twelve per 
 cent, compared with specie. 
 
LOSSES FROM BANKS AND BANK-PAPER. 437 
 
 B 1. 
 
 Number and Capital of Banks which have failed in the United 
 States since 1789. 
 
 1. From 1789 to 1811 : 
 
 Ascertained and estimated at twenty in number, and a capital aver- 
 aging each $150,000. 
 This would make the capital of all failing between 1789 
 
 and 1811 $3,000,000 
 
 2. From 1811 to 1830 : 
 
 Ascertained and estimated at 195 in all, viz. : 
 
 Ascertained by Mr. Gallatin, in his Considerations on Banks, 165. 
 
 Capital of 129 known, $24,247,309 
 
 Capital of 36 not known, and estimated by me in nearly 
 a like ratio, at $190,000 each, .... 6,840,000 
 
 [Capitals of both estimated by Mr. Gallatin at near 
 $30,000,000. (Considerations on Banks, p. 50.)] 
 
 Computed to have been unknown to Mr. Gallatin, 30 
 banks with like capital, 5,700,000 
 
 [See Gouge on Banking, p. 224, part 2d, first edition, 
 where it is stated that 28 more had been ascertained 
 than were in Mr. Gallatin's list.] 
 
 Whole capital of banks failing between 1811 and 1830, 36,787,309 
 
 3. From 1830 to 1841 : 
 
 The banks considered to be already broken, or failed 
 entirely, since 1830, are supposed to have been*about 
 150; of which 140 have been ascertained. The 
 average capital must be at least $300,000 each. This 
 would make the capital of the 150 equal to . . $45,000,000 
 
 [The capital is estimated higher, on the average, than in those fail- 
 ing before 1830, as greater capitals have been more common since; 
 and the capitals of all the banks in the Union are, at this time, known 
 to be, on an average, rather larger than this estimate, or near 
 $400,000 each. They are the smallest in New England, where the 
 failures have been fewest.] 
 
 4. It is apprehended that several banks, which are now 
 suspended, over the southern and western parts of the 
 United States, and particularly in Mississippi and 
 Michigan, will prove, in the end, to have failed 
 entirely, and will therefore never resume. Their 
 37* 
 
438 LOSSES FROM BANKS AND BANK-PAPER. 
 
 number is computed to be at least 30, and their capi- 
 tal must be $400,000 each (the average in the 
 Union), as some have a very large capital, especially 
 in Mississippi. This would make . . . $12,000,000 
 
 [I should not be surprised if the result hereafter shows the number 
 and the amount of the capital of the banks now suspended, which have 
 failed entirely and will never resume, to be larger. The above com- 
 putation does not include the Bank of the United States, which, while 
 this report was preparing, has suspended specie payments a third time, 
 viz., on the 4th of February, having resumed on the 15th of January, 
 1841, after its second suspension, October 8, 1839. Its first suspen- 
 sion was May 15, 183T. If the present one is to be regarded as a 
 failure, as many fear (its stock having been quoted as low in New 
 York as 26 on the hundred), an addition of $35,000,000 will have to 
 be made to the capital of the banks that have failed. 
 
 Several other banks in Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland, have 
 suspended a third time, since the 4th instant, and consequent upon the 
 stoppage of the United States Bank on that day ; but whether any 
 ultimate loss is likely to be sustained by any of them, as having failed 
 entirely, cannot yet be ascertained.] 
 
 Summary. 
 
 5. Capital of 20 banks, failing before 1811, . . $3,000,000 
 Capital of 195 banks, failing between 1811 and 
 1830, . . . . . . . 36,787,309 
 
 Capital of the 150 banks, of which 140 are ascer- 
 tained to have failed between 1830 and 1841, . 45,000,000 
 Capital of 30 banks now suspended, which have 
 
 probably failed, . . . . . . 12,000,000 
 
 Whole number 395, and their whole capital, . . $96,787,309 
 
 [This number of 395 banks, computed to have failed in fifty years, 
 may seem high; but it is not so large as in England, where, not- 
 withstanding any favorable influence of a national bank existing near 
 a century and a half, it has happened that from 1793 to 1826, — a 
 period of only thirty-four years, — 381 failures of banks have occurred, 
 on which bankrupt commissions were taken out. Near four times as 
 many more, it is said, failed within that time and compromised. 
 (Tucker on Money, p. 252.) 
 
 McCulloch's Dictionary, p. 95, says, " Some bankrupt concerns 
 were arranged without a commission;" but I think he does not give 
 the number. 
 
 It will be remembered that, in all these calculations, the number of 
 banks in the United States is computed as the number of banks and 
 branches, each of the latter being added as one.] 
 
LOSSES FROM BANKS AND BANK-PAPER. 439 
 
 B 2. 
 
 Losses by the Banks which have failed since 1789, computed on 
 their Capital, Circulation, Deposites, and Balances owing. 
 
 1. The whole capital of the banks that have failed since 1789 being 
 ascertained and estimated (as in B 1) at $96,787,309, the loss of the 
 whole of it, on an average, in one-half of the cases, is deemed 
 probable. 
 
 [See what is considered capital, Table CI.] 
 Then it would on them amount to . . . . $48,393,654 
 In the other cases, the loss is computed, on an average, 
 
 to extend to only half the capital, or . . . 24,196,827 
 
 This would make the aggregate loss on the capital . $72,590,481 
 
 [See Gallatin on Banking and Currency, page 50, as to the uncer- 
 tainty on this subject. The recent suspension, on the 4th of February, 
 1841, before referred to (Table B 1), may require a large addition to 
 the amount of capital in banks that have failed. But, on the contrary, 
 so much of this last capital is owned abroad (see Table D) that the loss 
 to our own people will not be greatly enhanced thereby.] 
 
 2. The circulation out, when these banks failed, being 
 usually large in banks of that character, must be esti- 
 mated at an amount equal, at least, to half of their 
 
 capital, $ 48,393,65 4 
 
 [In 1838, in eight States, the circulation equalled half the amount 
 of the capital of all their banks. (See Bank Report from the treas- 
 ury department for that year.)] 
 
 The estimated loss on the circulation is put at only half as much, 
 in proportion, as on the capital ; because, if means exist, the circula- 
 tion must be paid before any part of the capital. 
 
 Thus, instead of three-fourths of the whole circulation 
 being lost, estimate only three-eighths of it ; making 
 the whole loss on circulation .... $18,147,620 
 
 [Probably the people at large lose quite half on this 
 circulation, though the brokers may not lose over three- 
 eighths.] 
 
 3. All deposites and bank balances owing by broken 
 banks are estimated at half the amount of capital, as 
 insolvent banks owe largely, in most cases. Both 
 the balances and deposites, together, are considered 
 equal in amount to the circulation, and the loss on 
 
 them would be, at nearly the same rate, . . 18,147,620 
 
440 LOSSES FROM BANKS AND BANK-PAPER. 
 
 [In 1837, in nine States, the circulation and deposites, 
 without including the balances, appear, from actual re- 
 turns, to have amounted to as much as the capital. (See 
 Treasury Bank Report for that year.) Perhaps some 
 would think the bank balances should not be included, 
 because due to other banks ; but this point is not certain, 
 and they are not large.] 
 
 The whole loss by bank failures would then be . $108,885,721 
 
 For example : 
 
 Loss on capital, . . . $72,590,481 
 Loss on circulation, . . . 18,147,620 
 
 Loss on deposites and balances to banks, 18,147,620 
 
 $ 108,885,721 
 
 [Among the banks that have failed, the part of their capital owned 
 abroad has not been large, if the last suspension of the United States 
 Bank be not regarded as a failure. Very little deduction, therefore, 
 should be made on the whole computed loss to our own people, on that 
 account. (See Table D.) But it might require something.] 
 
 B 3. 
 
 Losses by the Community, through Depreciation of Bank-paper, 
 in Cases of Suspe?ision of Specie Payments. 
 
 1. The first general suspension of specie payments by the banks in 
 the United States commenced in August, 1814, and continued till 
 1817, in some places, and years longer in others, as well as extended 
 over most of the country, except the principal part of New England. 
 
 The whole paper circulation out in 1814, whether active 
 
 or in other banks, was about .... $75,000,000 
 
 [See table of circulation, E.] 
 
 The portion of it issued by the banks that suspended was 
 
 about $50,000,000 
 
 On this, the depreciation varying in different parts of the 
 country from ten to twenty per cent., the average was 
 about fifteen per cent. ; making a loss, at first, to those 
 then holding the notes, equal to $7,500,000 
 
 [See, on the amount of depreciation, Gallatin on Cur- 
 rency, in Appendix, and Treasury tables on exchanges 
 and price of bank-notes ; Gouge on Banking, part 2d, p. 
 
LOSSES FROM BANKS AND BANK-PAPER. 441 
 
 65. In England, after 1809, the depreciation fell to 
 fifteen per cent. Lowe on State of England, pp. 112, 
 113.] 
 
 [Some may think the estimated loss, at first, of fifteen 
 per cent, on the notes out, too high on another account, 
 because debtors often pay them away at par. But, if 
 this be done on an old debt, the creditor loses the depre- 
 ciation : so if it be for a salary, for rent, an annuity, &c. 
 But if the notes are paid at par, on a new debt or pur- 
 chase, the price of the articles sold, or of the services 
 performed, for the new debt, is charged as much higher, 
 in most cases, as the depreciation on the notes. (See 
 Gouge on Banking, part 1, p. 60 ; Report on Charter of 
 Bank of England, 1832, pp. 463-465 ; Raguet on Cur- 
 rency, pp. 162, 163 ; McCulloch's Dictionary, page 95, 
 "great injury to creditors and the public.")] 
 
 During the three years, this whole currency must have 
 been used at least twice more by persons at a similar 
 loss, without being able to adapt contracts, prices, 
 wages, &c, to its depreciated value, making . 15,000,000 
 
 [The same money changes hands very often, and, in 
 sea-ports, it is computed to occur once in every two days. 
 (Lowe on State of England, 15, Appendix.)] 
 
 Whole loss from 1814 to 1817, . $22,500,000 
 
 2. At the suspension of 183T, the whole circulation 
 
 out was about $150,000,000 
 
 On this, the first loss, at nearly a similar per cent., 
 
 would be $22,000,000 
 
 [See Baguet on Currency, p. 162, &c. ; table of 
 exchange and prices of bank-notes by treasury depart- 
 ment.] 
 
 Computing only one more use of it at a loss, within the 
 shorter period of a year to a year and a half, on the 
 ground above stated, it would be 22,000,000 
 
 Whole loss from 1837 to 1838, . $44,000,000 
 
 3. At the suspension in 1839, limited to the country 
 south and west of New York, the circulation out in that 
 
 part was about $75,000,000 
 
 [See same Table E, and Treasury Bank Report for 1839.] 
 
442 LOSSES FROM BANKS AND BANK-PAPER. 
 
 The loss, at the same average per cent., at first, was $11,250,000 
 Computing one more loss, within the year and one-fourth 
 
 already expired, that would be . . . . 11,250,000 
 
 Whole loss from 1839 to 1841, .... $22^500^000 
 
 4. To this may properly be added a considerable sum 
 for the depreciation at other times on the paper of 
 several detached banks, which have suspended specie 
 payments, and afterwards resumed, in different States 
 and districts of the Union. For this an estimate is 
 made of only $50,000 annually, on an average, during 
 the whole period from 1790 to 1805; $150,000 annu- 
 ally, from 1805 to 1820, being in the east great in 
 the first six, and in the west in the last three years 
 of the time, and the same annually since ; being large 
 in the west and south-west in the first five years of 
 the time, and small in the next ten, but greater since. 
 
 The aggregate on this amount would be . . $6,000,000 
 
 This would make the whole loss to the community, by 
 the depreciation only on the notes of suspended banks 
 out at the time they stopped paying specie, . $95,000,000 
 
 [The losses on bank-notes where the banks have 
 entirely failed, and never resumed specie payments, are 
 not included here, but are computed in Table B 2.] 
 
 5. The losses on deposites and bank balances, occurring 
 during the above period, are not specifically called 
 for ; but they are large, and arise from the deprecia- 
 tion on the notes taken for them during a suspension 
 of specie payments, and hence they properly come 
 under this head. They must be as much per dollar 
 on all actually paid over in notes during the suspen- 
 sion as on the bank-paper at first in circulation. The 
 whole amount of such deposites and balances must have 
 equalled very nearly the amount of bank-paper at first 
 abroad, when the suspension happened. (See B 2, 
 head 3d.) 
 
 Supposing that one-half of them only were drawn out 
 while the bank-paper was depreciated (which is a 
 moderate computation), and that they were drawn 
 out in such paper ; the aggregate loss on them must 
 have been 47,500,000 
 
 The aggregate of these losses by depreciation on the 
 notes out, where suspension of specie payments have 
 happened with banks since 1789, and on the notes 
 
LOSSES FROM BANKS AND BANK-PAPER. 443 
 
 taken for balances and deposites during those suspen- 
 sions, is thus computed at .... 142,500,000 
 
 6. But it may be considered a set-off, or proper deduc- 
 tion from the above losses by depreciation on notes, 
 that when the banks are preparing to resume, and do 
 resume, the notes rise gradually in the market to a 
 value at par with specie, and that, by this, some por- 
 tions of the community gain an amount equal to the 
 original depreciation or loss per dollar ; as more mer- 
 chandise or produce can usually be bought with the 
 notes, or more debts paid with them to creditors who 
 insisted on specie or its equivalent. This is true, fre- 
 quently. But, as the same persons who held the 
 notes when the banks suspended, or when paid out 
 for deposites and balances, seldom retain them till the 
 banks resume, and the original holder often suffers as 
 much as if the banks did not resume, — and as the 
 amount of notes out when they rise in value, and the 
 banks resume, is usually much reduced, — the deduc- 
 tion on this account to the people at large should not 
 be over one-third of the estimate of the former losses. 
 Thus, from 1815 to 1819, the circulation out was 
 reduced nearly one-third ; and from 1837 to 1838-39, 
 nearly one-third. (See Table E, and Treasury Bank 
 Beport for 1838-39.) Supposing, then, that only 
 two-thirds as many notes remained abroad when the 
 banks resumed as were out when the banks sus- 
 pended, and that half of this was in the hands of orig- 
 inal holders then, or during the rise, and the deduc- 
 tion should be equal to 47,500,000 
 
 [This includes an early resumption by all the banks 
 now suspended, and makes a liberal allowance for the 
 whole rise or benefit by that.] 
 
 7. This would leave a net loss to the community of 
 depreciated paper, in cases of suspension by banks 
 
 since 1789, equal to ..... $95,000,000 
 
 [Before these tables were completed, only a portion of the banks 
 that suspended in 1839 resumed, and several of those which resumed 
 suspended again after a few days. Deducting from the set-off a proper 
 sum for those banks which have not resumed, and adding enough for 
 this third suspension, and the aggregate loss should probably be sev- 
 eral millions more.] 
 
 [There is another injury to the public, of a pecuniary character, 
 during any long suspension of banks, such as from 1814 to 1817. It 
 arises from an expansion of the circulation, the check of paying specie 
 
444 LOSSES FROM BANKS AND BANK-PAPER. 
 
 being removed : and from a nominal rise of prices, and an increased 
 expense to all living on fixed salaries, rents, annuities, &c, without 
 any equivalent in return. (See Raguet on Currency, 160th page, on 
 this, and other evils from this cause, which cannot be computed in any 
 tabular form with aocuracy.) They may and will be more properly 
 considered further under Table B 5, and its notes.] 
 
 B 4. 
 
 Loss or Destruction of Bank-notes since 1789, by Accidents, fyc. 
 
 1. In 1811, the whole amount of bank-notes out was 
 
 about $36,000,000 
 
 [See Table of circulation and currency, E.] 
 
 But the average amount, during the previous period since 
 1789, had probably not exceeded two-thirds of this 
 sum, or $24,000,000 
 
 The loss on that, estimated at four per cent., would be $960,000 
 
 [Where banks issue no notes under ten dollars, it is believed that, 
 on their average circulation during twenty years, the loss or destruc- 
 tion of notes may fairly be computed at about three per cent. 
 
 The first United States Bank issued no notes under ten dollars ; 
 and at the close of its charter, in 1811, the circulation outstanding was 
 $6,552,791, — probably not far from the average since 1791. Of that 
 amount there remained unredeemed in 1822 (doubtless mostly lost) 
 $203,591, or three and one-tenth per cent. (See report below.) 
 
 The second Bank of the United States issued notes of a similar 
 denomination, with some five-dollar checks or drafts after 1825 ; and 
 the commissioners to adjust its affairs with the government estimated 
 the loss at $600,000, or three per cent, on its circulation. (See their 
 report to the Secretary of the Treasury, p. 14, Doc. 118 House of 
 Reps., Jan. 30, 1837.) 
 
 Few banks in the United States issued notes under five dollars 
 before 1811, except in New England (Raguet on Currency, p. 137) ; 
 but most of them issued notes under ten dollars ; and the amount of 
 five-dollar notes, when issued, usually equals one-fourth of the whole 
 circulation ; and those under five, one-fourth more. Add for these 
 two causes before 1811 only one per cent., making an average loss 
 of four per cent., and the result would be as before computed.] 
 
 2. Since 1811 it is believed that quite three-fourths of the banks 
 have issued notes under five dollars ; and most of them, with the 
 exception before named, as low as five. The loss, in cases of issues 
 
LOSSES FROM BANKS AND BANK-PAPER. 445 
 
 under five dollars, is often computed at ten per cent, on the whole. 
 But considering it to be only six per cent., or double the amount it is 
 when the issues are not under ten dollars, and the result will be as 
 follows : 
 
 In 1830 the whole bank circulation out was, by the small- 
 est estimate (see Table E), . ' . . $64,000,000 
 
 Compute, as before, that this had been, during the nine- 
 teen or twenty years previous, on an average, two- 
 thirds as much, or $42,666,666 
 
 The loss on one-fourth of this, at four per cent., would be $426,666 
 On the other three-fourths, at six per cent., . . 1,920,000 
 
 Aggregate from 1811 to 1830, .... $2,346,666 
 
 3. In 1840 the whole bank circulation out was not far 
 
 from $ 106,000,000 
 
 [See Treasury Bank Report, and Table E.] 
 
 As this period is only half as long, the loss, at half the 
 former rates, on two- thirds of this (the average amount 
 during the ten years), would be $3,814,666 
 
 Summary of these Losses. 
 
 Before 1811, $960,000 
 
 From 1811 to 1830, 2,346,666 
 
 From 1830 to 1840, 3,814,666 
 
 $7,121,332 
 
 [If it be computed that this loss by paper is quite double the loss 
 which would have been sustained on a like amount of coin in circula- 
 tion, — as the latter is more durable, not much injured by fires, and in 
 general guarded with more care, — and the greater loss to the commu- 
 nity, by the destruction of bank-notes, would probably be about 
 $3,560,666. 
 
 On the other hand, the advantages in the use of paper, by cheapness 
 and ease of transportation, and the saving of metal from wear, are 
 considerable ; but, being not included in the resolution, are conse- 
 quently, as before suggested, not attempted to be computed here, or 
 in the other tables.] 
 
 38 
 
446 LOSSES FROM BANKS AND BANK-PAPER. 
 
 B 5. 
 
 Aggregate of Losses since 1789, to the People, through the Exist- 
 ence of Banks and the Use of Bank-paper. 
 
 1. Losses through banks that have failed since 1789, on 
 their capital, circulation, deposites, and bank balances 
 
 (see Table B 2), $108,885,721 
 
 2. Losses by depreciation on bank-notes, through sus- 
 pensions of specie payments by banks (see B 3), . $95,000,000 
 
 [See note to seventh head of B 3, from which it is probable that 
 these two items should be increased, by events within a few days, at 
 least several millions.] 
 
 3. Losses by destruction of bank-notes, which some may 
 think should be added, but which in its full extent is 
 
 doubtful (see B 4), $7,121,332 
 
 4. The losses on counterfeit notes are not specifically 
 called for in the resolution. But, to the extent that 
 they are greater than the losses by counterfeit coin, 
 they are an incident to "the existence of banks and 
 the use of bank-paper," and should therefore be 
 included. They have been large, and it is believed 
 quite double those on coin in circulation, in a ratio to 
 the amount of each. Sufficient data on this point are 
 not possessed to justify any very accurate tabular 
 statement as to the amount ; but, on the above basis, 
 the losses by counterfeit notes, more than on coin, are 
 computed to have been $4,444,444 
 
 [In 1839, it seems that Bicknell had ascertained that counterfeit 
 notes were then in circulation on two hundred and fifty-four different 
 banks, and of thirteen hundred and ninety-five different descriptions, 
 from denominations of one to five hundred dollars. (See Raguet on 
 Currency and Banking, p. 174.) In England, the losses by forgeries 
 of bank-paper have probably not been so large, in proportion, as in 
 this country ; as the notes which circulate there are of larger denomi- 
 nations, and are in the hands of the more intelligent portions of the 
 community. The same note, it is believed, is issued only once there, 
 which would be a check on forgery. The Bank of England, for four 
 or five years, ascertained not over $15,000 yearly of its notes that 
 had been forged. (See report of committee on renewing its charter 
 in 1832 ; Appendix, p. 55.) Probably many more counterfeits were 
 in circulation, that did not come to the knowledge of the bank ; sup- 
 pose a like sum, making $30,000 of the Bank of England. Suppose 
 
LOSSES FROM BANKS AND BANK- PAPER. 447 
 
 that a like sum was lost there yearly, by forgeries of notes of private 
 and joint-stock banks, which would make in England an aggregate of 
 $60,000 yearly. In the United States, smaller notes being so much 
 more used, and especially by the less informed, the latter are much 
 more defrauded by counterfeits than in England. Suppose it to be 
 quite three times more ; and hence that the average loss here, by 
 counterfeit notes, has always been as much as one cent per head yearly 
 to our population. Some estimate it as high as half a dollar per head. 
 But, at that rate, the result would be enormous. Thus, supposing that 
 half a dollar per head of our population has been lost yearly by coun- 
 terfeits of bank-paper, and that only one- fourth of a dollar would 
 have been lost by a currency of coin to the same amount, and the 
 result of the mere excess of loss by bank-paper would be this : 
 
 From 1790 to 1810 : 
 
 (The average population is presumed to be that of 1800.) 
 
 From 1790 to 1810, yearly, at one-fourth of a dollar, 
 
 $1,326,487; for twenty years, . . . $26,529,740 
 
 From 1810 to 1830 : 
 
 The average population as 1820, at one-fourth of a dol- 
 lar, $2,409,533 yearly, and for twenty years, . 48,190,660 
 
 From 1830 to 1840 : 
 
 The average population at fifteen millions, at one-fourth 
 
 of a dollar, $3,750,000 yearly, and for ten years, . 37,500,000 
 
 Aggregate loss since 1789, by counterfeits of bank- 
 notes, beyond what would have been the loss on so 
 much coin, at one-fourth of a dollar per head, . $112,220,400 
 
 But, at only one cent per head (which is probably within the truth, 
 as it would be, on an average of ten persons, a loss of only one dollar 
 in ten years), the result would be one-twenty-fifth of the above aggre- 
 gate since 1789, or $4,444,444. 
 
 5. As this branch of the resolution is very comprehensive, and calls 
 for all lost " by the existence of banks, and the use of banking 
 institutions generally," as well as for specific losses, from certain 
 causes particularly designated, it will be necessary to proceed further, 
 and consider the other injuries that are supposed to have resulted from 
 the existence of those institutions. 
 
 The rate of interest in the money market is believed to have been 
 enhanced by the use or existence of banks, and in that way loss may 
 have been sustained, or increased payments made, on account of the 
 system; and also from the premium almost uniformly charged by 
 brokers for exchanging uncurrent notes of distant banks that still pay 
 specie. (Gouge on Banking, p. 90.) Banks, as chartered and man- 
 aged usually in this country, have led to still greater losses, which it 
 would be even more difficult to estimate in anything like accurate 
 amounts; but which arise from the improvident engagements and 
 
448 LOSSES FROM BANKS AND BANK-PAPER. 
 
 enterprises into which individual States and corporations are tempted in 
 this system of banking, by the facility not only of creating bank cap- 
 ital by promissory notes, but the measure of value at pleasure by bank 
 notes. (Gouge on Banking, pp. 89, 90, and 39.) Prices are raised 
 at will, by suddenly making currency plentiful. Thousands, seeing 
 the enhancement, purchase property, under the assurance of enriching 
 themselves by higher prices, and increase their current expenses into 
 wasteful extravagance. (Tucker on Banking, p. 189.) All at once 
 the flood recedes. Engagements cannot be met, but by sacrifices, 
 which not only take away all the profits, but the property previously 
 acquired. Schemes of relief succeed, tenfold more destructive than 
 the original schemes. Prices of real estate are to be sustained by 
 improvements made by States or corporations, in roads, canals, &c, 
 often without any real advantage but to the speculative holder of prop- 
 erty, and often with a total loss of the money expended by the public. 
 Elections are made to turn upon relief questions. Finally, it some- 
 times becomes a contest between the ruined and the solvent portions 
 of the community, in which the most desperate are the most likely to 
 prevail. 
 
 Two or three of the above general items of loss have alone been 
 computed to be annually quite $7,500,000. (See Raguet on Cur- 
 rency, page 174.) The above sum, on an average for only twenty 
 years of the period since 1789, and nothing for the other thirty, would 
 equal $150,000,000 
 
 If all the items were included, and could be reduced to figures, the 
 amount would be almost incredible. 
 
 While the present banking system exists, allowing so extensively 
 banks of issue, it will continue to happen, as has been the case hereto- 
 fore, that fictitious banks and their paper will be got up, without any 
 charters whatever ; and the community at a distance be thus frequently 
 swindled out of large sums, whose amount it is difficult to compute. 
 So all the frauds, robberies, and defalcations, connected with the 
 banks, and for which banks give peculiar facilities, may, in a great 
 degree, be proper charges on the system. 
 
 Summary. 
 
 1. Losses by bank failures, .... $108,885,721 
 
 2. Losses by suspensions of specie payments by banks, 
 
 and consequent depreciation on their notes, . 95,000,000 
 
 3. Losses by destruction of bank-notes by accidents, 7,121,332 
 
 4. Losses by counterfeit bank-notes, beyond losses by coin, 4,444,444 
 
 5. Losses by fluctuations in bank currency affecting 
 
 prices, extravagance in living, sacrifices of property, 
 and by only a part of the other incidents to the 
 banking system, not computed above, at least 150.000,000 
 
 Aggregate computed, $365,451,497 
 
LOSSES FROM BANKS AND BANK-PAPER. 
 
 449 
 
 C. 
 
 Amount paid by the Community to the Banks, annually, the last 
 Ten Years, for the use of Banking Institutions. 
 
 1. The resolution calls for the sums thus paid, whether " directly or 
 indirectly," and whether by "the people or the government." 
 
 It may be, therefore, that the amount collected by banks from the 
 community, annually, for interest, exchanges, rents, &c, ought, in the 
 opinion of many, to be considered as what is paid to them "for the 
 use of banking institutions." Consequently, an attempt has been 
 made, first, to form some estimate of this amount, which shall approx- 
 imate the truth. 
 
 The result has been, that the whole payments made to the banks for 
 the use of them, their capital, &c, during the last ten years, has been 
 in the aggregate . . . . ' . . $282,000,000 
 
 Tins would be annually, on an average, 
 
 $28,200,000 
 
 To explain the amount thus received by banks annually, during the 
 last ten years, the following data are submitted : 
 
 The aggregate capital and discounts of all banks in the United 
 States, during that period, so far as can be ascertained from the 
 treasury reports on banks, and some estimates, have been as follows : 
 
 
 Aggregate capital. 
 
 1 Aggregate discounts or 
 1 loans. 
 
 In 1831 
 
 Not ascertained 
 Do. 
 Do. 
 
 $200,005,944 
 231,250,337 
 251,875,292 
 290,772,091 
 317,636,778 
 327,132,512 
 358,442,692 
 
 
 In 1832 
 
 Do 
 
 In 1833 
 
 Do 
 
 In 1834 
 
 $324,119,499 
 365,163,834 
 457,506,080 
 525,115,702 
 485,631,687 
 492,278,015 
 462,896,523 
 
 In 1835 
 
 In 1836 
 
 In 1837 
 
 In 1838 
 
 In 1839 
 
 In 1840 
 
 
 [In 1830, $145,192,268 as capital, and $200,451,214 as dis- 
 counts or loans, have been ascertained and computed by Mr. Gallatin, 
 in his Considerations on the Currency.] 
 
 [The above amounts stated as the capital employed in banking 
 require some explanation. It has been the practice, in most parts of 
 the country, to put banks into operation chiefly upon the stock-notes 
 of the proprietors. By the reports of the Legislature of Massachusetts, 
 in 1838, it appears that many of the banks in that State, which are 
 generally as safe as any in the Union, have been put into operation 
 upon the naked promissory notes of the stockholders, with little actual 
 capital, excepting that which has accumulated from the operations of 
 the banks. These promissory notes are the principal basis of the 
 paper currency issued in the first instance. If confidence should hap- 
 38* 
 
450 LOSSES FROM BANKS AND BANK-PAPER. 
 
 pen to be buoyant for a succession of years, the interest on this cur- 
 rency, paid in advance, compounded as it always is at short periods, 
 soon enables the stock-notes to be withdrawn, without the application 
 of any capital whatever, by the original stockholders. On the other 
 hand, should a previous general inflation give rise to a demand for 
 specie for exportation, in the early stages of any new bank, or where 
 the stockholders have applied the dividends to other purposes, it 
 explodes, and the community generally lose the greater part of the 
 circulation out at the time. (See Ragueton Currency and Banking, p. 
 115 ; Tucker on Money, p. 409 ; Gouge on Banking, part 1st, p. 137.) 
 But in these tables I am compelled to make the computation as to 
 capital as if it was all real and paid in (so far as returned paid in), on 
 account of the difficulty in discriminating the amount that is factitious 
 from what is not so. But I do not consider anything as capital which 
 is merely authorized, and not returned as paid in.] 
 
 Estimated average bank capital, yearly, from 1830 to 
 
 1840, . $235,000,000 
 
 Estimated average discounts or loans, yearly, from 1830 
 to 1840, $370,000,000 
 
 The loans have, in some years, been nearly double the amount of 
 the nominal capital in the whole Union. Thus, in 1838, they were 
 one hundred and eighty per cent, on it, and in ten States exceeded 
 two hundred per cent. In scarcely any State is it believed that they 
 are, by law, limited below that rate, and sometimes they are limited in 
 their charters at only three times the amount of capital. (Gouge on 
 Banking, part 1st, page 51.) 
 
 As the income or gross profits are derived, not only from loans of 
 the capital, deposites, and circulation, over and above the specie on 
 hand, but from exchanges, and a larger interest than six per cent, in 
 all cases, by the mode of computing and paying it (and, in several 
 States, from seven to nine per cent, permitted by law), it is supposed 
 that the annual gross income must average twelve per cent, on the 
 capital. This would be, as before stated, in the last ten years, annu- 
 ally, $28,200,000 
 
 Or, for the whole period, 282,000,000 
 
 2. But it might be proper to regard as paid to banks, for the use 
 of banking institutions, not the whole of their gross revenue, but only 
 the net income collected by banks over six per cent, on their capital. 
 The six per cent, interest on the capital may be considered as paid for 
 the use of money they originally possessed, rather than for the use of 
 banking institutions. The aggregate paid them for the latter alone, 
 for the ten years, would, on this hypothesis, be but half the former 
 amount, or ...... $141,000,000 
 
 And the sum annually but 14,100,000 
 
 Again : if the expenses of managing the actual capital were also 
 
LOSSES FROM BANKS AND BANK-PAPER. 451 
 
 deducted, besides six per cent, interest on it (which some might 
 expect, but which is hardly deemed proper in the present calculations, 
 as the expenses are an incident to the use of banking institutions), the 
 result would be as follows : 
 
 It is computed that, on an average, in the United States, two per 
 cent, on the capital will pay all necessary expenses. (Tucker on 
 Money, &c, pp. 172, 369.) The expenses of the second United 
 States Bank were only one per cent, on its capital ; the latter was so 
 large. One per cent, is enough, if the capital be a million only 
 (Raguet on Currency, p. 89) ; or, indeed, if only $250,000 (p. 72). 
 This would leave four per cent, net receipts beyond the reasonable 
 expenses, and six per cent, on the capital, or yearly $9,400,000 
 
 During the ten years it would amount to . . 94,000,000 
 
 [If only five per cent, was deemed a fair interest, as some seem to 
 suppose (Raguet on Currency, p. 170), the net income would be, of 
 course, higher. The first United States Bank made, besides expenses 
 and six per cent, on its capital, two and two-thirds per cent, net profits. 
 (Tucker on Money and Banking, p. 360.) It sometimes divided ten 
 per cent., and never less than seven and a half per cent. (Seybert, 
 520; Gouge on Banking, part 2d, p. 51, note.) Had it dealt in 
 exchanges, which was not the case, to any great extent, and charged 
 more than six per cent, interest, the profits would probably have been 
 much larger. But Mr. Raguet thinks that if the delay in receiving 
 back the capital is considered, the profits (2d vol. of his Exam., p. 78) 
 were not more than par. In the Merchants' Magazine for June, 1840, 
 it is stated that banks often make ten per cent, profits on their capital. 
 (See, also, Raguet on Currency, p. 171 ; and Tucker on Money, pp. 
 175-7, on this subject; Gouge on Banking, p. 88.) 
 
 But a considerable portion of the capital, as before explained, is 
 frequently not paid in, which would greatly increase the profits in 
 such cases. (Raguet on Currency, p. 115 ; Gouge on Banking, pp. 
 155, 88, 137, part 2d, p. 57; Tucker, pp. 365-9.) And the net 
 gain, annually, has sometimes been computed higher than four per 
 cent, on the nominal capital, or a gross income on it of ten per cent. 
 (Tucker on Money, pp. 263, 264 ; Gouge on Banking, 1st part, p. 
 70.) On the other hand, Mr. Gallatin appears to consider it as 
 usually less, though he adds nothing for profits on exchanges, or for a 
 higher interest than six per cent. So the average dividends indicate a 
 less gain, as they do not equal in the United States over nine per 
 cent. (See Treasury Bank Reports; and Tucker, p. 411.) But it 
 must be remembered that they sometimes reach twelve and fifteen per 
 cent. (Gouge on Banking, part 2d, p. 51, note.) And, besides the 
 dividends made, something is often reserved from the profits, and kept 
 on hand, and small individual balances and some dividends are never 
 claimed, and thus, in the end, increase the gains of the bank. 
 
 The amount collected from the community would, also, often yield 
 a larger dividend, if the salaries to officers, who are frequently stock- 
 
452 LOSSES FROM BANKS AND BANK-PAPER. 
 
 holders or relatives, were not too high, and much lost by imprudent 
 loans to some of the officers and stockholders. It is an evidence of the 
 uncertainty of computations on this subject, that Raguet and Tucker 
 differ nearly forty millions as to the amount on which banks gain, or 
 receive an interest beyond their capital. (Tucker, p. 175; Raguet, 
 
 p. 171.)] 
 
 3. In conclusion, it may be proper to add, that if we regard the 
 amount collected from the community by the banks to be nearly what 
 I have computed it, and also regard the whole, beyond interest on 
 their capital, or beyond that and fair expenses, to be the amount paid to 
 the banks for the use of banking institutions, it is not material to the 
 inquiry what may be afterwards done with the money. Nor may it 
 be proper to regard it at all as an actual loss or injury to the commu- 
 nity ; because the borrower obtains, in the shape of notes, the use of the 
 bank credit, or its guaranty for the whole, instead of specie. Indeed, 
 it is considered by some as the great advantage of banks, that this 
 credit can be loaned out as a substitute for actual capital and coin. 
 (Raguet, p. 168 ; Tucker on Money, p. 175 ; McCulloch's Diction- 
 ary, p. 65.) But one evil in this is, that the banks are enabled to 
 loan their credit or guaranty, and to profit by them, through privi- 
 leges of this and other kinds, in which all the community do not partic- 
 ipate. One of the other privileges, sometimes, is an almost exclusive 
 system of loans to the stockholders, officers, and their friends. (Gouge 
 on Banking, p. 89 ; ib., part 2, p. 52.) Another great evil is, that 
 this is done through a system of banking which leads to losses ; such 
 as depreciation on the notes, total failure of banks, fluctuation in 
 prices, &c. &c, that injure the people at large in the manner and to 
 the extent illustrated in some of the other tabular statements before 
 submitted. 
 
 Thus, of the aggregate losses since 1789, computed in 
 the previous statements, there must, on an analysis of 
 them, be considered to have happened within the last 
 ten years at least . . . . . $200,000,000 
 
 Or, annually (see A, and B 5), . . . . 20,000,000 
 
 [Considering recent events, referred to in B 2 and B 5, this esti- 
 mate for the last ten years will probably be found not too large.] 
 
 D. 
 Whole Bank Capital in the United States owned abroad. 
 
 1. Amount of capital in the United States Bank, in 
 
 1832, owned abroad, 84,055 shares, . . . $8,405,500 
 [See Senate document (No. 31) of January 23, 1832.] 
 
 This is nearly one-fourth of the whole of its capital. It 
 
LOSSES FROM BANKS AND BANK-PAPER. 453 
 
 was owned by about 480 different persons. By a 
 report of the bank, January 30, 1840 (Doc. 172, 
 House of Rep.), there were then 1390 foreign stock- 
 holders; which, if they held the same number of 
 shares each, would require, by estimate, to be added 
 since, from the sale of the seven millions of stock 
 once owned by the United States, and otherwise, 
 about 16,000,000 
 
 Thus, there is owned abroad, in the aggregate, in United 
 
 States Bank, as estimated at this time * . . $24,405,500 
 
 2. In the United States, generally, not much bank stock is sup- 
 posed to be owned abroad, out of the cities of New York, Philadel- 
 phia, Baltimore, and New Orleans. 
 
 The bank capital in those cities, in 1839 and 1840, 
 excluding the Bank of the United States, averaged 
 about $90,000,000 
 
 Computing that only about one-third as much of this was 
 owned abroad as of the United States Bank stock in 
 1832, or only one-ninth as much as now, and it would 
 be 7,500,000 
 
 Add only one-half of this last sum, for all the rest of the 
 
 bank stock in the United States owned abroad, . 3,750,000 
 
 The result would then be as follows : 
 
 3. {Summary.) — In United States Bank, . $24,405,500 
 
 In the four cities, excluding U. 
 
 S. Bank, .... 7,500,000 
 In the rest of the country, . 3,750,000 
 
 Aggregate in the United States owned abroad, . $35,655,500 
 
 [For Table E, see Appendix V.] 
 
 * Some think that more than seven out of the ten millions of the stock of the first 
 Bank of the United States was owned abroad, when its charter expired in 1811. 
 (Gallatin on Banks and Currency, p. 44.) This is about the same proportion. 
 
454 SPIRIT RATIONS, AND WHIPPING IN THE NAVY. 
 
 SUBSTITUTE FOR SPIRIT RATIONS AND FOR WHIPPING 
 IN THE NAVY.* 
 
 Circulars respecting the Commutation of the Spirit Part of the 
 Navy Rations, Assistance to Vessels in Distress, and Punish- 
 ments in the Service. 
 
 Navy Department, 15th June, 1831. 
 
 All persons in the naval service, entitled to rations, who shall vol- 
 untarily relinquish the use of that part of them composed of spirits, 
 shall be paid therefor at the rate of six cents per ration, it being the 
 estimated value of that part, as approved by this department, Septem- 
 ber 17, 1817. 
 
 The payments made in pursuance of this regulation are to be 
 charged to the appropriation for "provisions." 
 
 LEVI WOODBURY. 
 
 Navy Department, 26th September, 1831. 
 
 Sir : In consequence of recent occurrences in the service, your 
 attention is invited to two subjects, where the laws now regulate the 
 rights and power of all concerned, but where there is still vested in 
 officers a discretion, in the exercise of which, it may be desirable to 
 them to know distinctly the wishes of the President and of tins depart- 
 ment. 
 
 One of those subjects and our wishes upon it are, that when any 
 portion of the navy furnishes relief to American vessels, whether 
 wrecked or otherwise in distress, to yield which relief promptly ought 
 to be, and long has been, one great object of its gallant exertions, no 
 compensation of any kind should either be asked or received. 
 
 The other subject and our wishes upon it are, that till Congress 
 deem it proper to alter the existing laws concerning punishments in 
 the navy, and whenever those laws allow a discretion in the choice of 
 punishments, the first resort, in the case of offences by seamen, is 
 recommended to be always had to pecuniary fines, badges of disgrace, 
 and other mild corrections, rather than to the humiliating practice of 
 whipping ; and that never on the same day, by punishing, under an 
 officer's own authority, two offences at once, should the stripes limited 
 by law be exceeded in number, or be inflicted otherwise than in the 
 presence and under the sanction of the commanding officer of the 
 vessel or station. 
 
 * Report of the Navy Department, allowing a substitute for the spirit part of the 
 ration, and urging the use of other punishments instead of whipping. 
 
BREAKWATER AT THE MOUTH OF DELAWARE BAY. 455 
 
 And that, in the case of offences by officers, which it is hoped their 
 well-known high sense of duty and honor will prevent from becoming 
 frequent, a system more remedial should be adopted, by sentencing to 
 a reduction of rank and pay, or to suspension from promotion, rather 
 than to suspension from active service ; as persons unfortunately 
 guilty of any misbehavior need most the constant discipline of active 
 service, and, when suspended therefrom, are left without employment, 
 under greater temptations and opportunities for injurious indulgences. 
 
 LEVI WOODBURY. 
 
 To all Captains and 
 
 Masters Commandant Navy U. States. 
 
 BREAKWATER AT THE MOUTH OF DELAWARE BAY.* 
 
 The subject of said memorial is of a character deserving the most 
 full and careful consideration. It interests immediately and deeply 
 almost the whole commerce of three Atlantic States ; it is important 
 to much of the coasting trade of the Union ; and has a material bear- 
 ing upon the security of our navy, and upon the great maritime 
 defences of the country. Hence, during five years past, the attention 
 of Congress has, in various ways, been invoked and devoted to the 
 examination of this measure. As early as May 9th, 1822, an act 
 passed, making an appropriation of $22,000 for the erection of wooden 
 piers near Cape Henlopen, at the mouth of Delaware Bay, provided 
 the Secretary of the Treasury, on a survey of that part of the coast, 
 should be satisfied of their utility and expediency. But the survey 
 rendered it apparent, that works more extensive, such as a break- 
 water, or artificial harbor, and those formed of the most durable 
 materials, would combine advantages more numerous, and in their 
 value be much more than commensurate with the increased expense. 
 Consequently, this appropriation was never carried into effect ; but in 
 June, A. D. 1823, pursuing the new light which had been cast upon the 
 subject by the partial survey, and yielding to the suggestions of a 
 
 * A Report made to the Senate of the United States, January 3, 1827, in favor of 
 the Delaware Breakwater. 
 
456 BREAKWATER AT THE MOUTH OF DELAWARE BAY. 
 
 policy enlarged and liberal, the proper authorities instructed the board 
 of engineers to make an examination into the practicability and useful- 
 ness of such works as are now prayed for in the memorial ; and if the 
 result should prove satisfactory, to recommend a plan for their erec- 
 tion, and furnish a detailed estimate of their expense. Their report 
 of July 14, 1823, presented a full and favorable exposition of the 
 whole subject. 
 
 The message of the President, at the commencement of the ensuing 
 session of Congress, invited the attention of its members to the accom- 
 plishment of this object, as one "of great service, both to the naviga- 
 tion of Delaware Bay and the protection of vessels on the adjacent 
 parts of the coast;" and the present memorialists, as well as the 
 Legislatures of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware, have since 
 urged its importance upon the national councils. 
 
 Desirous of obtaining information the most plenary, before a final 
 decision upon a measure of such deep interest, Congress, at its last 
 session, caused exhibits to be prepared of the revenue and expenditures 
 connected with commerce, from A. D. 1790 to A. D. 1825, in the 
 Delaware Bay, as compared with three other of our great commercial 
 emporiums ; and, during the same session, procured letters from the 
 Secretary of the Navy and the chairman of the Naval Board, on the 
 utility of the proposed breakwater to the operations of our navy in 
 war, and its general security both in war and peace. 
 
 From these various documents and proceedings, it is manifest to 
 your committee, that there has existed a long, a general, and strong 
 solicitude for the object contemplated in the memorial ; and from these 
 same sources, and such general considerations as obviously bear upon 
 all questions of commercial magnitude, your committee have gathered 
 and would present the following specific facts, as having a tendency 
 to aid Congress in forming a judicious opinion upon the prayer of the 
 petitioners. 
 
 The dangers to which the navigation of the Delaware Bay is 
 exposed arise principally from two causes. One is the large quantity 
 of ice in winter; and the other, the peculiar influence of the wind upon 
 that ice, upon the tides, and the general navigation of a bay running 
 in such a direction, and with such depths of water. The effects from 
 the ice, the general course of the winds, the form of the bay, the 
 soundings, and the tides, are stated with much particularity in the 
 report of the engineers before mentioned, and need not here be 
 repeated. 
 
 On this point it will now suffice to observe, that the mouth of the 
 bay is about sixteen miles wide, the channels intricate, and no harbor 
 of safety on either side, where vessels can lie secure to improve favor- 
 able openings in the ice when ascending the river in winter, or to 
 seize, in any season, favorable winds and weather for going to sea, or 
 to shelter themselves from storms, when overtaken by them in that 
 neighborhood. 
 
BREAKWATER AT THE MOUTH OE DELAWARE BAY. 457 
 
 From the first cause alone, the wonted navigation of the bay is 
 interrupted full two months of the year. It has been estimated, by 
 persons of much observation and experience, that, during such inter- 
 ruption, not over one in ten of the vessels enter and ascend the 
 bay, which otherwise would, if the proposed improvement takes place; 
 and thus that more than one hundred square-rigged vessels are 
 annually forced to seek other ports, at great inconvenience and 
 expense. 
 
 From this and other causes before mentioned, whose influence a 
 breakwater is calculated to obviate, the whole actual commerce of the 
 bay is subjected to an increased premium of insurance, varying from one- 
 half to one and a half per cent. This burthen, on Philadelphia alone, 
 whose tonnage, in A. D. 1825, exceeded eighty-four thousand tons, 
 and whose imports exceeded fifteen millions, would amount to an 
 annual charge of not less than $170,000. On the commerce of a 
 single port this is a tax at once oppressive and invidious ; and of the 
 aggregate capital of the country at large, of its sinews in war and its 
 prosperity in peace, it shows an entire destruction almost to the extent 
 of the increased premiums, as they are calculated to cover not much 
 beyond the actual losses. 
 
 Another evidence of the unfavorable influence of these causes is the 
 marked decline in the tonnage of that city, compared with its popula- 
 tion in A. D. 1810 and A. D. 1820 — the tonnage having sunk from 
 124,430 to 78,837 tons, while the population increased from 
 111,210 to 137,097. Some of this great disparity may doubtless be 
 traced to other circumstances. But it is well known that, from 
 the causes before enumerated, many vessels are ordered to other 
 ports in the winter season, many forced away by necessity, much 
 tonnage totally destroyed by shipwreck, and, from expensive delays 
 and insurances, considerable capital in navigation permanently trans- 
 ferred elsewhere. 
 
 The books of the insurance offices, and other authentic documents, 
 in Philadelphia alone, show, within the last twenty years, a total or 
 partial loss of more than two hundred vessels, originating in the neigh- 
 borhood of Delaware Bay. Sundry instances have occurred of ten 
 or more vessels being on shore, at one time, near its mouth. But if 
 there be added to these burdens, these delays, and this entire destruc- 
 tion of such amounts of property, the further injury to the country at 
 large sustained by the loss of many lives in those disastrous ship- 
 wrecks, the importance of some efficient preventive will become most 
 urgent. 
 
 Its effect will not be merely the removal of those evils to which the 
 commerce of the bay alone has been exposed ; but the proposed break- 
 water will be adapted to give security to much of the coasting trade 
 of the whole Union. A large portion of it passes near the outlet of 
 the bay, and now, when threatened or assailed with gales and storms, 
 has no safe harbor between Sandy Hook and Cape Charles. Delays, 
 39 
 
t 
 
 •* 
 
 458 BREAKWATER AT THE MOUTH OF DELAWARE BAY. 
 
 damage, and total losses, are the frequent consequences, and seem to 
 call for our interposition the more imperatively, as that branch of trade 
 is composed exclusively of American tonnage ; as it more nearly con- 
 cerns every section of the country, being, in a great degree, devoted 
 to the transportation of American produce ; and as its rapid increase, 
 within the last twenty years, renders it, in every point of view, dear 
 to American interests and American feelings. For, within twenty 
 years, it has more than doubled, while our tonnage engaged in the 
 foreign trade has declined nearly one-half, and at present but little 
 exceeds the former in amount. Thus, in A. D. 1807, the tonnage in 
 the coasting trade was only 285,990, and that in the foreign trade 
 1,477,075; while in A. D. 1824, the former was 606,893, and the 
 latter only 845,758. 
 
 A further benefit to be derived from a breakwater, or artificial 
 harbor, at the mouth of Delaware Bay, is the like security it would 
 furnish to our navy under the circumstances enumerated in respect to 
 vessels engaged in the coasting trade. But especially during war, on 
 a range of more than two hundred miles of sea-coast now almost closed 
 upon the navy, would it find such a harbor highly advantageous, 
 when pressed by a superior force, or when desirous of some inter- 
 mediate station from which to attack or annoy a powerful enemy. 
 Concerning the practicability of erecting such a breakwater, the report 
 of the engineers, after a thorough examination, would appear to be 
 decisive. 
 
 Though somewhat novel here, similar structures, whether called 
 piers, jetties, or breakwaters, have been made in other countries with 
 the happiest results, and in situations of greater exposure and of 
 greater depth of water. Those near Dublin, Plymouth and Cher- 
 bourg, have been so frequently visited and described, and so full is the 
 information possessed on this subject by nautical and scientific men, as 
 to remove all doubt upon the feasibility of the present measure at the 
 place contemplated. 
 
 The whole expense of such a breakwater, and the resources of the 
 government to meet it, remain to be considered. 
 
 If its size be ample, and its materials the most durable, — and only 
 such an one can be deemed expedient, ■ — the highest estimate of its 
 expense has been $2,326,627. This estimate was founded on a 
 minute survey of the bay, on the depth and length of the proposed 
 breakwater, the cost of materials, and all considerations, of whatever 
 nature, which science and experience could bring to bear on the 
 inquiry. Other estimates have been made by persons of acknowl- 
 edged skill, reducing the sum, by an alteration in the position of the 
 breakwater, to $1,380,478. But, adopting the highest as the safest 
 estimate, the means to defray the expense are assuredly within reach 
 of the government, may be obtained near at hand, and their appropria- 
 tion to this object would not be likely to embarrass our finances, or 
 prove invidious towards other sections of the Union. Half the revenue 
 
BREAKWATER AT THE MOUTH OF DELAWARE BAY. 459 
 
 from the port of Philadelphia alone, for only a single year, lias some- 
 times been sufficient to accomplish the whole object. The reasonable- 
 ness of such an employment of it will be more striking, when we 
 reflect that the losses it might prevent, in only twelve or fourteen 
 years, would, on the facts before particularized, equal ihe entire cost 
 of the breakwater. "That it can be spared, also, without essential 
 injury to our financial operation, seems probable, when it is considered 
 that the whole expenditure will not be required for some years, and 
 that even one-half of the annual amount heretofore devoted to the 
 increase of the navy, and now no longer pledged for that purpose, will 
 doubtless be sufficient to commence the work, and if thus dedicated 
 yearly, till the breakwater is completed, will only be continuing a part 
 of the old appropriation to another great object of commercial and 
 national importance. 
 
 In the narrowest view, however, as to its advantages, and in the 
 shape of an increased charge upon our finances, it cannot be considered 
 an undue appropriation for the protection and prosperity of the com- 
 merce of the Delaware Bay, when its revenues and expenses since 
 A. D. 1790 are compared with those of other important points on our 
 sea-board. 
 
 Thus the revenue derived to government from the commerce of the 
 Delaware Bay, from A. D. 1790 to A. D. 1825, was $80,313,721, 
 and the expenditures there, during the same time, on forts, light- 
 houses, beacons, &c, were $835,483, or only about one-hundredth 
 of the revenue. But, during the same time, the revenue from 
 the Chesapeake Bay was only $56,963,669, and the expenditures 
 on like objects were $3,253,611, or about one-nineteenth of the 
 revenue. In New York harbor, the expenditures have been nearly 
 one-thirty-sixth of the revenue, and in Boston harbor one-seventieth 
 of it. 
 
 Expensive works also are in contemplation, or in progress, in 
 each of the three last places, and will shortly make the expenditures 
 in some of them greater, and in others not much less, than those 
 in Delaware Bay, with the addition of the proposed breakwater. 
 
 On a deliberate consideration, then, of all the foregoing circum- 
 stances, reflecting, in brief, that above this breakwater the tide flows 
 up a noble river more than one hundred and fifty miles, through 
 a country of great fertility and wealth ; that most of the commerce 
 of three States floats upon its waters ; that, from the want of such 
 a breakwater, this commerce is now exposed to great and peculiar 
 inconveniences and disasters, as are likewise the navy and much of 
 the coasting trade of the whole Union; that the practicability of 
 the measure is so certain, and its cost so much within the resources 
 of the government obtained from that immediate neighborhood; 
 that the amount required for its accomplishment is not dispropor- 
 tioned to the equal claims of that section of country, or the numerous 
 benefits, both local and general, anticipated from the measure; and 
 
460 BREAKWATER AT THE MOUTH OF DELAWARE BAY. 
 
 that a gradual appropriation to this object, as fast as the money 
 can advantageously be expended, will not be likely to embarrass 
 our financial operations; — the committee entertain an opinion that 
 the prayer of the memorial is reasonable, and report the accompany- 
 ing bill. 
 
GUBERNATORIAL MESSAGE. 
 
 SPEECHES AND REPORTS ON STATE TOPICS. 
 
 39* 
 
GUBERNATORIAL MESSAGE, SPEECHES 
 AND REPORTS ON STATE TOPICS. 
 
 MESSAGE TO THE LEGISLATURE OF NEW HAMPSHIRE.* 
 
 Gentlemen of the Senate and 
 
 House of Representatives : 
 
 My elevation to the office of Chief Magistrate of this State was 
 altogether unexpected ; and the approbation such a distinguished honor 
 seems to bestow on my past conduct deserves the most grateful 
 acknowledgment. But a consciousness of inability to discharge a 
 trust of this importance in the manner required by our public inter- 
 ests would have deterred me from accepting it, had not so strong an 
 expression of the people's confidence inspired hopes that the charity 
 and candor hitherto experienced will be continued towards my humble 
 endeavors to be useful. 
 
 Animated by such considerations, and relying upon that Providence 
 without whose blessing all human exertions are fruitless, and upon the 
 wisdom of the Council whom the constitution has made my advisers, 
 I have entered on the arduous duties assigned me, and take this oppor- 
 tunity to tender you assurances of my cordial cooperation in any 
 measures which may be required by the great principles of our gov- 
 ernment or the true interests of the State. 
 
 Among the most sacred of those principles my education and polit- 
 ical faith have always led me to rank the general diffusion of knowl- 
 edge, equality of rights, liberty of conscience, and a strict accounta- 
 bility of all public servants. In regard to those interests, it would be 
 presumption to attempt a more just enumeration of them than is con- 
 tained in the injunction of our constitution, that " it shall be the duty 
 of the legislators and magistrates, in all future periods of this govern- 
 ment, to cherish the interests of literature and the sciences, and all 
 seminaries and public schools ; to encourage private and public insti- 
 
 *Made while Governor of that State, 1823. 
 
464 MESSAGE. 
 
 tutions, rewards and immunities for the promotion of agriculture, arts, 
 sciences, commerce, trades, manufactures, and natural history of the 
 country ; to countenance and inculcate the principles of humanity and 
 general benevolence, public and private charity, industry and econ- 
 omy, honesty and punctuality, sobriety, and all social affections and 
 generous sentiments among the people." 
 
 These expressions indicate that our fathers considered the subject 
 of education as the first in magnitude among the general concerns of 
 legislation ; and their strong conviction of its importance called forth 
 the additional remark, that " knowledge and learning, generally dif- 
 fused through a community," were " essential to the preservation of a 
 free government." The excellence of knowledge and learning, in this 
 respect, consists much in their tendency to cherish habits of mental 
 occupation, to rectify errors in opinion, to excite benevolent feelings 
 between persons separated by party or religious belief, and, while 
 inspiring the heart with virtue and honor, to disclose the real extent 
 of our powers, rights, and duties. 
 
 Under the influence of such views, the policy of this State has 
 improved, till the money employed in the free instruction of its citi- 
 zens is thought to exceed what any other government of equal resources 
 may raise for a similar purpose. Besides an annual tax for schools of 
 ninety thousand dollars, considerable sums in aid of it are expended 
 by spirited individuals ; and a literary fund, to be hereafter appropri- 
 ated, is accumulating at the rate of about five thousand dollars a year. 
 The system in force in these schools enables the humblest parent to 
 impart to his children all that knowledge of reading, writing and arith- 
 metic, grammar and geography, which the transaction of the common 
 business of life requires ; and, of late years, in the higher branches of 
 these studies, a zeal for improvement has appeared, particularly among 
 females, which promises signal benefits to society. Females instruct 
 us all at an age when impressions are most durable ; and through life 
 they exert a sovereign influence over taste and fashion. No method, 
 therefore, can be devised, which encourages so just hopes of a reform 
 in the intellectual condition of a people, as by the more general diffu- 
 sion among that sex of studies and sciences conducive to practical 
 usefulness.* But with us any favorable change of this kind must orig- 
 inate in our free schools, because in them the affluent of both sexes 
 acquire the elements of knowledge, and nearly all the poor and mid- 
 dling classes begin and complete their education. For these, and other 
 reasons too obvious to need recital, constant inquiries should be made, 
 whether the advantages derived from these schools cannot in some 
 way be enhanced. Great as these advantages now are, it is manifest 
 that perfection has not yet been obtained in the selection of the books 
 in common use, or in the efficiency and economy of the present modes 
 
 * These views have been fully confirmed since, by the experience of several States. 
 See Reports of Mass. Board of Education. 
 
MESSAGE. 465 
 
 of instruction ; . and, without question, the minds of both parents and 
 children are susceptible of still deeper impressions as to the unspeaka- 
 ble importance of improving their present opportunities. I would, 
 therefore, with respectful deference to your own observations on this 
 subject, recommend that our inspecting committees be required to 
 make to the Legislature annual reports of the books and studies, 
 together with the number, sex, and age of the scholars, in their respect- 
 ive towns, New light would thus be thrown upon the object of your 
 inquiries, and, beside the salutary excitement from such a measure, the 
 details it would furnish might suggest many legal provisions of lasting 
 usefulness. 
 
 Whether, in a State of our limited revenue, it will ever be practicable 
 to endow with sufficient funds a free university, may admit of doubt. 
 The expense of necessary buildings, library, philosophical apparatus, 
 and competent professors, is formidable, and would seem to require 
 that aid from the ampler resources of the nation which a few years 
 ago was confidently anticipated. But aid from that quarter having 
 since become doubtful, our literary fund might be permitted to accu- 
 mulate till the question receives a final decision ; or, abandoning hopes 
 of an institution calculated to reflect such honor on our character, and 
 at the same time confer so many advantages on the people at large, 
 this fund might now be employed, with usefulness to the cause of let- 
 ters, in the patronage of public colleges and academies, not strictly 
 free, or in donations of globes and maps to the use of our common 
 schools, or in the establishment in each county of a short course of 
 lectures on subjects of agriculture, mechanics, and the general appli- 
 cation of the sciences to the arts and the business of life. It affords 
 gratification to reflect, that, however small in appearance may be any 
 improvement adopted concerning education, benefits of very considera- 
 ble extent will probably ensue from the impulse it may give, in the 
 pursuit of knowledge, to that large class of ambitious yeomanry who 
 constitute the bone and muscle of the State. 
 
 The promotion of " Agriculture " appears to have occupied the next 
 rank in the estimation of those patriots who braved the perils of our 
 Revolution to secure the great interests of society on the foundation 
 of fixed principles. So high an estimation of agriculture was well 
 warranted by the circumstance that nearly all our population, either 
 for a constant or occasional employment, have been accustomed to 
 the cultivation of the earth ; and that the necessity of this pursuit to 
 the support of every other, and the permanent increase of value it 
 imparts to the soil, independent of its annual products, stand among 
 the first truths in political economy. These truths may have been 
 strengthened in their influence by the moral worth which has always 
 distinguished a people devoted to this primitive occupation of the 
 human race. Its importance, in our country, as the source of national 
 wealth, is conspicuous, and needs no stronger illustration than the 
 striking fact, that the products of agriculture constitute about forty of 
 
466 MESSAGE. 
 
 the fifty millions of the annual exports from the United States from 
 domestic sources. The quantity from this State alone cannot be 
 ascertained with much certainty. But as the custom-house books, the 
 last year, exhibit an amount of agricultural exports from our only sea- 
 port equal to forty-three thousand nine hundred and one dollars ; as 
 the lumber, more than one-half the value of which is derived from 
 agricultural labor, amounted to fifty-one thousand seven hundred and 
 one dollars more ; as produce to the value of about thirty-eight thou- 
 sand dollars was carried away in the coasting trade, and does not 
 appear on the custom-house books ; and as the quantity of these arti- 
 cles raised and transported from other parts of our territory to Mas- 
 sachusetts, Maine, Connecticut, and Canada, is undoubtedly from seven 
 to nine times more than what is exported from Portsmouth, — I am 
 inclined to think that our total surplus produce from agriculture 
 approaches very near a million of dollars. 
 
 When we advert to facts like these, and consider that, in A. D. 
 1791, the agricultural exports from our sea-board were not one-third 
 of their present amount, and from other parts of New Hampshire, in 
 consequence of their more recent settlement, must have been in a pro- 
 portion still smaller, it would seem impossible to feel indifference 
 towards the increasing magnitude of this branch of industry. The 
 commendable attention which, for some years, the Legislature have 
 bestowed on its advancement, has kindled much emulation, and opened 
 an avenue to many improvements ; and, what exceeds all price, the 
 intelligent farmer is rising rapidly to that rank and respect in society 
 which persons of inferior usefulness have too often engrossed. But 
 permit me to suggest that still further advantages would accrue, if 
 more particular inquiries were directed to the different kinds of culti- 
 vation, grains and stock, which are adapted to any peculiarities in our 
 soil or climate. The discovery of these peculiarities, some of which 
 exist in every county, and almost every neighborhood, is now a 
 far greater desideratum than knowledge of general husbandry, since 
 treatises connected with that have been multiplied from some of the 
 earliest profane writings, down to the very ingenious essays of our 
 own board of agriculture. Nothing could contribute to advance this 
 end with more rapidity than an agricultural survey of the State.* 
 Such a measure would excite, on these subjects, renewed and deeper 
 interest ; would tend to combine the researches of science with the 
 practical fruits of experience, and to correct numerous local errors in 
 every branch of husbandry ; the leading chemical properties of the soil 
 in different ranges, and at different heights and latitudes, in the State, 
 would thus be tested, and its peculiar fitness for different crops, and 
 its want of different manures, in some degree ascertained ; its natural 
 growth of valuable trees, plants and grasses, might be made known ; 
 
 * Judge Woodbury was the first Governor of the State officially to suggest scientific 
 surveys for practical purposes, 
 
MESSAGE. 467 
 
 its rocks and metals so far examined as they may indicate tlie quality 
 of the earth for any particular cultivation, or unfold its riches in regard 
 to lime, plaster, coal, iron, and other articles of general utility ; the 
 different practices in relation to the same crops, and the improved 
 instruments of labor, in different sections of the State, be noted ; and, 
 in fine, every fact collected which may be thought conducive to agri- 
 cultural prosperity, and a better acquaintance with the great resources 
 of our soil. Such a measure would likewise promote a knowledge of 
 "the natural history of the country," which is another injunction of 
 the constitution on all " legislators and magistrates." 
 
 The estimated expense of this survey does not exceed three hun- 
 dred dollars to each county. If this sum should appear too large for 
 a single appropriation, it might be divided between two or three suc- 
 cessive years ; and, whether advanced by the county societies or the 
 State, would prove a mere loan, to be repaid with little delay and at 
 the highest interest, by its advantages to the community. 
 
 Before leaving a subject of such general interest, it may be pardon- 
 able to advert to a few changes in the agricultural economy of the 
 people of this State which appear to merit your favorable counte- 
 nance. 
 
 We ought to import none of our bread-stuffs. For, though political 
 philosophy forbids sudden shocks to the existing order of things, and 
 though some pursuits disagree with the taste and local condition of our 
 population, yet, with these limitations, convenience and profit require 
 us to obtain from our own labor or neighborhoods all the necessaries 
 of life. Where wheat sufficient for domestic consumption cannot be 
 raised with success, — though such places are here fewer in number than 
 was once apprehended, — the use of it should yield further to grains 
 which long experience has proved to be equally conducive to health 
 and more congenial to some of our soil. It is another reproach, that, 
 with pasturage in such excellence and abundance, more wool is not 
 grown here, for the domestic demand of the United States, — a demand 
 so large as to cause, during the last year, an importation of raw wool 
 to the value of three hundred and eighty-seven thousand dollars. 
 
 It has been ascertained, also, that we can raise the Leghorn as well 
 as the common straw, and possess native grasses which are elegant 
 substitutes for both ; yet, the value of hats and bonnets imported into 
 this country the past season, from Italy alone, amounted to six hun- 
 dred thousand dollars ; and it is feared that our fair friends, many of 
 whom are distinguished for ingenuity in the manufacture of these 
 articles, have paid almost a full proportion of this unnecessary tax. 
 
 The value of the coffee and tea brought into the United States, in 
 the year ending September, A. D. 1822, after deducting what was 
 reexported, amounted to about five millions of dollars ; and though 
 with us, as elsewhere, the vitiated appetite for these foreign luxuries 
 is seated with such firmness as to preclude hopes of reform, either 
 speedy or thorough, yet a gradual substitution of other vegetables of 
 
468 MESSAGE. 
 
 our own culture is practicable and increasing, and deserves the encour- 
 agement of every friend to domestic economy. 
 
 The connection of some of these subjects with manufactures imparts 
 to them additional importance. At the time our constitution intrusted 
 to us the protection of " Manufactures," as well as of " Agriculture," 
 the annual exports from the former on our sea-board were less than 
 five thousand dollars. In A. D. 1822, they were forty-three thou- 
 sand four hundred and seventy dollars. Considering that, in the vari- 
 ety of other outlets to manufactures, the increase must have been 
 nearly proportionate, and is swelled even by our exports from granite 
 and soapstone, — considering, likewise, that manufactures often furnish 
 a market of the highest value and constancy to agriculture, and that 
 those called household contribute no less to wealth and diligent habits 
 than to domestic comfort, — we should not refuse to manufacturing indus- 
 try that patronage which its magnitude merits. But remarks of this 
 kind are made with no view to solicit favor for manufactures unfitted 
 to our state of society, and neither connected with the internal 
 resources, nor intended to supply the necessities, so much as the lux- 
 uries, of our people. These last articles form legitimate subjects of 
 foreign commerce. On the contrary, I would cherish such manufac- 
 tures as our wants, our means, and our permanent interests, may war- 
 rant. Thus, the cultivation of flax deserves increased attention; because 
 this plant thrives richly on our soil, and, in addition to the valuable 
 manufacture from its seed, the domestic fabrics from the stalk pro- 
 mote family industry, and afford a fair profit to agriculture. Without 
 any change in the national tariff impairing its productiveness as a 
 source of revenue, a discriminating zeal might also furnish New 
 Hampshire, from her own establishments, with a greater portion of her 
 bar and cast iron, with most of her lime and sugar, and with all her 
 cottons, woollens, glass, paper and nails. Nature has lavished upon 
 us many of the raw materials for these manufactures ; our hills are 
 clothed with abundance of wood for furnaces, and almost every dis- 
 trict is enriched, as well as adorned, with the finest falls of water for 
 machinery. 
 
 The policy now recommended has been enforced by my immediate 
 predecessor, with an ability which makes further comment useless ; 
 and the wisdom of such a policy is confirmed by the fact, that a dis- 
 position among us, in past years, to favor manufactures, has intro- 
 duced here and established some of the largest capitals in New Eng- 
 land. 
 
 As an encouragement to "Arts" and "Trades," the exercise of 
 which, by our mechanics, furnishes many of the comforts of life, and, 
 in the improvement of implements of husbandry, is a source of much 
 public wealth, I would suggest the propriety of assigning some spare 
 room in the public buildings in this place for the deposit of speci- 
 mens of their ingenious labors. Under the eye of the Legislature and 
 the care of the Board of Agriculture, all inventions of a useful char- 
 
MESSAGE. 469 
 
 acter would thus become known, and with rapidity and profit might be 
 disseminated over the State. 
 
 The promotion of "Commerce" is another subject committed to 
 your care by the constitution. But the powers of the General Govern- 
 ment over that branch of industry are so paramount, and have been 
 exercised such a length of time, and in many respects with a liberality so 
 judicious, that little remains for State legislation. All which our foreign 
 commerce can expect from us is a discreet patronage of agriculture and 
 manufactures, so as to create more surplus materials to feed this com- 
 merce, and a due attention to the facilities for transporting those mate- 
 rials to our own sea-board, wherever our own sea-board is able to furnish 
 a market equal in convenience and excellence to that of other States. 
 This mutual dependence between these great departments of industry 
 ought to produce between them harmony, rather than jealousies, and 
 is doubtless a provision of Providence to combine all the energies of 
 society in the advancement of human happiness. It must, therefore, 
 be a gratification to our citizens of every profession to learn, tha/t, 
 though a large portion of the imports and exports of New Hampshire 
 help to fill the custom-house records in other States, yet a gradual 
 increase of both at our only sea-port has made its way through many 
 severe calamities. Since A. D. 1791, when the whole amount of 
 each of them was less than one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, the 
 annual imports have risen to an average, for the last five years, of four 
 hundred and fifty-five thousand six hundred and eighty-seven dollars, 
 and the exports to three hundred and forty-five thousand eight hun- 
 dred and seven dollars. 
 
 Our inland commerce, by means of roads, bridges, and canals, is a 
 subject of more general solicitude. Its connection is more immediate 
 with the interests and enjoyments of every class of people ; and some 
 diversity of opinion prevails, whether the constitution of the United 
 States permits us to receive the aid of Congress in this species of 
 internal improvement. But the temptation to raise surplus produce 
 and the value of it when raised being in a ratio with the excellence of 
 the means to transport it to market, and no prospect existing of the 
 present assistance, whatever may be the power, of our National Gov- 
 ernment to improve these means in New Hampshire, it would ill com- 
 port with the foresight required in public affairs to withhold from these 
 means any encouragement which the smallness of our resources and 
 the frugality of our policy may justify. 
 
 Every facility should be afforded to open and straighten roads lead- 
 ing to the nearest markets from different sections of the State. Im- 
 proved methods should, if possible, be devised for expending in their 
 repair the large sums annually raised by fines and taxes. And the sub- 
 stitution of canals, where it can be effected at a moderate expense, is 
 such a gain in the cost of transportation as should make them objects 
 of continual solicitude. The price of freight on waters by nature 
 navigable, compared with the expense of transportation on land, is, for 
 40 
 
470 MESSAGE. 
 
 short distances as one to twelve, and for long distances as one to a 
 hundred ; and, where navigation is aided by art, the average propor- 
 tion is estimated by engineers to be one to twenty. But in our uneven 
 and rocky soil the difference is less, though, wherever the smallest 
 part of the expense of land carriage can be saved by canals, they 
 become an object of public consequence. In countries whose popula- 
 tion and business are on the increase, the usefulness of canals to com- 
 munity is often accompanied by a large profit to stockholders ; and 
 though this last result has not yet happened in more than two or three 
 instances of our own improvements on the Connecticut and Merrimac 
 rivers, still in England the dividends on fifteen canals have averaged 
 over thirty per cent. ; and, as their erection and repair are now better 
 understood, the capital hereafter invested in them in advantageous 
 routes is likely to be productive. 
 
 One of these routes, between Dover and Alton, has before received 
 legislative attention. But the estimated expense of three hundred and 
 fifty thousand dollars has appeared so formidable as to dishearten pri- 
 vate enterprise, "and perhaps, without national aid, would render ques- 
 tionable the future expediency of a canal the whole distance. Leaving 
 a portage, however, of six miles, where the fall is greater than in all 
 the other twenty miles from Winnepiseogee Lake to tide-water, it 
 might be sound economy to encourage a canal the rest of the distance ; 
 and the comparative expense would be trifling to connect the same lake 
 and the Pemigewasset at Plymouth, by a canal in the direction of the 
 Squam ponds. In this route, Plymouth lies only eighty-five miles 
 from the sea-board, and more than half that distance is now water 
 navigable by nature, without any aid from art.* 
 
 But further remarks on subjects connected with our inland com- 
 merce are unnecessary, since their importance to the public has not 
 heretofore been overlooked, and since reflection must convince all that 
 the advancement of some of these objects may contribute not only to 
 the agricultural prosperity of the State as now settled, but to the 
 more speedy occupation of our unsettled lands by a surplus popula- 
 tion, which otherwise might emigrate, and cover the forests of remote 
 States with the fruits of their industry. Measures of this twofold 
 tendency, directed to improvements either in our western, central, 
 or eastern roads and waters, promise the greatest utility ; and if, by 
 an equal and judicious policy, some of them at the same time should 
 happen to enlarge our foreign commerce, or lessen our dependence 
 upon other governments for a market, these incidental consequences 
 cannot fail to enlist more strongly in their support the patriotism of 
 all who cherish a just sense of State pride and ambition. Such a pol- 
 icy is the only one worthy an enlightened people, and would be most 
 benignant in its influence on sectional jealousies, and in allaying those 
 angry and vindictive feelings which faction, folly, and ignorance, are 
 
 * The importance of this suggestion has been since verified by railroad enterprise 
 
MESSAGE. 471 
 
 apt to inflame. But, in a State so limited in territory and resources, it 
 is probable that no new legislative appropriation to these objects will 
 ever be expected, unless, where the wild lands of the State may receive 
 peculiar benefit from new roads or canals, it should be deemed expe- 
 dient to apply the proceeds of part of those lands to objects so directly 
 calculated to raise the value of the remainder. 
 
 Among the miscellaneous subjects to which a sense of duty impels 
 me to invite your attention, are a few changes of inconsiderable mag- 
 nitude in our statutes. Laws should not be subjected to great or fre- 
 quent alterations, because every essential change in the rules of prop- 
 erty, of personal rights and their remedies, requires new labor to 
 understand those rules, and till the change receives a judicial construc- 
 tion, questions remain unsettled, and much expense is incurred. But 
 small alterations are attended with less hazard, and are often necessary 
 to meet the alterations which time produces in the condition of soci- 
 ety. 
 
 In our criminal code, I would suggest the propriety of a distinction 
 between the length of hard labor in the state-prison on a first and on 
 a second conviction. The decreasing expenses of that institution, 
 which, from an annual tax of about two thousand dollars, have become 
 less than the value of the labor performed in it, and the diminished 
 number of convicts, which from seventy-five has fallen to fifty-eight, 
 are sources of sincere congratulation. The difference, in these 
 respects, between this and other States, furnishes a high compliment 
 to the morals of our people and the vigilant economy of our warden. 
 Thus, in Connecticut, the number of convicts, compared with their 
 population, is nearly double what it is here ; in Vermont, it is more 
 than double ; in Massachusetts, it is treble ; and in New York, it is. 
 four times as great. In the third State mentioned, where the popula- 
 tion is little more than twice our own, the commitments are said to 
 have been ninety-five during the last year only ; being equal to almost 
 half the whole number committed here since the erection of our prison, 
 in A. D. 1812. It will be unnecessary to enter into any detail of the 
 comparative expenses, when it is known that our whole cost for food to each 
 convict in the year just ended has been no more than fourteen dollars 
 and nine cents, and for clothing and bedding no more than seven dol- 
 lars and sixteen cents. I mention this fact to furnish, also, a useful 
 hint concerning the necessary expenses of paupers ; and though, on 
 this occasion, no new suggestions will be offered in check of the great 
 moral leprosy our system of poor laws is calculated to spread, — and 
 though a thorough reform in them, while supposed to encounter some 
 of the noblest sympathies of humanity, may well be approached with 
 reluctance, — yet public inquiries on this subject should never sleep, as, 
 within a few years, legislative discussion alone has aided, if not excited, 
 an improved economy in the pauper police of many towns. 
 
 Coroners' inquests, without affording any assistance in the adminis- 
 tration of justice, often prove a source of inconvenience and pain to 
 
472 MESSAGE. 
 
 the jury, and impose a large tax on the county treasuries. If, in cases 
 of sudden death, attended by secrecy and suspicion, inquests some- 
 times help to calm popular feeling, I would recommend that hereafter 
 they be held only at the expense and special application of persons 
 who, in any particular case, may entertain that opinion. 
 
 The care recently bestowed on our militia was merited by the 
 importance of so valuable an institution. But the principal object 
 which can be attained by it in peace is the preservation of good arms 
 in the hands of the people, with a, view of self-defence against lawless 
 aggression, and a constant readiness to meet any public emergency of 
 usurpation or war. Yet our last returns exhibit a deficiency in mus- 
 kets of nearly five thousand, — a number equal to one-fifth of our 
 whole infantry. A remedy for so alarming an evil appears to merit 
 inquiry. Some persons entertain a belief that the present system is 
 attended by evils of a moral and pecuniary character equally alarming, 
 in consequence of the temptations it presents to intemperance and 
 idleness, and the burthens it imposes on the laboring classes of soci- 
 ety, in unsuccessful attempts to perfect their discipline. But one 
 annual inspection of arms would always seem indispensable ; and, 
 though a relief from all other military duty might obviate many objec- 
 tions, and merits the consideration of the Legislature, yet a change in 
 our militia, even to this extent, ought not to be hazarded, if it would 
 tend to impair the efficiency of what our constitution pronounces to be 
 the "proper, natural, and sure defence of a State." 
 
 Recent experience seems to designate, with sufficient certainty, some 
 useful changes in our statute concerning the choice of Representatives 
 to Congress. 
 
 The compensation allowed by statute to Judges of Probate is sup- 
 posed to be an inadequate reward for their services ; and, although 
 custom may warrant them in receiving sufficient fees beyond what the 
 letter of the statute allows, yet it deserves consideration, whether it is 
 safe for them, or for the public, that their emoluments should depend 
 upon the vague and various usages of the several counties, and whether 
 it might not remove embarrassments, and promote impartiality and cor- 
 rectness in business, either to make the fee-bill more comprehensive 
 and explicit, or to pay the judges by a fixed salary out of a fund col- 
 lected from probate proceedings. 
 
 We are reminded, by the constitution, that, in " order to reap the 
 fullest advantage of the inestimable privilege of the trial by jury, 
 great care ought to be taken that none but qualified persons should 
 be appointed to serve, and such ought to be fully compensated for their 
 time, travel, and attendance." Should the Legislature advert to the 
 value of the rights, the amount of property, and the difficulty of those 
 inquiries, often submitted to a jury, no care could appear too great in 
 the appointment of persons competent to a task of such arduous 
 responsibility. If the names in the jury-boxes were less numerous, 
 the chance for the selection of " none but qualified persons" would be 
 
MESSAGE. 473 
 
 increased ; and, if the present fees are insufficient to insure the cheer- 
 ful services of citizens most distinguished for integrity and good sense, 
 joined with firmness and experience, it would doubtless promote the 
 public interests to compensate jurors more "fully for their time, travel, 
 and attendance." This could be effected at the expense of litigants, 
 or the county, as sound economy may dictate. On caution in the 
 appointment of jurors, one further consideration, partly political, and 
 altogether paramount to any narrow calculations about office or emolu- 
 ment, arises from the fact, that, in proportion as jurors are well quali- 
 fied, their verdicts will not only exhibit greater accuracy, and the 
 artifices of injustice encounter greater obstacles, but the trial by 
 jury — that great palladium of civil rights — will acquire from the 
 public still higher veneration and confidence. 
 
 Under our system of jurisprudence, almost every argument in favor 
 of good jurors applies with increased force in favor of good judges. 
 Indeed, a judiciary enlightened and "independent," as well as 
 "impartial," seems by the constitution to be considered "essential to 
 the preservation of the rights of every individual, — his life, liberty, 
 property and character." It is, therefore, necessary, that you, who 
 are intrusted with the important power of giving force and efficiency 
 to that department, should examine, from time to time, whether any 
 change would impart to it a higher degree of usefulness. 
 
 • So far as usefulness depends on the form of any system, the first 
 object should be to carry the business to that tribunal whose judgment 
 is final, with no more delay and cost than are unavoidable in an adher- 
 ence to other judicial principles. The next object is to have such a 
 number of judges, and such a frequency in the terms, as to insure due 
 attention and despatch to the business. In respect to the administra- 
 tion of any system, all considerate men will agree, that the judges, no 
 less than the jurors, should be selected and compensated so as to cause 
 a performance of the business in the best manner ; or, in other words, 
 so as to obtain and preserve in this arduous service those citizens best 
 qualified by their virtues, talents and studies, to transact the judicial 
 business of the State. In forming an opinion whether the present 
 condition of our judiciary is fitted to answer these ends, it should not 
 escape consideration, that within the last thirty years the wealth and 
 population of New Hampshire have nearly doubled, and, of necessity, 
 have produced some increase in the number of litigated actions ; that 
 the practice of saving each year about one hundred questions of law to 
 be examined in vacations is a great addition to judicial labor ; that 
 this change, together with the progress of law as a science, and the 
 consequent improvement of the bar, renders superior qualifications 
 requisite in judges to command proper confidence ; that their expenses 
 by travel, and by the greater number and duration of the terms, are 
 much enhanced ; and, in fine, that the trial of all jury actions in the 
 State, which were formerly divided between two tribunals, — one, at 
 times, of four, and the other of six, twelve and eighteen judges, — is 
 40* 
 
474 MESSAGE. 
 
 now devolved, with the increased fatigue and responsibility before 
 mentioned, on only three men, whose salaries combined do not equal 
 the compensation to many single judges elsewhere. 
 
 After due inquiry, should you conclude that our present system, 
 among many excellences, possesses some defects, but that these are of 
 a character which can be remedied by the addition of another judge 
 and of other terms, where desirable to prevent cost and delay, and still 
 leave its incidental expenses much less than those of any other system, 
 no reasons of a public nature have occurred to me which would justify 
 an abandonment of it. 
 
 As to a change in the compensation of the judges, the question 
 should be settled on a reference to the facts above named, and on the 
 broad principles of an enlightened policy. While a course vacillating 
 and short-sighted, whether in public or private affairs, leads to waste 
 and extravagance, care is at the same time necessary to prevent 
 inroads on those frugal habits which form so strong a safeguard to the 
 morals and prosperity of small States ; and it will remain for you 
 alone to decide whether a moderate increase in the salary of those 
 officers would, under existing circumstances, tend to danger of this 
 kind, or exceed the bounds of expediency and justice. To guard 
 against misconstruction, it may be added, that if you impose a larger 
 fee on the entry of actions, in order to meet any change without a bur- 
 then on the treasury, and if a part of this fee should be assigned to 
 the clerks, who collect it, and whose very faithful services receive much 
 less reward now than formerly, I am not aware that an additional com- 
 pensation to any other officers in any department of our government is 
 either needed or desired. 
 
 In connection with judicial concerns, I may be excused for one 
 further suggestion. The cautious spirit of a republic seems to dictate 
 that some limit should be fixed to the discretion of courts in awarding 
 fines and imprisonment for contempts and offences at common law. 
 Without such a limit, unless we are blessed upon the bench with 
 angels in the form of men, no small danger of oppression must exist in 
 periods of party violence, and in cases where the judges themselves 
 may have been victims of wanton calumny. 
 
 It is a distinguishing feature in governments like ours, that the 
 people are entitled to such information on all public business and 
 expenditures as may conduce to economy, or throw light on the admin- 
 istration of the various trusts confided to their agents. I would 
 therefore repeat, in substance, a remark of the vigilant statesman who 
 retired from this chair in A. D. 1819, that the above ends would be 
 promoted, a useful check imposed on mistakes, and, in time, a valuable 
 body of statistical facts collected, if not only inspecting committees, but 
 county treasurers, clerks of courts and registers of probate, were 
 required to make to the Legislature annual reports of the quantity and 
 character of the business connected with their respective offices. 
 
 The gradual increase of our small library at the seat of government 
 
MESSAGE. 475 
 
 is another object of some public consequence. If confined to works on 
 political economy, national law, State trials, and parliamentary debates, 
 the necessary appropriation would be trifling, and, beside the credit of 
 such a proceeding to the Legislature, the advantage to be derived from 
 recourse to books of this kind, on questions of order, impeachment, 
 addresses for removal of officers, and important measures of State 
 policy or State rights, must be obvious to every intelligent politician. 
 
 In the deficiency of surplus funds for this or the agricultural pur- 
 poses before mentioned, permit me to inquire whether public expedi- 
 ency would not justify you in obtaining them by a small fee for 
 licenses to retailers of spirituous liquors. In each town this fee 
 might be paid to the selectmen, and by them to the State treasurer, 
 and, in the end, to a considerable extent, it would prove a tax on 
 intemperance. By indirect means the Legislature might thus promote 
 that "sobriety" which the constitution urges them to "inculcate;" 
 and by employing the money to advance some useful industry, or the 
 cause of literature, would contribute something to the interests of 
 morality and piety. 
 
 Often as I have adverted to the constitution, it is hoped a sufficient 
 apology may be found in the purity of those principles which pervade 
 this solemn charter of our liberties, in the oaths of us all to support it, 
 and in the impressive admonition of our bill of rights, that a "fre- 
 quent recurrence to the fundamental principles of the constitution" 
 "is indispensably necessary to preserve the blessings of liberty and 
 good government." In truth, gentlemen, it is our State constitution, 
 State laws, State interests, and State resources, with which we. as State 
 officers, are immediately concerned ; and, without turning aside to dis- 
 cuss any prominent measures of our national government, the import- 
 ance of which, however, cannot be too highly estimated, or to express 
 at length what we all doubtless feel, — deep sympathy with struggling 
 Greece, and the triumphs of Spanish freedom in either hemisphere, — 
 I have found leisure to invite your attention only to our own local 
 affairs. The character and dignity, no less than the interests, of this 
 State, as an independent sovereignty, seem to appeal to the Legislature 
 to give a new impulse to her energies, and for all domestic purposes to 
 take a lead in cherishing among our citizens a bold reliance on their 
 own enterprise, and on the strength and excellence of their own insti- 
 tutions ; and hereafter, as far as possible, to retain at home and per- 
 petuate that hardy spirit of valor, adventure, and industry, which in 
 war has always distinguished our soldiery, and in peace, beside giv- 
 ing fertility to our stubborn soil, has joined the advanced guard of 
 civilization, both on the western and eastern frontiers of the Union. 
 Another incentive to this policy may be derived from the reflection, 
 that, however limited, in comparison with some States, may appear 
 our present wealth and numbers, yet we are richer than many in a 
 mild code of equal laws ; richer in systems of education, literary and 
 religious ; richer in the frugality and morals of our yeomanry ; richer in 
 
476 MESSAGE. 
 
 improving roads, light taxes, and a healthy climate ; and, if the senti- 
 nels of our interests persevere in a policy worthy the destinies of a 
 free State, and the age in which we live, the tide of emigration must 
 long be checked. Before the close of the present century, should our 
 numbers multiply to a million, the increase would not be so rapid as 
 has occurred here within the last hundred years, and we should not 
 then exhibit so dense a population as now covers many countries of 
 much less natural fertility in Europe and Asia. 
 
 Should the sanguine also anticipate that by such a policy the char- 
 acter of this population for every human excellence may surpass that 
 of the purest republics of antiquity, their hopes will not appear alto- 
 gether delusive, if we look to the advantages just enumerated, to the 
 flood of light pouring upon the world from modern science, and to 
 those benefits from the diffusion of Christianity which exceed all ordi- 
 nary calculation ; or if we reflect, that within two centuries since the 
 axe of the husbandman was first heard in the forests of this State, she 
 has risen from a few huts on her sea-board, and from foreign and feu- 
 dal subjection, to the full enjoyment of independence ; and, after con- 
 verting her wildernesses into fruitful fields, has animated them with a 
 people equally able to understand and defend their inestimable rights. 
 Nor is there danger that such a people will ever cease to love their 
 laws and institutions, so long as these continue worthy of their love, 
 by keeping pace with the progress of freedom and knowledge. 
 
 Gentlemen of the Senate, and 
 
 House of Representatives : 
 
 I trust that you will not misinterpret my readiness to meet every 
 responsibility belonging to the executive department, and my use, in 
 all communications with you, of that plainness and frankness which 
 early habits and opinions teach me should be cultivated between the 
 free agents of a free people. 
 
 To expect unanimity of sentiment on topics so diversified, would not 
 be warranted by experience ; and so far as my private wishes are con- 
 cerned, they aspire merely to obtain credit for industry and fidelity, 
 leaving the usefulness of every suggestion to the scrutiny of temper- 
 ate discussion, and believing that a temporary difference of views on 
 subjects of legislation may be entertained with honesty, and will often 
 tend to elicit new light, and promote the triumph of correct prin- 
 ciples. 
 
 The pressure of those judicial duties which have engrossed my 
 attention till the present week may be some excuse for various errors 
 and omissions in the foregoing remarks ; and my regret on account of 
 them is much lessened by the reflection, that every deficiency can be 
 supplied by the variety of talent, the experience, and wide extent of 
 observation, collected in the Legislature. 
 
 Suffer me only to add, that it will be my pride to imitate, without 
 presuming to hope I can equal, the judicious example of my immedi- 
 
LAWS CONCERNING PAUPERS. 477 
 
 ate predecessors in their general course of administration, and in their 
 conciliatory deportment towards the different sections, sects, parties, 
 and interests, of the State. A broad motive for the latter part of this 
 policy springs from the fact, that liberality, when it can be indulged 
 with no sacrifice of principle, proves the great source of harmony and 
 strength in popular governments; and, under a conviction of this 
 truth, the venerable author of the Declaration of our Independence 
 long since inculcated upon the whole of his countrymen, that, as 
 " every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle," it becomes 
 " the duty of all good citizens to unite in common efforts for the com- 
 mon good." LEVI WOODBURY. 
 Concord, June 5, 1823. 
 
 LAWS CONCERNING PAUPERS.* 
 
 To the Honorable the Setiate and House of Representatives for 
 the State of Neiv Hampshire, in General Court convened. 
 
 The committee appointed at your last session to report concerning 
 the Pauper Laws of this State would respectfully represent, that they 
 have endeavored to devote such attention to the subject as its acknowl- 
 edged importance deserves. But it is not believed necessary to detail, 
 with minuteness, all the circumstances which have influenced them in 
 favor of the changes hereafter recommended. Many of those circum- 
 stances appear among the facts collected by the last Legislature, from 
 the several towns in the State ; many of them exist in the recorded 
 experience of other governments under similar systems of poor laws , 
 and many of them, we trust, are so manifest in the first elements of 
 political economy, as to occur, without enumeration, to the recollection 
 of all. To illustrate the views of your committee, however, it may not 
 be improper to mention a few general considerations derived from the 
 above sources. 
 
 Our laws for the relief of paupers are evidently founded on an idea 
 that all civil associations are bound to furnish protection and mainten- 
 
 * A Report made to the Legislature of New Hampshire, June 9, 1821. 
 
478 LAWS CONCERNING PAUPERS. 
 
 ance to the individuals of such associations. This idea, in a limited 
 sense, is correct. But experience has evinced, that though govern- 
 ment can, in most cases, provide more effectual protection than sepa- 
 rate individuals, yet, on the contrary, it has no less clearly evinced, 
 that each separate individual can, better than government, provide for 
 his own maintenance. As a general principle, therefore, government 
 should furnish only that indirect aid towards the support of individuals, 
 which consists in the protection of them while acquiring and enjoying 
 the means of subsistence. 
 
 The support of those persons who, through debility of body or mind, 
 are unable to earn a livelihood, forms no exception to this general 
 principle, unless experience justifies the belief that, without the inter- 
 position of government, such persons will be left to perish by individ- 
 uals interested in their fate from consanguinity, or friendship, or 
 humanity. Because the nature and character of man are so consti- 
 tuted, that if this interposition be made when not necessary, that very 
 circumstance will create and perpetuate an apology for the continuance 
 of such interpositions. How many are tempted to refrain from exer- 
 tion to support themselves and their indigent dependants, from a con- 
 sciousness that, without such exertion, they are secure of a mainten- 
 ance by the public ! On the contrary, how few, who are not entitled 
 to a support by the public, will endure hunger and nakedness, rather 
 than labor, provided they possess physical ability to labor ! Such, 
 also, is the mysterious construction of the human heart, that, in a civ- 
 ilized and Christian community, only a small number can be found so 
 destitute of the sympathies of our race, so regardless of their kindred, 
 or so dead to the religious duty of charity, as to see perish with want 
 their offspring, parents or friends, if those connections are really 
 impotent, and by law entitled to no relief from the prodigal hand of 
 government. 
 
 Thus it happened in modern Europe, till about the middle of the 
 sixteenth century, that the aid of government in support of paupers, 
 was neither offered nor invoked. That class of persons received no 
 regular assistance, except from monasteries ; and though this assist- 
 ance was voluntary, from mere religious charity, yet, instead of being 
 too limited, in its profusion was often a temptation to indolence. Most 
 of the continent of Europe is still without any civil laws for the main- 
 tenance of paupers. Ought a supposition to be indulged so deroga- 
 tory to this reformed section of the world, as that the obligations of 
 the Gospel are now less felt, and the proper objects of private charity 
 cannot be selected with as much intelligence, and with even better 
 effects on community, than were exhibited in ages of comparative 
 barbarism ? 
 
 It can hardly be questioned, then, that our present system of poor 
 laws, furnishing, as it does, public and permanent relief to every 
 description of paupers, must be deemed a departure from some of the 
 first principles of political economy. In one respect, it violates, also, 
 
LAWS CONCERNING PAUPERS. 479 
 
 the great moral distinctions between virtue and vice ; because it yields 
 the same aid to vicious as to innocent poverty. In other words, it 
 does not punish vice by the abandonment of its votaries to such suf- 
 fering as would naturally follow from gross wickedness ; but rescues 
 from want, and nourishes with as much kindness, the felon and drunk- 
 ard, as it does the victim of disease or misfortune. This system, too, 
 was in some degree intended to produce a remedial effect; yet, in 
 hostility to such a design, it contains within itself abundant seeds of 
 increase and perpetuity. No regular course of discipline or labor is 
 adopted, in order to reform the idle and vicious. Improper marriages 
 are contracted, under the prospect and security of eventual support 
 from the public. A similar foresight encourages many others to 
 indulge in indolence, prodigality and vice. Distant connections are 
 more readily flung upon the public, as the sympathies of kindred and 
 friends become more paralyzed by the increasing weight of their com- 
 pulsory taxes for the maintenance of other paupers. Indeed, a com- 
 bination of these and similar causes, under the present system, multi- 
 plies the whole number of paupers in a ratio calculated to alarm the 
 most courageous politician. For a confirmation of some of these 
 remarks, we would refer to the facts reported to the last Legislature. 
 Those facts, too, speak a language which outweighs every suggestion 
 of fancy or theory ; and, if their accuracy were questionable, are cor- 
 roborated by the experience of every government that has adopted a 
 system similar to our own. 
 
 Thus, in the year 1800, the annual expense for the support of pau- 
 pers, inhabitants of this State, was only about $17,000, and our pop- 
 ulation was 183,858. The above sum does not include incidental and 
 legal cost. But, in the year 1820, the same annual expense had 
 increased to about $80,000, while our population had become only 
 244,161. It therefore appears that our expenses increased almost 
 four times their just proportion ; for, had they augmented in a ratio 
 with the population, their amount would have been less than $23,000, 
 instead of $80,000. The facts reported to the Legislature show that 
 these expenses double in about every five years. But, on a recurrence 
 to the census of different periods, it will be seen that our population 
 doubles only in about forty years. The population of this State has 
 not recently received many accessions from abroad ; while the depart- 
 ure of our hardy and enterprising youth to milder climates and more 
 lucrative employments than exist here, has been a constant drain upon 
 our productive numbers, without draining from us, at the same time, 
 the infirm, the diseased and the impotent. It has, therefore, followed, 
 that though the number of paupers compared with our whole popula- 
 tion was, in the year 1800, only one to three hundred and thirty, 
 yet, in the year 1820, they had become one to every one hundred. 
 This is more than three times their just proportional number ; and 
 though, in our estimates, we have rejected fractions and obtained the 
 number of paupers by assuming a certain sum for the annual support 
 
480 LAWS CONCERNING PAUPERS. 
 
 of each, yet the comparative result must be accurate, because the 
 same rules in similar estimates are preserved throughout. From the 
 facts before mentioned, it follows, also, that should the number of 
 paupers, and of our whole population, continue to increase in this dis- 
 proportionate ratio for the next forty years, the former will become 
 one to every twenty-seven of the latter, instead of only one to every 
 one hundred. Thus, at the end of that period, our population will be 
 only 488,000, while our paupers will be 18,000 ; though to support 
 18,000 then with the same ease with which we can now support the 
 present number, our population ought to be 2,196,000. 
 
 These calculations are predicated on the hypothesis that our paupers 
 and whole population will, till the year 1860, continue to increase in 
 a ratio similar to that which has existed since the years 1T90 and 
 1800. But it is correct reasoning, as well as history, that paupers, 
 when a country grows older and taxes augment, will multiply in an 
 annually increasing ratio with the population ; and that a people under 
 such a system, like a heavy body descending to the earth, are acceler- 
 ated in their progress towards total pauperism, the further they advance. 
 
 The above number of paupers, therefore, at the end of forty years, 
 compared with the whole population, is estimated much too low. But, 
 taking only the actual estimate, such a system, if not amended, seems 
 destined to entail on our posterity a burthen more oppressive than the 
 support of all the privileged orders of monarchies, from which we 
 justly boast our happy exemption. 
 
 That these apprehensions do not rest alone upon reasoning and cal- 
 culation, may be seen by reference to the adjoining State of Massa- 
 chusetts. Their territory has been longer settled, the system under- 
 gone a fuller experiment; and the result, as reported to their 
 Legislature, tends to verify the worst predictions. In a population of 
 about 472,000, their annual pauper expenses are estimated at 
 $364,000, which, it will be seen, is more than double the amount of 
 our expenses compared with our population. Thus, too, the number 
 of paupers is there estimated at one to every sixty-six inhabitants, 
 whereas here it does not exceed one to every one hundred. If their 
 census of A. D. 1820 were taken as a guide, the result would differ, 
 but only in a small degree. 
 
 The experience under this system of poor laws has, in England, 
 been longer still; and the result has, if possible, been still more conclu- 
 sive in respect to its ruinous progress. From the year 1687 to 1785, 
 a period of almost a century, their annual pauper expenses increased 
 from £665,362 to only .£1,943,649; while from 1785 to 1815, a 
 period of but thirty years, they increased from £1,943,649 to 
 £8,000,000. Thus, during the infancy of the system, the expenses 
 did not treble in less than a century ; but, afterwards, they quadrupled 
 in less than a third of a century. The same disheartening conse- 
 quences are visible when the number of their paupers is compared 
 with their whole population. Thus, in the year 1803, the whole 
 
LAWS CONCERNING PAUPERS. 481 
 
 number of paupers in England and Wales had swollen to 1,039,716. 
 and the whole population was only 9,500,000. The ratio of one 
 pauper to about every ten inhabitants is, when compared with that in 
 New Hampshire, and even in Massachusetts, an appalling increase. 
 But what ought to be our consternation at the progress of the system, 
 when, in 1812, a period of only nine years, their paupers had multi- 
 plied from 1,039,716 to 2,079,432, and their population risen only to 
 10,000,000 ! This presents a ratio of more than one pauper to every 
 five inhabitants. 
 
 Let all deductions be made which can occur to the most cautious 
 economist, — and undoubtedly some are proper in consequence of the 
 depreciation of money, the unusual duration of their modern wars, and 
 the peculiar embarrassments which have distressed manufactures, — and 
 still the result will be such as to indicate a fatal termination to every 
 government which persists in the system. It is to be remembered, 
 also, that the expenses incurred in the support of foreign paupers — by 
 which we mean those who have acquired no legal settlement in this 
 State — constitute a very considerable addition to the sums first men- 
 tioned. Among us those expenses have been estimated at $6200 a 
 year ; and the observation of every one must confirm the remark, that 
 they are incurred with less reluctance and with more prodigality than 
 any other expenses under the present system. Much of this arises 
 from the circumstance that they are eventually paid by the counties, 
 and not by the towns, which furnish the relief. The expenses of this 
 description, too, increase in a ratio almost as rapid as those for the 
 maintenance of domestic paupers. In this State, the accounts for any 
 length of time have not been collected from the several county treas- 
 uries; but an imperfect examination of them strongly verifies the 
 above conjecture. 
 
 In Massachusetts, under similar laws, these expenses, between the 
 years 1801 and 1810, have increased from $27,363 to $50,542 ; and, 
 in 1820, had become $79,870 a year. These sums, too, may be 
 deemed another proof of the disproportionate magnitude, in older gov- 
 ernments, of both the number and expenses of paupers. For though 
 the extended sea-board and commerce of that State may create a 
 peculiar increase of the class of foreign paupers, yet, compared with 
 their population, it could hardly make them, to the number here, com- 
 pared with our population, as thirteen to four. 
 
 In addition to the sums before enumerated, which are expended in 
 the mere maintenance of both foreign and domestic paupers, the inci- 
 dental expenses of removals, and the costs which accompany litigation 
 concerning settlements, constitute items whose formidable amount 
 none could anticipate or believe, without much observation. In this 
 State they have been estimated at $30,000 a year. This, it will be 
 perceived, more than equals one-third of the whole expenses for mere 
 maintenance. When we advert to the time, trouble and expenditures, 
 of overseers and agents, in inquiries concerning the settlement of 
 41 
 
482 LAWS CONCERNING PAUPERS. 
 
 paupers, — in the relief, removal and superintendence of them, — in the 
 institution of suits, the service of notices, the procurement of evidence, 
 the fees to counsel and witnesses, — the attendance on courts and the 
 raising of money to discharge enormous bills of cost recovered, — few will 
 apprehend that the above estimate is much too high. It seems proba- 
 ble, too, that the same alarming increase which characterizes the other 
 expenses under this system is attendant on these. For, in England, 
 where questions of settlement have been longer adjudicated and fixed, 
 and where these incidental expenses should therefore be proportion- 
 ably small, there has still been a great increase in their ratio, com- 
 pared with the whole pauper tax. Thus, in the year 1783, their 
 whole expenses, beside those for maintenance, were .£92,097. Of 
 these, the mere law charges were £55,891, and the charges attendant 
 on removals, £24,493. But in the year 1803, out of the whole 
 pauper tax, which exceeded £5,000,000, only a little over £4,000,000 
 was expended in mere maintenance. It therefore appears, that as in 
 1783 the whole pauper tax was about £1,500,000, the incidental 
 and legal expenses were then less than one-fifteenth of the whole ; but 
 in 1803 they had become one-fifth of the whole. 
 
 From a view of the whole premises, it must be obvious, that though 
 the pauper expenses of this State are nominally much less than those 
 of some other governments, yet the same disastrous increase, which 
 we believe to be inseparable from the present system, is here exhibited. 
 
 It is fashionable to lament the condition of England in respect to 
 pauperism ; and it is flattering to our national vanity, when we com- 
 pare the sum total of her poor to our own, — her three millions of 
 famished beggars, fed from the hand of public charity, — a number 
 equal to one-third of the population of the whole United States ; and 
 when we compare, also, her annual expense in their support, of above 
 $44,000,000, — a sum more than double the whole revenue of the 
 Union. But we forget, at the same time, to compare our small popu- 
 lation and resources with hers ; and though the insulated position of 
 this State, the enterprise and industry of her inhabitants, their 
 general intelligence and correct morals, may long avert the catastrophe 
 which seems more immediately to menace England, yet the same 
 system of pauper laws seems to hurry us towards the same vortex. 
 
 Every reflecting mind in society has, therefore, become alarmed ; 
 and it is believed by the committee that the facts and inferences 
 which they have the honor to present to the attention of the Legisla- 
 ture will evince the necessity of some such speedy change in the 
 system as may check this overwhelming increase of expenses, and, if 
 possible, reduce their present formidable amount. 
 
 Only three methods to effect this have occurred to us. One is by 
 lessening the number of paupers who by law may be authorized to 
 receive public relief. Another is, by lessening the annual expense of 
 maintaining each person entitled to relief. And lastly, by lessening 
 the incidental expense of maintenance, and of litigation concerning 
 
LAWS CONCERNING PAUPERS. 483 
 
 settlements. It will be seen that these three propositions are so 
 independent of each other, that the adoption or rejection of either will 
 not affect the remainder. On the means to enforce each of them Aye 
 shall take the liberty to offer some suggestions. 
 
 1. The number of paupers, that are now so iburthensome a tax on 
 community, might be most effectually lessened by an exclusion of every 
 class of them from any public relief. But the policy of such a meas- 
 ure is exposed to much suspicion. Whatever may be its theoretical 
 correctness, and however fortunate may have been the experiments 
 under it in Scotland, and many other enlightened portions of Europe, 
 the measure seems impracticable to many who have so long been accus- 
 tomed to our present system. There is, too, an apparent cruelty in 
 it, which, with some, may not be obviated by the considerations men- 
 tioned in the commencement of this report. All changes, also, in long- 
 established systems, are more acceptable, and often more useful, if 
 gradual. Your committee, however, have been unable to discover any 
 sound objection to the exclusion from public relief of every person 
 reduced to want by indolence or extravagance. The exclusion 
 should, likewise, be extended to all those whose poverty is the conse- 
 quence of any crime. This class forms a large portion of the whole 
 number, and its ranks are almost wholly filled from the haunts of 
 intemperance. The abandoned mothers of illegitimate children make 
 up a great part of the residue. Their wretched offspring, with whose 
 support the public are now so often burthened, would be lessened in 
 number, and indemnity be obtained for most hereafter born, if select- 
 men were empowered and required, in the name of their respective 
 towns, to prosecute either parent till that indemnity was obtained. 
 When the supposed father was prosecuted, the mother, like every com- 
 petent witness, might then be compelled to testify in an action in 
 which she is not a party. In all cases, also, of children, illegitimate 
 or otherwise, whose parents ask public relief, selectmen should be more 
 rigidly enjoined to bind them out to substantial farmers and mechan- 
 ics, so that such children may learn industry and economy, receive 
 moral instruction, and acquire good English educations. Many would 
 thus be rescued from the necessity, too often imposed on them by early 
 habits of indolence and profligacy, by ignorance and infamy, to con- 
 tinue paupers for life, and to perpetuate through succeeding genera- 
 tions a race so baneful to community. 
 
 2. In respect to the annual expense of the mere maintenance of 
 those paupers who may by law be authorized to receive relief, we 
 entertain no doubt that it might greatly be lessened by the employment 
 of them, according to their ability, on farms and in workshops. These 
 should be owned by the respective towns ; or, where paupers are few, 
 by voluntary associations of contiguous towns. In some parts of this 
 State, and in many parts of Massachusetts, it has been ascertained, by 
 actual experiment, that much the most profitable labor for this class 
 of persons, when not totally helpless, is agriculture. Every man, 
 
484 LAWS CONCERNING PAUPERS. 
 
 who has watched the expenditure of public money, must be conscious 
 that when such employment is furnished by only one or a few towns, 
 the incidental cost will be less, the attention to frugality greater, and 
 the risk of imposition small. As idleness, too, is the parent of much 
 pauperism, constant labor being thus furnished and required will not 
 only often cure the evil, but operate as a preventive. The certainty 
 of being compelled to work will induce many sturdy paupers to sup- 
 port themselves voluntarily ; and those who are willing to work, but 
 unable to obtain employment, will thus be provided with opportunities 
 to earn a subsistence. When the poor, as is often practised, are bil- 
 letted around a town to the lowest bidder, few of them feel much obli- 
 gation to labor ; and no person is, under the present system, invested 
 with authority to enforce their obedience. Every one, too, who con- 
 sents to board them cheap, might not be a discreet person to invest with 
 such authority; and suitable occupation, in many different families, 
 could not always be supplied. All relief, likewise, to paupers in their 
 own houses, except in cases of accident, has been found, by experience, 
 to be the most expensive, as well as the most tempting to habitual 
 indolence. 
 
 3. The only effectual method that we can devise, to lessen the inci- 
 dental expense and legal cost which attend our present system, is by a 
 repeal of all laws in respect to settlement. This suggestion may not 
 meet with favor, on account of its novelty. But, as the expenses of 
 this description are enormous, and do not contribute to the actual 
 maintenance of a single pauper, almost any project to escape from 
 them deserves an experiment. On the hypothesis that every person 
 who was authorized to receive public relief should receive it at both 
 the immediate and eventual expense of the town which bestows it, our 
 vast expenditures in removals and in litigation would at once be 
 eradicated ; and the only plausible objection to such a course is the 
 avenue it may open to frauds, and the disproportionate burthen it 
 may impose on different towns. But cannot the Legislature inflict 
 such severe penalties on the transportation of paupers, by force or 
 fraud, from one town to another, as will check most offences of that 
 character ? In addition to their severity, a certainty that so many will 
 feel interested to enforce them by prosecutions, must prevent much 
 transgression. Mere vagrant beggary, also, will not greatly increase, 
 if punished by apprehension and confinement to labor ; and it always 
 should be so punished, because whoever is able to "compass heaven 
 and earth " to importune others, is able to work himself. But should 
 it, contrary to our expectations, considerably increase, the public 
 expenditures in removals and litigation would still be saved, and those 
 for maintenance will not be augmented, as the change will only be in 
 the form of relief. Persons from other States, who become paupers, 
 could then, as now, be sent home, if their infirmities permitted, and 
 the distance was small. In respect to the relative burthen on each 
 town, it would not, in a series of years, exhibit any essential difference 
 
MARTIAL LAW. 485 
 
 from the burthen imposed by our present laws. On the contrary, the 
 proportion now is so diversified, that, after a repeal of those laws, the 
 equality would probably be greater. This repeal, too, beside the pre- 
 vention of incidental and legal cost, would effect an improvement in 
 the general economy of towns in the management of the poor. To 
 check the voluntary incursion of paupers from other places, towns 
 would furnish a maintenance no more sumptuous than necessity 
 required, and, for the same purpose, would compel the poor to perform 
 all the labor their ability might permit. It is obvious that these indi- 
 rect consequences, by lessening the annual expenses of mere mainten- 
 ance, will be almost as useful to the public as the direct consequences 
 before mentioned. 
 
 Should a total repeal of our laws in respect to settlement be deemed 
 inexpedient, these incidental and legal expenses might possibly be 
 reduced, by greater difficulty in the methods to obtain future settle- 
 ments ; and, possibly, by the organization of a cheaper tribunal than 
 courts of law to adjudicate upon pauper questions. 
 
 But on these points no improved system has been matured by us : 
 and, after much reflection, we doubt whether any change, short of a 
 total repeal, would effect a very sensible reduction of this class of 
 expenses. 
 
 All which is respectfully submitted. 
 
 LEVI WOODBURY, 
 THOMAS WHIPPLE, Jun. 
 
 June 9, 1821. 
 
 MARTIAL LAW.* 
 
 The chair called the committee to order, and directed that the bill 
 of rights should first be read through, and afterwards be read by 
 clauses. 
 
 [The bill of rights was here read.] 
 
 Article 34 reads thus : 
 
 " No person can, in any case, be subjected to law martial, or to any pains or pen- 
 alties by virtue of that law, except those employed in the army or navy, and except 
 the military in actual service, but by authority of the Legislature." 
 
 * A speech made in convention to amend the constitution of New Hampshire, 1850, 
 against the power to declare martial law- 
 
 41* 
 
486 PROTESTANT TEST FOR HOLDING OFFICES. 
 
 Judge Woodbury moved to strike out " but by authority of the Legis- 
 lature," which, he said, authorized the Legislature to apply the law mar- 
 tial to citizens in private life ; and he would allow no Legislature to apply 
 to him the cat, at the drum's head. This could not be done without abol- 
 ishing the whole constitution ; and the power was not necessary. It would 
 not be tolerated, except in cases of war ; and scarcely then, even in the 
 army. He spoke of the law martial separate from the military code. 
 The fact was, there was no law martial. It was no law. It was a 
 contempt of law. If we ever get into such a state of society that any 
 man must be tried at the drum-head by a court martial, the founda- 
 tion of society was broken up. This power belonged to the General 
 Government in time of war, if anywhere ; but they had never dreamed 
 of applying the law martial to persons in civil and private life. 
 
 The motion prevailed unanimously. 
 
 PROTESTANT TEST FOR HOLDING OFFICES.* 
 
 Being opposed to the test, that some of our principal offices shall 
 not be filled except by persons of the Protestant religion, I ask leave 
 to offer a few reasons for it. I do it quite as much to vindicate our 
 fathers in part for inserting it, as myself for resisting it. Constitu- 
 tions, it is conceded, ought to be durable instruments, being the great 
 fundamental laws passed by the people, and lasting at times, as ours 
 has, without a shadow of a change, for half a century ; yet I am willing, 
 when a provision like this becomes hostile to the tolerant spirit of 
 the age and a more enlightened public opinion, to expunge it at once 
 from our system of government. I do this, too, the more readily at 
 the present moment, in order to present another illustration to the 
 world how easily laws, and even constitutions, where objectionable, can 
 be changed and rechanged in this free country, without a resort to vio- 
 lence, and to measures treasonable to public liberty, and the safety, as 
 well as best interest, of our blessed Union. Nor is it that I oppose 
 religion, but support it. I am neither deistic nor innovating rashly. 
 
 On a little examination, it will be found that this test crept into the 
 constitution originally under a temporary impulse, and without having 
 
 * A speech made in State convention to amend the constitution of New Hampshire, 
 1850, against religious tests for holding office. 
 
PROTECTANT TEST FOR HOLDING OFFICES. 487 
 
 any influence on the affairs of the State practically, as they then stood. 
 This is the vindication of our fathers. 
 
 Tradition says — and I probably had it, in early life, from the vener- 
 able parent of the member from Epping (Mr. Plumer), — that parent, 
 the Nestor of the politicians of that generation, and sole survivor of 
 the convention of 1791 — that the provision was inserted, in 1784, to 
 repel taunts which had been flung out by some, after the Trench alli- 
 ance, that there was to be an alliance also with the French religion, 
 and the establishment of it here. The provision fell then still-born, — 
 so few Catholics existed in the State. But, in 1791, the impropriety 
 of retaining it on principle became so manifest, that after one or two 
 ineffectual efforts, the convention voted to erase it, and a majority of 
 the people concurred with them ; yet not being quite two-thirds, the 
 provision remained, though against the will of a decided majority. 
 
 The principle of the test was even then so odious, that, as Catholics 
 increased since in the State, from a mere handful, another convention 
 would, I think, long ere this, have been called for expunging this 
 alone, had they become numerous, or had the test been much more 
 than a brutum fulmen, or used practically to oppress them. If any 
 soreness against Catholic persecutions of the Puritans abroad mingled 
 with this, and rendered prejudices stronger with some against erasing 
 the test, they ought, for more recent persecution by Laud and the 
 Episcopalians in England, to have excluded them also. But it was 
 right to exclude neither. Now, under more auspicious circumstances, 
 we have, and I trust will improve, the opportunity to do justice to all. 
 There is now no dread of French influence, or French religion. The 
 rights of all Christians at least to equal freedom and power in our sys- 
 tem of government have become a practical question, and should, of 
 course, be settled on broad, enlightened and humane principles. Fifty 
 years, with their discussions and researches and experiments, have 
 poured a flood of light over the true nature of liberty of conscience, and 
 all its great safeguards. Let us, then, do what our fathers themselves 
 would, if now living, under increased light and experience. 
 
 How does the question stand, under republican principles of govern- 
 ment ? By them, constitutions and laws are made more to protect 
 rights than confer them. They are made for protecting liberty, equal- 
 ity, conscience, property and life, rather than to give most of these, 
 or to establish any particular set of religious opinions. This is not 
 that religion is a minor concern, and not, in some view, the greatest for 
 an immortal being, but rather that religion is a concern between God 
 and man, and seldom to be interfered with by governments. Such 
 intolerant interference has caused oceans of blood to flow, and millions 
 to perish at the stake ; and was one of the great causes which expelled 
 our fathers to a wilderness, and the mercy of savage foes. The repub- 
 lican government afterwards established here should, if true to repub- 
 lican principles, shield all in their religious tenets, while conducting 
 peacefully, and protect all in their pursuits and worship, however 
 
488 PROTESTANT TEST FOR HOLDING OFFICES. 
 
 different, while acting as good citizens ; or it becomes suicidal, and, like 
 despotism, persecutes differences of opinions, and introduces the gross- 
 est irregularities. 
 
 How does the question stand, on the principles of our bill of rights 1 
 
 It is forced to admit that each sect should enjoy, and it does now 
 enjoy here, the privilege to hold property. If to hold that, why not 
 to protect it by laws, which each helps to make ? It concedes to each 
 sect the right to sue for injuries to character, for injuries to children 
 and wife, and to worship God in freedom. Why not, then, let them 
 aid in legislating to protect all these ? You hold out the husk, but 
 withdraw the kernel. You allow fire-arms, but neither gunpowder 
 nor lead, to load them and make them effective. In the bill of rights 
 you pledge, also, to all sects, equality ; but afterwards, by this test, you 
 make all but Protestants unequal. You promise entire freedom of 
 conscience to all, and treat it in the fourth article as so high a privi- 
 lege as not to be in any way alienable, and yet you leave others 
 than Protestants defenceless as to it, by disfranchising them from filling 
 offices to secure it by legislation. 
 
 It is contrary to the Declaration of Independence, and of the very 
 first article in your bill of rights, declaring all men equal. You do 
 not thus give to all men equal privileges. It is, also, in the teeth of 
 the same bill of rights, to say one sect shall not be subordinate to 
 another, and still disfranchise one, or let one hold offices forbidden to 
 others. It is likewise contrary to all sound experience and reason, to 
 say, as we do, that Catholics may vote, but not be voted for ; and that 
 they may be well competent for one duty, and not the other. So it is 
 inconsistent to say, as we do, that they may be jurors or judges, yet 
 not legislators ; or agree, as we do in the constitution of the Union, that 
 Catholics may be fit and safe for members of Congress, senators, cab- 
 inet officers, — yea, presidents, — and yet denounce them as unfit and 
 unsafe at home to represent one hundred and fifty polls in one of our 
 small townships. It is, in truth, much like the great grievance which 
 led to our Revolution, — taxation without representation. All other 
 than Protestant sects are virtually deprived of representation, as they 
 are made ineligible to the Legislature. Their opinions and wishes are 
 unheard there from themselves. They are branded. They are driven 
 forth as with the mark of Cain, for servitude and ignominy. 
 
 Why not as well explicitly say — and not do it covertly — that none 
 but Protestants are fit for a republic ? Why not say that Catholic 
 Maryland is unfit? Catholic Ireland? Catholic France? Why 
 halt at half-way measures'? Why not say it is a mere creed in 
 religious faith, and not the mind, heart, morals, which render men 
 suitable for self-government ? Or, that we establish government for 
 the former alone, and not to secure liberty, character, property and 
 life? 
 
 Indeed, this test debars man from what we allow to the degraded 
 African, as he is eligible here to hold office, as well as to vote. It 
 
PROTESTANT TEST FOR HOLDING OFFICES. 489 
 
 seems often to have been overlooked, likewise, that these tests are 
 restraints or chains on those who make them, as well as on others. 
 The Protestant himself cannot now vote here for a Catholic, any more 
 than a Catholic can vote for one, though the candidate may be, on all 
 hands, confessedly the best qualified man for State representative, 
 senator or governor. 
 
 If urged that the power to make such tests in constitutions exists, it 
 is no more an argument for the moral and political right to do it, than 
 it is, because we have the naked power, that we have also the moral 
 and political right, to unite church and State, create an inquisition, or, 
 having stripped other sects of the privilege to hold office, to go further, 
 and rob them of equal rights to earth, air, fire and water, and the same 
 hopes and means for happiness, both in time and eternity. One pro- 
 fession alone in business might, on a like ground, be admitted to sit in 
 the Legislature, such as merchants or lawyers. While the present test 
 continues, it is with an ill-grace we can call other countries bigoted, 
 who, like England, have emancipated the Catholics, and made contri- 
 butions for their education. All the former fears, as to their numbers 
 or political principles, have now become groundless. In most Catholic 
 countries, Jesuitism is banished, and the inquisition abolished, and the 
 Pope himself has become quite a reformer and republican ; and Catho- 
 lics generally are not believed, in morals or the religious sentiment, to 
 be behind the age, or the true standard for public liberty. What other 
 sect shall throw at them the first stone 1 What one vindicate the 
 present exclusion, and not admit that, if other than Protestant sects 
 had a majority here, these last should not also be stripped of power ; 
 and that our ancestors' complaints of penalties and disfranchisements 
 were ill-founded 1 It is doing what we have always censured in others. 
 The error is, that this exclusion concedes, in principle, that religion is 
 to be regulated by a majority, rather than the sincere conviction and 
 conscience of each individual ; or, that only certain sects are moral and 
 intelligent enough to exercise political power, which is fallacious and 
 false, under our systems of free schools and universal education ; or, 
 that reason and Providence cannot uphold correct principles, without 
 our feeble aid and our proscriptions ; and that Deity, or his adorable 
 Son, need persecution of some sects to sustain and render triumphant 
 pure religion. So, if it be insisted that one denomination must be 
 better and more trustworthy than the rest, — which may as well be 
 done, even among Protestants, — why not trust to that one alone, and 
 proscribe all the rest, though Protestant ? Which shall be that special 
 favorite 1 So, which one profession shall, under a like system, rule 1 
 
 What sect do Sidney, or Locke, or Jefferson, or Madison, think fit to 
 be trusted with legislative power ? How is this, too, in our neighbor- 
 ing republics ? Do they thus ostracize a part ? On the contrary, 
 they had the experience of the Revolution to aid them, by the Catho- 
 lic Carrols and Lafayettes, being moral and brave as the most Puri- 
 tanical ; and many others of that creed have fought side by side with 
 
490 PROPERTY TEST. 
 
 us since, at Chippewa and Bridgewater, and under the walls of Mex- 
 ico, and shown that their creed is not deserving proscription. In 
 short, without going further into the question now, it seems, to my 
 mind, not only unjust to other sects, but not reputable to us as a peo- 
 ple, or to the age in which we live, to retain this test longer.* 
 
 PROPERTY TEST.f 
 
 The property test, in our constitution, extends to State representa- 
 tives, senators and governor. Property is also the basis of the 
 districts for the election of senators. I am against the whole. But 
 I shall now confine myself to the recapitulation of a few reasons why, 
 in my opinion, property should not be made a test qualification for fill- 
 ing those legislative offices. It is not that I am hostile to property, 
 or rashly radical, but would set ourselves and myself right before the 
 world. In the first place, the theory of our government is not, like 
 that of some, founded on property, but rather on population, and intel- 
 ligence, and morals. It is mind, and not dead matter, which is to rule. 
 Nor is any republic to be sustained merely by money or land, but by 
 "men, high-minded men, who know their rights, and, knowing, dare 
 maintain." It is to be sustained by virtue, knowledge, fidelity to the 
 constitution and laws, till duly altered, and not by speechless idols and 
 senseless earth. But it has been argued elsewhere that the rich are 
 better qualified to fill offices. But, by our system of free schools, 
 intelligence and sound morals are diffused among the poor, no less than 
 the rich ; and hence, those without much property are often as well 
 educated for the duties of public life as the wealthy. 
 
 The former are not, as in some quarters of the world, serfs or laza- 
 roni, and fit materials for mobs, and insurrections against law and order, 
 
 * Mr. Kavanagh, recently Governor of Maine, and Mr. Taney, Chief-justice of the 
 Supreme Court, Avere Catholics. 
 
 t A speech made in State convention to amend the constitution of New Hampshire, 
 1850, against the property qualification for holding office. 
 
PROPERTY TEST. 491 
 
 but fitted, by industry, religion, and acquirements, to give security to 
 society, and to protect well the rights and liberties of all. It adds 
 strength to this consideration, that the class which may possess prop- 
 erty, and be able to hold office under this test, are by no means, in 
 consequence of it, necessarily possessed of greater virtue, or informa- 
 tion, or patriotism. Gold is not genius, nor is land religion ; nor are 
 the affluent here more likely to possess those talents and morals 
 requisite to fill offices well, than persons in middle or humble life, 
 among our village schools and village churches, and the industrious 
 village workshops, and the surrounding village farms. 
 
 If the public spirit, the public patriotism, and the public talents, 
 which become most useful in public life, are wanting in either class, it 
 is as likely to be in the wealthy as in those of moderate property. The 
 former are exposed to have some vices which the latter arc not. Wealth, 
 also, is far from being always the result of much knowledge, but it is 
 often the result of a lucky accident, or of inheritance ; and the pos- 
 sessor of it is quite likely to think more of wealth than of literature or 
 science, to think more of rank than individual merit, and quite as 
 much of his own interests as of those of the community at large. And 
 however much of wealth one may carry with him into public life, it 
 cannot add an inch to his stature, nor put a new idea into his head, 
 nor suggest one guaranty to the rights of the people, unless it be 
 rights connected merely with property. But it is also objected that 
 those not wealthy have not enough at stake to rule well. Let it be 
 remembered, however, in all this, that the man of humble life has 
 at stake in government, and comes into it to protect, quite as import- 
 ant possessions as the wealthy. They are character, liberty, life. 
 They are all these, in wife, children, and friends. They are property, 
 too, in small quantities, but not the less dear for being small. And 
 if he has not a freehold to be taxed and to defend, he has the proceeds 
 of his daily toil, whether on the farm or in the workshop ; he has a 
 head to think and will, a body able and ready to protect the property 
 and lives of others at the midnight conflagration and at the militia 
 alarm ; and is the bulwark of the State when war assails and jeopard- 
 izes the whole foundations of society, — the whole wealth of the rich, 
 — indeed, the whole possessions of the people, and the whole laws and 
 institutions of the government itself. 
 
 If all this does not entitle him to be eligible to office, — if it does not 
 give him sufficient stake in organized government, and make it suitable 
 to let others vote for him when considered the most worthy, — then well 
 might we say, with Dr. Franklin, that when the property test thus 
 alone renders him qualified or eligible, and that property be a jackass, 
 it would be the jackass, rather than the owner, that had the power and 
 influence in the government. 
 
 It should not be forgotten, in the consideration of this test, that, in 
 expunging it, property will still be protected, and will still exert all its 
 legitimate influences. 
 
492 PROPERTY TEST. 
 
 Whilst I am against its going further, I am as willing as any person 
 that it should possess every privilege which belongs to its appropriate 
 sphere, and be faithfully protected while it helps to maintain govern- 
 ment, and shuns corruption. I do not, like Proudhomme, regard 
 property as robbery, or, like Fourier, think it should be held only in 
 common. Let it, then, continue to exercise the influence which is its 
 natural accompaniment. There let it neither proscribe nor be pro- 
 scribed ; but beyond that, it is its own true policy and good not to 
 intrude or dictate. Nor will it follow, if expunging this test, that men 
 in office will not often possess as much property as this test exacts ; 
 but in such case it will be the man, and not the property, that is 
 elected, and receives, and is entitled to, public confidence. 
 
 Finally, in our bill of rights, we declare that all men are equal in 
 rights. Hence, we cannot confer privileges on one class, possessing 
 freeholds or large personal estate, and withhold them from others, 
 without an open violation of the cardinal principle of equality. A 
 different course might answer in a country where, in the language of 
 Jefferson, some are born booted and spurred, to ride the rest ; but not 
 where, among the Alps of New England, all are born equally free, and 
 equality of rights is considered the great foundation-stone of State and 
 national liberty. By retaining such a test, we tie up our own hands, 
 to place in office at times not the best men. The most popular, the 
 most worthy and useful citizen, in the opinion of all, may still, when 
 an election arrives, happen to possess no freehold, and cannot, there- 
 fore, be voted for. The test then operates against the voter himself, 
 as well as the candidate. If, on the contrary, as has too often been 
 the case, the law as to the test is defeated by fraud, — the rich using 
 their property to confer the qualification temporarily on others not 
 otherwise entitled, — the provision is a snare, and aids only the rich and 
 the friends of the rich, and imparts to wealth an artificial and corrupt- 
 ing influence over all our elections. In early life, in a neighboring 
 State, where property qualifications were required in voters, I have for 
 hours witnessed sham deeds made to qualify them so as to change 
 small majorities. Such subterfuges show the evil tendency of such 
 tests, and strip them of all usefulness in exacting in either the voter or 
 the candidate the habits and responsibilities of the real owner of much 
 property. Without fatiguing the convention with more on this occa- 
 sion, I would only add, that considerations like these have led to the 
 abolition of such tests in many other of our sister States, and in the 
 constitution of the United States, and, in my view, require us to 
 imitate their wise example. 
 
OCCASIONAL LETTERS AND SPEECHES 
 
 ON 
 
 IMPORTANT SUBJECTS. 
 
 42 
 
OCCASIONAL LETTERS AND SPEECHES ON 
 IMPORTANT SUBJECTS, 
 
 RIGHTS OF CATHOLICS.* 
 
 Portsmouth, N. H., June 30th, 1849. 
 
 Gentlemen: — I have received a letter from you, making inquiries on 
 the subject of " the rights of Catholics to establish schools and colleges 
 for the purpose of teaching such useful languages and sciences as they 
 may deem proper, together with the exclusive religious doctrines of the 
 Catholic church." As you deem my views on this of sufficient import- 
 ance to request them, I do not feel at liberty to withhold a reply, con- 
 sidering that there is nothing in the nature of the questions which 
 renders it improper for me to comply, by their connection with the 
 party politics of the day, or their liability to come before the judiciary 
 for decision. This reply will be not in the spirit of an assault on 
 others, who may differ from me in opinion, and especially the majority 
 of the last Legislature of Massachusetts, in refusing to incorporate the 
 College of the Holy Cross, at Worcester, and thus leading you to make 
 the present inquiries. But it will be rather to oblige friends, by 
 answering inquiries of so much interest ; and, in doing it, to exercise 
 and express courteously, yet I hope fearlessly, the same freedom of 
 opinion on this subject, as a citizen, which they have done as legis- 
 lators. 
 
 I consider this as a question going in some views much beyond that 
 of mere " liberty of conscience^ as usually understood, and to which 
 you allude. Such liberty is guaranteed to all in Massachusetts, by 
 the second article of her constitution ; and in most, if not all of New 
 England, as well as in other portions of the Union. Indeed, liberty 
 
 * A letter to George F. Emery and others, of Boston, in respect to the incorporation 
 of a Catholic college in Worcester. 
 
496 RIGHTS OF CATHOLICS. 
 
 of conscience, if restricted so as to embrace only freedom in public 
 worship, is now permitted in Great Britain, as well as France, and 
 several other portions of Europe. 
 
 Even in New Hampshire, which has been much censured on account 
 of some provisions in her constitution bearing unfavorably against all 
 not of the "Protestant religion," there is secured, most cautiously, 
 liberty of conscience to Catholics, no less than to Protestants. 
 
 Thus, in the second section of the bill of rights, it is declared that 
 " every individual has a natural and unalienable right to worship God 
 according to the dictates of his own conscience and reason," — " and 
 no subject shall be hurt, molested or restrained, in his person, liberty, 
 or estate, for worshipping God in the manner and season most agree- 
 able to the dictates of his own conscience, or for his religious profes- 
 sion, sentiments, or persuasion, provided he doth not disturb the pub- 
 lic peace, or others in their religious worship." 
 
 But this sacred right, thus emphatically guaranteed to all in New 
 Hampshire, no less than elsewhere, is only one of the rights connected 
 with religion and the progress of civilization, which is claimed by Cath- 
 olics, in common with other sects, not only in New England, but, per- 
 haps, in all places where exists entire freedom in the worship of God. 
 The other rights usually asked, and asked on the occasion before 
 referred to, are to establish schools and colleges to teach languages 
 and science, as well as their own peculiar tenets of religion. 
 
 If these are involved or implied in liberty of conscience, then the 
 right to that includes the right to these ; and, in securing that by the 
 constitution, as already shown, these also are secured. But one of 
 these questions or claims may not be identical with the other, nor an 
 inseparable incident. Because, to worship Deity freely is a devo- 
 tional act of homage to him by each individual ; but to instruct others 
 in letters or religion is an act of benevolence towards erring men, and 
 differs in form, if not substance, from the other. But all of these are 
 interwoven and invaluable. Without the power to teach the religious 
 doctrines which Catholics profess to believe to be vital to salvation, 
 liberty of conscience would be stripped of many of its attractions and 
 benefits. So the teaching of letters and science where one's own 
 family and denomination can resort, is highly conducive, if not indis- 
 pensable, to preserve equal intelligence and power with others in civil 
 life, and that for which liberty of conscience itself is chiefly designed, 
 viz., the enlightened and unfettered exercise of one's own peculiar 
 faith. 
 
 More detailed reasons why these rights should extend to the teach- 
 ing of literature, as well as religion, are, that intelligence, or a good 
 education, especially in those destined, by a collegiate life, to become 
 preachers, is highly useful in liberating the human mind and heart 
 from error. Otherwise, it might be the blind leading the blind. To 
 those not so destined, it is sowing the seeds of all which is conducive 
 to the able discharge of duty in the professions, in commercial stations, 
 
EIGHTS OF CATHOLICS. 497 
 
 in the arts ; and, indeed, by throwing new lights on the whole path of 
 social life, aids the correct performance of duty in every station, from 
 the humblest to the loftiest. The College of the Holy Cross educates 
 young men, by preparatory studies, either for commercial life, the 
 learned professions, or the priesthood, as may be desired ; and is not, 
 as are the impressions of many, confined exclusively to the last. It 
 would be a marvel, if the region of free schools, of the founders of the 
 earliest colleges and the printers of the first books in America, should 
 now become unwilling to concede, as a right, the power of any citizens 
 to extend the blessings of education ; or should not go further, and 
 encourage or aid all in the duty to manage in the most convenient 
 and effective manner, whether through incorporations or otherwise, the 
 funds raised voluntarily by themselves, or liberally bestowed by 
 others, for such laudable objects, and to extend with them, thoroughly 
 as possible, the rich fruits of literature, science and Christianity. 
 
 So far from discouraging this course, it is imposed as a constitu- 
 tional duty, in both Massachusetts and New Hampshire, that their 
 Legislatures should aid to diffuse both learning and science, as well as 
 religion and morality ; and cherish "the seminaries" of the former. 
 Thus, in section second, chapter fifth, of the constitution of Massachu- 
 setts, it is declared that "it shall be the duty of the Legislatures and 
 magistrates, in all future periods of this commonwealth, to cherish the 
 interests of literature and the sciences, and all seminaries of them." 
 In part first, article third, is the provision in favor of " piety, religion 
 and morality." In the constitution of New Hampshire, part first, 
 sections six and eighty-third, are similar declarations in favor both of 
 religion and literature, as well as the sciences. 
 
 In further support of these views, it may be added, that it is one 
 great topic of congratulation to the liberal and patriotic, as to the teach- 
 ing and support of religion, that in Massachusetts, no less than in most 
 of this country, no union of church and State is tolerated by her peo- 
 ple in her constitution. They speak there for the present and all 
 coming ages, till altered by them, and declare, virtually, that no par- 
 ticular sect shall be allowed to have public assistance forbidden to 
 others, — none alone allowed to have liberty to diffuse its doctrines in 
 modes not open to others, — none alone declared entitled to incorpo- 
 rations or donations which are to be withheld from others. "Each 
 denomination of Christians," as will hereafter be explained more fully, 
 it is guaranteed, " shall be equally under the protection of the 
 law." 
 
 To be sure, in part first, article second, of the constitution of Mas- 
 sachusetts, towns and parishes are permitted to make provision "for 
 the support and maintenance of public Protestant teachers." 
 
 But it will be seen that there is in this nothing prohibitory on any 
 sect of Christians, as a religious society, and much more as a corpora- 
 tion, from supporting their own teachers, or from any society being 
 incorporated for this purpose. And it is still further removed from 
 42* 
 
498 RIGHTS OF CATHOLICS. 
 
 any restriction on any religious denomination, being allowed an act of 
 incorporation to manage its property, while educating young men, like 
 the College of the Holy Cross, preparatory to a commercial life and 
 the professions, as well as for teachers of religion. The only restric- 
 tion in the constitution of either of the States referred to, on any 
 denomination, to form and spread its opinions in the manner deemed 
 by itself most proper, is a restriction imposed on all denominations, — 
 ' : not to disturb the public peace, or others in their religious ivor- 
 ship" 
 
 It would be a wonder if such were not the rights and the practice 
 in this country, so proud of its toleration and equal rights, when in 
 England, once armed with her bloody codes against Puritans, no less 
 than at other times against "Papists," the latter, as well as the former, 
 are now allowed to hold office in the army, navy and Parliament, and 
 permitted to enjoy, not only full liberty of conscience, but the right to 
 teach literature, science, and their peculiar religion, in colleges, and 
 receive some proportionate grants of money, even from the public 
 treasury, to assist them in it, as, a few years since, if not before, at 
 Maynooth. It is mere Protestant ascetidency, not exclusiveness, 
 which is now sought there, though under an alliance of church and 
 State. 
 
 The only objection as to the mode of teaching in the College of the 
 Holy Cross, as different from like institutions among Protestants, is 
 not that it is exclusive in what it teaches as true Christianity ; for so 
 are they generally. But it is that a more exclusive compliance is 
 required to its forms and discipline, or a stricter attendance on its 
 religious instruction. If this be so, yet no more exclusive adoption 
 of its code of faith is demanded, unless believed in ; nor does its course 
 of discipline on the subject prevent many Protestants from sending 
 their children to Catholic institutions, where two of my own have been 
 educated. And if fewer of other denominations attend this than other 
 sectarian colleges, less ground exists for the charge and the fear 
 expressed of their thus proselyting others. 
 
 While the Catholics, also, shall neither ask nor receive money from 
 the public treasury, or from compulsory taxation, no ground exists 
 for another objection, that the school fund, or other resources of the 
 State, will thus be diverted so as not to be used for the benefit of all 
 who may dislike conformity to any particular mode of religious wor- 
 ship. 
 
 If, after all this, the college at Worcester be not entitled to the 
 rank and to the State endowments of a public institution, with the 
 power of conferring degrees, this furnishes no reason why it should 
 not receive an act of incorporation to manage its own property, and to 
 aid in its course of useful instruction, as fully as any private associa- 
 tion may for its purposes. Can it be less entitled to such a facility than 
 every religious parish in the State ? than a few bank projectors, or 
 manufacturers, or friends to a branch railroad? Have they not a 
 
EIGHTS OF CATHOLICS. 499 
 
 right to equal privileges and favors, in respect to their property? 
 Ought they not to be allowed the same, or as great, legislative means 
 and security for their business, as a few inhabitants in some parish, or 
 a few capitalists in some country village or city ward, when the for- 
 mer are, for some purposes, the organ of one-seventh of the whole pop- 
 ulation of the State, and are devoted to such laudable objects as instruc- 
 tion in letters, science, and religion? 
 
 But, independent of the private rights of all useful associations 
 being equal to receive acts of incorporation, consider a moment, if it 
 be not a public benefit to the State, and indeed the whole country, to 
 have its Catholic population, as well as those of other sects, better 
 instructed in letters and science ? to have their young men better pre- 
 pared, by a due "course of studies," for "commercial" as well as 
 professional life ? especially as they accomplish the laudable object at 
 their own expense, and with general funds derived from the liberal 
 donations of their own friends. And is it not useful to the public — 
 the whole country — to have them open their doors for all young men 
 of all denominations for a like course of study and preparation, if they 
 are willing to receive such instruction as is given to all, and conform to 
 the discipline of the establishment? Besides these facts and reasons, 
 it must be recollected that legislators in this country should be con- 
 trolled by the provisions in the constitutions of their States ; and, 
 whatever they might have the naked power to do on this subject, when 
 not restrained nor regulated by constitutions, they have by these con- 
 stitutions no authority to give a preference by incorporations to one 
 denomination over another, — no power to establish a union of church 
 and State with any one of them ; and that the whole code of toleration 
 and free principles on which our American institutions rest is opposed 
 to any such discriminations. Most of our constitutions expressly 
 guarantee each sect against any preference of others, in any way what- 
 ever. Hence this liberty to teach religion or literature on equal terms 
 becomes a constitutional right in the members of each denomination, 
 and one which Legislatures are not justified to disregard or refuse, any 
 more than any other constitutional right. Thus, in the third article, 
 and again in one of the amendments, to the constitution of Massachu- 
 setts, it is explicitly provided that " every denomination of Christians, 
 demeaning themselves peaceably and as good subjects of the common- 
 wealth, shall be equally under the protection of the law ; and no subor- 
 dination of any one sect or denomination to another shall ever be 
 established by law." So, in New Hampshire, as she is among the 
 New England States to whom you refer, is a like provision, almost 
 verbatim et literatim, in the sixth article of her bill of rights, though 
 she is often taunted as the most intolerant towards Catholics. These 
 clauses furnish a new clear and constitutional guaranty against 
 allowing any privileges to other sects which are not allowed to Cath- 
 olics. It therefore follows, that if Unitarians, or Calvinists, or Meth- 
 odists, are permitted to have acts of incorporation to hold and manage 
 
500 RIGHTS OF CATHOLICS. 
 
 such portions of their property as is destined to assist in teaching let- 
 ters, science, and religion, so as to use it with more convenience and 
 efficiency, and confer honorable diplomas and degrees, it is manifest 
 that Catholics should be permitted the same, in order to be "equally 
 under the protection of the law" and to prevent any "subordina- 
 tion of any one sect or denomination to another" So, if the for- 
 mer persuasions may teach the tenets of their own faith only, under 
 such acts of incorporation, as is constantly done, may not the latter 1 
 and must they not be allowed to do it, or the equality violated which 
 the constitutions of both of these States secure ? If they are all Chris- 
 tians, — if they all believe in one revelation, and trust in the atone- 
 ment of one Saviour, — is not the constitution of both States designed 
 to be their common aegis against partiality and unequal discriminations 1 
 And is not the predominance of one or the other sects to be left to the 
 people, as worshippers and believers, rather than to Legislatures, by 
 unfortunately showering privileges and favors on one which it with- 
 holds from another ? 
 
 When equal protection to all is objected to by some, the reason 
 assigned is, that the teaching in the College of the Holy Cross is 
 exclusively of its own religious tenets, and hence is not to be encour- 
 aged by an act of incorporation ; — forgetting that, in most colleges, as 
 at Cambridge and Amherst, no less than Andover, or Newton, or 
 Wilbraham, it is also in practice similar ; forgetting, too, that it is 
 expected to be similar, as associations of no denomination can be sup- 
 posed willing, unless hypocrites, to teach what they do not believe ; 
 and, though persons of another faith may be allowed to attend those 
 institutions, it is well known that those of another feith will not be 
 allowed to instruct in them; and that conversions to the Catholic 
 religion, one of the objections to an incorporation here, are likely to be 
 less frequent from other sects, the more exclusive they are in Worces- 
 ter in confining their instructions to their own denomination. 
 
 But how unphilosophical is the fear that truth is not likely to pre- 
 vail where reason is left free in society "to combat error;" that, 
 "crushed to earth," she is not able to rise again; and Christianity 
 itself, the revelation from God, the hopes, promises, and glories of his 
 only Son, cannot triumph, unless aided by feeble man with disabilities 
 and disfranchisements of Catholics ! As if our holy, heaven-descended 
 religion could not stand firm, or advance over the earth, with the strong 
 tide of public opinion in its favor, and all its Divine supports, and no 
 persecuting, powerful paganism to thwart or intimidate, when it has 
 spread and triumphed in defiance of the latter, and of every machination 
 of infidelity ; and as if our Saviour, or his disciples, ever condescended 
 to ask any discriminations, any peculiar protection or monopolizing 
 assistance, from the civil laws, whether Jewish or Gentile ! 
 
 But the Catholic religion is believed by some to abound in error, 
 and therefore it is argued that a right exists to treat it with partiality, 
 and inflict on it disabilities. Would not this be persecuting its mem- 
 
RIGHTS OF CATHOLICS. 501 
 
 bers for opinion's sake ? Besides this, it is a matter of constitutional 
 right, and not of mere discretion, that all Christian sects be here treated 
 with equal favor ; and Catholics are, it is believed, not denied to have 
 some small claims to be a Christian sect. Were it merely a matter of 
 loose discretion, or expediency, then some of the collateral inquiries might 
 be pertinent and proper which have been indulged in as to the com- 
 parative excellences of that and other sects, and the usefulness or 
 expediency of encouraging their colleges by acts of incorporation. As 
 it is, however, a constitutional right, I would only add, in connection 
 with some of the comparisons made against their prayer, that when 
 the Catholics in Massachusetts exceed one-seventh of the whole popu- 
 lation, it can hardly be pretended that their importance in numbers is 
 not enough to entitle them to the conveniences and legal protection for 
 their . property and rights which are open and granted to other sects. 
 When they already have a college established, funds collected, and a 
 respectable attendance of students, it cannot be pretended that as much 
 occasion does not exist as is usual with other sects for requesting an 
 incorporation ; and, more especially, as without it they have been com- 
 pelled, thus far, with much inconvenience, to have their property held and 
 managed in trust by another incorporated college, five hundred miles 
 distant. When abuses are guarded against by proposing in this incor- 
 poration to empower the Legislature to visit and examine all the con- 
 cerns of the college, and when it must be unjust to future Legislatures 
 t;o apprehend that all errors will not be speedily corrected, it does not 
 answer to urge the danger of abuse against it. Nor can it be pre- 
 tended that the course of instruction will be illiberal, narrow-minded, 
 or behind the wants of the age, when this college educates all by a 
 preparation and course of study fitted for commercial and professional 
 life, if desired, no less than for ecclesiastical stations. 
 
 In short, are we to be asked to stop before an incorporation, and 
 argue the equal rights of Catholics to it as a sect, on more general 
 grounds of their position in the world, past or present, when the denom- 
 ination is claimed by its members to have been for several centuries 
 the great depository and sole expounder of Christianity ? When some 
 of its clergy, during that period, have been eulogized by Protestants 
 as the most devoted missionaries and martyrs of the cross, in every 
 quarter of the globe ? When the revival of letters and the diffusion 
 of civilization over Europe are admitted by all to have been under 
 their auspices ? When their tenets now not only predominate in sev- 
 eral of the most powerful and enlightened kingdoms there, but Amer- 
 ica itself was discovered by Catholics, and large portions of it are now 
 peopled by those of that faith, and its doctrine preached by them to 
 improve the semi-barbarians both in Africa and Asia? Under these 
 circumstances, let me again inquire if it is necessary to meet and argue 
 its tendencies, its equal right to toleration and legal protection, or 
 the soundness of its doctrines compared with other persuasions ? as, 
 for instance, whether it differs more or less from the standard of those 
 
502 EIGHTS OF CATHOLICS. 
 
 who landed at Plymouth Rock, than Unitarians do, or Episcopalians 1 
 If our fathers, after having felt the lash of persecution from the latter, 
 as well as from Catholics, felt willing to forget and forgive, and bound 
 themselves sacredly to secure liberty of conscience and equal rights to 
 all, are we so much wiser, or more honest, as to be justified in break- 
 ing their solemn engagements ? If, as their opponents charge, Cath- 
 olics, at some places and times, have slid into abuses and persecution, 
 let me ask what sect has long been without abuses, and is privileged 
 to throw the first stone ? How few have been without some Servetus 
 burnt at the stake, some Roger Williams driven into exile, or some 
 Bunyan or Baxter imprisoned in dungeons ! Or, if this be because 
 some other sects have produced heroes and martyrs and jurists, schol- 
 ars and statesmen, are we to forget how Catholic Littleton and Bulwer 
 wrote on law, or Sir Thomas More administered it ? or how some of 
 the Catholic Edwards and Henrys fought? or how Catholic Eenelons 
 have preached ? or how all our ancestors, and, indeed, all the piety, 
 genius, and chivalry of Europe, once bent before the Catholic banner 
 of the cross? Or, in truth, how the early Catholics of Maryland 
 conducted themselves in toleration, compared with the early Puritans 
 of a part of New England ? 
 
 We are not the apologists of the errors or abuses of any denomi- 
 nation. We merely mean to say that none should criminate or dis- 
 franchise for what all practise under the temptation of power, when 
 long possessed, and little restrained by law and public opinion. Differ 
 we may, in some respects ; differ we do, and differ we must, while 
 independent and free. But I exercise only ordinary candor, in being 
 willing to admit, for Catholics as well as Protestants, that some of their 
 supposed defects have belonged to the ages when they flourished most. 
 Some, too, belonged to the race, or country, or form of government, 
 with which they existed. All sects seem to have acted often as was 
 suited or well adapted to those circumstances ; and hence their errors, 
 when occurring, were not so mischievous in their consequences as they 
 otherwise might have been, and, ere long, were usually followed by 
 improvements and reforms, which grew, in some degree, out of 
 improvements in arts and sciences, in manners and governments, and 
 the freer workings of that Divine genius in Christianity, which must 
 pervade, more or less, all sects under its dominion, and produce, in 
 due time, examples of humanity and reforms in society, which are 
 gradually changing the world for the better in every age, and advanc- 
 ing civilization wherever the Bible spreads, and breathes a purer life 
 into the dead bones of heathenism. 
 
 This is hardly a time, too, for odious comparisons between Cath- 
 olics and other religious sects in this model republic of ours, when 
 Catholic countries now lead the van in reforms of government in 
 Europe. Nor is it the time to revive discriminations and buried ani- 
 mosities, prejudices and by-gone feuds; to restore, for example, the 
 annual festival here of burning the Pope in effigy, or "popish coffee- 
 
RIGHTS OF CATHOLICS. 503 
 
 houses, where," according to Macaulay, in England, "good Protest- 
 ants believed Jesuits planned over their cups another great fire, and 
 cast silver bullets to shoot the king;" when we are just fresh from 
 public meetings, called by all parties, to eulogize the Pope as having 
 taken the lead in political improvements in Europe, and when the seat 
 of his power, both temporal and spiritual, has become the seat of liberal 
 principles, and this country, without regard to sect or party, is prepar- 
 ing to give triumphal processions, and shower princely hospitalities, on 
 the Catholic Father Mathew, for his labors in one of the greatest 
 reforms of the age. But it seems rather to be an era to vindicate 
 among us the equal rights of all belonging to the great brotherhood of 
 Christianity, to exert our sympathies for all, and encourage concord 
 and peace with all, since one revelation and hope are the guides and 
 support of all. It seems rather a fit occasion to show how all, though 
 differing in details, may yet harmonize, and enjoy like privileges in 
 peace, through the love and fraternal spirit of the Gospel of peace, 
 which they all profess to inculcate. We can thus demonstrate that 
 the very abundance of sects is a great security against overgrown 
 power and oppression by any one of them ; and can, as we should, and 
 can in this way only, uphold with success and impartiality the great 
 principle of equal toleration guaranteed by our fathers to all Christian 
 denominations. This great principle of equal toleration involves, as 
 we have before seen, equal protection by law to all, and constitutes one 
 of the chief corner-stones of our free institutions. Well might our 
 fathers so establish it, not only from their own sorrowful experience in 
 a different course, both in suffering and inflicting persecution, but from 
 the beauty and justice of the doctrine itself of equal toleration and 
 equal protection, and from the reciprocal advantages derived from it in 
 our Revolution, and which then foreshadowed so strikingly in battle and 
 public council what has since been repeated in every station in society. 
 Catholic Carroll then signing the Declaration of Independence, and 
 defending our liberties in Congress ; Catholic Lafayette bleeding for 
 us at Brandywine, and hundreds of the same faith since helping us to 
 conquer at Chippewa, and to plant our flag on the battlements of 
 Mexico ; and myriads of them to aid in less brilliant, but not to be 
 forgotten triumphs, such as felling our forests, building our railroads 
 and canals, and filling every department of useful industry. 
 
 You inquire my views as to certain rights of Catholics in New Eng- 
 land generally, and I have answered chiefly as to Massachusetts and 
 New Hampshire. 
 
 I have done this because none of the thirteen States situated in New 
 England made constitutions early, and which were likely to be tinged 
 with some ancient prejudices against Catholics, except those two States. 
 Connecticut and Rhode Island continued to act under their old royal 
 charters, as constitutions ; and Maine formed a part of Massachusetts ; 
 and Vermont, a part of New Hampshire or New York. 
 
 Whatever, then, may have been done by the last Legislature of Mas- 
 
504 RIGHTS OF CATHOLICS. 
 
 sachusetts, in refusing to incorporate the College of the Holy Cross, at 
 Worcester, let none taunt her people at large that they have by their 
 constitution forbidden such an incorporation. On the contrary, by 
 that the doors are open for equal protection to every religious sect of 
 Christianity, and all possess an equal right to facilities for instruction 
 in letters, science, and piety, with the single apparent exception, before 
 explained, as to public ministers in a parish being allowed to be sup- 
 ported by taxes, if Protestants, and if their hearers please. Nor is 
 tiiere a tithe as much of hostility as has been represented, to those of 
 the Catholic faith, in the constitution of New Hampshire ; and much 
 less among her people, and none whatever in her general laws and 
 general history. It is confessed she has one provision beyond that in 
 Massachusetts, and copied from hers, on the subject of the Protestant 
 religion, which is objectionable, but which is not known ever in prac- 
 tice to have been used to countenance the exclusion of Catholics from 
 the equal enjoyment of any right, much less such as are now under 
 consideration. They are still, in other parts of her bill of rights, 
 guaranteed in full liberty of conscience, and in the equal protection of 
 the laws. They are not debarred from the equal rights of suffrage 
 with all other sects ; nor has their right to hold office, from the high- 
 est to the lowest, to or under the General Government, as inhabitants 
 of the State, ever been interfered with. And they may hold all State 
 offices, judicial, ministerial, and financial. But, in an unlucky hour, 
 in 1784, in her second constitution, there happened to be interpolated 
 a qualification for her legislative and chief executive officers — only two 
 classes — that they should be of the " Protestant religion." The cause 
 of this anomaly, and one so directly contradicted by other parts of the 
 constitution, it is difficult to discover, after more than a half-century, 
 and without any printed journal or debates of the constitution. 
 
 Why should a Councillor be required to be a Protestant, and not a 
 Secretary of State, nor a Judge of the Supreme Court? The only 
 solution of the riddle for inserting the provision at all, or, if at all, in 
 so restricted a form, is that handed down by tradition, viz., taunts 
 flung out by the enemies of independence that the French alliance was 
 meant to introduce the Catholic religion, and those qualifications were 
 introduced to disprove such a design. Less was probably thought of 
 its errors in sound theory, as nobody was likely to suffer from it, — no 
 Catholic church then existing in the State, and probably not a dozen 
 scattered members of that denomination. But, being wrong in theory, 
 though nugatory in practice, and there being some increase of Catho- 
 lics within the last twenty years, many of the opponents of these pro- 
 visions have attempted their correction, and labored, with myself, by 
 pen, tongue, and vote, to get so illiberal tests expunged. We did not 
 help to introduce them in 1784, being most of us then unborn ; nor 
 help to retain them in 1792, the time of the last revision of our con- 
 stitution, being then most of us in our cradles. 
 
RIGHTS OF CATHOLICS. 505 
 
 It must be remembered that this constitution provides for no change 
 except once in seven years, and then not by acting on a single point, but 
 opening the whole to a revision by a convention, and their changes to 
 be sanctioned by two-thirds of the people. No convention since 1792 
 has been authorized, partly because a majority of the people have been 
 unwilling to risk the expenses and anticipated evils of other amend- 
 ments, which might be made, for the sake of getting rid of this restric- 
 tion, so inoperative in practice, and which, indeed, so long ago as 1792, 
 I am happy to be able to show that the majority of her people, as well 
 as of the convention, then pointedly condemned. 
 
 Two-thirds being required to make an amendment, after several 
 trials, this test for governor was stricken out in the convention ; and 
 the people sustained that vote by 2319 in its favor, and only 1258 
 against it. But the majority being but 1061, or little short of two- 
 thirds, the exclusion of the test did not prevail, though a decided 
 majority of the votes of the people, as well as of the convention, was 
 in favor of its exclusion. A personal examination of the records shows 
 this clearly. Grant, then, that some countenance for unfavorable 
 discriminations against Catholics has stolen into the constitutions of 
 Massachusetts and New Hampshire, and some in the latter which are 
 not in the former ; they do not affect the present question, as to their 
 right to have the College of the Holy Cross incorporated ; and where 
 they bear against it all, by way of analogy, are overruled and contra- 
 dicted by the paramount provisions, before specified in both States, 
 forbidding any discrimination, to be made between different sects. 
 
 The convention of New Hampshire, it will be seen by its journal in 
 1792, foresaw and predicted this conflict. But the only safe rule of 
 construction, in such cases, is to let the causes in favor of equal rights 
 and the largest liberty prevail over others of a more restricted char- 
 acter. In another clause, part first, section sixth, of her constitution, 
 in connection with this topic, the people of New Hampshire carefully 
 forbid the compelling of any sect " to pay towards the support of the 
 teacher or teachers of another persuasion, sect, or denomination." 
 And her celebrated toleration act of 1819 guarded well against eva- 
 sions of this, and secured well to all sects their constitutional exemp- 
 tions. Indeed, every citizen of that State may feel a pride in the 
 liberality of her constitution in most other respects, and that she has 
 the credit of forming, in December, 1776, one of the first constitutions 
 in the Union established after our independence, though some of the 
 timid and wavering then protested against the step, because the large 
 States, such "as Virginia and New York," had not taken the lead. 
 
 It will thus be seen, in these hasty remarks in reply to your inquir- 
 ies, that I do not concur in the views of those who refused to incor- 
 porate the College of the Holy Cross, at Worcester ; and that, in my 
 opinion, the Catholics possess rights to establish schools and colleges, 
 to teach letters, science, and their own religion ; and are, by the con- 
 43 
 
506 PUBLIC SERVICES APPRECIATED. 
 
 stitutions of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and, it is believed, of 
 every New England State, guaranteed equally to have all legal aid to 
 exercise those* rights which is given to other denominations of Chris- 
 tians. Respectfully, 
 
 LEVI WOODBURY. 
 
 PUBLIC SERVICES APPRECIATED. 
 
 Boston, 10th April, 1841. 
 To the Honorable Levi Woodbury. 
 
 Sir : — On your return to your home, after having retired from the 
 public trust, which has devolved upon you as the Secretary of the 
 Treasury under two administrations, the Democratic County Com- 
 mittee for Suffolk avail themselves of your passing through Boston to 
 express their high sense of the fidelity and perseverance with which 
 you have adhered to and carried out that most important of all the 
 democratic measures now at issue — the separation of the govern- 
 ment from the banks. 
 
 Whatever may be the substitute or changes which the present tem- 
 porary administration may propose in the keeping of the public 
 moneys, it will be matter of congratulation that the administration of 
 Mr. Van Buren, during your direction of the treasury department, 
 practically demonstrated the entire safety, facility and sound and 
 wholesome effects, of the independent treasury system, thus entirely 
 exploding the pretext which so long deterred the people from declaring 
 a national independence of the banks, — that the public revenues could 
 not be kept and disbursed without their direct agency. 
 
 In leaving the treasury free from embarrassment, with ample 
 resources for an economical administration for the present year, you 
 have the satisfaction of having left no grounds of just complaint to 
 your opponents, while you have merited and secured the approbation 
 of your friends. Looking with entire confidence to the restoration and 
 
 * Correspondence with the Boston committee, in regard to his public services as 
 Secretary of the Treasury ; April, 1841. 
 
PUBLIC SERVICES APPRECIATED. 507 
 
 firm consolidation of those democratic measures and principles which 
 you, with the other members of the cabinet, and the executive, have so 
 perseveringly and honorably sustained, we are, with high respect, your 
 obedient servants and fellow-citizens, 
 
 CHARLES A. MACOMBER, Chairman, and 
 A. L. Cushing, Secretary of the 
 
 Suffolk Democratic County Committee. 
 
 Portsmouth, 17th April, 1841. 
 
 Gentlemen : — I beg you to accept my best acknowledgments for 
 the congratulations you offer, on my return home, and the favorable 
 manner in which you are pleased to speak of my public services. 
 
 As the democratic committee for the ancient and honorable County 
 of Suffolk, you express views concerning the safety and wholesome 
 effects of the independent treasury which are entitled to great respect. 
 They have certainly been confirmed by my own experience. 
 
 A national bank appears to be the only substitute generally pro- 
 posed by the opponents of that system. But, aside from the constitu- 
 tional objections to such an institution, and the wide-spread calamities 
 which have followed the management of the last one, if another shall 
 be recommended, on the ground of its being necessary to the fiscal 
 operations of the General Government, the democracy of the country 
 can, like you, point to a practical refutation of this pretence. During 
 the long period of my official connection with these operations, though 
 embarrassed by extraordinary commercial revulsions, the very large 
 collections and disbursements were conducted with promptitude, the 
 whole seven years, without the aid of a national bank for a single day. 
 
 Should it be urged further, that such a bank is necessary to a sound 
 currency (though the General Government has no power over the 
 latter, except to coin money), the same period furnishes a signal con- 
 tradiction to every such argument. For that government, notwith- 
 standing an opposition exceedingly active and virulent, has succeeded 
 in obtaining and using a good currency, in all its vast, wide, and ram- 
 ified concerns, during the whole period it has ceased to employ a 
 national bank. Nor need any State Government ever suffer for the 
 want of a sound currency, if its Legislature has the wisdom to require 
 one, and its public officers possess the firmness to enforce such 
 requirements. The fault, as to the currency, is occasionally in the 
 community itself; when overwhelmed in debt, it yields to a depreciated 
 circulating medium from dependence on those who issue it, or from 
 greater ease both in procuring it and in extinguishing with it their 
 burthensome liabilities. At other periods, the fault is in the agents 
 of the community, who either enact laws founded on bad theories, or, 
 if on good ones, fail to execute them fearlessly in bad times. 
 
 * OF THE ^K 
 
 UNfVERSITY 
 
508 PUBLIC SERVICES APPRECIATED. 
 
 Should a national bank be once more attempted to be forced upon the 
 country, under a pretence of its being necessary to sustain public credit 
 — (I mean, by credit, not mushroom speculations, or bubble hopes, 
 but real, honest confidence, grounded on some substantial basis of 
 property, labor, or considerate enterprise), — let the same democracy 
 point to the same period to confute this pretence also. Let them 
 point to the high pecuniary standing of the General Government, 
 during the last seven years, not only -without the assistance of a 
 national bank, but with all its formidable power arrayed in bitter hos- 
 tility. Yet, under such disadvantages, that government has gone 
 through some expensive wars ; defrayed large current expenditures ; 
 executed numerous great public works ; extinguished Indian titles to 
 many millions of acres of land ; paid off, instead of having created, a 
 permanent debt ; deposited surplus millions with the States, and sus- 
 tained its credit so high as to have it sought from all quarters, in aid 
 of others, at the close of the late administration, to which you so kindly 
 refer. Without enlarging here on this description of its financial 
 affairs, so different from the fancy sketch we have often seen exhibited 
 of its great discredit, utter bankruptcy, and burthensome debt of forty 
 millions, let me ask, if this last has been or is the disordered condition 
 of its finances, how could it have placed with the States near thirty 
 millions of surplus, after defraying all its own expenses ? how could 
 the assurance exist now to ask from it millions more 1 and how could 
 States or capitalists so earnestly seek, as better security, its mere 
 promises and assumptions for others, to the extent of millions on mil- 
 lions more? 
 
 Under our complex system, a great mistake at home, as well as 
 abroad, often occurs from confounding the constitutional distinctions 
 between the powers, rights and duties, of the General and of the State 
 Governments. The latter have, it is true, in several instances, during 
 the above period, exhibited a picture of very different hue, in respect to 
 monied affairs, from that of the former. They must continue to do 
 this till they alone apply the proper remedies, as they alone possess 
 the legal power. The General Government, strictly limited by our 
 fathers, and with much jealousy, to a few specified objects, should, of 
 course, not act beyond its assigned sphere. If operating within that 
 with fidelity and wisdom, seldom will it fail to insure prosperity to 
 its own functions, and security for all the interests intrusted to its 
 charge. But any encroachment on the reserved powers of the States 
 tends inevitably to prostrate every vestige of State rights, and, by 
 usurping authority not delegated either by the people or the States, it 
 betrays them, and is guilty of gross oppression. In such an event, a 
 consolidated government for the whole Union must follow, and end our 
 career in practical monarchy, or in disunion and miserable anarchy. 
 How near we may be to one of these catastrophes, time only can 
 develop. 
 
 But, as you justly intimate, come what may, no event can rob those 
 
PUBLIC SERVICES APPRECIATED. 509 
 
 connected with the last administration of the General Government of 
 the satisfaction which results from the eligible condition in which they 
 have left its credit and resources, by means chiefly of their scrupulous 
 adherence to all the requirements of the constitution. By the removal 
 of the deposites from the United States Bank, and the adoption of the 
 independent treasury, which are usually cited by our opponents in 
 contravention of this position, no powers were exercised except such as 
 were expressly conferred; and, at the same time, the guards and 
 securities for the public revenue have been increased. Instead of thus 
 uniting the powers over the purse and the sword, they have been, by 
 new legal provisions,— passed too on executive recommendation, — more 
 thoroughly separated than ever before ; and the executive control over 
 the principal keepers of the public money has been diminished, by 
 requiring the sanction of one House of Congress to their appointment 
 in each case, instead of leaving their selection, as formerly, to the 
 uncontrolled discretion of a department, or the will and caprice of 
 bank stockholders. As one of the administration which has intro- 
 duced these salutary restrictions, rather than usurped additional 
 powers, I return you sincere thanks for the flattering approbation you 
 are pleased to bestow on us all, on account of that measure. It was a 
 measure which will bear the scrutiny of time, and was in strict accord- 
 ance with those democratic views of the constitution, — whose early 
 and wide restoration I can heartily unite with you in desiring, — as 
 explained by Jefferson and Madison themselves in the memorable con- 
 test of '98, rather than the opposing but open and manly principles 
 of the Hamiltons of that age, or the false glosses since put on the 
 former, whether by temporizing expediency, unscrupulous ambition, 
 hypocrisy or apostasy. 
 
 With great respect, 
 
 Your obedient servant, 
 
 LEVI WOODBUKY. 
 
 Charles A. Macomber, Chairman, and } 
 A. L. Cushing, Secretary of the Suf- > 
 folk Democratic Committee. ) 
 
 43* 
 
510 GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF FREE TRADE. 
 
 GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF FREE TRADE.* 
 
 Several of the ablest minds in the civilized world, during the last 
 half-century, have been devoted to the discussion of the principles of 
 free trade. Little, therefore, which is original and striking, can be 
 suggested on this topic at the present day. But, from peculiar cir- 
 cumstances, the subject is not without interest in this country ; and a 
 revision of some of its general principles may, on this occasion, do 
 some good in helping to correct errors concerning them, both in public 
 opinion and in legislation. 
 
 The misapprehensions about free trade are here the worse to cure, 
 because mingled, in some degree, with the creeds and prejudices of 
 political parties. But though painted so often as a Gorgon or Hydra, 
 this kind of trade seeks, as a general object, only liberty in commer- 
 cial intercourse. Is this not reasonable — right ? Surely, the owners 
 of property ought to be allowed freely to make exchanges of what is 
 their own. In a free government, such liberty would not seem to 
 imply anything either very absurd or very criminal. But the oppo- 
 nents of free trade wish, at times, either partially or wholly, to pro- 
 hibit such exchanges and sales ; at other times, to confine them to par- 
 ticular places, persons, or articles ; and at others, to subject them to 
 regulations vexatious in character, and burdens highly oppressive. 
 
 Hence, a different meaning has been given to free trade, in different 
 countries and at different periods, according as its friends are then 
 struggling against one or another species of restriction. It happens 
 thus that sometimes the term is applied to trade free in all respects, 
 absolutely and unconditionally ; while, at others, it is used in a qual- 
 ified or limited sense, such as trade free from high taxes or unequal 
 ones, and exempt from prohibitions, as well as regulations very onerous 
 and embarrassing. But the express provisions in the constitution of 
 the General Government are such as to render it unnecessary to exam- 
 ine here several incidental questions intimately connected with the prin- 
 ciples of free trade elsewhere. Among them is one whether the home 
 or foreign trade should be made most free ; as here both are alike per- 
 missible by the constitution, and the impolicy of interfering, so as to 
 restrict or diminish either, is believed to be clear, and will soon be fully 
 considered. 
 
 Another question, very material elsewhere, is, how far a tax on 
 exports conflicts with free trade ? But this possesses little interest 
 here ; as here no burden is ever attempted to be imposed directly on 
 exports either to foreign countries or neighboring States, it being 
 expressly prohibited by the constitution. This is fortunate; for 
 nothing short of that wise prohibition would probably have been able 
 
 *A Lecture delivered before the " New York Free Trade Association," March, 1843. 
 
GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF FREE TRADE. 511 
 
 to prevent the disturbing interference, long ere this, of a system of 
 discriminating duties on exports, more sectional, partisan, and odious, 
 than that which has sometimes burdened so heavily our imports. 
 
 But, without entering upon other details connected with the pecu- 
 liarities concerning commerce under our forms of government, it may 
 be useful to review the general principles of free trade, as applicable 
 here, in two separate aspects, — one belonging to our intercourse and 
 exchanges of property at home, and the other to those abroad. Re- 
 specting the former, the system of domestic commerce in this country 
 is much freer than that in most portions of the world. We have no 
 prohibitions even as to alien merchants or alien capital embarking in 
 it. Nor does a single restriction exist on our own people, concerning 
 their residences or occupations, like the castes of India and Egypt. 
 No tolls between different States. No transit duties. No city exac- 
 tions at their gates. This is all as it should be, and as the true prin- 
 ciples of free trade demand, no less than the advancement of our coun- 
 try to those high destinies which belong to, and will thus accompany, its 
 liberal institutions and great natural advantages. Hence, the growth 
 of our home trade has, thus far, been not only larger than our foreign, 
 but unparalleled in history. Untaxed and unfettered, as to either mer- 
 chandise, places, or persons, it has swollen so as to create a demand, 
 from only a few vessels at first, to fleets of them, constituting a mass 
 of tonnage, in the aggregate, exceeding one million and a quarter. 
 This includes an increase, in the way of steam- vessels, from nothing, 
 forty years ago, to the vast number of near a thousand now, and some 
 of them as large in size as formidable ships of war. 
 
 The rapid advance of the tonnage employed in our domestic com- 
 merce may be imputed by some to the regulation requiring it to be 
 American ; but, in fact, the whole amount has probably become no 
 greater than it would have been, if left entirely open and free ; since 
 the quantity of tonnage is varied by the quantity of freights and 
 business, rather than they by the tonnage. This home trade, too, has 
 penetrated all our navigable rivers, however remote ; stretched along 
 not only two thousand miles of sea-coast, but covered immense inland 
 lakes — interior oceans; and it is remarkable how nearly it has 
 approached the gorges of the Rocky Mountains, and how eagerly it 
 aspires to cross, by caravans, boats, and portages, through a line of 
 forts and settlements, even to the Pacific. This will appear the more 
 striking, when we reflect that, less than a century ago, our fathers 
 assembled at Albany, as nigh a frontier, to plan the best system of 
 colonial union for mutual defence against savage aggression ; and that 
 now, St. Louis, a thousand miles further west than Albany, is but a 
 halting-place for business and supplies, to be pushed still thousands of 
 miles further.* What but freedom — untrammelled freedom — could 
 
 * An anecdote, illustrating this, may not be without interest. Only the last autumn, 
 I saw in the family mansion of Mecheck Weare, one of the delegates from New Hamp- 
 shire to Albany on that occasion, the deer-antlers brought home by him from that 
 mission, and which are carefully preserved by his daughter, now ninety years of age. 
 
512 GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF FREE TRADE. 
 
 ever have pushed forward, with such rapidity and greatness, all this 
 immense interior trade, throughout every inhabited portion of our two 
 million and a half miles of territory 'I 
 
 The other meaning of the term free trade, which is interesting here 
 as a practical inquiry, relates to the liberty of commerce abroad that 
 is enjoyed by the citizens of this country. What is our policy in that 
 respect ? what are our rights 1 and what are the restraints on them by 
 usage or by legislation, whether at home or abroad 1 
 
 In relation to this branch of commerce, the friends of free trade 
 here have always advocated the largest liberty. From the start, the 
 whole American people, after becoming an independent nation, evinced 
 unusual solicitude on this subject, in consequence of the colonial vas- 
 salage which had been long imposed on them, and had restricted their 
 commerce so exclusively to the mother country. Throwing off this, 
 with other galling yokes, their motto early became that embodied so 
 beautifully by Jefferson, and worthy to be set in letters of gold : 
 "Peace and friendship with all nations; entangling alliances vrith 
 none" Persevering in this, their commerce abroad was much aided 
 by the long continuance of wars in Europe growing out of the French 
 Revolution ; and this system and those wars, combined, flung into the 
 hands of the United States, as the greatest neutral power, almost the 
 whole carrying-trade of the world. In only twelve or fifteen years, 
 they pushed our commercial growth to an extent unprecedented in the 
 annals of mankind. They swelled the tonnage employed in trade 
 abroad to a greatness never, in our brilliant and most prosperous 
 career, since attained even by ourselves, till a few years previous to 
 the present moment. They increased, in a like manner, our commerce 
 and freights. The aggregate of imports, for some years, exceeded 
 even the amount two or three years ago, and went many millions 
 beyond what it is now. Another striking illustration of the portion 
 of this navigation under the principle of free trade, and without which 
 it could not have existed, that has been devoted to the business of 
 other nations centring here (and not including the freights by us 
 between foreign places), half of our whole large imports at that period 
 were again exported, and carried to every sea and people whose neces- 
 sities, comforts, or luxuries, created a demand for them. 
 
 This position, so favored and fortunate, became, at last, the envy of 
 belligerent Europe ; and, uniting with other causes, provoked orders 
 in council, impressments, Berlin and Milan decrees, unjust confisca- 
 tions, paper blockades, and a series of tyrannical sequestrations, dis- 
 figuring history and civilization some thirty years ago. Then, for the 
 first time since our independence, we were compelled to defend our 
 rights, as a nation, to that free trade on the ocean which had been 
 found not only so consonant to our republican principles, but so con- 
 ducive to our national growth. Then, for the first time in war, was 
 unfurled to the breeze in every sea that glorious flag bearing for its 
 motto the essence of the whole contest, " Free Trade and Sailors' 
 
GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF FREE TRADE. 513 
 
 Rights." That flag conquered in regard to this part of the struggle ; 
 and in no crisis, during the quarter of a century since, has any power, 
 European, Asiatic, or American, ever ventured to renew such a series 
 of aggressions against free trade. So far from this, the firmness, per- 
 severance, and inflexible adherence to our rights, which characterized, 
 in that struggle, the great captain immortalizing its close at New 
 Orleans, again were displayed by him in defence of the same princi- 
 ples in the public councils, while he held the helm of State. Again, 
 too, it succeeded ; and under his administration -were secured indemni- 
 ties for all those aggressions on our free trade by every offending coun- 
 try in Europe, where the claims had not been merged in actual hos- 
 tilities. 
 
 The rights of neutrals thus became better understood over the civ- 
 ilized world. The principles of free trade became more widely acknowl- 
 edged. Liberty of intercourse on every sea is now, in consequence, 
 better protected. Every nation has, and exercises now, the same right 
 with the haughtiest, to make her march "over the mountain wave — 
 her home upon the deep." The ocean is now the practical, as well as 
 theoretical, highway of nations ; and any encroachment attempted, in 
 this age, against such freedom, would justly excite, not only an armed 
 neutrality in the north of Europe, but hostility over all Christendom; 
 and the national power, however great, and circling the globe as it may 
 with its flag, that shall dare again to disturb a principle so well settled 
 in national law as free trade on the ocean, — whether she do it by 
 orders in council, or odious visitations, or rights of inquiry pushed into 
 insolent rights of search, — she will arouse not only the indignation 
 of other powers, but sap her own vast moral as well as political influ- 
 ence, and earlier fall unpitied and unwept. 
 
 As soon as the war of 1812 terminated, our sagacious statesmen 
 sought, by all possible means consistent with public honor and the pub- 
 lic welfare, to secure a permanent establishment of free trade between 
 us and other nations. They regarded it as the strongest security for 
 the rapid growth of all our great interests. Mutual privileges were 
 therefore invited and guaranteed, treaties of reciprocity encouraged, 
 and the road smoothed in various ways to that liberality in national 
 intercourse which is so vital to prosperity, letters, civilization and 
 religion, as well as freedom. It is destined to prove the glad herald 
 of them all to all people. This policy was calculated to open the 
 eyes of the rest of mankind gradually to the utility of promoting 
 a similar spirit in their foreign relations. The intelligent and far- 
 seeing perceived that it would tend first to abolish everywhere, in com- 
 merce, the substitution of mere might for right. All oppressive tolls, 
 under cover of sound dues, or light money, or close seas, would in 
 time cease. All seizures, under the impotent plea of State necessities, 
 would be proscribed, retaliatory prohibitions be deemed suicidal, per- 
 manent non-intercourses be hooted at, and Japanese exclusions be 
 prostrated. In the train of all these reforms would come next a spirit 
 
514 GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF FREE TRADE. 
 
 of enterprise, truth, and reason, which, ere long, must penetrate even 
 the ridges of the Himalaya Mountains ; carry thither useful fabrics 
 from abroad as freely as to the Alleghanies. or Alps, or Andes ; explore 
 thus the hidden recesses of China ; and, in time, open the heart of 
 Africa to a liberal foreign commerce, and accompany it with a higher 
 civilization in the place of savage slavery. It will prove to be the 
 only effective mode to abolish man-stealing and the traffic in human 
 blood, as it will substitute for such atrocities a better and wiser code 
 of faith and practice ; cultivate more suitable articles for consumption ; 
 furnish better examples ; make commercial exchanges of the products 
 of honest industry, instead of the captives of war or the spoils of 
 plunder ; as well as cherish, in all things, a more enlightened sense of 
 right, duty, and humanity. 
 
 Again, under such influences, we shall no more behold a continental 
 system in Europe consigning to the flames useful and costly merchan- 
 dise on account of a dislike to its origin, nor the condemnation of 
 innocent neutrals for having unwillingly been spoken to by a belliger- 
 ent on their voyage, or for using in their cabins merely a carpet or 
 rug of hostile manufacture. Nor, again, shall we witness, in civilized 
 regions, white men kidnapped by impressment, and forced to fight 
 against friends, or serve a government they loathe, and defend princi- 
 ples they abhor. Indeed, coursing over the annals of all ages, we 
 shall find that half their wars have either originated from hostility to 
 free trade, or would have been prevented had truer notions of political 
 economy prevailed. It is national partiality, unnatural restraints, 
 retaliatory obstacles, and false theories and practices, of one kind and 
 another, in trade, which oftenest excite disaffection at first, then 
 complaint, and, in the end, collision and violence. Commerce, like 
 water or air, cannot be long deprived of a free circulation without fatal 
 maladies to business, as all of them naturally and healthfully seek a 
 level or equilibrium. If governments aim at exclusive privileges over 
 others, or attempt monopolies, or resort to prohibitory restrictions on 
 the exchange of useful articles, or throw fetters of any kind over free- 
 dom in foreign intercourse, they often injure themselves the worst. 
 They cut off their own people from all those practical blessings of free 
 trade which are neither few nor small; for trade of that kind, as 
 defined by me, is not what some ridicule as a mere abstraction. It is 
 not a beau ideal, never to be realized, or Utopian, but frequently 
 exists, and involves principles winch come home to our business and 
 bosoms in daily life ; and if laws are equal, just, and reciprocal, as 
 they should be, those principles are felt in the market-house, the 
 workshop, and in the street or plough-field, and on the ocean as well 
 as the land. Hence, if we can sell any of our exports higher in 
 France than here or in England, and purchase articles imported lower 
 in England than here or in France, is it not, as a general rule, clearly 
 our interest to do both ? Why, then, should laws or treaties be made 
 to counteract either ? Freedom of commerce, in this way, is the life- 
 
GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF FREE TRADE. 515 
 
 blood to both purchaser and seller ; while restrictions or prohibitions, 
 under the idea that all nations must buy or sell at home only, or buy 
 only where they sell, however patriotic in design, are unphilosophical 
 and crude, — are fatal to commerce, and sacrifice the prosperity of the 
 w T hole and the best interests of society to narrow or selfish views. 
 One of the least mischiefs from such a course has been the wars thus 
 engendered, and the lives and wealth thus wasted. For, beyond all 
 that, it has been prolific in other evils. How 1 It has obstructed the 
 wider diffusion of arts and letters, and, in many countries, retarded 
 the progress of civilization itself for centuries. Indeed, it will be 
 found, through the whole annals of the human race, that all kinds of 
 improvement have been most rapid where commerce was freest and 
 greatest ; and that it seems as useful to advance man from barbarism, 
 as are winds, waves, and steam, to promote navigation. Without it, 
 as without them, there may, to be sure, be motion and intercourse ; 
 but they would usually be slow, awkward and unprofitable, rather 
 than forward and upward, in a manner aspiring to conquer all other 
 difficulties, as well as time and space. You can see, with a little cal- 
 culation, that not a tithe of the population of many ancient and modern 
 cities could have been maintained at all, much less so highly improved, 
 without the aid of a large and liberal foreign commerce. And if the 
 lessons as to the growth of Tyre and Carthage, Venice, Genoa, and 
 Antwerp, are wasted on us as a nation ; if we become exclusive, cap- 
 tious, and prohibitory, in our intercourse abroad ; if we move back- 
 wards in the cause of free trade, while much of Europe is moving 
 onward, — yearly diminishing some of its rigors, and getting more of 
 our locomotives to facilitate intercourse, as well as more of our free 
 trade principles, — we shall, ere long, be outstripped in every kind of 
 improvement. We shall even be distanced, instead of running, as 
 becomes us under our free institutions and great natural advantages, 
 first among the foremost in all which is progressive, liberal, and 
 glorious. 
 
 To be convinced that half our elements of growth and greatness are 
 likely to be lost if we indulge in hostility to foreign commerce, it is only 
 necessary to reflect a moment that this kind of commerce, for which 
 freedom is desirable in the broadest sense, is that which brings home 
 to us the comforts and excellences of all climates, which carries ours 
 to all. It thus increases their value and enriches us, while it obliges, 
 liberalizes and improves, both ourselves and others. It is this com- 
 merce which found a new world. It is this, too, which opened a new 
 ocean-path to India, which doubled both the great capes of both con- 
 tinents, and is discovering the thousand islands of the Pacific, as well 
 as penetrating the icebergs of the poles. It is the spirit of this com- 
 merce which alone, as before intimated, can not only carry high civil- 
 ization into the heart of Africa, but pervade Japan and all branches 
 of the Mogul race, surmount the Chinese walls of high protection, 
 throw open one-third of the whole human race to new influences, and 
 
516 GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF FREE TRADE. 
 
 diffuse, permanently, better arts, letters, and religion, among the four 
 hundred millions of slaves, bigots, and savages, who yet constitute half 
 the family of man. Religion may alone preach through her devoted 
 missionaries, and the schoolmaster may wander abroad wider and 
 wider ; but they will avail little, unless the spirit of this commerce 
 precedes them as a pioneer, or accompanies them for defence and prac- 
 tical blessings, as well as to keep interest fresh, and intercourse open, 
 frequent, and durable. Otherwise, millions after millions may con- 
 tinue to die as immured and unelevated in the scale of human rights, 
 as countless convents of the Jesuits have, for ages, in both hemispheres 
 of the globe. It is this same spirit, free, fearless, and indomitable, 
 which has already broken down the feudal system over much of 
 Europe ; closed, in most places, the dungeons of the inquisition ; and 
 aided everywhere to prostrate the idols of Paganism, and disseminate 
 light, literature, and a purer faith. 
 
 Another civilizing effect of foreign commerce has been colonization, 
 and, in its train, the substitution of refinement and arts for the rude- 
 ness of barbarism. In the newly-colonized regions, the plough soon 
 supplants the spear, — the loom, the arrow ; and all the comforts of a 
 more advanced society take the place of the nakedness, starvation, 
 ignorance, brutality and sufferings, of savage life. It is true that 
 other objects have led to the establishment of some colonies in both 
 ancient and modern times, and others still have been mixed up with 
 those of commercial gain ; but commerce has oftenest been the pre- 
 dominant motive, and, as free or restricted, has pushed forward, faster 
 or slower, an increase in wealth, numbers, and glory. Eventually, if 
 their trade continued to be entrammelled too much, the love of greater 
 freedom has entirely prostrated every barrier — asserted independence ; 
 and a larger liberty in commerce, as well as government, has not only 
 been vindicated, but bravely established. Then, like us in our colo- 
 nial state, they have taken their independent stand among nations ; 
 and, like us, in Greece from Egypt, or in Carthage from Tyre, or the 
 south of France and east of Spain from older portions of the shores 
 of the Mediterranean, they have combated the tyranny of colonial 
 parents, and, by freer systems of trade, not only increased in power 
 and fame, but proved able to sustain separate sovereignties, and 
 advance, with rapid and improving strides, the destinies of our race. 
 In short, looking to freedom of trade in foreign intercourse, each 
 nation best promotes its own interests in a durable manner, by allow- 
 ing every other one in that respect to be equal, and establishing such 
 free communication between each as ought to exist between individ- 
 uals of the same nation. 
 
 We are accustomed, in commendation, to speak of the great republic 
 of letters ; but commerce forms a republic still wider. It often pre- 
 cedes, and always fosters letters. It defends, as well as often diffuses, 
 a purer religion ; and is out of place if it tolerates either political ine- 
 quality or social injustice. Obstacles to the free intercommunication 
 
GENERAL PRINCIPLES OP FREE TRADE. 517 
 
 of all people, and the free interchange, among all, of what each may 
 need and each can spare of the surplus productions of each, not only 
 vanish before it, but, till this liberal intercourse is established, all 
 climates, soils, and pursuits, are not united as a whole in the sympa- 
 thies and benefits which should bind together the human family, and 
 are not, as duty requires, perfecting as much as possible the whole, by 
 making each part beneficial and cooperating. Till then, the strongest 
 guaranty of peace and security against war is not obtained by render- 
 ing it injurious to each nation mutually to disturb the commerce or 
 tranquillity of any other, bound together, as they would then be, in 
 the golden chains of reciprocal and useful trade. 
 
 Leaving any further consideration, separately, of the true principles 
 of free trade as connected either with our domestic or foreign inter- 
 course, I hasten to the only remaining branch of the subject proposed 
 to be reviewed on this occasion. It relates to a matter of no less 
 interest than the regulations which governments possess the right, and 
 which it is expedient, to make within their limits, bearing indirectly on 
 freedom of trade, whether interior or exterior. It is, whether those 
 regulations ought to be liberal or contracted, equal and impartial, or 
 the reverse, free or slavish ; and when not free, but shackled by par- 
 tial privileges, prohibitions, unjust discriminations, and other kinds of 
 interference, invidious and fallacious, what are their fatal tendencies to 
 society at large and all its best interests, as well as to commerce ? 
 
 In this view of the subject, the true principles of free trade require 
 that every citizen be allowed to embark in the business of commerce, 
 no less than in every other honest pursuit. There should be no dis- 
 franchisements on account of birth or residence, no personal vetoes, no 
 tabooing of different sections of the country, no monopoly in families, 
 tribes, or particular cities, no long apprenticeships exacted servilely 
 as a right. Skill in business, I concede, is desirable, and morals and 
 intelligence ; but these, certainly, are better secured by the stimulus 
 of free rivalship, and the rewards of free enterprise, than by any rigor- 
 ous exclusions. All employments not open to all are likewise aristo- 
 cratic in spirit, as well as unequal in operation ; and they can more 
 properly be tolerated in monarchical governments, where they originate 
 and prevail most, than in those where all men are born equal, and 
 possess an equal right to seek subsistence and happiness in the manner 
 most agreeable to each. Laws, by partiality, may become as great 
 tyrants as men ; and bad legislation is a more wide-spread and deep- 
 seated curse than any bad execution of laws. If one class is robbed, 
 by law, to build up or enrich another, it is still a species of robbery, 
 and is no less unjust suffering than to be robbed without law. So, if 
 one section of a common country, or one branch of industry, is ren- 
 dered tributary to others by a course of unequal legislation, the slavery 
 is as oppressive and intolerable as if inflicted by the actual scourge, the 
 dungeon, or the chain. 
 
 The violation of the principles of free trade, if caused by the restrict- 
 44 
 
518 GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF FREE TRADE. 
 
 ive course of some nations as to the commerce and other pursuits of 
 all their subjects, is more endurable than when it is practised only 
 towards particular classes or employments. When the whole commu- 
 nity choose to let rulers regulate the occupations and intercourse of 
 the whole, either among themselves or abroad, all will naturally sub- 
 mit with more calmness to privations which are general and common 
 to all. Hence it is that the citizen of Canton or Pekin cares but 
 little for free trade, and as little does the merchant of Japan, or a 
 bazaar-owner in Constantinople ; because they see around them all 
 others equally restrained, and because they are humbled by despotism 
 to submit, in all such matters, to the dictation of their rulers. At the 
 same time, tyrants think as highly of their own wisdom in all things 
 as their slaves can ; and hence the Pacha of Egypt flatters himself with 
 being as much better a farmer, merchant, and cotton-spinner, than any 
 of his subjects, as he is more powerful ; and he presumes to regulate 
 business for them, or to transact it himself in their behalf, as coolly 
 and arbitrarily as would any Pharaoh have done it thirty centuries 
 ago. In that country, once the pride of the civilized world, more than 
 half its population have been extirpated, within a few years, by such a 
 system of misgovernment, and by wars in which the people had no 
 voice but that of suffering. But, under institutions like ours, formed 
 by the people and not their rulers, — for the people and not their 
 rulers, — no power should be confided to the latter to discriminate, in 
 any way, between different occupations, classes, or sections. All leg- 
 islation ought, therefore, to be equal ; and if the constitution of any 
 State enables its officers to favor particular branches of industry, noth- 
 ing of the kind is expressly conferred on the General Government. 
 The error on this point often arises from hastily taking it for granted 
 that this last government possesses all the broad authority of that of 
 England or Spain; while, in truth, it is much limited, and it is the 
 governments of the States which, for all domestic purposes, more 
 resemble those abroad; though the State officers, at times, are jealously 
 restrained by their people, through provisions in their own constitu- 
 tions, from any partial, unequal, or exclusive legislation. 
 
 But, beside the fact that no right is expressly granted to Congress 
 to prohibit freedom of trade, the expediency of preserving such free- 
 dom here is so manifest, from the character of all our institutions and 
 the dangerous consequences of an opposite policy, as to repel any 
 implication of such a right ; for, if you permit discriminations and 
 exclusive privileges in one thing, the door is open to them in others, 
 and thus the vitality of a government of equal rights and equal laws is 
 destroyed. The example of such invidious favoritism is not only in 
 other ways pernicious, but, by provoking complaint and reaction, it is 
 suicidal of all the permanent advantages contemplated. The efforts 
 and success of the community, as a whole, are also weakened by it. 
 The energies of every citizen do not run in their most natural channel, 
 and hence not with full , force or rapidity. There is, likewise, less 
 
GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF FREE TRADE. 519 
 
 cordiality and cooperation. Jealousies are sown deep, heart-burnings 
 excited, and the public harmony disturbed, if actual violence does not 
 break out. In this way, rather than promoting the greatest good of 
 the greatest number, — the legitimate object of all government, — the 
 aim seems to be the good of a few, the elevation of a few, and the rule 
 of a few, over others equal by nature as well as constitutional rights, 
 and often in all useful acquirements. The hearts of freemen, no less 
 than their judgments, rebel at such injustice. The opponents of free 
 trade, therefore, attempt in various ways to justify their course ; and 
 it is due to the vindication of our own principles, as well as candor and 
 justice towards others, to notice as many of their arguments as time 
 will permit. 
 
 One of their grounds of defence is placed on a right, given by the 
 constitution, to regulate commerce and impose taxes. But the power 
 to regulate is not a power to destroy. An authority to regulate com- 
 merce is, therefore, not one to prohibit it. Regulations must also be 
 uniform and equal, rather than partial and exclusive, like the present 
 tariff. In short, their design, when applied to trade, should be to 
 encourage rather than lessen it, and to impose no restraints but such 
 as are necessary to secure the public health, public morals, and the 
 safe collection of the public revenue. I do not deny, to scarcely any 
 government, powers like these last ; and, if fairly exercised, they may, 
 without injury, be extended in almost every country to the exclusion 
 of imports of poisonous drugs, — as, in China, of opium, and as here of 
 obscene prints. But too much regulation, as to anything, is intrusive, 
 vexatious, odious ; and the exact limits of such powers, in point of 
 either right or expediency, are somewhat difficult to define, and need 
 not be examined further, on this occasion, for any practical object con- 
 nected with free trade. 
 
 But the other power, to impose taxes, is most relied on by our 
 opponents. Being one that is necessary in all governments, it is, from 
 the wide generality of its use, more likely to be perverted ; and has, 
 in fact, been repeatedly subjected to abuses, which have impaired free 
 trade both at home and abroad. It therefore requires greater watch- 
 fulness, and closer consideration. The usual method of applying it, so 
 as to trench on the established principles of free trade, is by imposing 
 unequal duties on the imports of foreign merchandise. This comes 
 into operation in a manner directly unfavorable to our foreign com- 
 merce ; and as those duties indirectly reach, to some extent, our exports, 
 such a tariff bears some on the domestic, as well as foreign trade. 
 Without going here into the examination how far the theory be sound, 
 that all the burden of a tariff falls circuitously on the exports, it is 
 certain that much of it falls on them, if it affects, in common, all who 
 consume the imports, since the producers of the former are the largest 
 consumers of the latter. The right, however, to assess some duties on 
 imports is not doubted by me, because it is expressly granted in the 
 constitution ; but the expediency of exercising it on ordinary occasions. 
 
520 GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF FREE TRADE. 
 
 if at all, has been questioned by many on the very plausible grounds 
 that it falls in too large a proportion on the middling and poorer 
 classes, who consume nearly as much of imports, per head, as the rich ; 
 that it is very open to partiality, by means of the high discriminations 
 often introduced between the amounts of duty on different articles ; 
 and that it is felt but indirectly by the community (though the burden 
 in the end is quite as great as in the other forms of taxation), and 
 hence any extravagance in expense leading to it is less noticed and 
 checked. Yet the States having taxed imports to some extent before 
 they parted with the power entirely to the General Government, and 
 the latter having always used it since, while the States continue to 
 resort to other modes of taxation, the inference seems fair that a tariff 
 imposed by Congress to collect revenue is not only constitutional, but 
 if equal, proportionate, and needed, may be expedient. These qualifi- 
 cations and limitations indicate the extent to which such a tax is per- 
 missible, as well as consistent with the principles of free trade ; because 
 a tariff on imports, not much exceeding the tax levied on other kinds 
 of property by the States or the General Government, does not prevent 
 trade from being equally free with all other kinds of business. Nor is 
 such taxation unjust ; for, when equal, it treats all with like favor, 
 and merely makes all pay, as all should, in a just ratio, for the ordi- 
 nary protection of life, liberty, and all kinds of property. 
 
 The true practical motto, then, in my opinion, where taxation 
 becomes indispensable to maintain an economical administration of the 
 government, is, not "free trade and no duties," but "free trade and 
 low duties;" the latter being no higher than what is required for rev- 
 enue alone, and only in due proportion to the tax which is generally 
 imposed on other property in the country, under our mixed forms of 
 government. If more revenue be wanted than this will yield, it, of 
 course, should be collected equally from other sources, as well as this. 
 But while the ordinary rate of taxation on most other property is not, 
 by the States, over five per cent, on its value, and often not one, the 
 existing tariff is seldom less than twenty per cent., and, in some cases, 
 is forty, eighty, and even a hundred per cent. ; and these highest not, 
 in most cases, on either luxuries or articles prejudicial to health and 
 morals, but on such great necessaries of life to the humbler classes as 
 cottons, sugar, salt, and some kinds of iron. So, while the tariff in 
 some States, before the constitution was formed, did not exceed three 
 per cent., and in none ten, and, for many years after, seldom equalled 
 on any articles twenty, yet now, after a return from high excesses to 
 something like twenty, and on half our imports still lower, — and after 
 other nations, under our example and their own experience, were 
 reducing their duties to a like moderate standard, — it is surely calcu- 
 lated to alarm the friends of free trade, all the world over, to see a tax 
 on imports suddenly raised on almost every article to more than quad- 
 ruple that which is usually paid on other property — to an amount far 
 beyond any precedent here when the constitution was formed, and to 
 
GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF FREE TRADE. 521 
 
 be vindicated in its high discriminations only by the notions of darker 
 ages than this in the science of political economy. 
 
 Another justification for such an outrage on all fair principles of 
 taxation, as well as of free trade, is claimed by our opponents to be, 
 the right to give that peculiar protection to domestic manufactures 
 which such a course confers. But, as before explained, this can never 
 be vindicated under a constitution which authorizes a tax for no pur- 
 poses but to pay the public expenses, and then only in a uniform and 
 equal manner; and nowhere confers authority, in any way, to give 
 peculiar protection to manufactures, or any other branch of industry. 
 On the contrary, such protection is left to the separate States, accord- 
 ing to their several local interests, if it should be exercised anywhere. 
 For anywhere, when exercised in favor of one class alone, it usually 
 opens a Pandora's box of evils as to the rest ; and when exercised for 
 all alike, it ceases to be peculiar, and becomes nugatory as a special 
 advantage to any. It is no apology to argue further, as is sometimes 
 done in palliation of exclusive protection, that it will be needed only a 
 few years. If wrong, it should not be granted at all ; and experience 
 shows that, instead of being desired but temporarily, it is sought with 
 as much importunity now as it was twenty years ago. 
 
 But our opponents again ask, in words most siren-like to the patri- 
 otic, would you refuse protection to American industry and home 
 labor? I answer, — by no means; but let that protection be made 
 equal to all, and not exclusive for a few. Grant it by equal laws, 
 where the rights of all are equal ; as the justice that should reign 
 among moral and intelligent republicans ; and the only justice, though 
 the heavens fall. If any partiality or inequality could be justified, it 
 would certainly be in favor of agriculture, rather than manufactures, 
 as that gives employment to more than four times the number of per- 
 sons and ten times the amount of capital, and is second, in virtue and 
 patriotism, to no other pursuit. 
 
 How proudly, also, does commerce contrast with either in several 
 respects already alluded to ! and beyond even them, as the foundation 
 of all maritime strength and naval defence, how fatally is it under- 
 mined by a hostile tariff! and how greatly is thus endangered the 
 attainment of those high destinies that have just been within our 
 grasp, as the second power in the world on the ocean ! Such a nar- 
 row policy looks more in keeping with the monkish bigotry of the 
 eighth century than the light and statesmanship of the nineteenth ; 
 and I am happy to admit that, in theory, it is disavowed by many of 
 our opponents. But it inevitably occurs in practice by their system 
 as a system, because it disturbs the natural employment of both cap- 
 ital and labor ; forces them into new and artificial channels, by encour- 
 aging one branch of business and overburdening others ; and, by being 
 prohibitory of some foreign articles, it provokes retaliations from 
 abroad, as well as weakens the interests neglected at home, and alien- 
 ates here the attachment of large classes and sections. 
 44* 
 
522 GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF FREE TRADE. 
 
 Such a fatal course is the more objectionable, because so unneces- 
 sary. The manufacturers, in common with other classes, and without 
 any special favor, always enjoy a liberal incidental protection. It is 
 obtained first by the expense of transporting hither, at so great a 
 distance, all foreign articles. Beside this, they have the additional 
 protection of any equal duties. These, at only twenty per cent., 
 will alone amount to one-fifth of the whole value of the foreign pro- 
 duction ; and if so great a protection as that, and the cost of freights 
 from abroad, united, will not secure success here in any particular 
 business, is it not strong presumptive evidence that such business is 
 of a hot-bed character 1 one not well suited to our climate, tastes, 
 habits, or skill 1 and which, like the growth of silk in our provincial 
 condition, notwithstanding high bounties, may fail, till we are riper in 
 those other qualifications so very indispensable 1 It is those tastes, 
 habits, and skill, with suitable climate and other natural advantages, 
 on which alone we can safely rely ; and they will always succeed bet- 
 ter, seconded by a steady, uniform policy in legislation, by free trade 
 and low duties, than the highest and a vacillating system. Still other 
 pretences, thrust forward, at times, in favor of partial distinctions in 
 legislation, are alike untenable. Of this character are discriminating 
 laws, made with a view to change the balance of foreign trade, — so to 
 keep more gold and silver in the country, secure from exportation, — 
 so to lessen the trade with those particular nations who take least 
 directly of our own products, — so to alter the rates of exchanges, 
 which are fixed from time to time by the great laws of trade, as surely 
 as the ebb and flow of the tides are fixed by the great laws of nature. 
 These are all a litter of the same lame and impotent breed, from the 
 same obsolete school. So to regulate prices, and, as some absurdly 
 reason, to impose a larger duty in order to reduce the price of the 
 article taxed. How would such a pretence be ridiculed in the case of 
 ordinary taxes in the States ! And if a higher tariff lessens the price, 
 why not impose five hundred per cent., rather than fifty? and why not 
 retaliate on other governments, by lowering instead of raising duties ? 
 The fact that prices sometimes fall after a tariff is made higher does 
 not conflict at all with this conclusion ; because they fall from other 
 causes, such as improvements in machinery, greater skill, or scarcity 
 of money ; and they fall on free goods, as well as those which are duti- 
 able. In brief, it would be quite as wise for governments to attempt 
 to regulate, by legislation, the quantity of corn or hay to be grown 
 per acre, as to regulate, in that way, most matters of trade. Gov- 
 ernment may very properly prescribe a just standard of value, 
 and the kind of money, or other articles, it is willing to receive for 
 its own dues ; and it may even manufacture such a circulation as it 
 deems the most useful. But free trade regards everything as a matter 
 of exchange, — of value against value. Its prices cannot be justly 
 affected by arbitrary legislation. The rules for the adjustment and 
 
GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF FREE TRADE. 523 
 
 enforcement of contracts may be regulated ; but the exchanges of trade 
 are in themselves generally beyond any salutary control, except the 
 agreement of parties and the instinct of individual interests. 
 
 Without the imputation of any personal claims in a matter of his- 
 tory, I may be allowed to add that the attempt made here, a few years 
 ago, to dispense with the sound constitutional standard of value, both 
 in the business of the government and in private contracts, as well as 
 in exchanges, was fortunately resisted, and ultimately with signal suc- 
 cess. The inviolability of contracts, the public faith, and the credit of 
 the General Government, were thus preserved unbroken amidst a press- 
 ure unexampled in severity, and with advantages to the eventual 
 soundness of the currency over the whole country which all parts are 
 now reaping, and which, otherwise, were likely to have been lost for a 
 quarter of a century. No stronger proof of a portion of this can exist 
 than the fact, that the rate of exchanges, both foreign and domestic, 
 was never lower than at the present moment. There exist several 
 other objections among the friends of free trade to the system of a high 
 tariff, as well as to officious interference in business by law, a few of 
 which only is there time left to specify, even in a condensed form. 
 
 Beside being thus forced to pay a higher price than would other- 
 wise be asked for foreign products, the people are compelled to pay 
 more for like domestic articles, or no special protection is gained for 
 them, and thus consumers are doubly fleeced. Again, while some 
 nations are reducing duties on many imports, and especially grain, so 
 that an additional market is thus made for ours, and the whole trans- 
 portation of ours is thrown more into American vessels, instead of a 
 large part of the carriage of most of it being, as before, through colo- 
 nies in foreign bottoms, we, by the late tariff, repel such liberal 
 advances. We refuse to offer a reciprocal scale of low duties, and 
 rashly raise ours much higher on almost every article to be imported 
 thence, in return for our meats, and bread-stuffs, and raw cotton. We 
 thus endeavor to diminish those very imports which have always given 
 so much and so profitable employment to American tonnage engaged 
 in the foreign trade. Such a course Adam Smith, near a century ago, 
 pronounced to be " evidently as destructive to the revenue of the cus- 
 toms as to freedom in trade," and on both accounts to deserve reproba- 
 tion. 
 
 In that very law, also, we have taxed higher almost every article 
 which enters into ship-building, and have thus radically impaired our 
 ability to compete, so successfully as before, for the carrying-trade of 
 the world. In the same way we have inflicted a vital injury on the 
 fisheries, — that noble nursery of naval as well as commercial great- 
 ness, — because, without adding anything to the bounty or drawback, 
 we have increased the cost of their vessels much beyond what it oth- 
 erwise would be, by placing duties on the iron, duck, and cordage, 
 used in them, and on the salt consumed, much higher than what existed 
 
524 GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF FREE TRADE. 
 
 originally, when the bounty was fixed or computed. Indeed, by this 
 policy, we impose a new tax on the very tools of their trade or occu- 
 pation, and overburden the employment by which they earn their daily 
 bread. What a specimen of the kindness evinced towards interests so 
 depressed as those of navigation and the fisheries, — interests whose 
 great encouragement has heretofore been that free trade and sailors' 
 rights for which they fought with such brilliant glory during the last 
 war ! While many of the raw materials used in manufactures are left 
 frse, or at a low duty, not only all but one used in ship-building are 
 taxed higher, but most of the foreign articles eaten and worn by the 
 mechanics and seamen thus employed. Another view of the unfavor- 
 able bearing of the present tariff on our tonnage is, that the increased 
 duties only on the articles used in building and repairs are computed 
 by some to equal near five dollars a ton. The consequence is, that all 
 our vessels engaged in the foreign trade are to suffer hereafter such 
 additional taxation. How is it possible, then, for them to compete 
 so well as before with the vessels of other nations, whose tariffs have 
 not been raised 1 Our domestic tonnage feels it the least, because that 
 is not exposed to rivalship from abroad ; and hence can raise the price 
 of freights, and thus obtain some indemnity, though, unfortunately, in 
 most cases, from our own citizens. But if our vessels in the foreign 
 trade attempt this mode of relief, the ships of other nations are ready 
 to carry at the old price with profit, and thus our own tonnage remains 
 unemployed, or is obliged to work at ruinously low rates. 
 
 Another objection to this kind of legislation is, that it resumes what 
 was called the mercantile system a century or two ago, and which was 
 brought into discredit under the increased lights of reason and expe- 
 rience. The manufacturers are thus, at the present moment, wearing 
 the cast-off clothing of the merchants. 
 
 Another objection is, that, by this vicious system, the greatest nec- 
 essaries of life are the most burdened, and some luxuries the least. 
 The very highest duties, instead of falling on the wines, the silks and 
 laces, of the rich, fasten themselves, like harpies, on the tools, food 
 and clothing, of the poorer classes. By this mode of taxing necessa- 
 ries, as well as luxuries, consumption cannot be avoided, and the bur- 
 den of the tax escaped by those least able to pay it, unless they can 
 go without both food and clothes. Hence, it operates as a high and 
 oppressive poll-tax in disguise ; the middling interest in society con- 
 tributing nearly as much from small incomes, as the wealthy do from 
 large ones. This is the very worst species of income tax, and, beside 
 all such unjust disproportion, falls, at first, on business itself as much 
 as on property, — on mere sales and purchases, — and, therefore, tends 
 to check them, and all the enterprise, industry, and commerce of fife, 
 connected with them. 
 
 Another objection is, that, by the experience of all ages, govern- 
 ments prove to be not so wise in regulating either the trade or pursuits 
 of individuals, as the latter are when left to themselves. To regulate 
 
GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF FREE TRADE. 525 
 
 prices by law, directly, was once quite as popular as it is now, with 
 some politicians, to influence them in that way indirectly, and control 
 other matters of private business. But the latter is a doctrine from 
 the same school as the former, and should be exploded, as that has 
 been, for its despotic folly. If unmolested, people will generally sell 
 where they can get most, and buy where they must give least ; and 
 this instinct of trade — this impulse of self-interest — not only prompts 
 and justifies free commerce, but aids both national and individual pros- 
 perity. The more each thus gains, the more the whole gain ; and, if 
 liberty in trade is interrupted, so that you cannot buy where articles 
 are cheapest, the interruption is usually pushed so that you cannot 
 sell where you are able to get most ; and hence much is lost both 
 ways, beside embarrassment and delay. It is obvious that, under the 
 doctrine of free trade, the profit would be quite as much to purchase 
 abroad cheaper either sugar, salt, iron, or woollens, as to sell abroad 
 higher either our grain, tobacco, cotton, pork, or even manufactured 
 goods. Nor is such a kind of business overreaching or disadvantageous 
 to others, as it confers mutual benefits ; the trade consisting often of 
 surpluses, which otherwise would not be produced, or would be much 
 less valuable. Nor is it justly open to a specious exception, that arti- 
 cles procured abroad are not the result of our own industry, and should 
 therefore be proscribed. For, whatever is bought on the other side 
 of the Atlantic, and paid for by our exports, is the fruit of American 
 labor, as much as if bought or produced in the United States. Nor 
 does it matter whether the articles are obtained in direct exchange for 
 others, or with money procured by the sale of others, originating here. 
 In either case, they are gotten by means of sweat, toil, and enterprise 
 here : and in either case, if, as before supposed, the sales are higher 
 and the purchases lower than here, American industry is better stim- 
 ulated, and American wealth more rapidly increased. 
 
 In connection with this view, it is a curiots fact, in the recorded 
 statistics of our foreign commerce, that both our tonnage and freights 
 have augmented fastest under falling duties and the largest portion of 
 free imports, and that both have swollen quickest with those nations 
 that supplied us chiefly with such imports. 
 
 Nor is such a course of business unfavorable to independence and 
 peace, as well as prosperity. On the contrary, it removes one tempta- 
 tion to aggressions and wars, by opening access for all, quietly, to the 
 mutual products and excellences of each. It also furnishes necessa- 
 ries and comforts to each from the rest, which hostilities would endan- 
 ger, if not destroy ; and thus it makes the free interchange of them a 
 pledge, a guaranty, and bond of peace. As to national independence, 
 I go as far as the farthest. The plausible argument against the free- 
 trade system, that it makes nations, in some degree, dependent on each 
 other, seems to overlook or confound the distinction between political 
 as well as pecuniary independence, so very desirable, and that social 
 independence of all others, which is not so very desirable, as it cannot 
 
526 GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF FREE TRADE. 
 
 exist in much perfection, except with the hermit in his cell, or the sol- 
 itary savage in the desert. Enlightened, civilized, social man, can 
 hardly be expected to imitate the oyster in the mud, or the grub folded 
 in his vegetable blanket for the winter, — both, for a time, at least, inde- 
 pendent of the rest of the world ; but it becomes his susceptible nature 
 to draw comforts and happiness from all around him, and derive from 
 society all the reciprocal advantages for which society itself is organ- 
 ized. And each nation, belonging, in a like manner, to the great family 
 of nations, should cheerfully impart, as well as use, all those benefits 
 which may promote the good of the whole. 
 
 Failing in argument, our opponents sometimes appeal to precedent, 
 or usage, in favor of high restrictive systems. But precedent may be 
 cited for almost every error, delusion, and even crime. We must dis- 
 criminate between different places and eras. Many principles might 
 be avowed and practised on in Egypt, or the Celestial Empire, or the 
 Eeegee Islands, which could hardly be urged as a fit example for imi- 
 tation in an enlightened republic in the nineteenth century. This is 
 no theatre for repeating such inconsistencies as to increase taxes, in 
 order to relieve an embarrassed community ! To shut up some of our 
 existing markets, when prices are already ruinously low ! To assist a 
 depressed navigation to compete with other nations, by taxing it higher ! 
 To promote harmony and cooperation in society, by introducing dis- 
 criminations ! In an age boastful as one of progress, and in a country 
 proud as among the most advancing, and under rulers pledged to aus- 
 picious reforms, and amidst taunts against other nations as illiberal, 
 intolerant, and monopolizing, is it decent or decorous to summon us to 
 assist in measures like these, — measures, likewise, so subversive of all 
 those great principles of free trade, of which, heretofore, as a nation, 
 we have held ourselves to be the champion 1 It is difficult to charac- 
 terize such steps, however well meant, in plain and truthful language, 
 without making it offensive. I forbear, therefore, saying more of them 
 in this view of the subject, except to quote another precedent of the 
 high protective system, which stares us in the face as a signal failure, 
 and from a quarter once highly distinguished. It is the case of Spain; 
 and it is the more striking, as her natural advantages for commerce 
 were so very conspicuous. She had some of the finest harbors in the 
 world. Her borders were washed by two oceans. Her colonies inhab- 
 ited almost every latitude, from the equator to the poles. Yet, resort- 
 ing most unadvisedly to prohibitory laws, and madly persisting in their 
 severities, have contributed largely to sink her to a third-rate power ; — 
 have, in brief, reduced her population one-half; caused the grass to 
 grow over the streets of her great commercial marts ; robbed her of 
 some of the richest countries the sun ever shone on in his whole 
 career ; filled up her sea-ports with rubbish and decaying wharves ; 
 rotted her navies ; lined her borders with armies of brigand smugglers ; 
 and ruined most of her vast internal trade, and, in the end, her man- 
 ufactures themselves, almost as effectually as her foreign commerce. 
 
GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF FREE TRADE. 527 
 
 The only striking exception to all this, in her possessions, is Cuba, and 
 that is still illustrative of the same principles, by being indebted, for 
 its great prosperity and exports, to the opposite policy of lower duties 
 and freer ingress and egress to all nations, instead of the exclusion of 
 all, formerly indulged in by Spain.* 
 
 And for what are we invited to become retrograde in our commercial 
 policy, and incur all such dangers and sacrifices ? Merely to push 
 further experiments already fatal. In short, merely to try, at the 
 expense of other interests, to manufacture a few more yards of calico 
 here, rather than buy them lower elsewhere ; or to make a few more 
 pounds of sugar in Louisiana, rather than purchase it from Cuba or 
 Brazil, where the cane ripens two-thirds larger, and the sugar is 
 cheaper in proportion, and where w r e can get it in exchange for our 
 lumber and flour, sold at much higher prices than here. 
 
 To dwell on these considerations no longer, it is manifest that such 
 a system of taxation is as much at war with common sense and com- 
 mon economy as it is with free trade ; while it abandons all constitu- 
 tional adherence to that system of equal legislation, equal rights, and 
 equal protection, so indispensable to the prosperity of the whole, and 
 to the preservation of the essence, as well as form, of a republican 
 government. 
 
 Besides such local views, there are some general ones, connected 
 with the principles of free trade, which deserve special notice, as they 
 bear on the progress of civilization', on the better security of human 
 rights, and the improvement of both morals and intelligence. The 
 system, fully carried out, is a harbinger and guaranty of all these. It 
 is not, like other systems, tainted with exclusiveness. It does not, like 
 them, claim a sort of Divine right for some pursuits, and impute a 
 want of it to others ; is not, like them, partial, and, so far, unjust ; 
 and not, like them, officious, and intermeddling with private business 
 and tastes, so as to govern too much, and confide too much in the wis- 
 dom of rulers, rather than in the people at large. By pushing the 
 principles of free trade everywhere and into everything, each country 
 will gradually participate more in the advantages of all, and the 
 imperfections of most of them will stand a better chance to be reme- 
 died. Facilities will thus be afforded, rather than creating interrup- 
 tions ; improvements be attempted, rather than obstacles ; and securi- 
 ties provided for all interests, rather than neglect or oppression indulged 
 in as to a part. There will then be a growing disposition to propagate 
 widely all benefits, instead of trying to monopolize them ; and nations 
 possessing advantages, whether in arts, arms or science, will permit 
 them to be diffused wider, and thus the whole become more civilized, 
 rather than a portion be kept in darkness and subjugation. In this 
 way, most modern advances in machinery, as well as valuable inven- 
 tions of all kinds, not only enrich and strengthen first those who make 
 
 * See Merchant's Magazine. 
 
528 GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF FREE TRADE. 
 
 them, but are spreading quicker and wider ; and will, ere long, cheapen 
 consumption as well as production everywhere, and, in time, fully per- 
 vade every people fitted by situation, education and habits, to improve 
 by them. 
 
 It is always a narrow view of commercial, as well as moral policy, 
 to seek profit to ourselves by beggaring others. Nothing is gained 
 durably by over-taxing or over-reaching others. On the contrary, the 
 wealth of all nations is promoted by the prosperity of all ; and the 
 great social principle, as well as sound political wisdom, requires us to 
 be humane and just to all, liberal to all, and to confer benefits on all, 
 rather than seek undue advantages. If less wealth were attendant on 
 such a course of free trade, which is not the case generally, there 
 would be more liberty, and hence more satisfaction. Only a crust 
 and liberty, are often preferred to splendid bondage. Mankind are 
 willing, when intelligent, to possess less property, if they can, at the 
 same time, enjoy greater freedom, — freedom in action, as well as opin- 
 ion, — extending, of course, to both government and conscience ; and 
 even these are no more gratifying than freedom in employment and 
 business, in pleasure and locomotion of all kinds. We sigh often to 
 have, as did our great progenitor, the whole earth before us where to 
 choose, and Providence our guide. Any climate or soil, any profes- 
 sion or employment, will, as it should, thus become open to the enter- 
 prising. They can select where to dwell, where to trade, or to visit, 
 or labor, as inclination or judgment may prompt ; and besides being, in 
 this kind of free intercourse, enabled to buy where cheapest and sell 
 where dearest, the fancy and health can be pursued, and happiness in 
 all ways be promoted. Were it otherwise, our nature revolts at 
 restraint. We object to have even wealth forced upon us. We would 
 fain do nothing by compulsion ; like Falstaff, not even give reasons in 
 that way. People are willing to be taxed higher, if they are allowed 
 a free voice in imposing and expending the revenue so as to insure 
 more equality. But the consequence of such a free voice is to stimu- 
 late industry, enterprise and trade, and gradually to lessen those bur- 
 dens which would otherwise increase, and which, unchecked, tend to 
 break down society, by impoverishing all who produce and pay, and 
 driving them, in the end, to repudiation, insurrection, or revolution. 
 But it is not the truth that light taxes, and less restraint on all kinds 
 of industry and trade, ever lead to a permanent diminution of wealth 
 in any country, however unfavored, in appearance, by either nature or 
 art. On the contrary, the very Alps themselves have become fertile 
 under liberal institutions ; and the Swiss inhabitants of their slopes and 
 valleys have become well-fed, well-clothed, intelligent, and, above all, 
 most successful in manufactures themselves, without high or protecting 
 duties. Industry, climate, skill, coupled with liberty, have made 
 them outstrip those who were most powerful and wealthy when they 
 started in the contest. And is it possible that we need monopolies 
 and oppression to enable us to compete with any country in raising 
 
GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF FREE TRADE. 529 
 
 cotton at the south, or wheat in the west, or corn in the Middle States, 
 or hay in the east ? Nay, do even the ship-builders of the east ask any 
 discriminating duties on tonnage, if you will only exempt them and 
 the articles they consume from high and discriminating taxes ? Far, 
 far from it, if, at the same time, you throw open all the proper ave- 
 nues for employment to their navigation. Among other aids, a free 
 trade with foreign countries on our borders, by land, should be fully 
 encouraged. Why should not such a trade be permitted by land, as 
 well as sea, when it can be well protected against frauds on the reve- 
 nue ? It is a most vicious policy to prohibit this trade in reexporting 
 foreign articles, except at the loss of the whole imposts on them. We 
 thus not only deprive our own vessels of much employment, in bring- 
 ing merchandise here from abroad for this trade, but rob our own 
 canals, railroads, boats, and carriers of all kinds, of large gains from 
 the interior transportation of it to the extensive foreign possessions — 
 Texian, Mexican, and British — on our vast inland frontier. We for- 
 get the more wise policy, in this respect, even of France, Holland, and 
 Northern Germany. 
 
 Under a like spirit, the most liberal rules of warehousing should be 
 adopted. They would give additional activity to our vessels and com- 
 mercial enterprise, prevent the loss of interest on cash duties till 
 articles are reexported, and relieve all from troublesome, as well as 
 useless, payments and repayments on articles never intended for con- 
 sumption here. Without such rules, our country is obstructed in 
 becoming the great commercial depot for the whole American conti- 
 nent, as well as the West Indies ; and even our manufacturers are 
 frequently deprived of an opportunity to make sales, as would then be 
 done, to foreign merchants resorting here for assorted cargoes to 
 supply the growing demands of the Spanish, British, French, or 
 Indian races, covering yearly, as the former do more and more, the 
 hills, prairies and savannas, of this new world. What Tyre or Venice, 
 Alexandria or Antwerp, once were, and London now is, to the shores 
 of the Mediterranean and Europe, it is clear that, in this way, Boston, 
 New York, and New Orleans might, ere long, become to regions 
 larger, if not richer, that fill the vast spaces between the Atlantic and 
 the Pacific. 
 
 To discourage such an enlarged intercourse, profitable even to man- 
 ufactures, as well as agriculture and commerce, is short-sighted, and is 
 a relic, in policy, of systems and theories unworthy the present age. 
 No matter whether this intercourse between different nations, or dif- 
 ferent portions of one nation, be carried on by caravans, ships of the 
 desert, through the heart of Asia and the sands of Africa, or by lakes 
 and rivers, watering half a continent, or by sea, doubling the stormiest 
 capes and penetrating remotest islands, — still let it be free — still let 
 it be untaxed, unfettered. It will then shower down innumerable 
 benefits, not only in its progress by the way-side, but benefit all, both 
 producers and consumers. Again, it is of no consequence, in one 
 45 
 
530 GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF FREE TRADE. 
 
 view, whether those articles are iron for the plough, or ostrich-feathers 
 for the ball-room ; the olive for peace, or arms for war ; drugs for 
 health, or gold for ornament ; woollens and cottons for the poor, or 
 silks and cashmeres for the rich ; or sugar and salt for all classes, and 
 the last for the whole animal creation ; still liberality in the trade 
 blesses, like mercy, twice — both him that gives and him that takes. 
 On the one side, that is parted with which is not wanted, or can with- 
 out suffering be spared; and, on the other, that is obtained which 
 is needed either to supply real wants, minister to our comforts, or 
 gratify taste. Both are accommodated, or both enriched; and the 
 industry is stimulated, and the faculties sharpened, in search of more 
 of that which either promotes pleasure, or advances knowledge, or 
 increases power. In fine, it is the theory which tends best, in all 
 countries, to develop the national mind, as well as the national wealth. 
 It gives full and free play to all the faculties and instincts of man, 
 while it is content to take from the earth the gifts of Providence, 
 where they are natural and most profuse. It does not attempt to cul- 
 tivate drugs in Greenland, or tea and coffee in New England, or pine- 
 apples in Canada. And should the Hindoos strive to freeze their own 
 ice by a chemical process, or the inhabitants of New Orleans labor to 
 make their own stone artificially, or the Yankees endeavor to grow, 
 for their general consumption, pepper and palm-oil, they would only 
 illustrate, in a different form, some of the follies and losses which 
 attend most of the departures from the free-trade principle. 
 
 The moral and intellectual view of the subject is stronger than even 
 the physical or the commercial one. It is a question going far beyond 
 the ledger, — beyond dollars and cents, — the number of bushels, 
 pounds, gallons, or yards produced, and the value of exports and 
 imports, as well as amount of tonnage. It concerns natural fitness, 
 social improvement, morals, and the higher education and civilization, 
 as well as happiness, of millions on millions of immortal beings. That 
 is a circle wider than all others, reaching the future, no less than the 
 present welfare, of most of the human race. 
 
 Intolerance in religion has been one of the allies of restrictions in 
 trade. It is bred in the same prescriptive school, and has sometimes 
 injured even its coadjutors. It helped to expel the Lutheran 
 mechanics from Spain, and drive across the Mediterranean her best 
 Moorish manufacturers. By the repeal of the edict of Nantes, it long 
 retarded the prosperity of France; and, by a like exclusive spirit, 
 peopled originally several of our own States from the persecuting 
 shores of England. Even at this day, by the union of church and 
 State in the latter, thus doubling ecclesiastical taxes on seceders, and 
 by high corn-law duties, so oppressive to labor, it violates some of the 
 most salutary of the free-trade principles. A mass of human suffer- 
 ing has thus been produced there, of late years, which is ill atoned for 
 by all her greatness and glories. Though palaces rise in the streets 
 of Manchester, and fertility clothes the fields of contiguous counties 
 
GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF FREE TRADE. 531 
 
 with golden sheaves, yet the laborer often starves in sight of them, or 
 lingers out a miserable existence in some neighboring almshouse. 
 What matters it to him if the treasuries of China are captured, and 
 conquering armies are pushed over the snows of Afghanistan, and 
 heroic columns rise in London to commemorate national glory, if he 
 and his children suffer for bread, or freeze from half-nakedness, or are 
 robbed of political suffrage, and have their morals and intellects 
 debased by brutal ignorance?* Under a like view, as to the effects of 
 such a system on mind, morals, and progress, while high protection is 
 yielded here to manufactures, it must be remembered that it is at the 
 expense of agriculture and commerce, and is confined in its influences 
 to the owner of the establishment, or the capitalist, — to property alone, 
 or dead matter, rather than extended to the artisan or laborer, the 
 spirit, heart, and soul engaged. In the most manufacturing State of 
 the Union, the mere operative is stripped of all political rights, and 
 deprived of that free suffrage, in forming and regulating government, 
 which constitutes the great distinction between liberty and slavery. 
 On the contrary, the free-trade principle spreads a table for industry 
 and virtue in every climate. Under its operation, man is so consti- 
 tuted, and is the only known being in creation thus blessed, that he 
 can succeed in living under the frosts of the pole, as well as the heats 
 of the equator ; and can and will, if let alone, thrive and improve by 
 all kinds of employment. Under it, no surplus of anything useful 
 exists which is lost, as nothing abounds in any country needed else- 
 where, without finding a market. Such intercourse stimulates 
 industry, and rewards enterprise. It diffuses, also, arts, as well as 
 letters ; and the whole world thus gradually becomes improving and 
 useful to the whole. We know how, from acorns and roots, man has 
 advanced in food to grain and meats ; from skins for clothing, to the 
 most beautiful fabrics of silk and wool ; and from ignorance and the 
 chase, to learning and all the glories of civilization. This has always 
 been witnessed most rapidly where commerce has most abounded and 
 was freest. Thus, in the dawn of time, it gradually circled, and thus 
 civilized all the shores of the Mediterranean. It then passed the pil- 
 lars of Hercules, and penetrated the forests of what were savage 
 Britain and savage Germany ; crossed the Atlantic afterward, to a 
 little less savage people, covering the whole western continent ; 
 explores still further to the remotest isles ; and is now at such a 
 height, and surrounded with such improvements in arts, laws, and 
 literature, as to reflect back, from the once Gothic portions of Europe 
 and from barbarian America, increased light and knowledge. Whither? 
 you may ask. Even to the seven hills of Rome, the banks of the 
 Tiber, as well as the Ilissus and the Nile. It is a curious fact, illus- 
 trating the mutual action and reaction through commercial intercourse, 
 that this very year, in the city of New York, has been formed a 
 society to diffuse useful and religious knowledge in Italy. This, 
 
 * See Lester. 
 
532 GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF FREE TRADE. 
 
 among us, a people whose English ancestors, thirteen centuries ago, 
 were painted savages, carried into slavery to Italy — and this in a 
 country five centuries ago utterly unknown to Italy, and full of 
 forests and Vandal Indians ! How irresistibly do such facts carry our 
 memories back to the conquest and civilization of Palestine, from more 
 commercial Egypt, and transport our imaginations forward to a period, 
 not far distant, when commerce may carry home most of the exiles 
 from Africa educated, and fitted to civilize her vast waste places, and 
 reform her debased servitude ! The tenants of those arid regions, 
 reached but seldom by foreign commerce, continue, like the Esqui- 
 maux, almost as barbarous as when first discovered ; and, like most 
 communities shut up from the liberalizing influences of free trade, have 
 improved little more than the ox since the days of Job, or the swine 
 since the miracle of our Saviour. 
 
 In fine, without the vivifying impulses of that trade on man, the 
 world is stationary or retrograde ; while, with them, all is progress, as 
 well as an apparent development of some useful end in the contrivance 
 of the human race ; and if any one nation or tongue is destined to 
 pervade the globe otherwise than by arms, and to ameliorate its condi- 
 tion, through the arts of peace, letters, and religion, it must be that 
 one most influenced in all things by the spirit of free commerce. That, 
 alone, can surmount every obstacle, penetrate remotest regions, win 
 confidence by political favors, and, through its comforts and neces- 
 saries, if not luxuries, interest, excite, benefit, and elevate, every 
 people. Withdraw, too, or shackle its power, after once enjoyed as 
 here, and though it may seem, at first, to affect only the humble ship- 
 wright, the sailor, or the merchant, and the axe and the saw may only 
 appear to stand still, the wharf and the warehouse only at first to 
 decay, rather than the splendid abodes of wealth and the gorgeous 
 temple, yet, rely upon it, there is a canker preying, — a worm gnaw- 
 ing at the root of the prosperity of the whole, — a mildew begun, which 
 will, in time, blast every ramification of society. 
 
 Miserable, indeed, beyond any description, must be the condition 
 of any country, where, by a violation of these principles of free trade, 
 the masses must deteriorate rather than improve, and wages become 
 lower, and the clothing or food of the millions are highly taxed to 
 supply the extravagances and follies of the few ; and, what is even 
 worse than this, the intellects of the former are left neglected, and 
 their morals depraved. 
 
 But it is time to close this hasty address. The free-trade system, 
 as thus explained, is, in my view, the only one suited to a free people 
 or a free government. If it cannot be restored and perpetuated here, 
 my deliberate conviction, without any want of candor or charity as to 
 the designs of our opponents, is, that our boasted form of government, 
 and all its golden promises to mankind, must in the end prove a 
 mockery. If it does not soon triumph again in all its essentials, we shall 
 lose consistency of character over the globe, and it is vain to look for 
 
GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF FREE TRADE. 533 
 
 restoration of permanent prosperity, or to cherish brilliant hopes for 
 the future ; and the experiment of a just and equal self-government in 
 this part of the western hemisphere, as a model for the world now and 
 forever, must be considered to have failed. If this be not the truth, 
 let others exhibit it ; for truth should be the object of all. In the 
 mean time, I trust that, knowing these principles, — to use the words 
 adopted as your beautiful motto, — " You shall know the truth, and 
 the truth shall make you free." 
 
 Though my remarks have been addressed to all classes, — all being 
 deeply interested in the success of such principles, — yet, before closing, 
 allow me to repeat the exhortation of the philanthropic Channing, on 
 this topic, to the merchants in particular. It was given not long pre- 
 vious to his death, and some may respect it the more from an impres- 
 sion that it may have been influenced less by any party prejudice than 
 my own views. This was his language: "Allow me to say a word 
 to the merchants of our country on another subject. The time is 
 come when they are particularly called to take yet more generous 
 views of their vocation, and to give commerce a universality as 
 yet unknown. I refer to the juster principles which are gaining 
 ground on the subject of free trade, and to the growing disposition 
 of nations to promote it. Free trade ! this is the plain duty and plain 
 interest of the human race. To level all barriers to free exchange ; 
 to cut up the system of restriction, root and branch ; to open every 
 port on earth to every product ; — this is the office of enlightened 
 humanity. To this a free nation should especially pledge itself. 
 Freedom of the seas ; freedom of harbors ; an intercourse of nations, 
 free as the winds : — this is not a dream of philanthropists. We are 
 tending towards it, and let us hasten it. Under a wiser and more 
 Christian civilization, we shall look back on our present restrictions as 
 we do on the swaddling-bands by which, in darker times, the human 
 body was compressed." 
 
THE UNION AND THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW. 
 
 THE UNION AND THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW/ 
 
 Concord, N. H., Nov. 15, 1850. 
 
 Gentlemen : — Your polite invitation for me to attend a Union 
 meeting, at Manchester, on the 20th instant, has been received. 
 
 The great object of that meeting — "to advise upon the course best 
 calculated to allay all unnecessary further agitation" of certain sec- 
 tional questions — meets with my hearty concurrence. 
 
 Without more forbearance as to such agitation among the sister 
 States, it is my solemn conviction that the present hallowed Union of 
 those States will be placed in fearful jeopardy. 
 
 It is another alarming sign of the times, that any portion of our law- 
 abiding community should either recommend forcible resistance to the 
 laws, or actually participate in measures designed to overawe the con- 
 stituted authorities, and defeat the execution of legal precepts issued 
 by those authorities. 
 
 This is in direct hostility to the injunctions of Washington, in his 
 farewell address to his grateful countrymen. And it seems no less 
 hostile and derogatory to every sound principle for sustaining public 
 order, and obedience to what the legislative agents of the people and 
 the States have enacted. 
 
 The only objection to such obedience which has come to my knowl- 
 edge, and which seems supported by any semblance of argument, is 
 one very dangerous for individuals to rely on at any time so as to use 
 force. But it is much more hazardous when the measure resisted is 
 one sanctioned, after much deliberation, by Congress and the Presi- 
 dent; one provided for explicitly in the constitution itself; one 
 carried into effect, except as to some details since added, under the 
 father of his country, as early as 1793 ; and one which has received 
 the approval of the Supreme Court, sitting as the highest judicial 
 tribunal of the Union, and of the elevated law-officer of the government, 
 the present Attorney General of the United States. 
 
 It would afford me much pleasure to attend your meeting, and 
 express my views at length on this subject, were it not that this last 
 question is likely to come before me officially, one warrant having thus 
 been issued already by the Circuit Court, of which I am a member. 
 Consequently, I do not deem it appropriate to offer my own opinion on 
 it now, or at any public meeting, until the parties who may raise it 
 before me judicially have been fully heard. 
 
 But, at all times and in all places, I shall never hesitate to raise 
 my voice against forcible resistance to established laws, made by our 
 
 * A letter in reply to an invitation from B. F. Ayer, Esq., and others, to attend a 
 Union meeting in Manchester, N. H., Nov. 1850. 
 
ADDRESS TO LAFAYETTE. 535 
 
 own agents, and subject to be altered by majorities, peaceably, when- 
 ever obnoxious. And, in point of conscience and common sense, it 
 must be as culpable to thwart their execution, or impair the Union, by 
 covert and indirect means, as by open violence. Respectfully, 
 
 LEVI WOODBURY. 
 
 B. F. Ayer, I Committee 
 
 Abr. Robertson, > of 
 
 Amos Hadley, and others, ) Arrangements. 
 
 AN ADDRESS, AT BOSTON, TO LAFAYETTE, ON THE OC- 
 CASION OF HIS VISITING PORTSMOUTH, N. H., 1824. 
 
 A committee from the town of Portsmouth, in the State of New 
 Hampshire, consisting of Messrs. Woodbury, Upham, Ladd, and Wen- 
 dell, having been introduced to General Lafayette, at Boston, August 
 24th, 1824, the chairman remarked : 
 
 General : — We appear before you as a delegation from the town 
 of Portsmouth, — a town which, after the great crisis of our Revolu- 
 tion, had the pleasure to welcome you as one of her deliverers from 
 foreign oppression. 
 
 Time has since robbed her of her Langdons, her Whipples, and, 
 indeed, most of those cotemporaries on whose memory your image was 
 deeply impressed ; but their children, and their children's children, in 
 common with the whole population of New Hampshire, still associate 
 your name and virtues with those of the founders of our independence. 
 
 The citizens of Portsmouth feel anxious to welcome you again to 
 their hearths and their altars. They wish to mingle their sympathies 
 with the prisoner of Olmutz, and to cherish as their guest the patriot 
 who, in one hemisphere, without fear or reproach, shed his youthful 
 blood in the triumphs of liberty, and, in another, during thirty years 
 of persecution and disappointed hopes, never faltered in fidelity to the 
 sacred rights of man. 
 
 They desire to show you, in person, a few of the improvements 
 which, in less than half a century, have been wrought by the industry, 
 enterprise, and intelligence, attendant on those liberal principles to 
 whose success your whole life has been devoted ; and are solicitous, by 
 
536 BIRTH-DAY OF JEFFERSON. 
 
 the part they seek: to take in your reception here, to give some faint 
 evidence of their own attachment to those principles, and of their warm 
 gratitude and veneration for your former services to their country. 
 
 In behalf of our fellow-townsmen, therefore, suffer us to repeat 
 assurances of their high satisfaction at your arrival in America, and to 
 solicit a visit soon as your convenience may permit. 
 
 BIRTH-DAY OF JEFFERSON.* 
 
 Mr. Woodbury observed that the kind allusion in the last toast to 
 the east, and the wishes of the president of the day, and other gentle- 
 men near, had emboldened him to trespass a few minutes on the 
 indulgence of the company. 
 
 The sentiment expressed in the toast in favor of unity of action in 
 the great cause of good government among republicans of the Jefferso- 
 nian faith, wherever found, met with his most hearty approbation. He 
 presumed that it would also meet with the approbation of the large 
 mass of his immediate constituents at home, and of their brethren of 
 the same principle throughout the whole east. But he would not 
 assume either to pledge or commit them on any point, nor usurp to 
 represent them in any respect beyond what his duty required from his 
 peculiar position. On account of that, he should venture to express, 
 on all proper occasions, his own belief as to their political opinions, and 
 endeavor to vindicate them whenever attacked. But beyond this he 
 could not be tempted to go ; because one of their opinions he well knew 
 to be the propriety of extreme jealousy of men in power. He himself 
 applauded that jealousy ; he deemed it a cardinal article in the Jefferso- 
 nian faith j he thought its constant exercise one of the surest preserva- 
 tives of our liberties ; and woe be to that individual in authority from 
 the east, who, as a public man, dares ever arrogate what has not been 
 intrusted to him ! Notwithstanding the liberality displayed towards 
 the republicans of the east in the toast just read, it was thought to 
 have been industriously inculcated in some quarters that our prejudices, 
 our interests and opinions, furnished other traits in our character, 
 
 * A speech at a public meeting, in Washington, in celebration of the birth-day of 
 Thomas Jefferson, April 13, 1830. 
 
BIRTH-DAY OF JEFFERSON. 537 
 
 peculiar and offensive to the residue of the Union. Prejudices we 
 doubtless possess, or we should cease to be human ; but, be assured, no 
 prejudices to the injury of our brethren of the same principle, whether 
 north, south, or west. Interests we have sometimes been charged with 
 pursuing which are exclusive, and prejudicial to other quarters ; and 
 interests, — great, paramount interests, — we doubtless possess. But, 
 as pursued and advocated by republicans of the Jeffersonian faith, they 
 are as admirably formed to harmonize with the interests of the south, 
 as, in the language of Samuel Dexter, on another occasion, are formed 
 for harmony and union the two sexes of the human race. 
 
 Whatever heretic opinions have been imputed to some of us, — and 
 strong opinions we doubtless possess on many questions of political 
 moment, — yet he was happy to avow, before this assembly, that, among 
 the republicans of the east, those opinions, in a mass, belonged to the 
 Jeffersonian faith. That, beside this test of the correctness of their 
 opinions, they were in a habit of proving their faith by their works ; 
 and usually carried their opinions into votes and measures according 
 with that faith, rather than confining their Jeffersonism to their lips. 
 He would ask, why should not the east go heart and hand, on all great 
 occasions, with their brethren of the same principle elsewhere ? With- 
 out entering into a detail too tedious for this occasion, did they not 
 encounter like perils with the rest in the early settlement of the coun- 
 try, in planting the wilderness, in driving back the barbarian, and in 
 patient endurance of those thousand privations and ills that flesh is 
 heir to, in new and inclement regions ? Did they not mingle their 
 blood and their counsels with the rest, through all the fiery trials of 
 the Revolution, and prove themselves right good swords-men, as well 
 as book-men ? Did they not aid in the formation of our constitution ?- 
 And have they not, since, manfully struggled to uphold it 1 
 
 Soon as the principles in its administration in 1798 and 1801 
 became fully understood, a large minority, and at times a majority, in 
 the east, have, with fearlessness and constancy, united with their 
 brethren in the south, the Middle States, and the west, in support of 
 that class of principles almost canonized by the great statesman whose 
 birth we are now celebrating. Many of them have gone for those 
 principles, not on the popular current, buoyed up by triumphant 
 numbers, and the smiles, honors, and plaudits of the times ; but through 
 taunts, reproaches, rebuffs, and persecutions, which none can duly 
 appreciate who have not felt or witnessed them. Through scenes 
 infinitely more disheartening than those which the great orator of 
 antiquity, towards the close of his pilgrimage on earth, looking back 
 upon, observed that, if starting afresh in life, with all his sufferings 
 and glories presented on the one hand, and a halter on the other, he 
 should be inclined to accept the latter. Could that martyr in defence 
 of Athenian democracy have gazed through the vista of futurity, and 
 seen what is the high price of freedom in every age, — could he have 
 beheld how often such sufferings were to come unmitigated by his 
 
538 BIRTH-DAY OF JEFFERSOX. 
 
 glories, and how indispensable to the preservation of republican liberty 
 in all after times were the moral courage and invincible fortitude which 
 he sometimes failed to exhibit, — he might, in so glorious a cause, have 
 rejoiced to devote all he had, or ever could hope to have. 
 
 Mr. W. asked indulgence a moment more, and he was done. What 
 had been the fruits of those principles of Mr. Jefferson, in the adminis- 
 tration of this government, to support which so much at the east and 
 elsewhere had been sacrificed and suffered? They are beautifully 
 grouped in an address to him, in 1809, by the Legislature of Virginia, 
 when he was about to retire from public life. He could not recollect 
 them accurately, nor call to mind each particular ; but, in substance, 
 the Legislature thanked him for the model of an administration con- 
 ducted on the purest principles of republicanism ; for pomp and state 
 laid aside; for internal taxes and public burthens diminished; for 
 superfluous officers disbanded; for the monarchical maxim that a 
 national debt is a national blessing renounced ; for more than thirty 
 millions of our debt discharged ; for the Indian title to a hundred mil- 
 lion acres of our national domain extinguished ; and, finally, for what, 
 above all other themes, the historic muse would hang on with rapture, 
 — the liberty of speech and of the press had been preserved inviolate, 
 without which genius and science are given to man in vain. The 
 liberty of the press preserved inviolate, not by any exclusion of its 
 conductors from the equal rights and privileges guaranteed to all, but 
 by leaving reason free to combat with error, and due honors to descend 
 on all of sterling worth, whether in or out of employments which Bar- 
 low and Franklin elevated and honored, as they elevated and honored 
 the country of their birth. 
 
 The argosy of State, as Mr. Jefferson, in 1801, called our consti- 
 tution, in writing to the revolutionary veteran Dickerson, has since 
 his administration been sometimes steered into rather rough water, 
 and been somewhat endangered by breakers. But, under a new com- 
 mander and disciple of Jefferson, can we not justly cherish the hope 
 that she will, as was then promised, — that she will again be put on her 
 republican tack, will escape shipwreck, and long show, by the beauty 
 of her motions, the skill of her builders and officers ? 
 
 He felt assured that his friends in the east were ready to cooperate, 
 in the language of the toast just given, in this great cause. They 
 were ready to go for measures in true accordance with their profes- 
 sions. Their principles were intended for practical effect, and not to 
 evaporate in mere holiday talk, not worth the breath that utters it, 
 or the ink that writes it down. In their just expectations he believed 
 they would not be disappointed. These remarks he had not made for 
 flattery to the memory of Jefferson departed, or to the character of 
 any of his admirers present. Anybody who knew him or his con- 
 stituents knew we would not flatter Neptune for his trident, nor 
 Jove for his power to thunder. But they knew, likewise, we were 
 willing to offer a just homage to merit at all times and in all places. 
 
BIRTH-DAY OF JEFFERSON. 539 
 
 They knew that under any lead in which we have confidence, political 
 and personal, we are willing, at all times, to unite with our brethren 
 of the south, the Middle States, and the west, to enforce the main 
 articles of the Jeffersonian faith in the administration of our govern- 
 ment. We deem it the only granite foundation for our Union ; and, 
 though differences of opinion must and will exist on some subjects, yet 
 it was as much as erring humanity permitted, that those who acted 
 together in a free government should agree in essentials. A union 
 with our brethren, founded on these principles in their great essen- 
 tials, and fairly and equally carried into the administration of this 
 government, he would always advocate in behalf of his friends in the 
 east ; and would vouch for them that, like Hannibal at the altar, they 
 were ready to swear to abandon that Union — never — never — never! 
 
 Mr. Woodbury afterwards said : 
 
 Considering the peculiar character of this festival, he hoped the 
 company would pardon him if he repeated the last democratic senti- 
 ment Mr. Jefferson ever sent out to the world. It was contained in a 
 reply, only ten days before his death, to an invitation here to the cele- 
 bration on that very fourth of July on which his spirit took its upward 
 flight, and which day his pen and his patriotism had contributed so 
 much to immortalize. Half a century before, a like sentiment, on the 
 equality of mankind, had been incorporated by his own hand into the 
 Declaration of Independence ; and he would now give it in the last 
 impressive words of the great author of that declaration : " The pal- 
 pable truth that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles 
 on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride 
 them legitimately, by the grace of God." 
 
540 RETURN FROM WASHINGTON. 
 
 RETURN FROM WASHINGTON.* 
 
 My Fellow-townsmen and Neighbors: 
 
 You will hardly need any assurance that I feel great happiness in 
 meeting you again, after so long an absence. This happiness is 
 increased by finding that health and prosperity have in many respects 
 blessed all around and among you. However strong is my gratifica- 
 tion at this on your account alone, it may be mingled with some con- 
 siderations not entirely disinterested ; as my intention always has been 
 to spend the remainder of my life amidst your community, and to 
 share intimately in its weal or woe, till our spirits ascend to the 
 beneficent source of all we have had, possess, or hope for. 
 
 If, under such circumstances, my sensibilities were not deeply 
 excited by this flattering reception, I should be more or less than 
 human. To be thus welcomed home revives the remembrance of 
 many favors in days gone by, from yourselves, and some who, I regret, 
 as your chairman feelingly remarked, have since passed away and live 
 no more to greet me, and whose departure, like that which has just 
 clothed the nation in mourning, shows what shadows we are and 
 what shadows we pursue. 
 
 The generation succeeding them will no doubt act worthy of their 
 sires : and most warmly do I reciprocate to the whole of you all your 
 kind wishes and heartfelt congratulations. 
 
 On such an occasion as this, I would not, if I could, check the over- 
 flow of friendly feeling, by many w T ords. But you will pardon me for 
 attempting to do plain justice, in a few particulars, to yourselves and 
 the other citizens of that Spartan State which gave birth to most 
 of us. 
 
 Amidst the scenes of high responsibility it has been my lot to pass 
 through since our separation, and which you have been pleased to 
 mention in so complimentary a manner, it has always been an abiding 
 consolation, that the people of such a State, who knew me best, have 
 confided in me most, and that their trust, under the severest assaults, 
 has never faltered. 
 
 Is it strange, then, that my heart — untravelled — should con- 
 stantly have turned to these Pilgrim shores ? or that my mind, though 
 beneath new skies in the service of New Hampshire and her sister 
 States, should have remained unchanged, and my devotion to your 
 democratic principles have grown, like your iron-bound coast, only 
 firmer by repeated shocks ? 
 
 * On his return (April, 1841) from Washington, Mr. Woodbury was met by a large 
 number of his political friends, and escorted into Portsmouth. He was addressed by 
 Mr. Abner Greenleaf, chairman of the committee of arrangements for the occasion, 
 and the above speech was made in reply. 
 
RETURN FROM WASHINGTON. 541 
 
 I rejoice, with you, that here, above all other places, the vestal 
 fire of those principles has been kept alive and bright. It has proved 
 a proud beacon to light the steps of your absent children, and, flashing 
 higher and wider, as in the last contest, after some despondency else- 
 where, it is an omen auspicious for the whole Union. 
 
 Real ignorance, or malignity under defeat, has at times attributed 
 the political course of this State to something less enlightened in her 
 condition than in other places. But, in vindication of her, under such 
 aspersions, it gives me pleasure to repeat on her own soil, where a 
 response to its truth must gratefully beat in every heart, that no peo- 
 ple are believed to possess higher advantages for obtaining a fund 
 of useful information and practical wisdom. This the hardy yeo- 
 manry of her mountains have shown by undeniable results. As an 
 evidence how well they have learned their true interests, no less than 
 their true rights, they have exercised an industry, an enterprise and 
 prudence, which have kept themselves and their State unencumbered 
 by burthensome debt, — have secured beside, though amidst ice and 
 granite, all the comforts of life, and have crowned the whole by liber- 
 ally sparing more money for free education, religious and literary, than 
 the proudest regions from which they have been assailed. 
 
 In truth, the sun does not shine on a land where, in a like extent 
 of population, the spires of the village church more frequently point 
 the path to heaven, or the district school-house and academy oftener 
 open their intellectual treasures to the young and aspiring. These are 
 some of her loftiest monuments, and for these a grateful posterity will 
 admire her more than they would for bronze or marble. 
 
 But turning a moment more particularly to this portion of the State, 
 and the political friends who now so cordially welcome my return, I 
 know that some differences concerning public measures must exist 
 among your community, or it would cease to be free. But the polit- 
 ical integrity of those here with whom I agree on public matters, and 
 to which you refer in your address, can nowhere be more commenda- 
 ble, or zealous, or firm, though at times struggling under what has 
 seemed fearful odds. I trust, also, experience will show that you are 
 right in the hope that your confidence has not been misplaced, in 
 looking to me, among others in our national councils, to defend the 
 principles of democracy. But, on this joyful occasion of reunion of 
 neighbors long separated, all of you, as well as myself, are doubtless 
 willing to do justice to those with whom we disagree. Firm and ardent 
 as we are in our political convictions, we can still cheerfully recognize 
 many bonds of union between persons possessing a common home, pur- 
 suits in several respects common, a similar religious faith, a litera- 
 ture, government, and, I may add, almost every hope of happiness 
 here or hereafter, founded on some common basis. I rejoice, there- 
 fore, that the harmony of personal intercourse among us has gener- 
 ally never been interrupted by mere differences of opinion. Between 
 myself and your community as a whole, however divided politically, 
 46 
 
542 RETURN FROM WASHINGTON. 
 
 there has long existed a mutual and generous personal confidence ; and 
 I have not and cannot hesitate to trust to its friendly protection my 
 hearth, altar, and character — everything held dear. 
 
 But should the storm of faction, of any kind, hereafter beat upon 
 me from any quarter, — and few places or parties are long exempt 
 from them,— they can have no terrors for one surrounded, as I am 
 now, by the lion hearts that have dared to be tolerant and just, in the 
 worst of times. 
 
 In no place do I believe that the lives, principles, and professions, 
 of its inhabitants generally, are more coincident, or more honest and 
 true. Fortune may have showered her golden favors elsewhere in 
 greater profusion, but nowhere, in the hour of public peril, have the 
 generations, whether present or past, ever displayed prompter patriot- 
 ism, and, at their country's call, gone forth with more chivalry, to 
 bleed gallantly on every ocean and every field of danger. How, then, 
 will it be possible for men of such a stock, though differing some in 
 the application of facts and principles, ever to differ much and long 
 concerning their essence or tendency? Can any of them, for instance, 
 look with tameness on the surrender of national rights, by any admin- 
 istration whatever ? On the contrary, I am confident that most of 
 them would denounce it in all shapes and to all extents ; whether the 
 proposition originated in menaces from abroad, accompanied by the 
 gasconade of fleets and armies, or in derogatory combinations at home ; 
 and whether it should abridge our territorial limits, or shackle those 
 principles of free trade, and those privileges of navigation and the 
 fisheries, in every sea our enterprise can reach, which have aided so 
 largely to enrich the whole north, and make the Union itself second- 
 ary in its commerce to only one government in the world. 
 
 Wasteful extravagance, also, or the removal of those securities 
 which experience has devised to guard the public treasure, or contribu- 
 tions forced in any form from the hard earnings of the thrifty for the 
 benefit of speculators, spendthrifts, and bankrupts, can never be 
 believed to occur, and at the same time be long tolerated by men 
 who, like you, obtain their money through honest industry, and who 
 know well that the people at large, in some shape or other, are taxed 
 to furnish all public means. In a government which freemen have 
 helped to create for the equal protection of all, how can many of them 
 be expected to countenance, in those dressed in a little brief author- 
 ity, partial legislation, for building up favorite interests or favorite sec- 
 tions of country ? The question, as one of principle, is too plain for 
 argument ; nor will they befriend, on any subject, what they may be con- 
 vinced is a system of monopolies, — a system hostile alike to the durable 
 interests of the seaman, laborer, mechanic, merchant, and last, but not 
 least, the farmer, — aristocratic in tendency, and likely to become more 
 powerful and overshadowing than the government itself; for this would 
 be to befriend or submit to a species of slavery, and one the more 
 ignominious, as being usually to money alone, rather than to superior 
 
RETURN FROM WASHINGTON. 543 
 
 intellect, goodness, or knowledge. Still more vain would it be to hope 
 that such a race will ever long bear to be insulted by duplicity or 
 broken pledges of any kind from those in power, and, on their own 
 soils and freeholds, in sight of their fathers' graves, the descendants 
 of the Langdons, the Halls, the Gardners, and the Mannings, endure 
 to be proscribed or persecuted like conquered helots. 
 
 But I forbear, lest these remarks should insensibly glide into what 
 is susceptible of perversion. This much, however, can be added with 
 justice, and I trust without offence, — that, come when, where, or how, 
 danger may, a people like those before me will always scent tyranny 
 in the breeze, and, knowing their rights, as free, equal, and independ- 
 ent citizens of the freest republic on the globe, they will, without regard 
 to sects and schisms, always be ready to maintain those rights. 
 
 If attempts be made to cajole you as to the true extent or character 
 of them, tell the offenders from this hall, dedicated to one of the great 
 apostles of liberty, that they are the rights explained by him in the 
 immortal Declaration of Independence, and which our ancestors, after 
 a painful succession of sufferings, sought to guarantee by their wise 
 constitution and just laws, as well as by the republican virtues they 
 inculcated on their posterity. 
 
 Without those rights, whatever name is given to ourselves or our 
 institutions, our condition must become one of base servitude ; and in 
 times past all has been often risked in their defence, and all will be 
 again, because, whether we come off victors or martyrs, nothing can 
 be clearer than that our duties, no less than inclination and honor, 
 equally forbid us either to live or die slaves. 
 
 I cannot misunderstand the ardent eyes which meet mine in every 
 direction ; and I know that your pulses must beat warm with the con- 
 viction that these are opinions and resolves which the great mass of 
 you hold in common, and which you will never part with, whether 
 here, at the altar or the domestic fireside, whether in public or private 
 trust, and whether as citizens of New Hampshire or the Union. 
 
 Regardless, then, of misconstruction or calumny, I have taken the 
 liberty to express my belief that thus we mutually think, and, by 
 God's blessing, thus will do. 
 
 After this response, and a personal exchange of salutations between 
 Mr. Woodbury and his fellow-gitizens at large, who came forward to 
 welcome him with the most unfeigned cordiality, the committee of 
 arrangements, with the board of selectmen, accompanied him to his 
 lodgings at the Rockingham House, where he had taken rooms for him- 
 self and family, until his effects should arrive from Washington, and 
 his house be prepared for his reception. 
 
544 PRESIDENT POLK. 
 
 PRESIDENT POLK. 
 
 Mr. President : — Allow me, in behalf of my fellow-citizens of the 
 ancient town of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to welcome you to their 
 hospitalities. Interchanges of personal civility between a people and 
 their chief magistrate are usually attended by the happiest influences. 
 We know and are known better by being face to face, and heart to 
 heart ; and it rejoices us thus to enjoy an opportunity to draw closer the 
 cords which kindly bind together the true source of all political power, 
 and those deemed worthy to administer it. We greet you, therefore, 
 sir, to our hearths and altars, as the highest administrator of that 
 power for more than twenty millions of free and prosperous people. It 
 is this which makes our hearts overflow with gladness to see you tread 
 our granite soil ; for we do not presume to boast of its great fertility 
 in any crops, unless it be in crops of men, — high-minded men, " who 
 know their rights, and, knowing, dare maintain." It is this that makes 
 us exult to have you gaze on our mountains, and not that they are the 
 abodes of wealth and grandeur; but, on the contrary, the faithful 
 nurses of our share — we hope our full share — of hardy industry, of 
 well-tried bravery, both in "flood and field," of enlightened liberty, 
 of sterling patriotism, and all the republican virtues. Indeed, sir, you 
 see here one of those prolific northern hives, which yearly sends off its 
 swarms over the western continent, to gather, and, it is trusted, diffuse, 
 much that is useful, wherever they wander. Liberty and law, order 
 and industry, are inscribed on the banners under which they march 
 and conquer. 
 
 In this immediate neighborhood, sir, we invite you to examine the 
 scenes of the earliest settlement of our State; — the noble river, on 
 whose banks stands its venerable commercial capital, whither our 
 fathers came for a freer trade, as well as freer worship of their God ; 
 the beautiful navy-yard near us, in whose environs was built the 
 first ship-of-the-line since our independence, and, it is believed, the first 
 frigate in America ; and lastly, to inspect the gallant fort which opens 
 its cannon on the ocean at the mouth of our harbor, to aid in our 
 protection, under any unhallowed invasion of our soil. 
 
 We look anxiously towards the means of public usefulness increased 
 here by the dry dock, which has been happily authorized under your 
 administration, cherishing, as we do, a strong conviction that such 
 expenditures tend to render imperishable that great principle, now 
 embodied into the American code of public law, — " Millions for 
 defence, but not a cent for tribute." Every war steamer, — and we 
 
 * An address made to President Polk, on the occasion of his visit to Portsmouth, 
 1846. 
 
PRESIDENT POLK. 545 
 
 hope to see many grow up from this cradle of our navy, — every ship- 
 of-war of any kind that shall float from our harbor, under a svstem 
 like this, will be a monument to the world of that great principle, as 
 striking as if all her flags and canvas were emblazoned over with it in 
 letters of gold. 
 
 In conclusion, Mr. President, permit me to add, that but one pulse 
 beats in every heart in this vast multitude around me, — from smiling 
 youth to decrepit age, — and that is, with the earnest wish that you 
 may possess leisure to see everything here of public interest, may 
 meet with no accident to mar the enjoyments of your northern tour, 
 and, above all, may carry back with you the discovery of new cements 
 of the common brotherhood between us and the giant west and high- 
 principled south, — new attractions to bind us all closer and firmer for- 
 ever in one sacred and harmonious union. 
 46* 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 WAR WITH GREAT BRITAIN, 1812.* 
 
 ADDRESS TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 Sir : — One hundred and eighty-nine delegates, from all the 
 towns in the County of Hillsborough and State of New Hampshire, 
 have convened at Weare. They are attended by more than fifteen 
 hundred of their constituents. Among them are many, as their signa- 
 tures will show, who are proud to have participated in our Revolution, 
 and also to behold, as their associates in this convention, the flower 
 of our yeomanry, our mechanics and manufacturers. Such numbers 
 and character will perhaps justify us in addressing the chief 
 magistrate of our Union, and, without presumption, expecting from 
 him a regard to the sentiments we may express, as emanating, at least, 
 from an honest and respectable source. The citizens of this county, 
 sir, have, in common with their countrymen, suffered long from aggres- 
 sions of the European belligerents. And though their pressure has 
 fallen more directly and more heavily on some others, yet the circuit- 
 ous evils of them have visited us with no small privations. But com- 
 
 * This was a convention of much importance. Hon. Robert Alcock was chosen 
 president; Gen. Benjamin Pierce, David L. Morrill, Esq., and Gen. David Steele, 
 vice-presidents ; Henry E. Chase and John Burnam, Esqs., secretaries. 
 
 This Address and Resolves to the President of the United States, and Address to 
 the people of Hillsborough County, were read and adopted by the delegates, and after- 
 wards read to the whole convention, and unanimously appi-oved. It was voted, that 
 they be signed by the president, and countersigned by the secretaries, transmitted 
 to the President of the United States ; and that they be published in the New Hamp- 
 shire Patriot and Democratic Republican. 
 
 This Address was the first political performance of Mr. Woodbury, and gave him 
 eai'ly reputation. When he wrote it he was twenty-three years of age. 
 
550 WAR WITH GREAT BRITAIX. 1812. 
 
 plaint has hitherto been foreborne, from a reliance on the -wisdom and 
 integrity of our government. This confidence, we are happy to per- 
 ceive, was not misplaced. After a series of injuries, negotiations, 
 and indignities, which would long before have exhausted the patience 
 of any people and rulers less wedded to peace than the American, 
 they have at length risen in the violated majesty of a nation's rights, 
 and hurled the gauntlet at their oppressors. Even France they 
 are pledged to attack, unless atonement shall be proffered by her, ere 
 satisfaction has been wrested from England. This bold, magnanimous 
 deed, of the twelfth Congress, was beheld by many with sentiments of 
 approbation. In fancy, the heroes of our Revolution reappeared, pro- 
 claiming the charter of American independence; and we fondly 
 anticipated that all its friends would once more press forward in sup- 
 port of it, and, as our ancestry, devote " their lives, their fortunes, 
 and their sacred honor." Has this hope been disappointed, or are its 
 foes — the enemies of republics — those alone who raise the cry of 
 distrust and sedition ? The latter, patriotism, as well as facts, would 
 induce us to believe, is more probably the truth ; for, while ancient 
 differences of party have vanished, and men of integrity, of genius 
 the most brilliant, and reputation the most extensive, rally round our 
 constituted authorities, the voice of complaint vibrates now, as ever, 
 from a few relics of our Revolutionary opposition — a few systematic 
 revilers of the people, and a clan of their respective sycophants. That 
 voice, elevated against an administration which vast majorities have 
 selected, stigmatizing its measures, of whatever character, with imbe- 
 cility, corruption or wickedness; — that voice, hoarse with threatening 
 resistance to law, and summoning all the myrmidons of monarchy and 
 faction to demolish our confederacy ; — that voice has blown the tocsin 
 of alarm over our retired villages, and awakened the republicans of 
 Hillsborough County to refute, in a collective manner, its misrepre- 
 sentation of their sentiments. What !. shall such panders of sedition, 
 and their newspaper hirelings, and the merchants of British capital, 
 with their deluded disciples and abject dependants, — shall these men 
 dare to guide or seek the opinions of our great mechanic, manufac- 
 turing and agricultural phalanx 1 Shall they describe us alienated 
 from the administration, because agonizing under that injustice of the 
 belligerents, against which this administration amicably negotiated till 
 the olive withered? Shall they describe us hostile to war, because it 
 remains the sole weapon to wield against their indignities and aggres- 
 sions, — their rooted animosity and ferocious jealousies'? Shall they 
 describe us ripe for a rupture of the Union, and all the horrors of 
 civil butchery, because that Union was created by the founders of our 
 independence, nurtured by their example, and enforced by their pre- 
 cepts 1 Because its benefits are innumerable, — extending our empire 
 and augmenting our opulence,— a rainbow in peace and meteor in 
 war? These things, sir, have constituted a crisis, admitted to be 
 momentous and alarming ; yet, being forced on us, according to our 
 
551 
 
 belief, by the joint iniquity of foreign and domestic foes, we will never, 
 tliough deprecating its inevitable evils, never flee from it, as cowards 
 or traitors ; but rather face undaunted the enemies of our republic, 
 with our full portion of the energies which God has lavished on seven 
 millions of freemen. In such emergencies, an enlarged exposition of 
 the feelings and opinions of electors is seldom unacceptable to those 
 who are in authority. It is therefore 
 
 Resolved, That we consider the great compact, which binds in con- 
 federation these United States, a national act — an act which should be 
 supported, and reverenced, and perpetuated, as the ark of our political 
 salvation ; for, among other reasons, having legally emanated from a 
 vast majority of the people, it has become a law, — one too of the 
 highest obligation, — one as to all others what God's are to man's, and 
 which, as Washington, that father and hero of our country enjoined, 
 we should not even speak of, but "as the palladium of our liberties," 
 and not countenance so much as " a suspicioji that it can, in any event, 
 be abandoned." 
 
 Resolved, That all laws enacted under this confederation, and 
 according to its provisions, ought to be fulfilled, encouraged, and 
 respected ; because they are formed with our consent, constitutionally 
 expressed through a majority of our representatives, and have thus 
 not only received the sanction of all, but the allegiant oaths of 
 many to their support ; and consequently a breach of them will entail 
 upon its authors deliberate falsehood or flagrant perjury, as well as 
 jeopard the whole fabric of our civil polity. 
 
 Resolved, That it is not with acquiescence, but with astonishment, 
 — not with emotions of sympathy, but with abhorrence and detestation, 
 — we have witnessed men who call themselves Americans threaten- 
 ing to prostrate all these barriers of moral and political duty, scatter- 
 ing disaffection and revolt into the very bosom of our families, and 
 assailing that Union and those laws with the firebrands of calumny, 
 rebellion and death : and our reasons for indulging this sentiment are, 
 that though the leaders of "an artful and enterprising minority" have 
 often avowed contempt for our republic, and hostility to our confedera- 
 tion ; though suspected of intrigues for even the overthrow of the one 
 and dismemberment of the other ; though they have once disconcerted 
 our government by an approximation to that catastrophe, and, for 
 diverting the people from a scrutiny of their machinations, have brought 
 every unholy engine to bear upon the passion, prejudice, and sordid 
 interests of community; though, as Arnold accused the Congress of '76 
 with subjection to French influence, so have Arnold geniuses accused 
 that of 1812 ; though, as the Rivingtons of our Revolution strove to 
 excite sectional interests between the north and south, and to taint our 
 fraternal blood with jealousies the most reprobate, so have hirelings at 
 the present day ; though, as Washington himself, being a Virginian, 
 was branded with southern partialities, and, according to Marshall, 
 menaced, in the very midst of our struggle for independence, with 
 
552 WAR WITH GREAT BRITAIN, 1812. 
 
 removal from office, so has been the fate of many of his surviving 
 co-patriots and disciples; though, in alliance with these, whole hosts of 
 perturbed spirits have been conjured up from that pride and ambition 
 which had "rather rule in hell than serve in heaven;" and this at 
 the very crisis when each link in the chain of Union should be 
 brightened to a sunbeam, — yet ive continue still undismayed. The 
 friends to our constitution, whether republican or federal, will form a 
 pillar of adamant, which shall break this tempest that beats around it. 
 And though surprised at such depravity, its very hideousness will arm 
 them to its discomfiture with an indestructible energy, — an energy 
 sanctified by the justness of our cause, and a reliance on that same 
 arm which was made bare for the salvation of our fathers. 
 
 Resolved, That after the passing of laws, deliberation should for a 
 space yield to action. Time for opposing their policy has been 
 enjoyed ; and a competent tribunal has rendered judgment. By that 
 we will abide, till all legislative acts presumptively good, because 
 approved by a majority, are, after full experiment, ascertained to be 
 bad. The people and their representatives will then personally realize 
 this, and their repeal inevitably ensues. But, as the disorganizing and 
 turbulent have attempted, by assemblages, to misrepresent popular 
 opinion, particularly on the late measures of our government, we feel 
 constrained to come forward and express in their favor our detailed 
 and almost unqualified approbation; and this, among a myriad of other 
 reasons, because the conduct of both the great belligerents has towards 
 this country been long and systematically hostile. For evidence of 
 that, we rely not on declamation, but appeal to facts. It is perhaps 
 enough for us to forget the attack on our liberties, the conflagration of 
 our sea-ports, and murder of our ancestors, during the war for independ- 
 ence ; and that these outrages were inflicted only because we had pre- 
 viously fled thither to a wilderness inhabited by barbarians, esteemed less 
 ferocious than our British persecutors, — because we had here laid, in 
 tears and blood, the base of a new empire, which presented wealth for 
 their plunder and power for their jealousy. But that perfidy, originat- 
 ing from the same principle, which appeared in a non-compliance with 
 some articles of the subsequent reluctant peace, particularly in a reten- 
 tion of the western posts, that produced the desolation of our frontier in 
 the burning and butcheries of Indian warfare, and humiliated us 
 by tribute to the savages, and planted in their breasts thorns of 
 revenge, which have grown, rankled, and devastated, to the present 
 moment, — these, we confess, cannot so easily be forgotten. And though 
 Jay's treaty, however disapproved by many of the wise and good, and even 
 by Washington, and was considered but as a choice of evils, — though 
 that might have imposed on us silence, while strictly adhered to, and its 
 temporary provisions existing, — yet the subject of impressment was 
 collusively excluded from it ; and all its articles, but the permanent 
 ones, have long since expired, amidst our wishes and endeavors for its 
 renewal on an honorable basis. This last assertion let the arrange- 
 
WAR WITH GREAT BRITAIN, 1812. 553 
 
 ment with Erskine corroborate ; let the labors of Pinckney and Monroe 
 confirm. For the very persons who rail so loudly at the rejection of 
 their contemplated treaty ought to be conscious that it contained 
 what clearly demonstrates England's exorbitant pretensions and 
 America's conciliatory spirit. One glance at the instrument must 
 convince them that its clauses on the East India trade and enforce- 
 ment of our commercial restrictions, if no others, were totally inadmis- 
 sible. Distinguished statesmen of both parties have also pronounced 
 tins. The question of improvement, too, was again, as in Jay's treaty, 
 postponed to a supplement. Indeed, this last topic, so incalculable in 
 its interest, had, early as 1792, rendered it, in Washington's opinion, 
 '•necessary that their government should explain themselves on the 
 subject, and be led to disavow and punish such conduct." This he 
 directed to Jefferson, his illustrious Secretary, as also to inform our 
 minister at the cabinet of St. James that "the vessel being American 
 should be evidence that the seamen on board her are such;" and if "a 
 settlement of this point" was not soon completed, there would be 
 " difficulty in avoiding our making immediate reprisals on their sea- 
 men here." 
 
 Mr. Jay ought on this basis to have effected "that settlement," con- 
 sidered by our political father so indispensable and momentous ; but, in 
 the hurry of concluding his treaty, says Pickering, " among the articles 
 left unadjusted, one of the most interesting nature regards the impress- 
 ing of American seamen;" and that, with others, as before observed, 
 was expressly stipulated to be afterwards supplied. The credulous 
 ambassador left England under this belief, and also indulging, as he 
 observes, "a pleasing expectation that orders will be given that Amer- 
 icans " impressed " be immediately liberated ; and that persons honored 
 with his majesty's commissions do in future abstain from such 
 violence" But Mr. King was sent out; Mr. Listen arrived; negotia- 
 tions were recommended; and all these "pleasing expectations" ter- 
 minated, not in an additional a-rticle to the treaty, not in a release of 
 our countrymen, not in subsequent forbearance from such violence, 
 but in a mere proposal, which even President Adams reprobated ; and 
 our minister himself, since federal candidate for Vice-president (Mr. 
 King), indignantly spurned, as sanctioning "a principle which might 
 be productive of greater evils than those it was our aim to prevent." 
 And can they be friends to our country who, even now, reiterate that 
 Great Britain has always been willing honorably to adjust tins barba- 
 rous custom? In 1806, to be sure, Mr. Monroe, after much toil, 
 obtained from her a mere concession on impressment " both honorable 
 and advantageous to the United States ; " yet even that concession was 
 refused by her to be incorporated with his treaty, and has since been 
 disclaimed by proclamation and practice. And could Mr. Foster, in 
 his boasted letter, intend anything else but adding insult to injury, by 
 proposing to release all who should be proved natives of America } 
 For have not we the same privilege as England to naturalize foreign- 
 47 
 
554 WAR WITH GREAT BRITAIN, 1812. 
 
 ers, and then protect them, with other citizens, by our flag 7 This 
 denial to others what she claims to herself, says Chief-justice Marshall, 
 converts ''the practice into a question of power, and not of right." 
 But even " natives of America ," says he, "they are impressed; they 
 are dragged on board British ships-of-war, with evidence of their citi- 
 zenship in their hands, and forced by violence there to serve, until 
 conclusive testimonials of their birth can be obtained." " These," says 
 he, "must generally be sought for on this side of the Atlantic. In 
 the mean time, acknowledged violence is practised on a free citizen of 
 the United States, by compelling him to engage and continue in foreign 
 service." " The mere release of the injured, after a long course of ser- 
 vice and suffering, is no compensation for the past, and no security 
 for the future." If, then, such be the facts, such the principles, and 
 such their authority, we ask what measures should have been adopted ? 
 To liberate one citizen from confinement, Greece welcomed a ten years' 
 war. Will the opponents of government, then, inform us how much 
 longer time ought to have been employed, — to use the judge's lan- 
 guage, — in "unsuccessful remonstrance and unavailing memorials," 
 with above six thousand of our citizens in bondage 1 
 
 But the rapacity of England could not so violate the rights of per- 
 son, without assailing also those of property. A commerce bleaching 
 every sea was too tempting a prey. Jealousy of our naval greatness, 
 a dearth of resources to support her own vast expenditures, and that 
 wantonness, that abandonment of principle, which power frequently 
 engenders in a conflict with mere right, all combined to produce those 
 gradual aggressions on our neutrality which have augmented to their 
 present heinousness and ruin. In 1805 they burst forth in a manner 
 the most flagrant and unwarrantable. The rule of '56 was revived, — 
 a measure which, by one fell swoop, conveyed almost our whole car- 
 rying trade into the grasp of British cruisers. No provocation, no 
 State necessity, no settled principle of national law, could or was pre- 
 tended to extenuate this deed of piracy. And hence, a long year 
 before blockades or decrees, or the orders in council, all our sea-ports 
 covered the tables of Congress with supplications for war, — war against 
 England. Even the Senate, that body so grave and deliberate, with 
 not one dissentient vote, pronounced it "an unprovoked aggression 
 upon the property of the citizens of these United States, a violation 
 of their neutral rights, and an encroachment upon their national inde- 
 pendence." And can some of these very men now protest that Great 
 Britain has done us "no essential injury"? That the war is "impol- 
 itic, unnecessary, unjust " 1 That "France was the first aggressor" ? 
 We have not time, had we the disposition, to wade through that morass 
 of blockades, decrees and orders, which succeeded this wanton attack 
 on our commercial rights. All of them, however, and particularly the 
 last, even Mr. Bayard denominates "destructive to neutrals," and 
 "covering injustice with the cloak of retaliation." "They violate," 
 says he, " the plainest rights of the nation." " It is a doctrine which 
 
WAR WITH GREAT BRITAIN, 1812. 555 
 
 we must resist." And we have resisted it. Honor, interest, justice, 
 all summoned us to resist it. The insulting repetition, too, of Mr. 
 Foster, but a few weeks prior to the 18th of June, ''that Great Britain 
 cannot relinquish her retaliatory system on France," or, in other 
 words, her determination and right, in contending with Bonaparte, to 
 sacrifice the commerce of America, unless we compelled him to '"'rescind 
 absolutely and unconditionally" his decrees, — that is, in relation to all 
 the world, as well as the United States, — this, we believe, was not 
 wanting to Jill the cup of insolence and iniquity. And though by us 
 it is regretted that six years since "the republican banner" had not 
 been "unfurled" against the then only aggressor, before nine 
 hundred and seventeen of our ships had fallen victims to her 
 injustice, yet we consider the postponement of hostilities a proof, 
 incontestably as solemn, of our invincible attachment to peace. It is 
 known, and even demonstrable, that neither the present or past admin- 
 istrations are lovers of war. In avoiding it, their forbearance became 
 the very theme of ridicule. But it was a failing that "leaned on 
 virtue's side ;" and from which to redeem themselves their prepara- 
 tory measures have already produced a suspension of the English 
 orders, — an honorable repeal of which, with the adjustment of all 
 points in dispute, we confidently believe, energy and fortitude in the 
 cabinet will eventually effect. This war is regarded as one of 
 resources, and not simply of men or ships. While, therefore, occa- 
 sional disasters darken the lustre of frequent victory, we still look to 
 no distant termination of it. But the greatest caution should be exer- 
 cised in renewing negotiations with that court, which disavowed the 
 arrangement of Erskine, and whose present prime minister pledged 
 himself to reward Henry for encouraging the dismemberment of our 
 Union. This last act of perfidy and crime, whatever may have been 
 its success or reward, is among all governments regarded, in its patrons, 
 advocates, or abettors, as equally abhorrent. " It is," says Vattel, 
 " a violation of the law of nations, to persuade those subjects to revolt, 
 who actually obey their sovereign, though they complain of his gov- 
 ernment," — "an atrocious injury," "if any one attempts" it "by 
 his emissaries: " And ought a free people, an independent sover- 
 eignty, tamely to submit to such trifling % Is it to be endured, that 
 amidst the rotation of all their miserable expedients to benumb our 
 public feeling, avert merited reprisals, and palsy, if not annihilate, our 
 national spirit, — is it to be endured, we say, that not only spies shall 
 be missioned into the heart of our country, but the savages also, their 
 merciless and now open allies, be let loose on our frontiers, " to wake 
 the sleep of the cradle," butcher our wives, and apply the midnight 
 torch to our dwellings ? 
 
 Because these, and a host of other offences, cried for vengeance, we 
 therefore approve of Avar, — war against the first aggressor and great- 
 est aggressor, — against one at a time, instead oiboth) and if, before 
 an adjustment with this, the other belligerent shall not atone for her 
 
556 WAR WITH GREAT BRITAIN, 1812. 
 
 plunder, we pledge ourselves, with equal sincerity, to assail her wher- 
 ever vulnerable. 
 
 Resolved, That this contest, however, ought not to be prolonged 
 unnecessarily ; but still we revolt from its cessation till there has been 
 procured restitution for injuries and security for our rights. Because, 
 although the trade, navy, and sea-ports of America, should all be exter- 
 minated, yet a peace without that restitution and security could be 
 neither permanent or honorable. Some of these calamities we have 
 now partially endured; and the others, if happening, shall, rather than 
 depress, only inspire us with redoubled ardor in their redress ; for, as 
 freemen, we view submission worse than misfortune, deprecate insult 
 alike with aggressions, and welcome poverty before disgrace. Indeed, 
 without these sentiments, so indispensable to respect, independence, 
 and national honor, we should richly merit, what England seems long 
 to have meditated, the conversion of our affluence, our liberty, yea, life 
 itself, into an infamy and a curse. In our desire for speedy if honor- 
 able "peace with all nations," let it, however, be understood, that we 
 entreat for "entangling alliance with none." British fraternity and 
 Trench fraternity are equally our abhorrence ; and while others, with 
 much parade, disclaim a fondness for the last and aversion to the first, 
 we, in our republican simplicity, detest both. For, perhaps, almost as 
 little exists, deserving admiration, in "that bulwark of our religion," 
 which even now tears from all our theological sects but one the priv- 
 ileges of freemen, which has burnt hundreds of us at the stake, and 
 exiled as many thousands more to the mercy of barbarians ; in " that 
 champion for the liberties of the world," who once jeoparded ours, 
 who recently robbed Denmark of the power to defend hers, and who 
 at this moment makes the commerce of most its plunder, the seamen 
 of some its slaves, and whole regions of the east, with unhappy Ireland, 
 her vanquished and guiltless tributaries; in "that last hope of 
 nations," who has really favored few that she has not gangrened with 
 corruption, and leagued with as few that have not perished in her 
 embrace. It is seriously repeated, that in this we can perceive but 
 little more to admire than in the fickle, perfidious and sanguinary 
 Corsican. But, finally, if an internal foe, as many appearances indi- 
 cate, has conspired with the external one, and shall actually cooperate 
 to destroy our glorious Union, as well as surrender those rights 
 already so violated, — 
 
 Resolved, That we will embody around the constitutions of our 
 fathers and their elected guardians, and never assent to peace or alli- 
 ance till victory or death ; for, if our republic is to be overturned, if 
 this fair fabric of freedom is destined thus to fall, rather than survive 
 the catastrophe, we deem it more eligible, as well as magnanimous, to 
 bury ourselves under its splendid ruins. 
 
 ROBERT ALCOCK, President. 
 
 Henry B. Chase, ) g ecretaries 
 
 John Burnam, 
 
WAR WITH GREAT BRITAIN, 1812. 557 
 
 ADDRESS TO THE PEOPLE. 
 
 We are delegates from a respectable number of our fellow-citizens. 
 We have taken into consideration the present crisis, and adopted such 
 measures as the great occasion seemed to require. An expression of our 
 sentiments has been forwarded to the President of the United States, 
 which contained, in the opinion of those present, a fair statement of the 
 causes, character and results, of this emergency. But it is not forgotten 
 that in elections, and there alone, can the people speak fully and effect- 
 ually. While, therefore, the right of addressing and petitioning our 
 public functionaries should never be surrendered, it ought always to 
 be considered as merely advisory, — as communicating popular senti- 
 ment at doubtful and alarming exigencies, and not as strictly obliga- 
 tory on the measures to be pursued. In our primary assemblies, how- 
 ever, you can dictate, as well as advise ; and in them, on the first Monday 
 of November, we call upon the honest men of all parties and profes- 
 sions to use a language, by their votes, which cannot be misrepresented. 
 We dread not the trial. Your sentiments have of late been notoriously 
 belled by the factious and wicked. Let the day approach, let the hour 
 arrive, when the question must be, Will you elect those who support, or 
 those who oppose, our own government? and the majesty of the people 
 shall frown into obscurity each disorganizer, rebel and traitor. As pre- 
 paratory to a proper performance of this duty, we invoke every American 
 to regard the origin of his constitution, its articles and present admin- 
 istration ; to regard our conduct to foreign nations, theirs to us, and 
 that of a domestic faction to both ; and then dispassionately decide 
 whom you will support. If our form of government be republican ; 
 if it be a union, and not a severance, of the States ; if the adminis- 
 trators of it now are likewise republicans, and approve that union, 
 rather than its severance ; if they have conducted honestly toward all, 
 and yet have been injured and insulted by some in return ; — and if 
 that faction, on the contrary, have, by its leaders, avowed enmity to 
 republics, — styling them "a creature of fiction, an asp, a cockatrice," 
 "that it could exist nowhere but in theory," and also threatened a 
 severance of that Union, terming it "a rope of sand," a " millstone 
 on the neck of New England," — if they have also palliated, and, indeed, 
 justified, all the aggressions of our enemy, and denounced all the mod- 
 eration .and integrity of our own country, — then we conjecture that 
 your decisions will be with wisdom and facility. In political contro- 
 versies, too, among ourselves, "the reign of terror" introduced by 
 them in '98, and in 1812 reattempted, must create more abhorrence 
 than alarm, — more foes, we believe, than converts. Their intolerance, 
 their menaces, their malignant fabrications, have already roused to 
 withstand them, from the calm of civil life, many relics of the Revolu- 
 tion. Such conduct will rouse more. It will and must engender its 
 47* 
 
558 WAK WITH GEEAT BRITAIN, 1812. 
 
 own corrective. Let, then, an unceasing opprobrium, if they so will it, 
 be heaped on all the measures of our administration. It is not punish- 
 able under the republicans, however severely it was under the feder- 
 alists. Our sacred regard to independence of opinion and liberty of 
 the press pardons this licentiousness. But the people will mark its 
 authors, and properly reward them, — not by retaliation, not by mobs 
 against printers, representatives or judges, but by the finger of public 
 scorn, and the omnipotence of elections. So, during peace, a contin- 
 ued justification of one foreign government, and as continued a repro- 
 bation of another ', is, perhaps, almost equally harmless in law, though 
 not in decency and friendship. But, when a constitutional tribunal, in 
 a constitutional manner, declares war against one of those powers, it 
 obviously alters the character of such conduct, in relation to that power. 
 For then it becomes in fact, if not form, treacherous ; then, whatever 
 tends to or actually lowers that estimation which enemies make of 
 our justice, our wisdom, resources, courage or union, persuades them 
 more willingly to provoke, and enter, and prolong the conflict ; and 
 whatever tends to or actually magnifies their virtue, ability, success, 
 or glory, disheartens us in the assertion, as well as protection, of our 
 rights, and directly facilitates the path to their surrender. Can this 
 be, toward our foes, even in the constitutional definition of treason, any- 
 thing but " giving them aid"? Let honest men, therefore, of all 
 parties, listen to the conversation and peruse the writings of certain 
 persons since the declaration of war, and then decide whether they 
 have conducted like friends to this country, and deserve, for their 
 meritorious deeds, election to office. But they would excuse them- 
 selves by opposing the administration, and not the government. Is it 
 lawful, however, to resist an administration by bad means, and that, 
 too, when legal, constitutional ones are provided 1 By means which 
 contribute to the continuance of our commercial sufferings, and the 
 perpetuity of hostilities 1 By means which Washington himself pro- 
 phetically denounced, in denouncing all political societies, as "of fatal 
 tendency." "They serve," says he, "to organize faction, to give it 
 an artificial and extraordinary force ; to put in place of the delegated 
 will of the nation the will of a party, — often a small, but artful, enter- 
 prising minority." The leaders of federalism, however, are not con- 
 tent with this. They do more than oppose the administration, and 
 that, too, by unlawful means ; they oppose even the government, — 
 yes, the constitution itself — that is, a republic. They have pro- 
 nounced it "'inefficient," "unnatural," "impolitic." Monarchy has 
 received their eulogies, and their measures, as well as principles, have 
 tended to its establishment. That, too, is a confederation of the 
 States. They have menaced, even in Congress, that this confedera- 
 tion should be dissolved, — " amicably if we can, forcibly if we must." 
 They have said "we should live better separate than united;" that 
 "the Union is neither for our interest or safety." They have exhorted 
 the people now to resume their natural rights, and hurl defiance at the 
 
559 
 
 constitutional provisions. All these things are too notorious for denial ; 
 because reiterated by individuals, journals and assemblages, till the ear 
 even deafens. But, if honest federalists disclaim assent to these enor- 
 mities, like a Dexter or Pinckney, then, like those worthies, let them 
 rally round the legal authorities ; and not commit the absurdity of 
 reprobating such sentiments, and still vote for those who utter or 
 patronize them. For that is becoming accessory, if not principal, to 
 the whole decalogue of their flagitious tenets, and the whole series of 
 their disorganizing measures. This now is the question, — Does that 
 candidate you are incited to elect act for the government, or against 
 it? Consign, for a moment, all other distinctions of party to the grave. 
 Once let every man imitate his ancestry. Once become Americans in 
 word and deed. The spirits of Franklin, Warren, and Hancock, 
 are surely not extinct. Regard to foreign nations must, therefore, be 
 swallowed up in devotion to our own ; and each freeman, when about 
 to give his suffrage, will ask, not simply what is professed, but what has 
 been done, by him he shall support. The inquiry, great and impending, 
 should be, Does he join, does he belong to, that faction, who, as appears 
 above, oppose our oicn government? and in that manner, even if he 
 be inactive himself, yet, by uniting with them and increasing their num- 
 ber, he emboldens or abets his companions to pull down the pillars of 
 our constitution, and drag us all as suppliants and victims to the altar 
 of British mercy ! After full deliberation on these points, your breth- 
 ren of Vermont have acquitted themselves manfully. They have suc- 
 ceeded in electing their candidates by majorities of thousands ; and, in 
 the very mouth of danger, erected themselves into a wall of granite on 
 our frontier, as impregnable as their glory shall be imperishable. New 
 Hampshire loitered not behind her sister State in the Revolution ; and 
 we can now also calculate, with confidence, that she will u go and do 
 likewise" 
 
 ROBERT ALCOCK, President. 
 
 Henry B. Chase, } ~ . . 
 
 John Buknam, \ ®*r<*<™*- 
 
560 SPEECH DELIVERED IN FANUEIL HALL. 1841. 
 
 A SPEECH DELIVERED IN FANEUIL HALL, OCT. 19, 1841. 
 — PARTY SUBJECTS. 
 
 I AM not used to scenes of this kind. My life has been spent rather 
 in courts of law, in senates, and the secluded labors of the cabinet. 
 But why should I hesitate ox fear to face my friends, — warm-hearted 
 and kind friends, — asking my presence at so favored a spot, in a great 
 crisis and a great cause, when I never feared to face even enemies in 
 any place or manner the most inquisitorial 1 What is the reason of 
 this 1 Nothing in the humble individual before you, but everything in 
 the cause. It is the character of the cause in which we are all 
 embarked, the progress of human improvement and popular rights, 
 which sustains and animates us, and is, indeed, the last hope of 
 oppressed humanity in every quarter of the globe. 
 
 If it be asked why such a charm and magnitude should be attached 
 to it, I answer, because, though intermingled, at times, with transient 
 and local questions, this cause enters deep and wide into all the import- 
 ant movements in society. It is the same which, under different 
 names, forms, and aspects, has been convulsing the social system since 
 the origin of our race. Its principles have often been developed, — not 
 always, to be sure, but often, — in the struggles between the few and 
 the many in every age ; between the ambitious and the lowly ; avarice 
 and honest industry ; office and private life ; rank and the masses ; exclu- 
 sive privileges and monopolies against equal rights, liberty, and free 
 trade ; strength against dependence ; combination and coalition against 
 individual weakness ; and, in fine, aristocracy of all kinds, whether of 
 birth, money or power, against the unpretending democracy of num- 
 bers. Exceptions, without doubt, will always exist. Yet disguise, and 
 gloss over, or pervert facts and principles, as has been done in all 
 countries, some of the interests involved in such conflicts have been 
 alike in their essence, and, amidst all sects and schisms, have contended 
 for supremacy, like the fabled deities of Darkness and Light, in some 
 systems of philosophy, struggling constantly for the government of the 
 universe. 
 
 But, thanks to God, we, or most of us who are assembled in this 
 place consecrated to struggles for liberty in by-gone days, stand ar- 
 rayed on the liberal side, — in fine, on the glorious side of the greatest 
 good to the greatest number. And if our efforts in the contest now 
 waging among and around us are proportioned to the excellence of our 
 cause, we shall behold the greatest number espousing it, — not only in 
 our sister republics, under the second sober thought of this victorious 
 autumn, but in Massachusetts herself, whose democratic sons, under 
 all reverses, have in this noble cause proved themselves unterrified and 
 renowned. 
 
1841. 561 
 
 It is vain to attempt to separate State parties and State contests 
 from the influence of great general principles, or from the solicitude 
 and cooperation of others engaged in their support. Those principles 
 are interwoven with everything, inseparably as light and heat. It is 
 equally vain to seek to disunite them, and be isolated from the politics 
 of the General Government, — that government which controls the 
 most vital interests of the whole, and, in its operations and character, 
 is the chief exponent of all to the rest of the civilized world. To talk 
 of such solitary grandeur is to mistake weakness for strength, and to 
 lose the sympathies which make us one and all aid one and all in every 
 important struggle. Separation or disunion from the others, in a 
 State that has been among the foremost, by flood and field, no less 
 than in the public councils, on questions affecting the whole continent, 
 would also be treason to the memory of the illustrious dead, whose 
 memorials around us would waken almost the stones of your streets to 
 exertion. Indeed, much more, in one view, exists to animate you 
 than roused your fathers in a like formidable contest, under names 
 and principles only in some respects different, but closely similar in 
 tendency. The same harbor, but now crowded with masts and com- 
 merce, spreads its waves before you which witnessed their intrepid patri- 
 otism in the general cause, — in the cause of the whole continent, — 
 to destroy all means of collecting a tax on tea, which they deemed 
 unlawful as well as odious. The same immortal heights, but fuller 
 with population, surround your city, where they poured out their 
 blood like water to defend the general cause — the rights of all the 
 colonies — against usurped power and perfidious legislation across the 
 Atlantic. The same Cradle of Liberty — though guarded with much 
 greater wealth and numbers, as well as improved laws and freer 
 institutions — can again rock with exhortations against general as 
 well as local misrule, and against an army of venal office-holders 
 quartered upon the people, in the language of the Declaration of 
 Independence, to eat up their substance : or, in the fervid eloquence 
 of your own Hancock, to dragoon them into submission. 
 
 Nor are you men, any less than they, formed selfishly to hold back 
 in a national crisis ; with less of mind, soul or heart, to face peril ; or 
 with less at stake of wives, children, friends and homes, — or, in fine, 
 of "lives, fortunes and sacred honors." No; democracy is a unit: 
 and democrats will, with fraternal confidence and with martyr zeal, 
 unite their efforts, till they can unite their rejoicings in one common 
 triumph through the Union. 
 
 But, beyond and above all which actuated your fathers to take an 
 interest in their elections, and discussions as to what concerned the 
 whole, you have a wider and greater whole to cooperate with : — at 
 home, twenty-six States instead of thirteen colonies ; seventeen mil- 
 lions instead of only three millions of people ;.* — and abroad, new coad- 
 
 * In 1851, 31 States, and a population of 23,347,884. 
 
562 SPEECH DELIVERED IN FANEUIL HALL, 1841. 
 
 jutors ; a more enlightened age : systems and principles, if not new, 
 yet resuscitated with new energy, and agitating all society, and the 
 foundation of many of its best interests, in both hemispheres. They 
 struggled chiefly against particular despots, tyrants, or aristocrats ; 
 you contend against despotism itself, tyranny itself, and aristocracy 
 itself, in all shapes, plans and designs. This, in some degree, has 
 produced a new era, in which both Americas have been revolutionized 
 and Europe reformed. The progress of civilization everywhere, as 
 well as in the United States, has become involved in the crisis. Your 
 war is not only against bad men, but bad systems, bad legislation, bad 
 usages, bad education, bad opinions; not, as some have misrepre- 
 sented, against constitutional laws, honest contracts, really vested 
 rights, sound morals, order, property, or religion, — but, in fine, 
 against abuses and errors as to all of them. 
 
 In this warfare, unfortunately, our own citizens became early divided, 
 and have since presented two leading parties. The contest is, there- 
 fore, going on nominally between their respective men and their imme- 
 diate measures, but really between the great principles, tendencies, 
 and results, which each favors, in their general mode of thinking and 
 action. 
 
 From the first, we had the misfortune to possess statesmen among us 
 who aspired more to independence than republicanism. Rebels, if 
 you please, against George III., but not rebels against monarchy. 
 Converts, if you please, to revolution, but not to democracy. They 
 remained the worshippers of old systems, and wedded to ancient forms, 
 and distrusted the capacity of man for self-government. It is not to 
 be concealed that some were still monarchists, — doubtless honest mon- 
 archists, but still monarchists. Some aristocrats, and honest, but still 
 aristocrats. Some disciples in all things of Alexander Hamilton, — 
 not only in his United States Bank and funding system, but in his 
 high-toned notions of government and society; content with what 
 existed, rather than seeking more ; with what was established, rather 
 than urging improvement ; with what was literary, fashionable, or 
 savoring of good society, rather than aiming to instruct better and 
 elevate higher the masses ; advocates of more power to the executive 
 and stronger government, instead of the governed being more intelli- 
 gent and privileged; in fine, federalists in principle, — honest federal- 
 ists often, but still federalists. They were not the apostate, bastard, cor- 
 rupt recreants who have frequently, for the loaves and fishes of office, 
 — mere plunder and pelf, — joined, and controlled, and disgraced fed- 
 eralism of late years. No ! They were sincere followers of the old 
 school ; and highly respectable in private as well as in public life, for 
 talents and virtue, however misled and dangerous in their political 
 opinions in a republican government. 
 
 The democratic party, on the other hand, have felt bound from the 
 outset, and still do, to oppose such unjust theories, and such a sta- 
 tionary policy, as well as measures so unequal. In short, they con- 
 
563 
 
 sider them hostile to our form of government, and the true spirit of our 
 constitutions, no less than the most vital interests of the citizens at 
 large ; and also as behind the progress of the age, as false to the rights 
 of man, as opposed to the spread of civilization, and, more than this, 
 as illiberal and anti- Christian in all their tendencies. Such, then, is 
 our general cause ; such, theirs. Such is that of our liberal co-labor- 
 ers throughout the world, against the antagonist party under every 
 protean shape which power and deception can devise. 
 
 Formidable even here as our opponents are, — by talents and wealth, 
 — their greater success elsewhere renders this peculiarly the asylum 
 and the citadel of free principles for all countries. How strongly, 
 then, does it behoove us at all times, occasions, and points, to be armed 
 in its defence, and much more on the approach of our elections ! If 
 the elections do not, in each case, involve all of the points of difference, 
 and settle for any great length of time many of the momentous ques- 
 tions which agitate society, they always operate on some of them. 
 However local or temporary some of their immediate objects, yet the 
 leading men infuse into them forever much of evil or good, both by 
 example and precept, as well as opinion. 
 
 The great cause to which I have alluded is retarded or advanced, to 
 the injury or benefit of untold millions, by every victory or defeat of 
 its friends at the polls, on a scale however limited. The elections, 
 also, though not exactly the warfare itself, furnish the great occasion 
 for ascertaining its results. The warfare is indeed here to-night ; it 
 is everywhere, and during the whole year. It is in the counting- 
 room, the street, the workshop, the field, on the vessel's deck; but 
 the elections are the places and the times for a final reckoning. They 
 are the great day of account, if they are not the battle-fields ; and if 
 ballots are there used instead of bayonets, they give us the numbers on 
 each side, and the killed, and wounded, and missing, from the mental 
 disputations and contests which have preceded. They show what 
 has been effected by useful hints here, by exposing misrepresentation 
 there; by intrepid appeals to duty in one place, intelligent books 
 and independent presses in another; by misrule developed, or the 
 detection of confidence betrayed, everywhere. Before they take place, 
 we contend with open doors, open hearts, and open principles ; while 
 our enemies have fought in ambush, and still rely on power more 
 than right, and are already appalled at the prospect. Notwith- 
 standing this, it becomes us all, in season and out of season, to keep 
 our lamps trimmed and burning ; and though, in a righteous cause, 
 always trusting in Providence, yet, at the same time, always taking 
 special care to keep our powder dry for the fight. Use no meas- 
 ures but arguments, — no influence but reason. With a desperate 
 foe, never sleep but on your arms. Eternal vigilance has more than 
 once been justly called the price of liberty ; and well have you illus- 
 trated it in former elections, when, after years of hope deferred, you 
 persevered under the most fearful odds, till you triumphed by a 
 
564 SPEECH DELIVERED IN FANEUIL HALL, 1841. 
 
 single vote. All you need now is the same resolute perseverance and 
 undiminished ardor, with the same steady, inflexible, trustworthy 
 spirit, to insure another triumph for your chief candidate in the field. 
 You do not belong to the party to stay beaten. Morton is the pilot, 
 who, I trust, will again weather the storm. Why should he not? 
 What is there in the present crisis, what in the agitating topics of the 
 day, what in all that is daily happening around us, which is calcu- 
 lated to dishearten ? On the contrary, we have quite as much in all 
 these to encourage us, even in these local struggles, as we have in the 
 great principles of public liberty, and public virtue, and public 
 improvement, which distinguish our friends and their cause over the 
 whole world. 
 
 Some twelve months ago, to be sure, we witnessed much to shake 
 the confidence of the friends of equal rights in their security and 
 further progress. This arose not merely from the temporary success 
 of our opponents in the last presidential election, but from the success 
 of such bad means ; means so much worse than usual, and so discred- 
 itable to their authors, and, what was still more to be deplored, so 
 degrading to the purity and stability of all free institutions. 
 
 The scenes of degradation and demoralization which preceded that 
 election were not of American growth ; they were basely foreign in 
 character. They must have been imported by our opponents from 
 countries where the lower ranks are ignorant and inexperienced, and 
 accustomed to debauchery, and where votes are bought and sold like 
 sheep in the shambles. Their influence must be short-lived, where 
 intelligence and virtue among the electors are not utterly extermi- 
 nated. Never can results thus produced, or results attempted to be 
 perpetuated by means such as those proposed at the late extra session, 
 triumph long here. Indeed, it is a part of the providence of God 
 everywhere, that unlawful means can no more be used with safety 
 or durable success than unlawful ends. Hence they have, in this 
 instance, already proved the seeds of overthrow to those who used 
 them. The profligate engineers have been blown sky-high by their 
 own shells. The revulsion is not only begun, but advanced. The 
 people are not merely awaking, but awakened. And overwhelming 
 ruin is written on the walls of the political palaces of our opponents, 
 in warning as legible and deep as ever dismayed tyrants in days of 
 miraculous interposition. 
 
 Let us devote a few moments to a consideration of some of their 
 means and measures, as a memento for our children to shun, and as 
 an excitement for us, and all who value virtue or liberty, to punish 
 such outrages on them at the polls, in the eusuing election, by the 
 most signal reprobation. 
 
 Look first at some of the reckless charges they trumped against their 
 predecessors. In the front rank was a host of Ogle fabrications ; 
 and, what was worse, after being proved on the floor of Congress, by 
 one of his own political friends, even by one of your own ex-governors 
 
565 
 
 and present collector, to be full of exaggeration and hypocrisy, thou- 
 sands calling themselves honorable men aided in disseminating those 
 falsehoods in every section of the Union. Next came the convulsive 
 horror at the use of bloodhounds, though employed to detect the fero- 
 cious savage, who had spared neither sex nor infancy, and had for 
 years covered an exposed frontier with conflagration and butchery. 
 But, what is worse, the very territorial governor who recommended, 
 bought, and used them, was a whig, addressing whig conventions, 
 and has, by a whig administration, been reappointed to the office from 
 which the abused democratic one removed him. Next came the really 
 laughable charge of usurpation intended by a standing army ! A 
 standing army, composed only of citizen militia ! Yes, a citizen 
 militia converted into an army voluntarily to destroy their own liber- 
 ties, and that on a most dangerous plan, it was pretended, but which 
 had its origin in principle under Washington, and had been partic- 
 ularly recommended by Harrison himself. Shame, shame on such 
 hypocrisy ! But, perhaps, enough of this scrutiny. Next, then, came 
 the charge of a forty million debt ! Reiterated over the whole Union, 
 and yet now admitted not to exceed twelve ; and half of that twelve 
 manifestly caused by themselves. This was done by them in only 
 half a year, and near sixteen more was attempted to be created for a 
 national bank, while their predecessors were twenty-four half-years in 
 forming as much as five or six millions ; and, in the mean time, saved 
 and deposited with the States near thirty millions, though their suc- 
 cessors have not deposited a dollar with them, and will not, without 
 the aid of increased taxation. Next came the complaint against the 
 use of treasury notes, which saved from two to three per cent., on 
 the average, compared with their twelve million loan. The notes 
 allowed all the middling classes to participate, while the loan benefits 
 only banks and nabob capitalists ; and the notes, however derided, did 
 not, on the 4th of March last, equal six millions, while our opponents 
 have since authorized loans equalling more than twenty-five millions, 
 and resorted to treasury notes also, whenever able, under former 
 laws. 
 
 Next, extravagance of expenditure, being, the last year, but 
 twenty-three millions, when they contemplate twenty-seven or twenty- 
 eight this year ; being larger in former years only under large 
 expenses in Indian wars, and uncalled for appropriations for other 
 purposes made by Congress, to the extent of thirty or forty millions. 
 The average in Mr. Van Buren's administration did not exceed 
 twenty-seven millions, instead of thirty-seven, as pretended often; 
 and his last year, reduced to twenty-three millions, was leading the 
 way to only twenty in this year, that being only the amount of the 
 average ordinary expenditure of the whole last twelve years, pro- 
 nounced so extravagant by those who have exceeded it seven or eight 
 millions. I ought to pass over other topics of their groundless charges, 
 lest too great an encroachment should be made on your time. 
 48 
 
566 
 
 Look at the losses by receivers, collectors, &c, so falsely presented 
 and exaggerated. A list of the whole, from the foundation of the gov- 
 ernment, during half a century, has been circulated and placarded by 
 these honest politicians on every post and corner, as the amount lost 
 during only the twelve past years of democratic rule. Much of it has 
 also been attributed to the sub-treasury system ; when, in truth, the 
 losses have not been a single dollar under the sub-treasury, and when 
 its whole expenses yearly do not appear to have equalled thirty thou- 
 sand dollars ; when all the losses by collectors and receivers under 
 General Jackson were not as much as in various former administra- 
 tions, with a United States Bank, or as the losses yet unsettled to the 
 treasury by the United States Bank alone ; and when all the losses 
 under Mr. Van Buren (including Swartwout himself, recommended 
 to office at his second term by whigs, voted for by whigs, chairman 
 of the panic whigs, and once nominated as a candidate for Vice-presi- 
 dent by whigs), not all equal to the losses in the last four years, in 
 more than twenty cases of broken banks ; nor one-twentieth of the 
 amount lost by the public and its stockholders, through the United 
 States Bank alone. Even now, after all the tirades against the last 
 administration on account of Swartwout' s default, we are told by the 
 very last whig papers themselves, that all the vituperation has been 
 groundless, the defalcation trifling, and the whole well secured. In 
 fine, without being too tedious, the past administrations were falsely 
 charged with ruin, ruin, general KUIN, every year since General 
 Jackson's election, as well as since Mr. Van Buren' s. Ruin, from 
 imputed harshness to the Indians in Georgia, where civilization and 
 Christianity were only then attempted to be extended ; ruin, from 
 the veto of the bank in 1832, which veto their own President has 
 repeated in 1841; ruin, from the removal of the deposites, which 
 the law expressly authorized, and from an institution that has since 
 failed, and been pronounced, even by some of the whig partisans, a 
 public nuisance. 
 
 But enough of charges so groundless and absurd. "Well calculated, 
 to be sure, to mislead for a time ; but yet, after detection and full 
 exposure, calculated also to recoil, and overwhelm, as they are now 
 doing, with shame, desertion, and defeat, their heedless authors. 
 
 Look next a moment at the reprobate character of the other prac- 
 tices and principles under which they sought and procured power. 
 Their course, as a party, was to promise nothing, but abuse every- 
 thing. At the same time, fragments of the party, in particular places, 
 promised everything, and in others resisted everything. In one place the 
 fragments were United States Bank, in another anti-bank ; in one high 
 tariff, in another anti-tariff; in one abolition, in another anti-abolition ; 
 in one pledging all offices to old incumbents, in another all to new ones. 
 
 But, as a party, and a whole party, when asked for their joint com- 
 mon principles for administering the government, they referred you to 
 nothing, but their philosophical and argumentative coon-skins and 
 
SPEECH DELIVERED IN FANEUIL HALL, 1841. 567 
 
 hard cider. If you inquired for their plans of reform, you were 
 answered only by log cabins or gold spoons. In fine, the loftiest 
 among them admitted that their resolution was to oppose everything 
 and propose nothing. 
 
 Even at Harrisburg, where the magnates of their cause assembled, 
 you could obtain no opinions on the constitution, the currency, the 
 distribution, — much less abolition, or the United States Bank. All was 
 concealment, noncommittalism, inglorious secrecy, — nothing, in short, 
 about any great principle, or question of constitutional liberty, or pub- 
 lic policy, but simply " Tippecanoe and Tyler too." 
 
 It was "Tippecanoe and Tyler too" morning, noon, and night, 
 at taverns, pipe-layings, log-cabins, halls of legislation, and, if not in 
 churches, at least in aristocratic drawing-rooms. It was the league 
 of black spirits and white, of all hues, opinions and creeds ; and all not 
 for one single great specified object, except '•Tippecanoe and Tyler 
 too ; " and that to be attained through all kinds of misrepresentation 
 and delusion, all kinds of mummery and parade, all kinds of sensual 
 and sordid appeals ; indeed, all kinds of political debauchery, from 
 treating down to Badgerism and Glentworthism ; and all kinds of 
 inconsistency, from running two candidates to establish a Bank of the 
 United States who had both uniformly opposed it, and two to enable 
 them to seize on all the spoils of office who had uniformly denounced 
 those spoils, and all removals for opinion's sake. 
 
 What could common-sense, philosophy or cool reflection, anticipate 
 to happen, ere long, when the mask was stripped off from such a chaos 
 and profligacy of principles 1 Nothing less than what experience soon 
 verified. Those who sow the wind must expect to reap the whirlwind. 
 The end, in one sense, came more quickly than any anticipated, — in 
 less than one short month. 
 
 In less than one short month, — ere the baked meats of the inaugu^ 
 ration, with all its senseless pageantry and "glorification," were cold, 
 — they had falsified most of their pledges against removals, and by 
 importunities and bickerings not only embittered the life, but hurried 
 to a painful grave the gray hairs of their chief magistrate. 
 
 It is a singular coincidence, that the cold-blooded persecutors for 
 the spoils of office were allowing the timbers of the last log-cabin in 
 the capital, the great emblem of their cause, to be pulled down and 
 trodden in the dust beside his ashes, when these last were being con- 
 veyed from the city. 
 
 What has been the fate also of his colleague, of "Tyler too" before 
 the first half-year of his Presidency closed 1 Burnt and shot in effigy 
 over half the Union, denounced in their conventions, black-balled by 
 their presses, and, in fine, proscribed in Congress itself by all the great 
 leaders of the great Harrisburg piebald coalition. 
 
 What sudden retribution ! What changes beyond the romance of 
 the wildest Arabian tale ! What a stupendous coalition sapped by its 
 own bad principles — overthrown — scattered in fragments over the 
 
568 SPEECH DELIVERED IN FANEUIL HALL ; 1841. 
 
 earth, in only half a year ! It was almost miraculous madness, which 
 led them to persevere, as they began, in such a universal disregard 
 for all then solemn pledges against removals for mere opinion's sake, 
 — pledges given everywhere and in every form, and by almost every 
 conspicuous politician. In this matter their wantonness almost exceeds 
 credibility. Did they suppose the whole community had adopted a 
 Paul Clifford rule of conduct and belief 1 Did they suppose that the 
 people at large had neither memories nor morals 1 Is breach of faith 
 to be a part of the creed of our opponents 1 Can they regard hypoc- 
 risy as a virtue?- — violation of pledges as honorable? Did they 
 expect to retain public confidence by breaking it, and to deserve future 
 trust by a profligate abuse of all past trust ? If they did, it is for- 
 tunate that the false disguise has been stripped off so early, and that 
 they now stand unwhigged before the scorn of many of their own 
 party, and the jeers of the world. 
 
 They have been equally unfortunate, if not perfidious, in several 
 other respects. Thus, on the great and absorbing question of the 
 currency, they have accomplished little or nothing, except to get up a 
 malignant family feud. Their magnificent doings have been chiefly 
 undoings. The deposite act, as to the pet banks, which they had 
 insisted on as indispensable to prevent a despotic union of the purse 
 and the sword, and to control a dangerous executive discretion, they 
 have repealed in hot haste, before any system had become a law in 
 its stead ; thus, by blunder or design, restoring under themselves the 
 very condition of things they had anathematized under others. Not 
 content with this, they committed the like folly as to the sub-treasury, 
 though so excellent in some of its provisions as to force on themselves 
 a renewal of them ; and so wise in all its essentials, tha,t no constitu- 
 tional, safe, and permanent substitute is very likely to be devised for 
 it, except with some modifications as to the currency originally recom- 
 mended with it in September, 1837. Indeed, the great whig argument 
 against it, that a verdict had, by the former elections, been rendered 
 against it, has already been nullified, and the hundred thousand changes 
 of votes already ascertained since last autumn, and, indeed, since its 
 repeal, furnish the strongest whig argument to restore it, and to drive 
 the advocates of a national bank into more than Andalusian shades. 
 
 How ludicrous has been their tinkering with this subject at the late 
 extra session, till they fell together by the tongues, — not to say ears, 
 as in one House of Congress, — and then, like termagants, broke up 
 with a regular row of caucus-scolding ! 
 
 Instead of confining banking to those who have spare funds to loan, 
 they tried to dabble in it themselves, though without spare money, and 
 compelled to resort to an immense debt to be embarked in so unprom- 
 ising a speculation. Instead of providing capital for commerce, where 
 a sufficiency did not exist, they sought to swell the amount of what 
 was already over-bloated, excessive, and unprofitable. Instead of 
 reducing, by their system, executive influence, they increased it ten- 
 
SPEECH DELIVERED IN FANEUIL HALL, 1841. 569 
 
 fold. Instead of letting the government keep its own money, as it 
 keeps its own ships, forts, lands, and buildings, by its own officers, 
 amenable to it and accountable for defalcation under severe penalties, 
 they attempted to put it in the power of bank stockholders, — at times, 
 titled, inimical, and irresponsible foreigners, — such as some Countess 
 of Paper-rags, some Duke of Shinplasters, or the Barings, or even 
 Louis Philippe. Instead of leaving substitutes for specie to the States, 
 that may need them, and who can, by only willing it, at any time, 
 make them sound, they have sought to absorb the whole subject of 
 the currency into the hands of mere jobbing politicians. Under pre- 
 tence of doing some small exchanges for themselves, they have argued 
 the power to do all exchanges for others ; and they have thus attempted 
 to regulate, cheapen, and equalize, the whole exchanges of the country, 
 amounting to several hundred millions, by legislative corporations, when 
 they might as well regulate and reduce the tides of the ocean by such 
 corporations. They might as well control prices of merchandise and 
 produce, and fix new regulations for the movements of even the plan- 
 etary system, as alter by legislation the great laws of trade that per- 
 vade and govern the whole civilized world. 
 
 The real difference of exchanges between two places, you know full 
 well, cannot exceed the cost of carrying specie from one to the other ; 
 or else specie would be carried, instead of buying a bill of exchange. 
 Now you know, also, that the cost of carrying gold from the remotest 
 points, St. Louis or Detroit, does not exceed two per cent. Hence it 
 follows, inevitably, that all the party slang as to high exchanges, with- 
 out a national bank, is groundless ; and that what trading politicians 
 please to designate as five, ten, or fifteen per cent., as a difference in 
 exchanges, is not a difference between exchange of specie, but of specie 
 in one place and bad notes in another. Such a difference they might 
 find across one of your own streets, between the exchange of specie for 
 the notes of a broken bank. You might as well call the difference 
 between the exchange of a sound horse for an unsound one, in differ- 
 ent cities, a difference caused by their distance from each other, rather 
 than by their unsoundness. 
 
 Only last winter (to give a practical illustration on this point), 
 when exchanges were quoted, by political presses and bankers, as from 
 three to five per cent, 'on New Orleans, I exchanged two hundred 
 thousand dollars of specie in New Orleans for the same amount paid 
 me at New York, without paying a single dollar for the difference in 
 exchange. 
 
 Nothing can cure such ignorant or speculating interference, but 
 some little acquaintance with the true principles of banking and of 
 commerce, and some restraining grace in politicians not to make the 
 public the goose to be exposed to be constantly plucked by a combina- 
 tion of speculators, sharks, and blacklegs. Had neither of the bank 
 projects been vetoed, those miserable schemes would both have fallen 
 still lower, except for the public capital and credit connected with them ; 
 48* 
 
570 
 
 and Captain Tyler, as well as the constitution, would botli have been 
 headed in vain ; and the public would, in my opinion, soon have been 
 more thoroughly undeceived than they even now are, as to the folly 
 and imposture of both measures. The people can always have specie, 
 or its equivalent, when they insist upon it ; and, whether they resort 
 to a Macon specific, or hard money alone, as provided by the consti- 
 tution, the fault is in themselves, in not having good laws, or in not 
 inflexibly requiring them to be executed, when they are subjected to 
 the miserable vacillations and depreciations of suspended bank-paper. 
 The axe can be laid at the root of speculation and profit ; and sound 
 money will abound as much as sound timber or sound ships, if the 
 demand for them is only made steady and firm. The stupid idea that 
 coin enough, if required, does not exist in the world for a circulating 
 medium of specie here, when it exceeds in America and Europe alone 
 fifteen times all needed here, is worthy only of the superficial flippancy 
 that gives birth to such crudities. The specie flag, kept flying by the 
 General Government in 183T, saved to us specie enough for three- 
 fourths of the whole amount desirable, and relieved the country from 
 the abominable twenty-five years' suspension looked up to by Mr. 
 Biddle as the English model for our imitation, — one of the conse- 
 quences of which has been developed in the rotten insolvency and ruin 
 of the United States Bank under his boasted auspices. 
 
 I would fain pursue this subject further, did time permit, without 
 wearying your patience, and encroaching on ground allotted to others. 
 A word or two as to some of the other measures, and I have done. It 
 may suffice to remark, as to most of them, that; they were in close keeping 
 with the contempt of public decency and public pledges, as well as the 
 disregard of democratic principles, which have already been exposed in 
 the others. On this allegation, we are ready to meet them every- 
 where. On this, especially, do we choose to meet them at Philippi — 
 at the polls. They have been met in it there already, by a once 
 deceived and now indignant people, in many of the States. The 
 hour of meeting and of reckoning here approaches. You have made 
 up your minds, I trust, unchangeably, on several of the other points 
 in their public career ; and I will now briefly, but plainly, openly, inde- 
 pendently, boldly, tell them beforehand what, in my opinion, they are, 
 and what such unfaithful stewards must expect from your ballot-boxes, 
 First, you will not countenance public perfidy. No matter whether in 
 false accusations against former rulers, or broken promises as to proscrip- 
 tion, and, above all, to retrenchment and reform. Next, you will not 
 tolerate succumbing or truckling to foreign powers, and more especially 
 our ancient oppressors. No hasty willingness to surrender supposed 
 offenders without either trial, indemnity, or even apology, and no defer- 
 ring to take possession of the disputed territory on the next 4th of 
 July, as promised, to the next, the next, and we fear the next 
 onward, till the "last syllable of recorded time." Massachusetts, as 
 well as Maine, has a deep interest in this question. We want peace, 
 
SPEECH DELIVERED IN FANEUIL HALL, 1841. 571 
 
 but we do not want dishonor ; and it is not, and must not be in the 
 true American heart or nerve, ever to prove craven, or unfaithful, to 
 either national rights or national honor. Next, you will never endure 
 that the public domain be squandered, and its place supplied by per- 
 manent loans, or augmented taxes. The government, as a whole, has 
 been plundered of its principalities, large as half the size of Europe. 
 
 Remember that there is no surplus, and that every dollar of our 
 public territory given away has to be supplied by more than a dol- 
 lar's tax; and that Massachusetts, for instance, in getting $140,000 
 by the distribution law, has to repay, under an increased tariff, quite 
 $180,000 to restore the principal, and the expense, as well as loss, of 
 collection and transfer. Remember, too, that the poor and middling 
 classes are obliged to pay of this $180,000 at least twenty or thirty 
 per cent, more under a tariff than they would have to pay if the money 
 was wanted by Massachusetts, and collected by herself under her own 
 system of taxation, which properly falls heaviest on capital, and less 
 on labor than does the tariff. Remember, too, that these losses are 
 inflicted on us so as in effect only to aid British bond-holders abroad, 
 and wealthy political jobbers at home. Next, you will support no 
 wasteful addition to the public expenditure, which, at only the extra 
 session, our opponents have augmented nearly six millions, by such 
 unprecedented schemes, among others, as granting civil pensions, 
 assuming naval pensions, assuming post-office expenses, and assuming 
 the support of lunatic paupers. Nor will you tolerate any star-cham- 
 ber inquiries, with secret and inquisitorial powers, to hunt down political 
 opponents, and provide for starving office-seekers. 
 
 Tell them, too, you want no Biddle bank, coiling, like a huge sea- 
 serpent, its leviathan folds around every antagonist interest or institu- 
 tion, and strangling its victims at the nod of party caprice, or party 
 dictation, on either side of the Atlantic. Tell them to keep off pro- 
 fane hands from destroying the veto power in the constitution, which 
 they threaten. It is the people's tribunative prerogative, speaking 
 again through their executive. And if the popular voice is to vote, 
 independent of the forms of the constitution, as they argue against the 
 use of the veto power, then all of them and their schemes are already 
 check-mated and overruled. If half of those in either House resigned 
 who are now in a minority at home, the gasconading grandeur of the 
 administration, last March, or even last June, would become a mere 
 worthless hulk. 
 
 Nor will you tolerate any useless increase of taxation or national 
 debt. The latter you never believed to be a national blessing, but a 
 curse in time of peace ; and the former is utterly indefensible, whether 
 it equal only the old tory tax of threepence a pound on tea, which 
 goaded your fathers into revolution, or whether it keep up on most of 
 the great necessaries of life double the odious tithes, from the oppres- 
 sion of which they once fled to this iron-bound coast and to a savage 
 wilderness. 
 
572 SPEECH DELIVERED IN FANEUIL HALL. 1841. 
 
 It has been reiterated, as a matter of taunt, that even I, on whose 
 motion tea and coffee have been exempted from taxation, was once of a 
 different opinion. This is of a piece with many other calumnies 
 and misrepresentations of the day. To be sure, I once said that, 
 if the imports continued small as in 1838, and if the public expenses 
 were kept high, or not reduced, it would be necessary either to violate 
 the compromise, limiting all duties to twenty per cent., or impose 
 duties on coffee and tea. But I said at the same time, and have a 
 thousand times repeated it, that not only would the imports be mate- 
 rially larger, but the public expenses should be reduced, and then that 
 several articles might be exempted, including coffee and tea ; and 
 accordingly I moved to have them exempted, and, thanks to Provi- 
 dence, they are free ! 
 
 But still our foes compel the people, by a needless tariff, to pay 
 three millions more within the Union than they would be obliged to 
 pay without the boasted distribution bill of the last session. Thus are 
 we ground down with a tax on our clothes and our leather ; our salt 
 and molasses ; our sugar and iron; — indeed, much of all, besides tea 
 and coffee, which we either see or taste, wear or use, except the drugs 
 and poisons to kill us. 
 
 If we live or die, ride or walk, marry or be single, remain poor or 
 rich, — still, in some shape or other, from the cradle to the grave, tax- 
 ation under the present tariff, like cankered care, stalks beside or 
 around us, as inseparable as our shadows. On the contrary, we want 
 industry and enterprise to be free, — " free trade and sailors' rights," 
 all the world over. We want the just reward everywhere and in every- 
 thing of honest labor. We are not foes to manufactures, any more 
 than to agriculture or commerce. But we say, let all have equal 
 rights, — let all have a fair field and a clear deck. Is not tilling the 
 soil, or ploughing the ocean, as much American industry as moving a 
 spinning-jenny? Are not all the toils and mechanical arts con- 
 nected with farming and trade useful and commendable, and to be 
 encouraged, as much as weaving or spooling ? We want no hot-bed 
 protection in either, to disturb capital from its natural channels, or to 
 make the rich richer and the poor poorer. On the contrary, give us 
 equal liberty in all. Last, but not least, you never will countenance 
 any marked hostility to the laboring classes, in any form, — much less 
 by annulling the salutary ten-hour system, or capriciously lowering 
 wages. We are all, it is hoped, practical as well as theoretical demo- 
 crats. We go for substance, more than names. 
 
 We care not for claims to democracy, whether under an October sun 
 or an October moon, set up by those who have long reviled Jefferson 
 and Madison, the fathers of our democratic faith. Let us have deeds, 
 rather than words. If such pretenders are democrats, those fathers 
 were not, and we are not. Let us not trust the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence and the constitution, as well as the resolutions of ? 98, to be 
 construed and enforced for us by those who advocated the alien and 
 
SPEECH DELIVERED IN FANEUIL HALL, 1841. 573 
 
 sedition laws, reproached Mr. Madison as deserving a halter, denounced 
 Jefferson asunder French influence, and supported, in 1832, '39, and 
 particularly in '41, United States Banks, as well as gag-rules and 
 gag-laws. Thank God, all this kind of masquerade humbug is coming 
 to the light ! The bubble has been pricked — burst. The promises and 
 pledges before the election have been openly violated. Tell them to 
 change creeds, or not to change names. The democratic church is lib- 
 eral, but she wants converts, not spies. The relief which was to come 
 from our opponents proves in the end to be oppression. The economy 
 expected turns out to be extravagance. The time for their retrench- 
 ment is never the present time, but always to-morrow, and to-morrow, 
 and to-morrow. The reduction promised in expenses is augmenta- 
 tion, by millions. The better times which were to refresh and enrich all 
 classes have proved the worst — except the gradual cure which increased 
 industry and thrift will alone in time produce, and which intermeddling 
 legislation often retards. The true bone and muscle of the land, 
 whether merchants, mechanics, or farmers, seamen or laborers, — 
 whether heretofore under the whig or democratic flag, — are tired of 
 this wretched system of change, pretension, and hypocrisy. I con- 
 cede cheerfully that members nominally in the ranks of our opponents 
 are men of private worth, and are kept from our ranks only by preju- 
 dice, indifference, or delusion, on political topics. Their reason and 
 conscience often approve our general principles, while their habits, and 
 associations, and timidity, disarm them. I war not with such, nor 
 impugn their motives. I only invoke them to exercise courage, as well 
 as inquiry, — alter their views, when found untenable, as virtuous cit- 
 izens and real patriots should, — and then perform their duty like the 
 sons of noble sires, who scented tyranny in the breeze, and many of 
 whom died martyrs in the holy cause of liberty. The whole country 
 around them is becoming watchful and indignant. Every quarter is 
 loud with scorn at the impositions which have been practised, — burn- 
 ing with the cry of shame on such moral outrages, — ardent to avenge 
 on their betrayers unfaithfulness, insults, and injuries. The ball has 
 recoiled. We are, to use the old language of our opponents, in the 
 midst of a revolution. And let me congratulate you that never 
 shone out brighter omens, or in a brighter sky, than now appear to 
 invite Massachusetts to join the bright galaxy of republican States. 
 
 This is not declamation, or round assertion for the occasion; for more 
 than one hundred thousand voters from our opponents' ranks have 
 already joined ours, or refused longer to act with theirs. States, too, 
 large as well as small, have spoken loudly, and invite you earnestly by 
 their glorious example. 
 
 Scarcely had the present administration finished the carousals and 
 gaudy pageantry of the inauguration, when the cloven foot of their 
 course became so apparent, that New Hampshire opened the spring 
 elections with an increase of her six thousand against them to eight. 
 Permit me, one of her grateful sons, — so numerous on earth and ocean, 
 
574 
 
 in the sunny south and mighty west, — to express for that first noble 
 rebuke of whig misrule my thankfulness. No less do I express it 
 in her behalf for the kindness evinced this night towards her and hers, 
 by you and the eloquent speaker who preceded me. She, I can assure 
 you, showed the same granite firmness in the Revolution as now, — 
 proved herself to be equally granite in the last war, however overborne 
 for a season, — granite in the struggles of the last ten years, and 
 granite will you find her forever. 
 
 Next came Indiana, though their favorite State, rushing against 
 them like a cataract. 
 
 Next, faithful Alabama, whose high praise is to be the New Hamp- 
 shire of the south. 
 
 Next, Tennessee, changing at once from them over seven thousand 
 votes, and thus gladdening the venerable hero's last days, who looks 
 from her Hermitage with a still anxious eye for his country's welfare. 
 
 Next, Vermont came, like an avalanche from her Green Mountains. 
 Next, Maine, — now the bright particular star in the east, sweeping 
 all the tribes of whiggery before her like the tides in her vast bays. 
 Next, Maryland, with almost an entire revolution, under the very 
 eaves of the palace at Washington. Next, Georgia, speaking as the 
 winds come when forests are rended. Next, Pennsylvania, once 
 more to be the keystone of the arch. Next, is Ohio, coming as the 
 waves come when navies are stranded. And New York will be 
 most trumpet-tongued. And shall not Massachusetts rise also in her 
 might, and take her old lofty position among the stars which shine in 
 the democratic galaxy 1 Forbid her absence, ye sterling souls, whose 
 energies and labors have done so much, and who are so well equal to 
 the task of doing so much more ! Forbid it, above all, that spirit, that 
 redeeming spirit, which alone has improved our race in every age and 
 crisis, and which led Luther, in the cause of duty and reform, to say 
 he would move onward in their cause, though obstructed in his faith 
 even by devils themselves, as thick as the tiles on the roofs of the 
 houses ! "Now, then, is the day, and now the hour," to plant your 
 foot once more on the neck of the federal tyrant ; and, if once more, 
 it will be. God willing, henceforth and forever. 
 
ORATION AT PORTSMOUTH. 575 
 
 ORATION AT PORTSMOUTH.* 
 
 My Fellow-citizens: — You do well to unite with millions of our 
 countrymen in celebrating this eventful day. Its fires should be kept 
 alive forever, with more than vestal vigilance, because it is the anni- 
 versary of a nation's birth, and the great jubilee of American inde- 
 pendence. For this reason I have always been willing to take a part, 
 however humble, in trying to make the occasion memorable, joyful, 
 and glorious. And for such a purpose, in compliance with a request 
 from our city authorities, I come before you now to submit some 
 views connected with the Revolution, which, on this day seventy-four 
 years ago, secured to us the sovereign station and rights of a free 
 people. 
 
 Considering my present official position, — withdrawn, in some degree, 
 from the stormy politics of the day, — and considering more particularly 
 your position, — having met together without distinction of party, — I 
 deem it just and respectful to avoid all mere party topics. It is true 
 that parties in a republic are often evidences of freedom and independ- 
 ence of opinion, and are often efficient checks on each other's tenden- 
 cies to abuse of power ; yet it certainly augurs well if, at any time, all 
 can meet on one common platform, and let one pulse beat through every 
 heart. Most assuredly is it auspicious to our unity and energy of 
 action in times of peril, if, on this proudest festival among Americans, 
 we are willing temporarily to forget and forgive collisions, and extend 
 to each other the olive-branch, rather than the arrow. 
 
 Without indulging, then, in any of the spicy or fearful and exciting 
 topics of the day, there seem to me some points of opinion common to 
 us all in relation to the excellences and glories of the independence we 
 celebrate. 
 
 One of those points is the great importance of that event. On that 
 account, inspired by one common gratitude, we all join heart and 
 tongue in one chorus of thanksgiving to the statesmen and patriots 
 and heroes who won our hallowed independence. They established 
 among us its immortal principles, we hope, forever. 
 
 Lisping infancy, therefore, youth, manhood, and decrepit age, 
 come together to-day; matron and maid, as well as the sun-burnt mil- 
 lions from the plough and the vessel's decks, should come, — all profes- 
 sions and ranks, and forms of faith, political or religious, — from every 
 hill, and valley, and prairie, of our beloved country, from Maine to 
 California, — all gather in joyful throngs, and all bend in veneration 
 before the glorious event, and its thrice-glorious doctrines. 
 
 * Delivered to citizens of different parties, July 4, 1850. 
 
576 ORATION AT PORTSMOUTH. 
 
 This is not, that almost fourscore years ago some plain American 
 farmers, planters, merchants, and lawyers, assembled in a small room 
 near Independence-square, in Philadelphia. It is not, that some 
 among them, with iron heart and eagle eye, dared do all which had 
 immortalized the Brutuses and Cromwells of other ages, and not only 
 speak their wrongs, but redress and avenge them. It is not, that then 
 and there was done a deed to become a newspaper theme for a brief 
 month only, or to be known not beyond the few cities and settlements 
 then scattered over the eastern slope of the Alleghanies, containing a 
 population but little larger than the State of New York now does 
 alone ; or to live in its influences only a generation, a half-century 
 even, and then die out, as have perished from the page of history mil- 
 lions of other occurrences, at first far more dazzling to the inexpe- 
 rienced eye. But it was, that then occurred an event which has 
 become incorporate with Liberty herself, — is a part of her substance 
 no less than symbol, — and shall endure as long and spread as wide as 
 the longest and widest portion of her magnificent empire. An event, 
 which, if not destined to revolutionize all nations and people, has been 
 already felt, in some degree, wherever civilization pervades mankind, 
 and is likely, in coming ages, more and more, by "the war of opin- 
 ion" it wages, to leaven the political views of the whole habitable globe. 
 To dethrone a king by oppressed subjects has always been one of the 
 most glowing themes in the annals of the human race. To change a 
 dynasty of kings looms up still larger in the horizon of history and 
 poetry. To alter the whole form of government in any country often 
 has a bearing more important than either on its future destinies ; and 
 especially so, if it be a change from slavery to freedom, for the 
 people at large. But to do all these, — more than all, — to show con- 
 summate skill in the cabinet at the same time with heroic bravery in 
 the field, and to accomplish a revolution in principles of government 
 and legislation by the pen and the tongue, while another was carried on 
 and gloriously sustained by the sword — by the blood of freemen, 
 poured out in torrents wherever the invader polluted the soil, or a 
 ruthless savage was let loose, with tomahawk and torch, on an exposed 
 frontier, — this was an event that all the millions who have been sig- 
 nally blessed by it may well celebrate, for its grandeur, — may long 
 and loudly celebrate, — and will, by God's permission, hold in holy 
 remembrance, while they preserve any of the virtues of the patriots 
 who accomplished it. # 
 
 Myriads elsewhere, who have enjoyed only some of its reflected 
 light, would shame us for any neglect of so great a revolution, by their 
 heart-felt rejoicings over only so much of its influences as have 
 reached and animated them in the cause of political reform ; because 
 it has been the talisman and tocsin to freedom in all countries since. 
 Whenever, for the last half-century, an oppressed people have broken 
 their chains, — whether in France, or Hungary, or the classic soil of 
 Italy, — the recollection of American independence has strengthened, if 
 
ORATION AT PORTSMOUTH. 577 
 
 not guided, the blow ; and when tyrants since have trembled at popular 
 indignation, and listened to remonstrances, and relented or reformed, 
 the memory of American liberties and victories has struck terror to 
 their hearts, and made them relent, oftener than arms or arguments, or 
 a returning sense of justice towards the victims of their wrongs. 
 
 Not only have this Western Continent and some of its adjacent 
 islands — both sides of the Andes — been thus made vocal with songs 
 of gratitude for the example set this day, but Europe, from the Baltic to 
 the Mediterranean, has felt the influence of some of its sacred principles, 
 and been slowly but surely reforming, in order to save at all, a por- 
 tion of its superannuated institutions. Even Asia has witnessed a 
 grand vizier appealing through the press in favor of popular education 
 and the welfare of the people at large ; and ere another century closes, 
 it would not be more extraordinary to see such principles prevailing in 
 China, — in one kingdom alone of the populous east, — half of the whole 
 human race. Misunderstood and misrepresented, I admit, have often 
 been the character of our ^Revolution, and the designs and doctrines 
 of the patriots who accomplished it ; and many, it must be conceded, 
 have been the outrages committed under a pretence of justification 
 through its principles, as flagrant crimes have, in all ages, been com- 
 mitted under the sacred names of liberty and religion. But the estab- 
 lishment of American independence is no more answerable for such 
 abuse, such perversions of her holy cause, than are religion and 
 liberty for the profanations before, as well as since, committed under 
 their consecrated banner ; and proceeding, as we ought on occasions 
 like this, to make some inquiry into the true civil consequences of that 
 independence, no less than its military daring, in order to appreciate 
 duly the greatness of the event, it will be found that their legitimate 
 operation, their true essence, their full and perfect work, both here 
 and elsewhere, is likely to prove most auspicious to the human race. 
 
 In forming a correct estimate of the magnitude of the event we now 
 commemorate, the principles involved in it are vastly more important 
 than all its battles or military glories. Not that I would be unjust to 
 heroism in the field in a good cause, or be ungrateful to those who 
 have exposed their lives, as well as fortunes, and sacred honor, for their 
 country, from Leonidas and Scipio of antiquity, to the Washingtons 
 of modern days. But it behooves us all to remember that, even in 
 modern days, physical bravery is often wasted in a bad enterprise, and 
 perverted, in the Tamerlanes, and Caesars, and Napoleons, and Santa 
 Annas, to enslave mankind, as frequently as to emancipate them ; and 
 that its triumphs are transient, personal, and at times die in their con- 
 sequences as quickly as their authors crumble into dust, and as their 
 withered hopes and guilty ambition moulder with them, in one common 
 grave. Political principles, on the contrary, are eternal. They per- 
 vade society and government, as air and water pervade physical being. 
 They control them, too, as the different elements control vegetation and 
 animal life ; and they move the whole, as the mechanic powers, and 
 49 
 
578 ORATION AT PORTSMOUTH. 
 
 other great laws of motion, constitute a mechanism that moves the 
 universe ; and they will continue to do this as long, as widely, and as 
 deeply, as the others pervade matter ; and in this way civilization and 
 liberty are, if ever, to become universal, eternal. 
 
 Among the high justifying principles involved in any civil contest, 
 one of the highest was at stake in the Revolution of 1776, and tended 
 much to enhance its lofty interest, and the magnificence of its conse- 
 quences. It was the principle of self-government. That lies at the 
 foundation of all security for liberty. That made the struggle vital, as 
 well as righteous. The first illustration of this principle was, that 
 man should not be taxed, except by himself or agent. " No taxation 
 without representation," reverberated through every American village 
 and legislative assembly, — crossed the ocean, and rung through the 
 halls of Parliament and the palace of St. James. The next illustration 
 involved the idea of natural equality in political power, and the duty of 
 all government to respect, shield and enforce those equal rights, and carry 
 out all their elevating influences on the toiling millions, no less than 
 other classes. It is these, and not the burning of gunpowder and the 
 hecatombs of killed and wounded, which have imparted such a magni- 
 tude to that contest and its successful results, and have given to those 
 over the civilized world almost the interest of a great epic poem. 
 
 Other people, in ages long gone by, had revolted against tyranny. 
 The Greek, and the Iberian, and the Gaul, and the painted Pict, and 
 the haughty Briton, had before flown to arms, when trodden down ; 
 and the Roman, the conqueror of the world, whose triumphal proces- 
 sions were filled with captive monarchs from Africa and Asia, no less 
 than Europe, — the proudest of the proud, the bravest of the brave, — 
 was still at times forced to retreat to the Sacred Mount, to wring jus- 
 tice from an uncompromising Senate. But scarcely ever before, in the 
 long tide of time, did a whole people throw off a government on the 
 broad basis of violated compacts, broken charters, taxation without 
 representation, oppression and wrong under the forms of law, and a 
 virtual dissolution of all the former political ties between the same 
 races. Boldest, calmest, firmest, if not first, — then it was at the 
 cannon's mouth, after respectful petitions had been exhausted, our 
 fathers appealed to the judgment of the civilized world for their justifi- 
 cation in claiming the inalienable rights of human nature, and in fight- 
 ing for the powers of self-government. 
 
 It indicates another remarkable feature in the contest — the extreme 
 caution, the prudent deliberation, the full vindication of their measures, 
 before resorting to violence. 
 
 Long misrule over them had broken and forfeited all political obli- 
 gations before existing from them to their haughty masters. They at 
 last felt justified to fly to arms, and defend the rightfulness of rebellion 
 against oppressions so flagrant. But much had they known and 
 reflected, and acted on the hypothesis that every clear right need not, 
 at all times, be asserted or pushed, at all hazards; as this would be 
 
ORATION AT PORTSMOUTH. 579 
 
 vain, if at all times it could not be successfully enforced, or the abuse of 
 it be avenged. For this reason, they waited for increased strength. — 
 they delayed till more wealthy, as well as populous, — they counted 
 fully the cost of independence, before erecting its bold temples. They 
 weighed every consequence with far-seeing, long-suffering patience, 
 before an actual resort to blood. If other people, trained and 
 educated differently, uncalculating, reckless, sometimes ferocious, had 
 occasionally rushed headlong into the most sanguine excesses, and had 
 done it often only to be overthrown and reduced to ivorse bondage, or 
 only to substitute anarchy for despotism, such were examples to be 
 shunned, rather than imitated, by the descendants of the Pilgrims. 
 These last were formed in an iron mould of prudence, intelligent fore- 
 cast, and religious self-control. The helots of Sparta, uneducated and 
 uncalculating, under bitter oppression, might seek at once, regardless 
 of consequences, to cut the throats of their powerful masters; but 
 it would be often worse than vain, and only increase the weight of 
 their chains. So the slaves of Rome might, at times, be goaded by 
 cruelty into a servile war, unprepared, undisciplined, and abortive. 
 And Galbas, Wat Tylers, and Jack Cades, might lead unsuccessful 
 insurrections, in various ages, against some flagrant wrongs, which 
 by man's nature and passions are almost unbearable without attempts 
 at vengeance ; and may strive, without much reflection as to success, 
 to extirpate those who had pillaged them, or desecrated their hearths 
 and altars, destroyed their household gods, and violated, if not carried 
 into desolate captivity, their wives and daughters. 
 
 But the American Revolution began differently, and was conducted 
 differently, and has ended differently. It began by argument, not 
 force, — by indignant remonstrance against abuse, and by persevering 
 petition for security to great rights. It was a contest for principles, 
 rather than sovereign power. It was carried on, not for a month, or 
 a year, or a generation, but a whole age ; and by book-men, at first, 
 rather than swords-men. It was fought early and long in the closet 
 and printing-office ; in the forum, and pulpit, and Provincial Assembly ; 
 in the courts of law; before the Privy Council ably by Franklin, 
 however stigmatized by "the cold serpent tongues" of wily Wedder- 
 burnes in the halls of Parliament ; before the estates of the realm, 
 king, lords, and commons ; — relying, with a lofty confidence, on God 
 and their right, rather than flying at once to the sword and the 
 tented field. 
 
 It was not till all peaceful means were exhausted, and the unalien- 
 able and natural rights of man became otherwise past redemption, and 
 a long training and preparation for extreme measures had been forced 
 on them, that the Revolution broke out into armed resistance. 
 
 Then and there the right to resume self-government by a people 
 long suffering was claimed and maintained. This, it will be seen, was 
 not resisting by violence laws they themselves had participated in 
 making ; nor was it hostilely renouncing allegiance till the protection 
 
580 ORATION AT PORTSMOUTH. 
 
 due for it had been withheld ; nor lightly stirring up rebellion, for 
 slight causes, and without long endurance of wrong, and patient efforts, 
 in all peaceful ways, to obtain redress. But it was rather with sage 
 deliberation, tfvith reasoning most urgent, with missions most able, with 
 remonstrances unanswerable, with entreaties most intense, with appeals 
 to kindred blood and kindred interests, — to all good men, and angels, 
 and Deity himself, — to turn the hearts of their oppressors, that they 
 preceded any resort to force ; and they persisted in that force no 
 longer or further than was necessary to establish that great right of 
 self-government, without which they had found not only property, but 
 liberty and life, exposed to constant outrage. The burning detail of 
 their grievances, in the Declaration of Independence, is sufficient to 
 make our blood boil, even after the lapse of almost a century. Let us, 
 then, disclaim, for the Hancocks, and Langdons, and Washingtons, of 
 the great and glorious day which witnessed our independence, any of 
 the reckless seditions that so often, for trifling reasons, have disfigured 
 the earth before or since. Let us disclaim, for the whole galaxy of 
 patriots and heroes who have mingled in that Revolution, any brutal 
 fondness for blood, or any regicide war upon other forms of govern- 
 ment, or any hostility to the just rights of property, the prevalence of 
 order, and the reign of law. Their aim was higher and nobler. They 
 sought security to themselves and posterity for all those sacred liber- 
 ties, and those elevating powers, which distinguish man from the beast, 
 and the freeman from the slave. 
 
 In this way alone could they successfully have accomplished the 
 great mission assigned to them on earth. But another work was to be 
 done. They not only had to declare, but establish and guarantee by 
 every safeguard which human prudence could devise, their national 
 independence, and all the glorious results of such an independence. 
 
 It was not enough to be free ; for free was the Indian barbarian in 
 the forests near them, — free was many a Tartar horde in the wilds of 
 Asia, — free many a savage islander in the waste waters of the Pacific. 
 But it was to be free, with pledges, securities, and checks against mis- 
 rule, — with institutions suited to perpetuate freedom and order. More, 
 beyond, higher, than all this, — it was to be free with systems of 
 education and morals suited to understand and insure equal legislation, 
 and equal rights of conscience, and equal political power, as these 
 alone can rescue revolutions from anarchy, or a relapse into military 
 despotism. What is that government worth to society at large whose 
 seat and security are a mere camp ? whose administration, like Boli- 
 var's, is but a continued campaign ? or, like Robespierre's and Marat's, 
 but the anarchy of mobs or the terror of guillotines ? 
 
 Then and therefore came their second great struggle. It was to 
 secure well what they had won. Their first struggle had been with 
 oppressors from abroad and traitors at home. The first had been to 
 free their limbs and minds from fetters, that they might be able to 
 move unshackled. The next was to shape their movements wisely. 
 
ORATION AT PORTSMOUTH. 581 
 
 The result of the first was emancipation. The second was, to use it 
 as God, nature, reason, intelligence, and liberty, united, should prompt, 
 and not as mere impulse or passion might impel them. The first 
 required courage in the field, skill in foreign negotiations for succor, 
 firmness against the wiles used to deceive and disarm them. The 
 last, wisdom in the cabinet and in council, sagacity in deliberative 
 assemblies of all kinds, intelligence in every village and in every farm- 
 house or household, honor and morality in every manly breast that was 
 now to exercise the liberty which had been recovered, and so exercise 
 it as to preserve it, and to preserve so as to render it redolent with 
 blessings to himself, his children, his country, and the coming ages 
 of every region of the world. 
 
 This was the noblest work of all. The first was indispensable to 
 begin it. But this, the second great undertaking, was to test the 
 utility and duration of the first ; and, instead of giving vent to the 
 mere animal energies of war and civil broils, was to restrain and regu- 
 late them, and to build up an empire worthy the contest they had just 
 encountered, and plan and perfect institutions and systems which 
 should secure great principles, and use them in a manner to benefit 
 and control their whole race, — showing more especially, as to them- 
 selves, that they ha-d not sacrificed life and treasure in vain, or in 
 mere angry and petulant hostilities with a tyrannical parent. 
 
 What, then, were the chief political safeguards to self-government 
 which they proceeded to secure for the future ? 
 
 The greatest of all, in form, were written constitutions. They were 
 made to bind both rulers and ruled, and prescribe the duties, as well 
 as powers, of both. Not that there had been no pledge, by those in 
 authority before, through coronation oaths, or charters, wrested, as at 
 Runnymede, from tyrant kings, or bills of rights voted by Hampdens, 
 Cokes, and St. Johns, but never obeyed. All these, however, had 
 been imperfect, almost chaotic. They were mere fragments of consti- 
 tutional forms, rude elements, or rocks rough from the quarry, to be 
 afterwards fashioned into useful works, and polished by skill and expe- 
 rience. None of them, too, were deliberate compacts by and with the 
 people* at large, and binding voluntary givers no less than others ; but 
 rather they were concessions of intimidated despots, and those extorted 
 usually by rivals in power, and made to them rather than to the 
 masses ; and were not mutual recognitions of rights among equals, 
 standing on one common platform as immortal and accountable free 
 agents, and consulting and cooperating together in the great work of 
 self government. 
 
 By the representative system, — making the voice of the people 
 known and felt beyond the limits of a single city or town, — such com- 
 pacts over a whole country had become feasible and useful, and able 
 to be watched over and enforced with the ease of a school district or 
 militia beat of the drum. All could thus speak, and to all. And 
 49* 
 
582 ORATION AT PORTSMOUTH. 
 
 where all thus speak wisely ', under due intelligence and training, they 
 must and will be obeyed. 
 
 But something more was requisite than seals, or the parchment sig- 
 natures of constitutions. The latter must have that within and around 
 them which passeth mere show. They must fling strong securities 
 about popular rights, in the laws and habits of the community. They 
 must do this, as they did here, by free suffrage, by a free and full 
 voice in the masses. They must make it effective by making it fre- 
 quent, through short terms of office and rigid accountability in repre- 
 sentatives. They must and did here improve the representative system 
 itself, by exacting constitutional qualifications, and imposing consti- 
 tutional checks on their agents ; by organizing double bodies for 
 decision, so as to make concurrence in wrong more difficult ; and by 
 requiring fresh and frequent elections directly from the people, so as 
 to render the popular will more imperative, and pervading, like the life- 
 blood of the system, the whole machinery of the body politic. 
 
 Throwing open thus all stations, high and responsible, to talent and 
 virtue and learning, all classes have been brought gradually to love and 
 cherish the laws as made by and for them, and all brought to sustain 
 what protects and honors all ; — the son of a blacksmith winning vic- 
 tories at the head of armies ; the son of a farmer president over the 
 destinies of twenty millions of people ; the son of a carpenter command- 
 ing " the applause of listening senates," or holding the scales of justice 
 in the highest judicial tribunal of the Union. 
 
 They next rendered their political system simple and well under- 
 stood, so as to operate with ease, no less than skill, by separating, as 
 was done here, the powers to be performed for the people, through 
 their representatives, into natural and plain classes, such as executive, 
 legislative, and judicial ; thus being enabled to select for each agents 
 best qualified for each, and thus enabling these agents, by so beautiful 
 a division of public labor, to become more perfect in their respective 
 spheres, and the system, as a system, more useful and acceptable, and 
 more prized, as more full of rainbow hopes to the great popular heart 
 of the community. 
 
 Anxious to render their constitutions rich in the securities which 
 near six thousand years of experience in the world had treasured up 
 and spread open to their free choice, they went further, and imposed 
 checks the most rigid and solemn on various abuses that had for ages 
 filled prisons with tears, and neighboring countries with exiles, and 
 scaffolds with victims. They prohibited the suspension of the writ of 
 habeas corpus, seeking in this to rescue personal liberty from long 
 confinement, without trial, in dungeons, towers, and bastiles. They 
 forbade attainders of innocent blood, and cruel and barbarous punish- 
 ments, whether the savage fagot, or more civilized forms of torture in 
 " Luke's iron crown or Damiens' bed of steel." They prevented an 
 invasion of their domestic quiet by search-warrants not under oath, — 
 each freeman's house, however humble, being his castle. They 
 
ORATION AT PORTSMOUTH. 583 
 
 denounced ignominious trials for crime without previous indictment, 
 and any abridgment of the liberty of speech and the press, — those 
 great palladiums of popular rights, — or stripping the people of the 
 privilege of bearing arms, and thus exposing their rights to wanton 
 aggression. And, finally, they tabooed most solemnly any restraints 
 on liberty of conscience, which their Pilgrim fathers had braved the 
 wrath of bigotry at home, and hazarded three thousand miles of ocean 
 and exile in a savage wilderness, to enjoy with tranquillity. 
 
 Mingled up and interwoven with all this, calculated to secure what 
 they had conquered with so much blood and treasure, were the habits, 
 no less than the principles and opinions, on social as well as political 
 matters, which had grown with them in their sojourn here for a cen- 
 tury and a half, and which were to be improved and enlarged, rather 
 than abandoned. They had built up, from the start, a system of free 
 schools, to enlighten all, rich or poor. They had taught in them 
 duties, as well as rights. They had endowed colleges to fit some for 
 guides in seeking the ways of eternal life, and tracing out the inspired 
 history and great truths of Christianity, so as to be able to worship 
 God in more purity and more fidelity to all his wise commandments ; 
 others for aids in preserving health, by a more accurate knowledge of 
 our physical system, and the means, botanical and mineral, scattered 
 around us of healing many of the bodily ills which flesh is heir to ; 
 guides and aids, likewise, to understand the laws, that should equally 
 govern high and low, and to plead the cause of the fatherless, the 
 widow, and the oppressed, and administer justice as unsoiled as the 
 ermine she wears. 
 
 They had organized the militia, the means of self-defence as well 
 against despotism from abroad and usurpers at home, as against a bar- 
 barous foe, hanging night and day, like a dark cloud, on their frontier, 
 and ready, in any unguarded moment, to fling the fire-brand into their 
 habitations, and tomahawk their children. They had secured the 
 invaluable trial by jury, as a safeguard in legal persecutions by arbi- 
 trary power, and had been trained through its various duties to a 
 better acquaintance with many of the elements of self-government. 
 
 And by a system of religious preaching, as well as free toleration, 
 added to their schools and colleges, they had permitted and encouraged 
 all to enjoy the moral means of learning how to exercise the great 
 privileges and liberties which the Revolution secured to them, with an 
 eye to what was just towards each other and the rest of the world ; 
 with the conviction of their own accountability hereafter, as well as 
 here, for all abuses of those liberties ; and with some laudable ambition, 
 if not pride, to satisfy a doubting world that man, so educated and 
 trained and free, was capable of good self-government, and would not 
 throw discredit on the hopes of philanthropists, who had indulged the 
 fond expectation of further progress in social improvement, and of 
 seeing realized their theories of additional ameliorations, both in gov- 
 
584 ORATION AT PORTSMOUTH. 
 
 eminent and the general condition of humanity. Thus they stood, and 
 thus we still stand, when so many others have fallen. 
 
 Thus stood, and still stand, not only the Puritan of New England, 
 but the staid and enterprising Hollander of New York, the industrious 
 Quaker and German of Pennsylvania, the chivalrous Virginian and 
 Carolinian, and now millions of their descendants in the mighty west. 
 Thus may they forever stand, one and indivisible ! 
 
 It is thus only, when seeking improvement and prostrating tyranny, 
 that man acts up to the original dignity of his nature, and seems to 
 fulfil the apparent design of Providence in his high destiny. He once 
 communed with God himself in the garden of Eden. His companions 
 since have often been angels. He is still lord of this lower creation, 
 when acting worthy an immortal being, and clothed as he is with 
 attributes so far above the brutes that perish, and so superior to the 
 dead matter which he treads under foot, and destined as he is, when 
 free and enlightened, to acts of heroism and patriotic vengeance on all 
 the violators of his just rights. Then he is truly man, — truly deserv- 
 ing, by his lofty deeds, to live in history, sculpture, and poetry. It was 
 when acting thus, Akenside exclaims : 
 
 " Look, then, abroad, through Nature, to the range 
 Of planets, suns, and adamantine spheres, 
 Wheeling unshaken through the void immense ; 
 And speak, oh man ! does this capacious scene 
 With half that kindling majesty dilate 
 Thy strong conception, as when Brutus rose 
 Refulgent from the stroke of Caesar's fate, 
 Amid the crowd of patriots, and his arm 
 Aloft extending, like eternal Jove 
 When guilt brings down the thunder, called aloud 
 On Tully's name, and shook his crimson steel, 
 And bade the father of his country hail ! 
 For lo ! the tyrant prostrate in the dust, 
 And Rome again is free." 
 
 The failures of many other revolutions were not unnatural, when 
 we reflect that they have been either mere wars on a single despot or 
 his dynasty, or have originated in wanton hostility to particular ranks, 
 or in a lust for plunder of the rich, — holding all property to be rob- 
 bery, like Proudhomme ; or, Fourier-like, that half the world should be 
 an almshouse to be supplied by the other half; or indulging in a dis- 
 organized hatred of those salutary legal restraints winch are indispens- 
 able, in every form of government, to the safety of either property or 
 life. It is the neglect of these, and of the means to uphold them with 
 moral and intelligent fidelity, which has made so many of them but 
 mockeries of reform, — mere devastations of property and life. — useless 
 deluges of passion and desolation over great countries, and ruinous 
 alike to the advancement of civilization and the great political destinies 
 of mankind. 
 
 It is a remarkable fact, that when Dr. Franklin returned from a 
 
ORATION AT PORTSMOUTH. 585 
 
 mission to induce the Canadians to unite in support of the holy prin- 
 ciples of our Revolution, he found them so ignorant of all which was 
 essential to understand and prize the great struggle, that he recom- 
 mended to Congress to send an army of schoolmasters there to teach 
 them, rather than troops to fight. The character of that population 
 has much improved since. But, the world over, and in all times, what 
 of good, as a general rule, can be expected from seditions and insur- 
 rections of mere slaves, with neither the education nor morals how to 
 use power wisely, or sustain free constitutions 1 What of good from 
 the raw and vagabond liberty of savages, or pirates, thirsting for 
 " beauty and booty," or drunk with vengeance? What, too, from the 
 frenzy of ignorant fanaticism, under no guide but fancied impulses 
 from heaven, which too often are but promptings from hell? What 
 from unenlightened bigotry or superstition, ready to burn opposition 
 at the stake, and ferocious to consign mere differences of opinion to 
 the tender mercies of an inquisition 1 
 
 Such, we have seen, were not the principles of the heroes of the 
 Revolution we commemorate, nor, thank God ! the objects and meas- 
 ures they pursued in order to crown it with utility and immortality. 
 Some of their policy has been since misunderstood or misrepresented ; 
 and especially in respect to the extension of their power. Neither 
 then nor since did they or their posterity look to amalgamation or 
 permanent intermixture and union with other nations composed of 
 tyrants and illiterate slaves, in carrying out triumphantly a govern- 
 ment like this, though for national objects temporary treaties are per- 
 missible with all public bodies. But it is admitted that " the area of 
 freedom" they have ever been ready to extend, when more territory 
 was needed at particular points for outlets to our commerce, or national 
 security in war, or better harbors and supplies in peace. They have 
 not been false to such great interests, and frightened from them by 
 the groundless cry of ambition or rapacity ; but for important national 
 objects have " annexed" and "re-annexed" Louisiana, Texas and 
 California, — hoping to fill them, in time, with a population congenial 
 and useful. For reasons like these, all may well say, Go on, when 
 such reasons occur, — multiply the stars in your national banner, — 
 stretch forth liberally the arms of your Union to the north, as already 
 to the west ; but, so far as regards population added, let it be as much 
 as practicable of kindred races and kindred principles. So as to emi- 
 gration ; our fathers did open their original capacious bosom to the 
 emigrant patriot from all countries, — to the Kosciuskos, the Lafay- 
 ettes, the Gallatins, and Emmetts. They have welcomed such to 
 their two and a half millions of square miles of virgin soil, their mag- 
 nificent rivers, lakes and mountains, and their common right of com- 
 merce, under the star-spangled banner, over all the great highways of 
 nations in every ocean of the globe. They have invited all, who love 
 virtuous liberty, — all, of whatever creed or faith, Protestant or Cath- 
 olic, whose morals are sound, who respect the laws, and are ready to 
 
586 ORATION AT PORTSMOUTH. 
 
 defend both liberty and law in wholesome purity, — to embark their 
 fortunes with ours, and seek here a peaceful asylum from persecution 
 and chains. 
 
 The refusal to allow this by Great Britain, and to favor emigration 
 here, was one of the grievances for which she was denounced in the 
 Declaration of Independence you have just heard read. To all such, 
 therefore, of sound principles, renouncing all foreign allegiance, we 
 still say, — Come and cooperate; help to fell our forests, dig our 
 canals, build our railroads, adorn our professions; help to drive the 
 plough deeper, to swing the sledge harder, to watch the spindle and the 
 shuttle on our thousand waterfalls closer, to fight valiantly our com- 
 mon battles against a common enemy, whether on land or ocean. 
 
 But come none by force; and none, unless now or likely to be 
 qualified to sustain, and eager to perpetuate, the free principles and 
 free institutions which adorn our vast republic. We want no draw- 
 backs, — mere Mexican conquests; nothing not essentially American 
 in opinion and progress ; nothing to neutralize or impair our energies, 
 or draw us from the improving track of our fathers, but everything 
 which may strengthen or speed us in the great career we have begun, 
 — everything that harmonizes with and hastens our great destinies, 
 securing unity of principle, unity of taste, unity of hope, unity of 
 action, — and then, of course, will there be unity of success. 
 
 It was unity of action, in peaceful efforts at improvements and pro- 
 gress for the human race, that we have ever sought, and must still seek, 
 at home as well as a,broad , rather than rush into civil strife, or overrun 
 the earth with violence, like the descendants of Romulus and Remus, 
 and cause, in the end, that to perish by the sword which has been 
 built by the sword. And because forced into a war of liberty or 
 death with oppression, and armed and disciplined from their cradles 
 to repel the Indian scalping-knife from their frontiers, — having long 
 slept with their rifles at their pillows, and captured Louisburg, and 
 fought for victory with Wolfe at Quebec, — never, never did they love 
 war as war, — the death-bed of many gallant victims, and the house of 
 mourning to many kindred and fatherless, and the desolate waste of 
 fortunes, and blackened ruins of not a few of the other bounties of 
 Providence, and hopes of mankind. But they armed for it rather than 
 live abject slaves, and as one of the stern necessities of government 
 and human society. They preserved it in self-defence, preventing 
 butcheries on the frontier, in repelling the conflagration of their cities, 
 in upholding the sacred rights of representation, and in securing from 
 rapine and pollution and degradation their hearths and altars. And 
 though forbearance, under the mild influences of such principles, to 
 rush rashly into hostilities, and to violate a just neutrality among 
 belligerents, has, at times, since called down, on them and their poster- 
 ity, taunts of cowardice, and false accusations of preferring gold to 
 honor and sordid gain to principle, yet they have more than once, 
 when further forbearance ceased to be a virtue, shown to a censorious 
 
ORATION AT PORTSMOUTH. 587 
 
 world that they can, when need be, defend their rights, and avenge 
 injury and insult on the heads of their foes. 
 
 They have taught oppressing nations and wanton violators of their 
 flag, plunderers of their commerce, invaders of their soil, and impris- 
 oners and murderers of their citizens, that these outrages are not to be 
 perpetrated with impunity, whether at piratical Algiers and Tripoli, 
 under the rule of the crescent and the bowstring, or at the Falkland 
 Islands, beneath the frozen zone of the south, or at Sumatra, in the 
 equinoctial heats of India, or at the Feegee, on the opposite side of the 
 globe. 
 
 Among the coral reefs of the Pacific, or in sight of the halls of Mon- 
 tezuma, — wherever, on land or ocean, in the western or eastern hemi- 
 sphere or the south, by savage, semi-barbarian or civilized, by Pagan, 
 Mahometan, Infidel, Turk, or Christian, — wherever an American citi- 
 zen is wronged, or American property plundered, or American rights 
 invaded, there the stars and the stripes should appear, and will protect 
 and avenge. There, manfully, when all other reasons are exhausted, 
 Americans will rush, like Warren at Bunker Hill, or Stark at Ben- 
 nington, and hosts of others through the whole length and breadth of 
 our Revolutionary campaigns; — in short, like Decaturs, Mc Niels, and 
 Jacksons, in the war of 1812, or Worths, Scotts, and Taylors, since, 
 they will prove themselves, on every fit occasion, ready to punish the 
 enemies and redress the wrongs of their country. Such a spirit alone 
 can save and perpetuate the glorious principles of this day. 
 
 It is not a thirst for conquest, but firm resolve to sustain national 
 honor. We spare the vanquished ; and if we scale the Alps, it is not 
 to seize on new provinces, or ill-gotten gold, aiiri sacra fames, but 
 we purchase and pay for empires, when needed, though we could have 
 retained by the sword what we won by the sword ; and thus, by the 
 rights of war, have made our title as good to California, as it was, by 
 treaty, to Louisiana. A different temper, shrinking from a vindication 
 of national honor, would make us sheep to be devoured by the wolves 
 around us ; and allow Santa Annas to enforce their menaces to occupy 
 our capital, rather than we to retaliate invasions, and hoist the stars 
 and stripes over the walls of Mexico. A different temper, too, — not 
 being magnanimous to the conquered, and forbearing to the fallen, — 
 would tend to render our brave troops but marauders, or armed mobs, 
 or fierce buccaneers. Our resistance even the matrons of the Revolu- 
 tion had the moral courage to inculcate ; and deserve their full share 
 in its glories, for inculcating it on their husbands and sons, and exhib- 
 iting so many virtues, and so much heroism, in the times winch tried 
 men's souls. Our pious mothers were not hostile to the common 
 enemy wh6lly for the oppressive tax on their tea, but because they were 
 educated by the Bible, and especially by Christianity, in the great 
 doctrines of equal rights ; and, like Spartan women, they taught their 
 descendants — and deserve their gratitude for the patriotic lesson — that 
 it was nobler to be brought home dead on their shields, than fly or 
 
588 ORATION AT PORTSMOUTH. 
 
 submit to be slaves. A revolution originating and conducted like 
 ours, illustrates well the excellences of such a spirit, and embodies it. 
 
 A revolution thus justified, guided, established, has become a model 
 revolution for mankind ; a great landmark, a colossal beacon-tower to 
 all future times, and all future navigators on the rough sea of Liberty. 
 When truly imitated, it has scattered blessings in its train more widely 
 than even Columbus discovered, or Raleigh, or Cabot, or Americus 
 Vespucius explored. And it is by these, — by its genial destinies of 
 human rights, its fidelity to morals and laws, its freedom for conscience 
 and industry, and property and power, to all who desire and deserve 
 them, its liberality to all nations and creeds, — that, as before observed, 
 it has penetrated deeply the popular heart in Europe, and in many 
 cases there, and in some even in despotic Asia and benighted Africa, 
 has relaxed the chains which there were not yet strength enough, and 
 education and training enough, to break. 
 
 The liberty our independence sought was likewise liberty united 
 with law, and defended by law, and not licentiousness. The liberty 
 our Revolutionary sires bled for was to sustain personal rights, to 
 protect conscience and property, — not violate them; to shield labor 
 and capital, — not to be unmindful of either; to uphold government, 
 and laws, and constitutions, in their equal and just exercise, — not 
 overturn them ; and to change their governments, and laws, and social 
 systems, so far, and only so far, as was necessary to secure their 
 rights from being afterwards trodden down by tyranny, or from being 
 invaded by ambitious demagogues, quack statesmen and seditious 
 anarchy, at home, or crushed by envious rivalry from abroad. 
 
 It was such a revolution, and such only, that was worth having. 
 Under that, down to the present moment, the same laws protect a 
 laborer or a farmer that sustained an Astor, with his ten to twenty 
 millions of dollars, and an income equal to that of an average of twenty 
 thousand or thirty thousand tillers of the soil ; and the difference in 
 this wealth is rather the result of fortunate accidents and a systematic 
 life of sagacious and intelligent industry, than of any invidious dis- 
 tinction in favor of the rich over the poor. Girard and Brown are 
 like illustrations. And even the marble trough used by the former to 
 feed his pigs from happened from no cause akin to extravagance, or 
 apart from the calculating spirit of thrift in the long run, which clings 
 to such men till they repose in the grave. 
 
 But though the principles of that revolution were so pure, and 
 though we have been taught, from the cradle, to regard this as a great 
 festival, because our liberties were then won, yet, in another sense, we 
 all know that Liberty herself did not then first alight on earth. We 
 fain would forbear to set up any unjust claims, — we need none; and 
 hence, though youth and age then left the plough in the furrow, and 
 flew to Lexington and Bennington, — though the blacksmith left his 
 forge with fires unextinguished, and one of my kith and kin left the 
 corpse of his father unburied, — though all classes rushed forward, and 
 
ORATION AT PORTSMOUTH. 589 
 
 with one loud hosanna swelled together the chant of Liberty, and fought 
 together her fierce battles, — yet it was not so much that she was the 
 first-born, as that she was once more freed from the manacle and dan- 
 gers, and under circumstances favorable to her future security and 
 future improvement; — not that she had never before bounded over the 
 plains of Sparta and the rocks of Athens, or wandered on the banks 
 of Tiber, or climbed the Swiss Alps, — but that she was about to be 
 more than ever before secured from violence j that she was to be better 
 sustained by equal constitutions and laws, protected by numerous 
 checks and balances, and hedged around by a wider intelligence among 
 the masses, a higher state of morals, and three thousand miles of ocean 
 between her and her worst foes. 
 
 It was, likewise, that the liberty they were about to save from 
 profanation — it is hoped forever — was, in character and destiny, in 
 many other respects, very different from what both then and since 
 deluged many of the fairest portions of the world in blood and misrule, 
 — feeding her votaries with fruits fair to the sight, but more bitter in 
 taste than the apples of Sodom. 
 
 It was, in short, the liberty of civilization, the liberty of Christian- 
 ity, the liberty of wide-spread intelligence among the many ; the lib- 
 erty of an elevated condition of public morals, and of some training 
 and discipline, and experience in the principles and work of self-gov- 
 ernment. Such a liberty, though among rocks and ice, is preferable 
 to the most splendid bondage. 
 
 We have seen that the care and labor to secure that kind of liberty 
 long and permanently, by the Revolution we celebrate, were as great 
 as to win it. 
 
 Because they did not wish to see that it succeeded every change of 
 the moon by a new constitution, as in some future revulsions. Not 
 to have new presidents, or consuls, or kings, give place to others by 
 violence, as often as theatrical tyrants appear and disappear on the 
 stage ; or the Deys of Algiers are disposed of by the bowstring ; or the 
 small, pigmy republics of Italy were once monthly revolutionized, — 
 sometimes by a few malcontents, little better than banditti, — or Rome 
 herself again and again put up at auction by Praetorian bands ; or as 
 often as the reigning despots in Spain, or Portugal, or Mexico, enter 
 and exit before the bayonet or a mob. But, on the contrary, they 
 sought, and millions this day testify that they succeeded in making it 
 evince all the stability and probable durability of the oldest govern- 
 ment on the globe ; as for more than half a century we have exhib- 
 ited not a single change by force, — however loud, at times, and men- 
 acing the tongue of faction, — scarce a single day, when the constitu- 
 tion and laws have not triumphed, and stood, not only unshaken by 
 any of the angry tempests around them, but washed whiter by the 
 party surges which have broken at their feet. 
 
 A3 such a revolution, we all are proud this day to recount its glo- 
 ries, and to swear at the altar to use our best efforts to preserve its 
 50 
 
590 ORATION AT PORTSMOUTH. 
 
 principles. As such, it accords well with the genius of our people, — 
 their early instincts, and their sober discipline for ages. As such a 
 revolution, we call God to witness our fidelity to its principles in peace, 
 our devotion to them in war ; our invocations to our households and 
 neighbors ; our example and walk in private and public life ; our 
 whole energies, intellectual, moral and physical, our heart and soul, 
 all consecrated to perpetuate, and, if possible, influence, every blessing 
 we have inherited from them. It is to be gathered from these consid- 
 erations, that some increase of former means, and some addition of new 
 ones, are to be put in requisition by us to secure fully these good pur- 
 poses. They are wider — still wider spread and useful education among 
 the masses, in whom is most of the political power of the country. 
 They are purity of morals, to unite with intelligence, in giving to such 
 a tremendous political power a just and honest direction. They are 
 temperance in all things, but especially with her cold-water armies, 
 and those patriarchal allies, old-fashioned industry and homespun fru- 
 gality. They are religious, likewise, at all times to be " named with 
 solemn awe;" it maybe of one shade in faith and forms, or of 
 another, — but still religion, to elevate and guide all ; without any Holy 
 Alliance, however, between church and State, to tempt both astray, 
 and corrupt both. They are equal laivs, also, — not leaving equal 
 power an empty bubble, but making it operate to secure equal priv- 
 ileges in the honors and wealth and pursuits of society. 
 
 They are a pure administration of equal laws, — not blunting the 
 spear of justice when you "plate sin with gold," nor shielding inno- 
 cence only when not in rags, nor valuing character and person unless 
 robed in purple and fine linen, — but holding the scales steadily for the 
 toiling millions, as well as for wealth and power; and, at the same 
 time, on the other hand, protecting property and guarding the rights 
 of the great as well as the humble, — both classes standing, in this 
 respect, on one pedestal, and both obedient to law, in order that they 
 be protected by law. 
 
 All must, likewise, be prompt and bold to use every other instru^ 
 ment, and means of improvement, which the long experience of the 
 world may, from time to. time, develop. It is one of the peculiar 
 characteristics of our people, that they gather suggestions and excel- 
 lences from every age and every subject, and every region of the 
 globe, — winnowing wheat from the chaff, and being as ready to adopt a 
 benefit or art from the Arab as the Englishman, or from the African 
 as the European ; having opened a Pantheon in every household and 
 State, for every good which our enterprising commerce can collect from 
 every quarter of the globe. 
 
 Let the treasures of all time, — in learning, or science, or govern- 
 ment, or in social comforts, or labor-saving machinery, — let all con- 
 tribute to our common and national progress and security. In this 
 way, the inventors of all ages may be encouraged with hopes of being 
 
ORATION AT PORTSMOUTH. 591 
 
 benefactors to some such future government as ours, and not faint or 
 falter, though, like Galileo, plunged into dungeons from bigotry, or, 
 like Oliver Evans, languishing in prisons, a victim to the once stern 
 laws as to debt. In this way, martyrs and patriots likewise may take 
 courage at the stake and the scaffold, and, like Cranmer or Russell, 
 look to some future age and people for a rich reward for their suffer- 
 ings. In this way, ungrateful requitals, by ungrateful contemporaries, 
 should not dishearten the orator, or divine, or jurist, or statesman, or 
 patriot warrior, or great inventor, — like Faust, of the art of printing, 
 persecuted as leaguing with the devil, — or the great discoverer, the 
 world-finder, Columbus, carried home in chains. They sow the seed for 
 other tongues and people, it may be, and even for other hemispheres, 
 where, in due time, if not here, all the scattered good of all ages may 
 be garnered up, and employed to advance the comforts and virtues, as 
 well as powers, of our race. 
 
 What but this, and things like this, already have extended our for- 
 eign commerce so as scarcely to be second to any other nation on the 
 globe ? — made our prospect of having a hundred millions of people 
 before this century closes ? — made our triumphs in machinery, and 
 manufactures, and agriculture, almost as rapid as the fabled labors of 
 the most powerful of the heathen demi-gods 1 Our power over rude 
 nature — over time and distance — magnified often a thousand-fold by 
 steam, and the railroad and the electric telegraph widening still higher 
 and further the elevation of our civilization over that of the barbarians 
 and semi-barbarians on some of our borders ! 
 
 Another advance of our higher liberty, and higher duties resulting 
 from it, is that our people are here, under American independence, 
 an assemblage of the most devoted friends to free institutions, from 
 every quarter of the globe. What is but a sprinkling or scattered 
 ingredient elsewhere, or in other systems of society and government, 
 constitutes here the mass. 
 
 Our high mission, then, would seem to be, to be foremost, as ablest, 
 to improve as well as preserve and diffuse this over the world, by the 
 influence of our great success and unequalled prosperity, rather than 
 by Mahometan violence ; and rather than being officious with others, 
 or unjust to different forms of government and different systems of pol- 
 icy from our own, deeming all others, with Chinese stupidity, "out- 
 side barbarians." Not Marplots, — political Paul Prys, — constantly 
 intermeddling in the domestic affairs and domestic institutions of the 
 rest of mankind ; but rather leaving them free to choose, like ourselves, 
 and rather trusting to reason and example for their reform, — the 
 mighty power of public opinion, — and gathering around ourselves the 
 light of all ages, so as to profit by all their discoveries, arts and im- 
 provements, and so as to encourage and draw forth all our own energies 
 and excellences. When vilified from abroad, let these principles and 
 course of conduct answer for us. Permit these, also, to be our polit- 
 ical missionaries to convert the rest of mankind • and thus verifying 
 
592 ORATION AT PORTSMOUTH. 
 
 here the prophecy concerning us by Bishop Berkley, near a century 
 and a half ago, " Time's noblest offspring is the last." Push forward, 
 then, like your fathers, the agricultural and mechanic arts, and man- 
 ufactures, and commerce, which bless all they pervade ! But, like your 
 fathers, too, side by side, erect the village school and village church — 
 not only to diffuse and defend popular power, but enlighten it, elevate 
 it, purify, and thus improve and perpetuate it. 
 
 If, like them, you continue to promote all these, — improved and 
 improving wherever you wander, — well may you not only be encour- 
 aged in having crowded back the barbarian to the mountains and 
 lakes, and in having crossed after him the Alleghanies and the great 
 monarch of rivers, but in climbing the Rocky Mountains beyond, and 
 in dipping your eye-brows in the Pacific, and scattering arts and civ- 
 ilization, and purer morals, over the sunny islands still further on 
 towards the setting sun. 
 
 By your vast commerce, the great instrument to diffuse modern civ- 
 ilization, the great anchor of hope, — in spreading it to all people, — 
 not only can the benignant fruits of your spare crops and useful man- 
 ufactures be disseminated wherever they will prove a blessing, but your 
 example, and principles, and institutions, and religion, and all of good- 
 ness, and greatness, and usefulness, of every kind, that this glorious 
 day secured, and will shadow forth wider and wider, till they encircle 
 the globe. 
 
 I fear you have already been detained too long ; but, in the present 
 crisis of our beloved country, I ought, before bidding you farewell, to 
 allude to one other consideration. There lurks a serpent in the paths 
 of our political paradise. It is disunion. It is not that the bands are 
 likely to be suddenly cut or torn asunder by violence; but what will 
 they be worth, if neglected, decayed, and allowed to perish by omis- 
 sion of duties, and of the compromising temper by which the Union was 
 founded and can alone be preserved 1 I stand not here, on this occa- 
 sion, as the censor of any political party or section, but as a friend to 
 the constitution and Union, against all and every aggression in spirit 
 or deed. If the bonds of a common language, a common religion, a 
 common country, a common government, and all the great common 
 glories of the last century, cannot make us conciliatory and kind, — 
 cannot make all sides forgive and forget something, — cannot persuade 
 to some sacrifice even, if necessary, to hold us together, — force is as 
 unprofitable to accomplish it as fratricide is to perpetuate peace in a 
 common family ; and, broken into petty States, agitated by contend- 
 ing parties, and ere long the prey of some military chieftain, we shall 
 all tread the down-hill path already strewed by similar wrecks in the 
 history of republics, and hence more disgraceful to us, for not being 
 admonished by so many deadly warnings. 
 
 But enough of this dark side of the picture. The same Union 
 which, on this sacred day, helped to give to our fathers courage and 
 independence, and final victory, — the same Union, which has since 
 
SPEECH AT ELIOT, ME. 593 
 
 enlarged our population seven-fold, extended our limits to the Pacific, 
 and made our fame and example known over the habitable globe, — 
 that same Union we must and will resolve, one and all, so to adminis- 
 ter, so to conduct, so to preserve, as to restore its harmony, and increase 
 forever its benefits, as well as strength and glory ! 
 
 SPEECH AT ELIOT, ME., 1844, BEFORE THE PRESIDENTIAL 
 
 ELECTION. 
 
 Fellow-citizens : — I hail this immense assembly and beautiful day 
 as bright omens to our cause. Since the heavens smile upon us, 
 everything else necessary to success is to be true to ourselves and our 
 principles. We have some very great duties to discharge amidst the 
 festivities of the occasion, and the presence of the lovelier portion of 
 creation, whose countenances gild with hope, as well as attraction, every 
 undertaking. "We are called on to perform one of the most vital obli- 
 gations of freemen, in examining the character and principles of the 
 several candidates for the two highest offices in the Union. 
 
 In doing this, well does it become us to be fearless, no less than just ; 
 because, avoiding all individual wrong, we are responsible for this 
 inquiry to God alone. 
 
 The candidates are known to profess different sets of principles ; on 
 the one side, those which are democratic, — on the other, those which 
 are federal. The first, plain, undisguised, unadulterated, — written in 
 sunbeams of light over the whole country ; the last, those high-toned 
 doctrines of increased and increasing power in the central government, 
 which fell with the elder Adams, and have since been revived and 
 mingled up with that piebald compound embodied in the code of mod- 
 ern whiggery. I use plain language, because the crisis demands it, and 
 it becomes freemen. At the same time, I shall neither abuse private 
 character on the one hand, nor flatter and fawn on the other. 
 
 The public conduct and opinions, however, of all candidates for 
 public favor are public property ; and those brought forward by each 
 of the great parties in the coming contest are presumed to profess the 
 50* 
 
594 SPEECH AT ELIOT, ME. 
 
 leading principles of each, and to represent them, and properly to be 
 held responsible for them. 
 
 Hence, the men on our ticket, whose names float on our country's 
 flag above us, and whose praise is on every tongue in our thronged 
 ranks, — Polk and Dallas, — stand ready, now and ever, to enforce the 
 whole creed of democracy ; while theirs — Clay and Frelinghuysen — 
 are doubtless ready to sustain all the degenerate practices and profes- 
 sions of the present whig party. Stand, therefore, by your own col- 
 ors, fellow-citizens ; you then know who is who, and what is what. 
 Make your opponents fight under their own disgraced pledges and 
 mottoes, and thus defeat any shuffling to steal away our names or 
 livery. You are republicans ; and what, in a republic, is more fit than 
 that the honest masses should be republicans 1 You are democrats ; 
 and, in a democracy, why should not the people at large be democrats 1 
 How else are the Declaration of Independence, and all your free consti- 
 tutions, and bills of rights, and democratic institutions, to be upheld ? 
 Unfortunately, however, even in republics, ambition will warp some ; 
 interest, sordid interest, mislead others ; and local or personal preju- 
 dices betray a few into error, and array them, for a season, under new 
 names and parties. But it is grossly unnatural for the honest yeo- 
 manry of the country to rally round any standard except that repub- 
 lican one under which our fathers marched, and under which, during 
 forty years, in peace and in war, in the conflict of '98, as well as 
 1812, the Union ha3 been preserved, and prospered beyond that of 
 any other land on which the sun has ever shed its cheering beams. 
 Our opponents, conscious of their weak attitude in this respect, often 
 resort to other issues than those of principle, in order to blind the 
 people to the great and paramount questions really involved in the 
 election. 
 
 Hence their presses and speakers dwell so long and loud on the 
 opinions of some of Col. Polk's ancestors, rather than his own: and 
 they would fain throw dust in your eyes, as if his grandfather's or his 
 great-grandfather's character, rather than his, was a prominent topic 
 by which the destinies of twenty millions of people were to be influ- 
 enced the next four years. But this aristocratical notion of inherited 
 reproach or inherited glory, groundless as the imputations really are, 
 belongs rather to the meridian of a monarchy than a republic, and 
 needs no refutation before a democratic audience. They might as well 
 go back and arraign any of us for the kingly notions of any of our 
 forefathers, back to the Norman conquest or Saxon heptarchy. 
 
 In the same cavilling temper on matters not properly in issue as 
 cardinal points of public policy are the taunts so often repeated 
 against both Col. Polk and Mr. Dallas, that before the Baltimore 
 nomination they had not been known and discussed as candidates ; 
 when, in the same breath, they are obliged to admit that Mr. Freling- 
 huysen had been quite as little known and discussed ; and we are all 
 aware that his gallant associate had been rather too much known and 
 
595 
 
 discussed for his popularity, in all the great races where he has been 
 broken down and defeated, during the past generation. And when 
 some old heresies are conjured up against our candidate for Vice-presi- 
 dent, do the assailants forget how often they are obliged to ask an 
 oblivion to the early peccadilloes of their favorites, and urge us to try 
 them by their present opinions alone ? Let me entreat you also not 
 to be led off by these experienced huntsmen on other false scents, — 
 such as whether Mr. Van Buren, whose public services we all appreci- 
 ate, has or has not been properly deemed less available than some of 
 his competitors, when if, for any personal dissatisfaction, he could be 
 seduced from duty to the democratic cause, and confide in new and 
 hollow adulations, — which none of us believe of him, — he would justly 
 forfeit all the respect before won. Or such paltry controversies as 
 whether Col. Benton is or is not still a Simon Pure in democracy, 
 when his patriotic motto is " Everything for the cause, and nothing 
 for men;" and when that cause, we all hope, is destined to survive 
 and flourish amid the wreck of hundreds of generations of frail men. 
 No, democrats of Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts, — away 
 with such irrelevant issues, such false lights ! Let me invoke all who 
 listen, — whether guided by the Star in the East, or reared amid the hills 
 of the Granite State, or come, unconquerable in spirit, from the iron 
 shores of the ancient Bay State, — one and all, lift your eyes and your 
 hearts to nobler game, to questions befitting the high duties and respons- 
 ible positions of those to whom is committed the self-government of 
 a mighty nation. 
 
 Ask, are the views of our candidates and party, or those of our 
 opponents, most in unison with what animated the patriots and heroes 
 of our Revolution ? Do ours or theirs accord best with both the letter 
 and spirit of the great charter of our liberties'? Under which is 
 popular freedom likely to be safest, the laws made most equal, the 
 rights and privileges of the masses sustained the firmest, domestic 
 tranquillity best insured, and foreign aggression and foreign wiles, — 
 whether aimed at our commerce, our defences, our institutions, or the 
 inviolability of our territory, — be most vigilantly and strongly guarded 
 against ? In short, which will be likely to carry out most implicitly 
 the wishes and will of the people themselves ; the power in our gov- 
 ernment which must rule, — rule, I admit, through the constitution, 
 the law, and the ballot-boxes, but still rule, or our whole political 
 system is a miserable mockery. 
 
 Now, I aver, deliberately and fearlessly, that the great division 
 between the two tickets exists in this : that one pays more, and the 
 other less, respect to the will of the people in the administration of the 
 various affairs of the General Government. 
 
 It is well known we profess to respect that will, rather than slight 
 it. We follow the declaration of that will, as embodied in constitu- 
 tions and bills of right, letting all doubts operate in favor of the 
 reserved powers of the people and the States, while we allege that our 
 
596 SPEECH AT ELIOT, ME. 
 
 opponents, in all doubts, assume increased authority for the central 
 government ; and, instead of asking their masters — the people and 
 States — for more express grants in questionable cases, take, by con- 
 struction, at once, and without leave, all which they desire. 
 
 In proof of this, as their chief limitation is the "general welfare," 
 how can it amount to any check, when no party in power can ever be 
 so shameless as to attempt what it will not gloss over with the varnish 
 of declaring it to be for the general welfare ? 
 
 With such constitutional opinions and practices, the custom of our 
 opponents to disobey express instructions on these topics by legislatures 
 and other public bodies is in perfect harmony, and is another conclu- 
 sive evidence of their grasping principles. If these instructions, how- 
 ever solemn, stand in the way of any new and broad construction to 
 monopolize more power in public affairs, without new grants from the 
 true fountain of power, or stand in the way of new and plausible proj- 
 ects to control the currency or regulate the industry of the country, 
 or build up particular favorite classes at the expense of the rest, they 
 are given to the winds, — they are trampled under foot. 
 
 These distinctions between the two parties are further embodied and 
 illustrated in almost every dispute about principles which mingles in 
 the present canvass. 
 
 Do any of you ask me for specifications ? 
 
 They thicken on every side; and, in the outset, in making the 
 nominations themselves, our opponents have attempted to bring, unjusti- 
 fiably, a new power and influence into the struggle. They have made 
 an appeal to religious prejudices. 
 
 It is now boldly asserted, in some quarters, that their candidate for 
 Vice-president is "the Bible candidate.' '' In his person is an attempt 
 made to revive the old unholy alliance of church and State, and obtain 
 the aid of sectarian prejudices and theological zeal. 
 
 We, like our venerated fathers, honor evangelical piety, sound mor- 
 als, and the church, whether with or without a bishop ; but, like them, 
 at the same time, we abhor the profanation of religious power to con- 
 trol secular government, and dictate to the human conscience. We 
 ask the arm of political authority, not to grasp at the combination of 
 new influences to operate on our elections, and those connected with, 
 and tending inevitably to, all the tests, and persecutions, and inquisi- 
 tions, and autos dafe : which have so often cursed Christendom with 
 carnage, and which expelled our ancestors to a savage wilderness. 
 
 Sorry as I have been to see sentiments published formerly by one 
 of the candidates sneering at the principles of liberty in opinion, and 
 looking to uniformity in church and State as kindly as if coming from 
 an Archbishop Laud, or from under the cowl of a monk, yet cool 
 reflection must convince him, and all who think, and reason, and read, 
 that, under our system of government, nothing, in the end, is more 
 likely to derange and destroy its purity than the efforts now going on 
 to augment the strength of our opponents' ticket by these appeals to a 
 
597 
 
 new element in our elections, and to defile the cause of true piety by 
 sinister attempts to make it a mercenary ally in our party strifes, and 
 then inevitably a greedy applicant for spoils and rewards from any 
 partisans it may have helped to elevate to ill-gotten power. Discard, 
 then, every feeling of fanaticism or bigotry, and honestly render to 
 Caesar the things which are Csesar's. 
 
 Of a like character, as to the increase and monopoly of power, is 
 another question in the contest, concerning the free-suffrage cause in 
 Rhode Island. 
 
 The aim of our opponents, in that whole struggle, has been to strip 
 the people at large of some of their dearest privileges; and, at the 
 same moment, to augment the powers of a few, so as to enable them 
 to control some of the most important interests of the many. The 
 whole aim of our friends has been peaceably to establish a republican 
 constitution of government for the people at large, in place of a kingly 
 charter of incorporation for the few owners in a land company. We 
 wished for equality in rights, — they, inequality. We desired that all 
 adults (who were bound by taxes to contribute to support government, 
 and liable to defend it in the militia) should participate in its privileges 
 and powers. They excluded the whole, however highly qualified, if 
 they did not happen to own a share in a certain land corporation, 
 granted a century and a half ago, by the most profligate king of the 
 Stuart name. Our friends, innocently enough, among a republican 
 people, supposed that a constitution allowing free suffrage, among 
 other rights, to all properly qualified by age, mind, and educated 
 habits of business, to self-government, and accustomed to pay and fight 
 in support of political institutions, was more suitable to the advanced 
 spirit of the age and a free people than an old, worm-eaten act of 
 incorporation, intended only for the purposes of a few land-owners 
 under a monarchy. 
 
 And, for such desirable changes, similar to what had taken place in 
 every other State of our blessed Union, and so clearly proper as to be 
 since, in most respects, obliged to be carried into effect by their oppress- 
 ors themselves, Dorr is now suffering imprisonment in a penitentiary, 
 — a martyr to a new and barbarous penal law, made in order to reach 
 cases like his, and administered, as well as made, with a cruelty and 
 revenge which have appropriately been characterized as Algerine. 
 
 Remember that all this has been done by your opponents under the 
 boasted liberality of the nineteenth century, in a country proud of its 
 humane principles, and among a New England people, claiming to be 
 peculiarly devoted to the mild and forgiving doctrines of the Gospel, 
 so full of peace on earth and good will to men. 
 
 But do you approve of such barbarity 1 Do you sanction the con- 
 vict's badge for mere differences in opinion? Would you impose the 
 felon's infamy and slavery for life, — slavery baser and more miser- 
 able than what wrings tears and blood, under the lash of the task-mas- 
 ter, in the most savage despotisms of the old world, — would you inflict 
 
598 SPEECH AT ELIOT, ME. 
 
 this, for a mere difference of opinion on constitutional questions, in this 
 age and land of liberty and light ) Let it not be said, in extenuation, 
 that, however peaceful at first, and no blood ever shed by Dorr, yet 
 there was under him an array of arms in the end. 
 
 There was no array of arms — no force used by any of the free- 
 suffrage party — not a finger raised — not a drum beat, or gun fired ; 
 only quiet, formal, and peaceful steps pursued, till after the constitu- 
 tion was actually adopted, and their opponents called out troops to dis- 
 turb its operations, and, for a like object, invoked the march of federal 
 troops. Everything done by Dorr, after that, was provoked by the 
 violence of others, and in a conscientious belief that duty required 
 those to repel force by force who had been placed in power by a 
 majority of the people. 
 
 Looking to all the original grounds of controversy, our opponents 
 seem also entirely indefensible in this unfortunate conflict. 
 
 The objects of the free-suffrage party were not only reasonable, as 
 before explained, but, by the Declaration of Independence, by the 
 express doctrines of almost every constitution in the Union, by the 
 opinions of the best jurists and statesmen abroad as well as at home, 
 that party had a right to accomplish those objects by peaceful conven- 
 tions of a majority of the people, when no other mode of redress was 
 provided for in their existing laws and charters. If they had not such 
 a right, the doctrine of self-government is a delusion ; and the reform- 
 ation of certain abuses, except by rude force, becomes impractica- 
 ble, and our whole system, by which we are now an independent nation, 
 resting on such a right and such a reformation, is a false system. If 
 we deny to others among us what alone gives life and independence to 
 ourselves, we pursue a course suicidal, and calculated to make us the 
 reproach, as. well as laughing-stock, of the world. 
 
 When we go to facts, the case is equally strong for the friends of 
 free suffrage. A decided majority of all the male adults, and some 
 believe that a majority of even the freeholders, voted for the adoption 
 of the new constitution ; and the grievances which it was to remove 
 were so far from being imaginary, that nearly three-fifths of those over 
 the age of twenty-one were entirely disfranchised, and excluded, also, 
 from prosecuting in the courts of law, or having any voice in that leg- 
 islation by which were daily affected their characters, — the lives, too, 
 the fortunes and the sacred honor, of their wives and children, as 
 well as themselves. They were thus stripped of the great discrimi- 
 nating badge between a freeman and a slave. 
 
 Under a change in commerce and manufactures in Rhode Island, 
 which had made more than half of the adult population not proprietors 
 in the land, but prosperously engaged in other useful employments, was 
 it improper, or hasty, to ask for some form of government customary 
 and proper elsewhere for the whole people, rather than submit longer 
 to the monopolizing and tyrannical rule of a mere corporation, not 
 made for them, and in which they could not, in the usual course of 
 
SPEECH AT ELIOT. ME. 599 
 
 business, become participators, without changing their course of liveli- 
 hood 7 I cheerfully admit that these merchants, and manufacturers, 
 and mechanics, if not owners of land, could not, in a corporation 
 made to manage the land, exercise properly the power of voting ; but 
 I do insist that if that corporation is converted into a form of govern- 
 ment to regulate the civil and political privileges of a whole people, 
 they all ought to participate in that government ; and if it has not 
 now been so changed, it was high time it should be, and its exclusive 
 corporate powers be made to give way to a new and rational constitu- 
 tion of government, for all the members of society within its limits. 
 As members of that society, without being owners of land, they had 
 interests deep and wide to be looked after and governed. They had 
 their own livelihoods at stake, their professions, their personal prop- 
 erty. They had families and dependants ; and in such a society a 
 majority of the whole did not claim to sell the land or own it, because 
 a majority, — but they desired to exercise some control over their 
 own interests, to be participators in the government, and proper agents 
 to consult as to their own affairs in political life, and proper guardians 
 over many of those rights and relations most dear to a freeman's 
 heart. 
 
 Such, in brief, was the origin, as well as progress, of the whole con- 
 troversy ; and for attempting, in a peaceful and orderly manner, such 
 reasonable changes, violence was first resorted to on the other side ; 
 and the friends of free suffrage, for standing by the constitution and 
 seeking to discharge the duties prescribed by a majority, were over- 
 awed by the General Government, denounced as insurgents, and by 
 such premature interference disheartened and disbanded, and their 
 bodies since immured in dungeons and penitentiaries, by the intoler- 
 ants and their friends, who now ask your sanction and votes. Yes, 
 they ask your support, whose feudal oppressions would have disfran- 
 chised Hancock or Jefferson, or even the sainted father of his country, 
 had they removed to Rhode Island, and not been able to purchase a 
 share in a mere corporation of her land-owners. Not that these 
 immortal worthies would have been wanting in morals or intelligence, 
 in patriotism, or even personal property ; but only that they did not 
 happen to own one seventy-thousandth part of the rocky soil of her 
 ancient land company. That alone is to constitute a Divine right to 
 rule. That is paramount to every virtue. The whole of the mistakes 
 on this subject have sprung from the perversion of corporate technicali- 
 ties to matters of free government ; and when the most talented, use- 
 ful, and experienced, have requested these political privileges, without 
 which they continue slaves, they receive a stone instead of bread. 
 They are turned over to a base and soulless corporation ; and, if once 
 becoming members of it, should fire and floods destroy their freeholds, 
 they are again forced- back to political degradation and chains. The 
 temper which power, thus aristocratically monopolized, is likely to 
 engender, was developed often during the struggle for our Revolution- 
 
600 SPEECH AT ELIOT, ME. 
 
 ary liberties, by neglect and contempt towards the requisitions of the 
 old Congress. Our fathers had to lament still more the continuance 
 of it when the constitution of the General Government was formed, as 
 Rhode Island neither joined in the convention which formed it nor 
 assented to its provisions, till Washington himself recommended to 
 Congress to pass acts treating her as a foreign power, shut out from 
 the glorious sisterhood of the Union. Even to this day, on the public 
 records in the nation's archives, none of the names of her Solons and 
 Lycurguses, her Roger Williamses, or Hopkinses, or Elleries, appear 
 in the proceedings of the convention ; and the frame of those who 
 formed and signed the great charter of our public liberties will hang 
 forever with one blank, like that for the recreant Doge of Venice, — 
 and that blank will represent, to the end of time, the malign influence 
 of the Rhode Island land company. To crown all this, half a century 
 more of such exclusive power hardened the hearts of its possessors, so 
 as not only to refuse to let the people go free, but to pursue their 
 advocates with unrelenting prosecutions, prisons, and disgrace. 
 
 Those of you, if any, who can join in hosannas to the authors of all 
 this, go and support the candidates for Presidency and Vice-presi- 
 dency who approve it. Go with them, and, if consistent, cooperate in 
 introducing a like monarchical spirit into the other States, and into the 
 government of our glorious Union. But those who disapprove it, — who 
 prize the immortal man above land, — who consider the social affections 
 and character and intelligence somewhat higher than the dross of earth, 
 — who look more, in public affairs, to the image of God, to mind and 
 soul, than to clay in the hands of political potters, and regard efforts 
 for improvement and freedom and progress in these as deserving lau- 
 rels, rather than penal laws and penitentiaries, — let those brand such 
 usurpations and abuses of power indelibly, and shun their support as 
 something worse than war, pestilence, and famine, — as a virtual re-col- 
 onization to British principles ! 
 
 In further illustration of this same ambition of our opponents to 
 increase power is their advocacy of a national bank. The constitu- 
 tion, it is not pretended, gives any express authority to regulate the 
 currency or the exchanges, or to pass acts of incorporation of any 
 kind whatever ; but it is vindicated by them, under a vagrant con- 
 struction, wandering first to this class and then to that, till retreating 
 at last behind that apology for every encroachment, the temporary and 
 fluctuating opinions of a temporary and fluctuating majority as to what 
 might promote the general welfare. One of the leaders on our oppo- 
 nents' ticket agreed with us in these views, till, after travelling abroad 
 towards the close of the late war, he came back with such loose and 
 dangerous notions on this subject as those since avowed by him. 
 
 The other candidate is. as thoroughly committed to the same cor- 
 rupt and corrupting institution ; for, though not its feed attorney, he 
 has been its advocate in the Senate, and his speeches in its favor, 
 circulated widely, at the expense of its stockholders, by the very 
 
ME. 601 
 
 Mr. Biddle whom he eulogized as being calm as a summer's 
 morning, though surrounded by the first mutterings of that storm 
 which afterwards strewed the shores of both continents with his vic- 
 tims. Let, then, that odious bank, — the notorious corrupter of legis- 
 lation, the disturber of the peace and commerce of the whole country, 
 the author of ruin to millions by its unwarrantable expansions and 
 contractions, the scourge of widows and orphans who had confided 
 their all to its trust only to be betrayed and lost, — let all its putrid 
 taints stick to them and their party, like the poisoned shirt of Nessus. 
 The old apologies for it have, by subsequent experience, become 
 flimsier than ever. The gentlemen who preceded me spoke so fully 
 and ably on this subject, that little remains for others. Suffice it to 
 say, that the absurdity of vindicating the bank as constitutional, under 
 an implication that it is necessary and proper as a fiscal machine for 
 the government, is demonstrated when the experience of the last ten 
 years has proved it to be entirely unnecessary and useless, except for 
 evil. And the folly of considering such an institution expedient, even 
 were it constitutional, could never be made more glaring, after their 
 inability even to reduce the exchanges so low as they now are, or to 
 make the currency better than it now is ; and after its disastrous losses 
 of thirty millions of capital ; its capacity, as well as inclination, to 
 destroy State banks ; its liability, in war, to have all its funds wielded 
 by English interests and agents, if not actually in Threadneedle-street ; 
 its power, as a party machine, through immense loans to members of 
 Congress, as well as other partisans, with the circulation of more than 
 three hundred and fifty thousand copies of whig speeches ; and last, but 
 not least, its large contractions and expansions, virtually making every 
 yard-stick in the country a third longer or shorter, and every pound 
 weight a third heavier or lighter, so as to furnish its gambling friends 
 with the means of public robbery and swindling to the extent of 
 untold millions. 
 
 But these are only a tithe of the illustrations which could be adduced 
 to prove the inveterate zeal of our opponents to enlarge the powers of 
 the General Government, by new constructions, at the expense of the 
 people and the States. Where is the monstrous extension of the 
 bankrupt system to classes never contemplated by our fathers, and to 
 past as well as future contracts, trenching thus on vested rights, and 
 absorbing into the expensive and encroaching jurisdiction of the federal 
 judiciary the whole dealings of the whole community, with a long train 
 of irritating injunctions and judicial collisions ? Where is the McLeod 
 bill, stripping the State courts of all power to protect the lives and 
 property of their citizens, when some incendiary may choose to plead 
 the command of any foreign power 1 Murder may stalk abroad on 
 our lake frontier, the felon torch may be applied to our steamers, our 
 sacred soil invaded, and our citizens and property hurried in flames 
 over the cataract of Niagara, and yet our natural avengers against 
 these boastful marauders, when once in our power, are to be disarmed at 
 51 
 
602 SPEECH AT ELIOT, ME. 
 
 the nod of foreign menace and foreign interference. Where, also, are 
 the orders issued by a whig Congress to their masters, the sovereign 
 States and people of the Union, to make districts for the choice of 
 representatives 1 
 
 The domineering and encroaching spirit of the whole shows them to 
 have sprung from one common parentage, and indicates the dangerous 
 propensity of the party opposed to us for seizing new powers, and 
 stretching old ones to new objects, on all practicable occasions, rather 
 than condescend to resort to the proper sources of authority for new 
 grants. Another reason for neglecting such a resort is, doubtless, a 
 knowledge that the grants would often be withheld ; because instruc- 
 tions unfavorable to such new powers again and again are accustomed 
 to emanate from these sources, and are issued only to be despised and 
 systematically disobeyed by the party that now seeks your support. 
 
 But I am detaining you too long, as other gentlemen, more youthful 
 and spirited than myself, are waiting to speak. One other evidence, 
 then, of the difference of the two parties in this respect, whose candi- 
 dates ask your votes. It is involved in the exciting measure of the 
 tariff. The very object, the alpha and omega, of our opponents, in 
 a high discriminating tariff, is to exercise a new power. It is not 
 merely to raise revenue, which is the power granted in the constitu- 
 tion, but it is to protect and favor particular interests, which is a 
 power not .granted in the constitution. It is a modern innovation 
 since the late war, in order to stretch legislative authority to new and 
 doubtful objects ; so doubtful as, in 1832, after convulsing the Union, 
 to have been abandoned by a solemn compromise ; and yet, in the 
 face of all this, is revived, under the present law, with all its oppres- 
 sions and odium. We not only resist all such exercises of questiona- 
 ble powers, but any measure, even if constitutional in form, provided 
 that, like this tariff, it is unequal and partial. Choose, then, between 
 us, as to this. We go for the spirit, as well as the letter, of the consti- 
 tution, — to impose taxes for revenue, and treat all classes alike. They 
 go only, by a broad and dangerous construction, to effect other objects 
 than revenue, and these for the benefit of a favored few. We wish all 
 taxation, even by a tariff, to be low ; they push it up, even on some of 
 the necessaries of life, to an enormous height, and, indeed, beyond that 
 on luxuries themselves. We wish imports to be taxed, as much as any 
 other property, for the support of government, and have never imposed 
 a direct tax on land in time of peace ; while they, half pretending to 
 the contrary, have alone, under the elder Adams, harassed you with 
 direct taxes in peace, and, by their extravagant expenses in 1842 and 
 1843, would have plunged us into them again, if they had not resorted 
 to what was nearly as bad, — ruinous loans and large additions to the 
 public debt. 
 
 I would here leave the subject of the tariff, so much has been said 
 in explanation of it, by myself and others, on former occasions, had it 
 not escaped from some of their leaky vessels that by one item in the 
 
603 
 
 present tariff they intended to work wonders, however disconcerted as 
 to others. Indeed, it has been boasted, that, as the election of 1840 
 was carried by coon-skins, they meant to carry this by sheep-skins. 
 You will, therefore, excuse me for detaining you a few moments longer, 
 by stating a few plain and unvarnished facts, that may enable all 
 honest yeomanry to prevent demagogues from pulling wool over their 
 eyes. 
 
 In the first place, the woollen manufacturers, as a class, and their 
 whig advocates, have always opposed raising higher the duty on wool. 
 This has been for the obvious reason, that the higher that duty, the 
 more the raw material would cost them, the less would be their profits 
 in making woollen cloths for sale. As we shall soon see, the whole 
 body of manufacturers never want a higher duty on anything they 
 buy, as they never, in their own cases, practise on the practical absurd- 
 ity which they preach to mislead you, — that high duties make low 
 prices, — and which it will be quite as difficult, I trust, to make you 
 believe, as that the more toll the miller takes from your corn, the more 
 will be left for you to carry home. What, then, has been the real 
 truth as to the imposition of what duties now exist on wool to protect 
 its growers ? It is, that the raising of those duties was moved by 
 democrats in 1828 and 1841, and not by whigs ; and that the very 
 increases of which our opponents now boast, and ask favor for, were 
 made, not by them, but by democratic votes. Here are the yeas and 
 nays in the Senate of which I speak, taken at different periods from 
 the official journals ; and not a whig is among the former, unless one 
 or two from a large wool-growing State and the free- trade region of 
 the south. 
 
 Most of the new guards to prevent frauds in the imports of foreign 
 wool were, in 1841, introduced on my own motion ; and when, to 
 secure the farming interests still further in this article, and give them 
 some equality with the manufacturer, I moved to raise the duty on 
 cheap wool to the average standard of other articles, which was twenty 
 per cent., the motion was talked down and voted down by the whigs. 
 
 Again, in 1842, who said yea to the raising the duty on the same 
 kind of wool, from the mere bagatelle of five per cent., to a higher and 
 more equal rate ? Democrats throughout, and only two whigs of the 
 whole body. Here are the names, that all may decide for themselves, 
 who wish to examine them. 
 
 I have had it cast in my teeth, as a reproach, in the Senate, within 
 two years, by the whig friends of the manufacturer, that, in 1828, no 
 less than in 1843, I desired to increase the duty on wool to the disad- 
 vantage of the manufacturers, when in truth it was for the equal pro- 
 tection of the farmers. And yet these sheep-skin demagogues would 
 now try to pull wool over your eyes, and make you believe that I anus 
 your enemy, and they your exclusive friends, in imposing that very 
 duty. But, after all which could by the democrats be got incorpo- 
 rated into the present oppressive tariff for your relief, does it deal 
 
604 SPEECH AT ELIOT, ME. 
 
 justly and fairly by you even as to wool, and much less as to numer- 
 ous other articles 1 Let me point you to recorded facts, and not gen- 
 eral tirades. On all wool worth above seven cents per pound, the duty 
 is but three cents per pound, and thirty per cent, more on the value ; 
 and on all under that value, but five per cent. Now, if wool of the 
 first class averages fifty cents' value per pound, the whole duty on that 
 would be almost thirty-six per cent., on an average. Thus their boasted 
 aid to the farmer on his wool, and that forced from them by democratic 
 votes, is only five per cent, on one class, and thirty-six per cent, on 
 another. But what think you they have the impudence to demand for 
 themselves, as aid and protection on the articles — the cloths and carpets 
 — made from this very wool 7 Not the same impost of five to thirty- 
 six, but what ranges from twenty-eight to sixty per cent. This is only 
 one sample among many of the miserable farces they seek to play, in 
 this tariff, on the farming interest. If they give to others half a dollar, 
 they extort, in return, for themselves, a dollar and a half; and thus they 
 thwart all the benefits you might otherwise realize, and make you 
 yearly poorer, unless you work harder and spend less, while they 
 yearly grow richer on your earnings, and on your forced contributions 
 to sustain their business. Just run through the parallel in a few other 
 articles, and see how miserably your productions are encouraged or 
 protected, in comparison with theirs — thus : 
 
 To you, upon wool, 5 to 36 per cent. ; and to them, on woollens, 
 28 to 60 per cent. To you, on hides, but 5 ; to them, on leather, 35, 
 or more, on an average. To you, on hemp, 30 ; to them, on cordage, 
 100 to 130. To you, on flax, 7 to 9 ; to them, on linen, &c, 25 to 
 50. To you, on silk, cocoons, 50 cents per pound ; to them, on silk, 
 manufactured, $2.50 per pound. To you, on tobacco, 20 per cent. ; 
 to th*em, on tobacco, manufactured, 100 per cent., or more. To you, 
 on wood, 20 per cent. ; to them, on wood, manufactured, 30 per cent. 
 
 This list could be extended, if necessary, to show the kind of pro- 
 tection yielded by the present tariff to farmers, compared with manu- 
 facturers, and proving that where a duty is imposed on the products 
 which reward the farmers, another, three-fold to seven-fold, is forthwith 
 exacted from them to aid the manufacturers, on the article made from 
 your raw material. 
 
 Hence, if anything of agricultural origin has risen a few cents per 
 pound since the tariff, like wool, the cloths made from it, and to be 
 taken by the farmer in exchange, have risen still more; and the farmer 
 is made much worse, instead of better, by the whole operation. But, 
 in most things grown among us, — in the great staples of wheat, corn, 
 flour, pork, beef, tobacco, butter, and cheese, — there has been a decided 
 fall in price, under this boasted whig tariff, while in most that the 
 laboring classes must buy or take in exchange there has been a decided 
 rise in price. In this way the farmer's candle is burning out rapidly 
 at both ends; while the manufacturer's is growing longer at both ends, 
 by giving less for the flour, beef, and pork, he consumes, and getting 
 
605 
 
 more for the cloth he sells. Again, generally, when the agricultural 
 product obtains any protective duty, — 5 to 36 per cent, — the 
 favored manufacturer of cotton gets 100 to 130 ; of cordage, 120 or 
 more ; of paper, 100 ; of iron, 80 ; and of salt and sugar, also great 
 necessaries of life, 80 or more, according to the cost. 
 
 Look a moment to the great contrast of this system towards your- 
 selves and the manufacturers in another aspect. The manufacturer is 
 an advocate for low duties, or no duties whatever, on articles where he 
 is to consume much of them. Then the principles of absolute and 
 unqualified free trade are with him not merely a beautiful abstraction, 
 but a blessed reality. His dye-woods are imported free, his indigo 
 and madder and kelp, his saltpetre and barilla and brimstone, his 
 models of machinery, and tartar, — all, and much more, are brought 
 from abroad entirely free ; and his foreign wool, if cheap, paying but 
 a nominal tax. So of his linseed and flax, his hides and rags and 
 bristles, with much more of raw material, scarcely reaching a revenue 
 standard. 
 
 But your raw materials for your agriculture, and ship-building, and 
 lumbering, — the iron, and salt, and cordage, and duck, with various 
 other necessaries of life, — are taxed enormously. While he has free 
 trade for his articles, and you not for yours, and thus acknowledges 
 the excellence of the free-trade system for what he consumes, he uses 
 insulting mockery to justify it. Yes, you are to be forced by him to 
 pay the highest taxes on foreign manufactures, so as to protect Amer- 
 ican labor and domestic industry against the derided pauper labor of 
 Europe, while he refuses to protect your American labor and industry 
 by equally high duties on all foreign raw materials ; on lumber, fish, 
 cord-wood, potatoes, hides, cheap wool, and many other products of 
 what they call the pauper labor of the rest of the world, but which 
 they are very willing to profit by themselves, when cheaper than ours. 
 It is no answer to this that a higher duty is imposed on several other 
 agricultural products, when imported, than on wool ; because these 
 others seldom or never are imported. They cannot be aifected by 
 imports here under any duty, and it is throwing dust in your eyes to 
 talk about the protection to them, as much as it would be to put a 
 high duty on hay, or ice, or rocks, and talk of that as giving protec- 
 tion to northern farmers. We all know that few, if any, of these arti- 
 cles, can ever be profitably imported from abroad. As conclusive 
 evidence that the system has been prejudicial to agriculture, almost 
 every product of it has become lower since than before the tariff ; and 
 that it has been beneficial, as intended, to manufacturers, all their lead- 
 ing fabrics have risen. The new home market it was to furnish you 
 — so praised to the skies — turns out, therefore, to be one where you 
 must sell for less and buy for more. 
 
 Here is a schedule of the prices in New York, before and since, on 
 several articles of agricultural growth : 
 51* 
 
606 
 
 
 SPEECH AT 
 
 ELIOT, ME. 
 
 
 
 1S36. 
 
 1839. 
 
 , 1844. 
 
 Beef, 
 
 $9.87 to 10.75 
 
 $15.00 to 0.00 
 
 $5.25 
 
 Pork, 
 
 ..■- 17.69 to 18.00 
 
 23.00 to 0.00 
 
 8.75 
 
 Flour, 
 
 7.00 to 8.00 
 
 6.75 to 8.69 
 
 4.37 
 
 Wool, 
 
 .35 to .40 
 
 .55 to .60 
 
 .40 
 
 Corn, 
 
 .43 to .85 
 
 .76 to .80 
 
 .56 
 
 Cheese, 
 
 .06 to .09 
 
 .08 to .10 
 
 .05 
 
 All know the advance in manufactures. Since the passage of the 
 bill, some kinds of cotton cloths have risen near fifty per cent., and 
 most of them twenty. 
 
 Besides this, with these prices near a third lower on farming pro- 
 ductions, you have to pay the tax-gatherer, the collector, a duty nom- 
 inally as high in most cases, and in some higher, than in 1828. This 
 makes the tax, in truth, operate one-third higher to the farming 
 interest. On the other hand, it is made to yield eight to ten per cent, 
 more protection to manufacturers where nominally the same, as it is 
 paid in cash now, without the credit formerly allowed. 
 
 The profits realized by high duties on most manufactures go also to 
 capitalists, rather than the operatives. They swell the dividends on 
 capital, but do not enhance the workman's wages. So they aid the 
 great branches of business by corporations, and not the business of 
 common mechanics, transacted on a smaller scale. Such mechanics are 
 victims of this system, rather than profiting by it. I appeal to them, 
 and all the household manufacturers, against its oppressions, by taxing 
 so highly many of the great necessaries of life which they consume. 
 All mechanics, under it, are compelled to pay more for their iron, their 
 leather and cordage, their sugar and salt, as well 'as the tools of their 
 trade ; and, if not makers of cloth, much more for all worn than they 
 would for high duties. Nor is there any escape from this, unless they 
 and their families rebarbarize, and, like the Esquimaux Indians, dress 
 in nothing but skins. 
 
 Beside that, the shoemaker, and hatter, and blacksmith, and tanner, 
 have grown up under free competition, and always will grow up in 
 that way, and prosper in communities like ours, whether tariffs rise or 
 fall. They were as successful under Washington and Jefferson's 
 administration, with mere revenue duties, seldom equalling twenty per 
 cent., as they ever have been since; and their occupations are of a 
 character almost to bid defiance to political legislation of any kind. 
 We import, and ever shall, but little of the work of either of them, 
 even when the tariff is low ; and it is as delusive to attempt to make 
 such mechanics believe they would be injured without a high tariff, as 
 it would be to convince the shipper of ice from the Kennebec, or the 
 hewer of granite on the Penobscot and the Merrimac, that they want 
 a high tariff to protect the growth of what they deal in. 
 
 But, not to consume more of your time on such general considera- 
 tions, look a moment at the manner in which this high tariff is made 
 to bear on the chief productions of Maine as a State, even in connec- 
 
607 
 
 tion with the boasted article of wool. Your population equals about 
 one-thirty-fourth that of the whole Union. The articles which you 
 produce in a larger ratio than that, or above your average amount, are, 
 of course, those in which your interest must be considered most peculiar 
 and deep. They are ships built equalling one-third of the whole in the 
 Union ; lumber, near one-sixth ; ships employed in navigation, in ton- 
 nage, one-seventh ; potatoes, about one-tenth ; fisheries, men engaged, 
 one-tenth; wood (cord), one-twenty-fifth; and sheep, but one-thirtieth, 
 though made in this canvass to take so prominent a stand. Our oppo- 
 nents cry ivool, wool, wool, as loudly as Patrick Henry's tory antag- 
 onist did beef, beef, when it is only a drop in the ocean compared to 
 your other interests, and when those interests are so shamefully neg- 
 lected. The average duties of the whole tariff exceed thirty-seven per 
 cent., and the highest duties range from fifty to one hundred and 
 thirty per cent. : making the direct average duty, when imposed for 
 protection, and not revenue alone, quite seventy per cent. In 
 calculating a moment how you fare under this system, and what cause 
 your great productions have to bless it and its friends for encourage- 
 ment, look first to your ships built yearly. They are taxed highly, 
 instead of favored, by this new tariff, — are burdened to the amount of 
 five dollars per ton above a revenue duty, or tA\o hundred thousand 
 dollars a year, in prosperous times, in your State alone. Next your 
 ships owned are to be replaced and repaired under a like discriminat- 
 ing tax against you for your tonnage; which tax, on what is now 
 used by you, exceeds a million and a half of dollars — besides suffer- 
 ing, on all the clothes worn, and tools used, and salt and sugar 
 consumed, by those employed in and on your vessels, an increase of 
 taxation from two to three hundred per cent, over twenty, the former 
 revenue standard. This is the new kindness by the new tariff to your 
 first and greatest interest, the navigation of the east, — that interest 
 which sustained the brave men who bled in every sea during the late 
 war with haughty England in defence of free trade and sailors 1 
 rights ; and who, since and evermore, can know no patriotic cry, but 
 freedom of the seas, as opposed to the proud claim of dominion of 
 the seas set up by those who constantly deafen our ears with British 
 magnanimity and British power. 
 
 Which of your interests is next in magnitude, compared with other 
 States? Lumber. That product is near two millions yearly, in 
 Maine alone, — double all the income of all the sheep in your State. 
 
 I go for facts and not speculations, and take my data as to your 
 products from the census itself. And how is this lumber protected, 
 compared with cotton? Only twenty per cent., instead of eighty to 
 one hundred and twenty. How, compared with the average of all 
 protected articles? Only twenty per cent., instead of seventy, — or 
 not one-thirtieth so much. Indeed, it is protected a little over half 
 as much as the average duty of the whole of this eulogized tariff. 
 
 How stands your next article in importance, — potatoes, — equalling 
 
608 SPEECH AT ELIOT, ME. 
 
 one-tenth of all grown in the Union, while your wool is only one- 
 thirtieth ? This is higher, though not much of it imported ; the whole 
 brought from abroad being a very small-potato concern. But even 
 this duty is, on an average of years, only thirty to fifty per cent. ; 
 while, on the other protected articles, the average is quite seventy per 
 cent. 
 
 Next, as to your fisheries. The old drawback allowed to them from 
 the foundation of the government was predicated on a scale of duties on 
 iron, salt, duck, and cordage, far less than it is now ; and while, under 
 the new tariff, each fishing vessel is made to cost five dollars per ton 
 more than it would under mere revenue duties, the drawback is not 
 increased a single dollar. Thus the adventurous fishermen of the 
 United States, — of whom you have one-tenth in the whole Union, — 
 who brave storms, fogs and icebergs, for a livelihood, man our com- 
 mercial marine, and sustain the flag of our navy under every peril 
 and in every sea. — they are selected for a new tax on all their humble 
 vessels by this wretched whig tariff, in order to help the manufactur- 
 ers of iron, and duck, and cordage, at their suffering and cost. Nor 
 are their fish themselves protected by a duty beyond what usually 
 exceeds twenty to twenty-five per cent, in their value, instead of 
 seventy, the protecting average ; and their fresh fish, the beautiful 
 salmon of your beautiful bays and rivers, are left without the slightest 
 shield against the competition of your near British neighbors, who, 
 clothing them in ice, penetrate with them every sea-port of the Union. 
 Neglected as this hardy class of individuals is, compared w T ith the lords 
 of the spindle, yet the census shows that those engaged in the 
 fisheries, with their families, are three or four to one of all employed 
 in Maine in cotton factories. 
 
 So the farmer's cord- wood, — which in your State constitutes one- 
 twenty-fifth of the whole Union, a larger proportion than wool itself, 
 — it is protected by only the small duty of twenty per cent., instead 
 of the seventy, as an average allowed to most manufactured goods. 
 
 For this glaring neglect, which brings swarms of New Brunswick 
 and Nova Scotia coasters with wood into every northern sea-port, to 
 your exclusion, — for this want of equal and proportionate favor to 
 your other great articles, by the whig tariff, — you are invoked to sus- 
 tain the whig candidates, as well as such oppressive whig measures. 
 But that invocation will be in vain, if facts and common sense have 
 not abandoned us, and been driven to the tombs, by bold assertion, 
 noisy fallacies, coarse songs, dumb shows, and the orgies of hard cider. 
 
 And if vjool is again appealed to, as having a higher duty than some 
 of the others, see, as already stated, who voted for and who against it, 
 — who tried to increase it, and who opposed. See, too, that the rate is 
 only five per cent, on some and but thirty -six on other kinds of wool, 
 when the average in the tariff on protected articles is seventy per cent. 
 See, too, that you raise not so much of it as you consume within your 
 own State, by many thousands of pounds. By reason of a colder 
 
me. 609 
 
 climate, you use in all ways more wool and woollens, on an average, 
 than the same number of persons further south ; and yet the amount 
 of wool you raise very little exceeds the average for the whole Union. 
 As the country then imported, the very first year, under this new 
 tariff, near five millions of pounds of raw wool, and several millions of 
 dollars' worth of woollen cloths, of which your people required more 
 than a full proportion to their population, look at the facts, and tell me 
 if the high tariff on wool and woollens be not a grievous tax on your 
 State, as a State, rather than a blessing? If the individual who 
 happens to grow more of the raw material than he consumes in all 
 ways in his family gets a trifle more per pound by means of the duty, 
 — as I admit he may, — how does the tariff stand, even with him, as a 
 whole, when, for the salt, iron, and sugar, he gets in exchange or buys 
 with the proceeds, he is compelled to pay at least double the amount 
 in advance, by duties, which he procures on his wool 1 
 
 The whole pretence, then, of benefit to you, by the system, as a sys- 
 tem, is delusive. And think, a single moment, in conclusion on this, 
 as to the whole country, — that if the eight millions' worth of wool raised 
 in the Union was benefited a little by the duty, what a miserable kind 
 of aid it must be, when five hundred millions in value of other agricul- 
 tural products are taxed at a double rate of duty on all the clothing, 
 iron, salt, sugar and numerous other articles, consumed by those who 
 raise them, and reckon, if the farming interest get a protective duty on 
 all their wool equal in the aggregate, yearly, to a third of a million of 
 dollars, they are obliged to pay a protective duty on other articles, 
 something like twelve or fourteen millions, — or near forty times the 
 amount they obtain on wool. 
 
 Again, the monopolizing spirit of our opponents would not even dis- 
 criminate, so as to let ordinary articles of the same name, but used by 
 the working classes, pay less than the finer and richer ones used by 
 the wealthy. And hence the coarse shoe, the coarse flannel, the 
 coarse carpet, and coarse cloth of almost every kind, are taxed as high, 
 by specific duties, as the finest, costing fifty or one hundred per cent, 
 more. Even the farmer's wife and daughter, or the mechanic's, or 
 the fisherman's, are compelled, if aspiring by extra labor and saving to 
 buy a durable cheap silk for wear on Sunday or holidays, to pay the 
 same amount of duty on it as is paid on more expensive silks by the 
 most extravagant belle in Broadway, or Chestnut-street, or the fami- 
 lies of the wealthiest nabobs in Boston or Baltimore. Nor is this 
 accidental. On the passage of the bill, its injustice was exposed, and 
 motions made to amend it by democrats, but voted down by whigs. 
 The great question naturally occurs, when so much is said in vindica- 
 tion of a tariff for protection, why it is, in your agricultural and com- 
 mercial State, that four hundred and fifty thousand farmers, mer- 
 chants, and seamen, including their families, should be taxed highly 
 on all the manufactures they wear, or eat, or use, and be unprotected 
 in all their great staples and employments by anything like one-half 
 
610 
 
 the average protecting standard for others 1 Why neglect the half- 
 million to build up and maintain in luxury only 21,879 individuals, 
 who, by the late census, are engaged in your manufacturing estab- 
 lishments 1 If any are to exult in such a departure from equal 
 principles, let it be those, certainly, who win, who profit, by the tariff. 
 But let not those who are fleeced and trodden down by any political 
 oppression have the unearthly meekness and humility to kiss the hand 
 that smites them, and reward it by renewed votes and confidence. 
 
 A part of the view of this whole restrictive system is, that, though 
 some branches of business may be temporarily aided or built up by it, 
 the result is accomplished on unequal and anti-republican principles. 
 It is sustained at the expense of others. It is, then, an almshouse or 
 pauper system. In the end, too, the whole community are seldom 
 gainers by it ; because, the business being forced, unnatural, hazardous, 
 and fluctuating, the losses by the many counterbalance any profits by 
 a few. Thus, since 1820, in New England, though the manufactur- 
 ing population has increased from 81,922 to 187,215, those engaged 
 in commerce have been forced to fall off near one-third ; and this 
 though commerce and the fisheries are as natural to our people as air 
 and water, and their tastes on such an extensive sea-coast become 
 almost amphibious. 
 
 This was not the promise made in the infancy of the system. 
 Then, such high protection needed not to be beyond a few years — 
 beyond the cradle and leading-strings. But, after a quarter of a cen- 
 tury, the cry is still louder, and for protection still higher, — like the 
 daughters of the horse-leech — give, give, give! And, what proves 
 the fallacy of the whole system, the statistical returns of our commerce 
 exhibit the astounding result, that where the duties have been the very 
 highest, the domestic supplies cannot be forced up thus unnaturally to 
 meet such a proportion of our demands as they did a generation ago. 
 Our population, rapidly as it increases, doubles only in about thirty 
 years ; yet, in all the progress of manufactures during the last twenty, 
 the great hot-bed ones have not increased so as to furnish the old 
 wants, nor scarcely half the new ones. Thus the sugars needed from 
 abroad in 1821 were worth $3,553,582; but in 1841, instead of needing 
 less from abroad on account of the greatly protected growth of it here, 
 we imported more than double the value, being $8,798,037, and under 
 fuller prices probably quite treble the quantity. So of iron : in 1821, 
 we imported $1,868,529 in value; and in 1841, instead of home pro- 
 duction supplying under this hot-house system our old as well as new 
 wants, we imported $4,225,960 in value, and perhaps quadruple the 
 number of pounds. And even cottons, imported in 1821 to the 
 extent of $7,589,791 only, but in 1842 $11,657,036 worth, under 
 prices reduced perhaps fifty per cent. 
 
 Make any fair allowances for the new uses of these articles, and if, 
 after twenty years, when so highly protected, they are not yet estab- 
 lished so as to supply as large a portion of our wants as formerly, — if 
 
ME. 611 
 
 they need as much or more nursing and indulgence in caudle and 
 arrow-root as at first, — if the home market, so much eulogized, which 
 they furnish to agriculture, is one of lower prices for most of its 
 products, and leaving a still larger and larger surplus to find buyers 
 abroad, or rot on our hands, — as is the recorded and official truth, — 
 pray tell me, what has become of all the foundation-stones on which 
 the system was grounded 1 It may be asked, how does this happen 1 
 Use your eyes to see, not jaundiced, — your ears to hear facts and 
 reasons, not sophistry and selfish glosses, — use a little plain, practical 
 common sense, — and the causes cannot be mistaken. Because our 
 natural pursuits for the present, as a nation, are agriculture and com- 
 merce, and household manufacture ; and what is forced must continue 
 to be forced, unless the circumstances of the country change so as to 
 render it natural. But the ocean, lakes, and rivers, are not dried up, 
 and will not dry up, so as to make commerce impracticable ; the fisher- 
 ies — the cod, whales, mackerel — still multiply ; the new and fertile 
 and cheap soils are not all cultivated. 
 
 While, then, we can get, for wheat and pork and beef, the same 
 price as other nations get in the markets of the world, and raise them 
 on lands costing not one-tenth as much as theirs, is not agriculture 
 our most natural and profitable business, and commerce its most use- 
 ful handmaid, for exchanging the surplus 1 And why should we seek, 
 by unequal, oppressive legislation, to force other kinds of business, to 
 the injury of those f l I have neither interest nor other motives to mis- 
 lead you as to these great branches of industry, being somewhat con- 
 nected with manufactures, as well as agriculture. Nor are you in a 
 position to wish or seek injustice to any honest employment ; as this 
 immense audience, when in their quiet homes, live in a position to 
 weigh this subject very dispassionately, being surrounded by persons 
 engaged in agriculture and commerce, as well as manufactures, or are 
 themselves devoted in part to all of them. 
 
 There, a few miles only southward of us, swells the Atlantic Ocean, 
 over which you and your sons help to transport the products and mer- 
 chandise of every zone, and from whose depths they assist to fish up 
 food, comfort, and wealth. There, more northward, strike the eye the 
 blue ridges of those mountains on whose hill-sides your cattle graz6, and 
 your ploughs run for bread to the very summit. And on the water- 
 falls of the river near you, both east and west, — the Saco and Piscata- 
 qua, — the hum of the spindle almost reaches our ears. 
 
 All which you or I, then, can reasonably ask, is just protection to 
 ail these interests ; not partial favor to one branch of American labor, 
 or industry, or capital, but impartial to all. And the only true Amer- 
 ican system is to demand impartiality and equality, and insist on the 
 justice of them, though the heavens fall. 
 
 But this system keeps money in the country, cry out some of its advo- 
 cates, as a last argument. So would robbery of one to enrich another. 
 It keeps money, I grant, in the pockets of the manufacturers of the 
 
612 SPEECH AT ELIOT, ME. 
 
 country, but not of the farmers. Yes, it keeps the money here, at 
 first, of those obliged to buy the manufactured article ; but sends it 
 abroad afterwards, by the manufacturer himself, for the raw agricul- 
 tural material of which it is made. Under it, to be sure, the farmer 
 must keep his money in the country, and not send it abroad for cloth- 
 ing, salt, and iron ; but the manufacturer is at liberty to send his even 
 to Botany Bay for wool, and Buenos Ayres or California for hides, or 
 the Mahometan Turk for dyes, or the Pope for rags or sulphur. In 
 truth, this system does not keep so much money in the country, as a 
 whole, as would otherwise remain here, on the sound principles of free 
 trade. For, in that case, all would buy where what they need is made 
 cheapest, and sell where what they spare will bring most ; and in this 
 way we should have and keep much more money in the country at the 
 end of each year. Our tariff being lower, foreign ones become so ; 
 and, getting ten millions more for our products, and buying our man- 
 ufactures ten millions lower, we should, as a nation, manifestly be 
 twenty millions richer at the end of the year, and all our population 
 would be as much employed in what is American and patriotic as 
 before. Should we need all for revenue we now get, nearly the same 
 revenue would be collected, in a series of years, on a duty a third 
 lower, because so much more would be imported, and so little smuggled. 
 It does not answer, on this subject, to be advocates of low duties, or 
 free-trade principles, on everything but iron, like one State ; or all but 
 sugar, like another ; or all, even pauper labor, but cottons, like another; 
 or all but wool, like another ; or, as the Scotchman desired, on every- 
 thing except his red herring. This is partial, and full of log-rolling 
 coalition. Rather must we go for equal protection to all things not 
 foreign, by imposing equal and moderate duties on all ; and which 
 w T ould thus decidedly assist the treasury, and yield incidental favor to 
 the industry and labor of all classes equally against foreign compe- 
 tition. But this partial tariff, — why should you admire and advance 
 this and its friends, when it never protects your favorite articles, — 
 your ships, your lumber, your wood, not even your red herring ? 
 
 But it yields a large revenue, say its friends, and therefore must be 
 upheld. What ! Did they not avowedly make the present tariff to 
 exclude foreign imports — the pauper labor of Europe? And yet 
 they have the assurance to recommend it and urge the election of its 
 friends, because the imports of foreign labor under it are so large, and 
 the consequent revenue so high. If these results are commendable, 
 we all know that they spring from other causes — the opening of new 
 markets and the previous dearth of goods. In the same inconsistent 
 course, they ask your support for it, because the seasons and the crops 
 are so propitious to the country ; when we all know that these come 
 from the smiles of Providence and your own industry, rather than the 
 tariff; — and the good home market in higher prices for what is sold, 
 which were promised by so many under the tariff, has never come, 
 except to the manufacturer for his own goods ; and the lower prices 
 
SPEECH AT ELIOT, ME. 613 
 
 for what is bought, alike promised, have never come, except to the 
 same manufacturer for the wheat, corn, and beef, he eats and purchases 
 from the farmer. 
 
 The system is therefore to be dreaded, on account of its partial dis- 
 criminations, appealing to the sordid principles of our nature — the 
 five loaves and two small fishes ; and pursuing politics, like camp fol- 
 lowers, for plunder, rather than equal justice to the whole community. 
 It extends the same proscriptive feeling abroad as at home ; trying, 
 when we all came from abroad, — when our vessels thrive by going 
 abroad, and our products sell chiefly by help of markets abroad, — 
 and when they import, if cheaper, labor from abroad, workmen and 
 raw materials both from abroad, — though trying, on other occasions, 
 to excite hostility the most bitter to persons, as well as things, not pro- 
 duced among us. This narrow, bigoted feeling, under such auspices, 
 we see pushed to the lamentable extent of drenching the streets in 
 blood of our chief cities ; and requiring, even in the city of brotherly 
 love, the protection of the rifle and cannon to property, life, and even 
 the holy altars and churches of religion. Too much of this feeling at 
 the north has, I fear, been carried into the agitating question concern- 
 ing the annexation of Texas. A class of people among us have a 
 perfect hydrophobia of every person and region not belonging to 
 their own clique. With them, nothing good can come except from 
 their own leaders. With them, the shell is never to be enlarged, 
 no reforms tolerated, no boundaries extended, nor securities strength- 
 ened. 
 
 I respect the opinions of those, as to Texas, who dislike the terms, or 
 time, or circumstances connected with the late treaty ; but can cherish 
 no respect for a party who would tie up the limits of our glorious 
 Union to the Alleghanies or Mississippi, — who still hold the purchase 
 of Louisiana, as well as of Texas, to be unconstitutional, and would for- 
 ever renounce those destinies which invited us to the Pacific, over both 
 Oregon and Texas. 
 
 On the part of the republican party, there is nothing of principle 
 new in this measure as to Texas. We travelled over the whole of it 
 in the purchase of Louisiana ; and, under Jefferson, the great apostle 
 of liberty among us, then fought the battle with ancient federalism, 
 then, as now, threatening disunion, if she was admitted into the Union. 
 Texas, and all its difficulties of slavery, and other obstacles, were then 
 overcome, and her soil purchased. Her inhabitants have never assented 
 to any cession from us, and are entitled to all the privileges of our 
 Union by a solemn treaty on our part with France. Let us, then, ful- 
 fil our duties to them, though late, — to those who are not only ours 
 by original purchase and voluntary cession, but ours in race, in educa- 
 tion — ours in religion and love of liberty, affection, choice, and valor 
 in defence of their inalienable rights and independence. But the ticket 
 opposed to us looks on the whole of this with alien eyes, — would 
 refuse, even by negotiation, to strengthen with such a purchase our 
 52 
 
614 
 
 maritime defences, to guard our western frontier more effectually against 
 the Indian scalping-knife ; to prevent our enemies from procuring cot- 
 ton lands to make them independent of us. and girting us around, 
 from the Rocky Mountains to Halifax, Bermuda and Cuba, excluding 
 Texas and Oregon whenever a cloud of war darkens the horizon ; to 
 open to our views new sugar-fields and markets, our vessels new rivers 
 and harbors, because, perchance, it might change the balance of power 
 in favor of the agricultural States on the south and west, or thwart 
 the machinations for more extended empire and power of that ancient 
 oppressor, whose wrath they so constantly dread, and whose arrogance 
 they have so often truckled to. Let not the hazard of war with Mex- 
 ico be interposed as an assurance. To say that a peaceful annexation 
 would rightfully expose us to a war, or that, by pursuing our national 
 duties and interests, through amicable negotiation with a friendly inde- 
 pendent power, like Texas, we become liable to the just censure of the 
 world, is to say that the talk of our fathers, about the right of self- 
 government, was mere blarney. It is to hold, under a government 
 and under a constitution which rest on the great principle of justifia- 
 ble resistance to oppression, that such resistance is unholy till the 
 oppressor himself approves it. It is to commit national suicide, — to 
 belie our own example, to cast a foul censure on our fathers, and to 
 repudiate the whole American system of politics, Mexican as well as 
 Texian and of the United States, under the obsolete dogmas of the Old 
 World and its Holy Alliances of despots. The resolve, therefore, of 
 the Baltimore Convention in favor of Texas and Oregon, and the 
 pledges of our candidates to re -annex the first as soon as practicable, 
 are truly American ; nor let the childish attempt prevail to frighten us 
 from a maintenance of our just national rights and natural independ- 
 ence, by the cry that we thus violate any treaty obligation with Mex- 
 ico. Did we ever engage, by treaty with Mexico, never to buy Texas, 
 or never to unite in government with her after becoming independent, 
 or never, in that event, to protect her against barbarous and unjust 
 oppressions ? As well might the Hartford Convention have opposed 
 the war with England, in 1812, as a violation of our solemn treaty of 
 peace with her in 1783. No treaties bind nations to endure wrongs, 
 or to submit to what is in contravention with national law. 
 
 Nor will the opinions and policy of our candidates as to Texas tend 
 to an increase of slavery. On the contrary, it adds not one to those 
 before within the limits of the two countries. It would more effectu- 
 ally, by our increased navy, prevent importation of slaves there from 
 abroad. It would transfer them further north to more congenial and to 
 healthy climates, and hasten the wise and gradual abolition of slavery, 
 by some generations, in those States nearest to the Potomac, who will 
 thus surest and easiest get rid in safety of their present burdens, and, 
 like ourselves fifty years ago, become emancipated from so great an 
 evil. 
 
 If the English ministry, and the World's Convention in London, in 
 
SPEECH AT ELIOT, ME. 615 
 
 their ^ abolition fanaticism , looked a little more at home to mitigate 
 debasing and miserable servitude, it might be quite as well for°thc 
 cause of humanity ; for so grossly is it outraged still in their very 
 midst, that a whig periodical among us (North American Review for 
 July, 1844) says : 
 
 "We may affirm that the condition of the galley-slaves in France, or of the blacks 
 in Cuba and the Carolinas, compared with that of English children immured in coal- 
 mines, is like the contrast of Elysium with Tartarus." 
 
 Without any thirst for aggrandizement, then, or any attachment to 
 scenes of war, or disregard of the solemn obligations of treaties, or 
 desire to enlarge the number of our slave population, but the reverse 
 of all of them, let us despise every groundless taunt on such topics, 
 and, as soon as practicable, by the election of men friendly to the 
 annexation of Texas, crowd onward the great destinies which Provi- 
 dence seems to have marked out for our republic. While we are 
 scrupulous to do no injustice to others, let us be equally careful not to 
 neglect our own public duties, and not to bring contempt and dishonor 
 on our common country by a timorous and vacillating policy. In this 
 way, there need be no limits to our Union, but the growth of general 
 education, sound morals, and intelligent liberty. 
 
 " Wide as our free race increase, 
 Wide shall extend the elastic chain, 
 And bind in everlasting peace 
 State after State, a mighty train." 
 
 My fellow-citizens, I must now close these hasty remarks, and make 
 way for others more useful and entertaining. 
 
 But, in doing it, let me conjure you, between this and November, not 
 to be led off the true points in the canvass by any false or feigned 
 issues, like those I first alluded to. 
 
 The eyes and hearts of sober-minded men, like you, will look higher, 
 and dwell on considerations like these : whether the cause of independ- 
 ence and self-government by a majority shall prevail, or the Divine 
 right of a few to rule the many ; whether those who hold our delegated 
 trusts shall not be made amenable to us by instructions, and a strict 
 adherence to granted powers, rather than enlarge them by broad con- 
 structions to cover every species of encroachment. In fine, whether 
 the people shall rule, or their servants, and the policy of the country 
 be shaped by ourselves, or by the puppets to Sir Robert Peel or Louis 
 Philippe ; whether your government shall continue to be administered 
 on the principles of Jefferson, Madison and Washington, or dangerous 
 novelties be introduced, like the distribution of the public lands and 
 the assumption of State debts — those fatal omens of discord and dis- 
 union ; whether trade shall be left free, industry unshackled, rights 
 equal, and your youthful empire of democracy bounding onward in 
 its own energies, over Oregon and Texas, to the Pacific, — or all be 
 
616 
 
 cramped up, chained, hedged, emasculated, mildewed, and all be par- 
 alyzed, and at a dead halt, or be limping along like the fettered 
 despotisms of the Old World. 
 
 This may be considered plain language. The times demand 
 it. You are a wronged people ; your interests will not be dealt fairly 
 by and protected equally, unless you act in earnest ; you are too intel- 
 ligent to be deluded longer. Tell the aspirants to power what you 
 want, and what, by God's blessing, you will have, — equal rights, equal 
 protection, equal laws. 
 
 The whole canvass must be bold and searching, though just. You 
 must be faithful, as well as fearless ; and not, like some cringing 
 menials of power, see either a handsaw or a whale in the clouds, as is 
 supposed will best suit the wishes of a superior and officer, or as 
 cliques may dictate. 
 
 Nor do you want any neutrals in contests like this. For, where such 
 vast interests are at stake, it is disgraceful not only to blow hot and 
 cold, but to try to escape responsibility, by being neither whig nor 
 democrat, Clay nor Polk, but an insipid "nothingarian." On the 
 contrary, the whole country looks to you to be firm as Agamenticus 
 on his rocky base near us, and to dare to do your duty, whatever 
 obstacles may interpose. In such a cause, can any hesitate to stand 
 forth and swell the ranks of that party which our fathers founded, and 
 under whose administration of public affairs Providence so long blessed 
 our country at home and abroad ? Believe me, such leaders as Polk 
 and Dallas will be its standard-bearers to victory, if we are only united 
 in action, vigilant and prompt at the post of duty. 
 
TABLES 
 
 A. [No. 1.] 
 
 Articles paying highest duties under the proposed bill. 
 
 A bove 50 per ctnt. 
 (per cent.) 
 
 1. Cordage, untarred, . . . 150 to 100 
 
 2. Cheap cottons, .... 140 to 25 
 8. Pepper, black, 130 
 
 4. Iron, nails, or spike-rods, ... 125 
 
 5. Paper, writing, .... 125 to 100 
 
 6. Glass, quart bottles, 120 
 
 7. Wire, not over No. 14, .... 100 
 
 8. Spirits, near, 100 
 
 (per cent.) 
 
 , . .00 to 50 
 
 10. Salt, 80 
 
 9. Spices, generally, 
 
 11. Cordage, tarred, . . . 
 
 12. Glass, cut, 
 
 13. Sugar, 
 
 14. Cotton-bagging, . . . 
 
 15. Woollens, 
 
 10. Iron, rolled and pigs,* 
 
 GO to 
 60 to 
 60 to 
 60 to 
 
 80 
 40 
 40 
 40 
 
 25 
 
 60 
 
 At and under 50, but above 20 per cent. 
 
 (per cent.) 
 
 1. Coal, 50 
 
 2. Fruits, 50 
 
 3. Wines, 50 
 
 4. Molasses, 40 to 30 
 
 (per cent.) 
 
 5. Silk, 40 to 30 
 
 6. Wares, crockery and China, ... 30 
 
 7. Linens, 25 
 
 Three articles selected at and under 20 per cent. 
 
 fl. Tobacco, 20 f 3. Nux vomica, 
 
 2. Gold epauletts, free. 
 
 free. 
 
 B. [No. 2.] 
 
 Highest duties in England. 
 
 1. On spirits, . 
 
 2. Molasses. 
 8. Coffee, . 
 4. Sugar, . 
 
 Foreign. 
 
 . 500 (per cent. ) 
 
 .300 
 
 .300 
 
 .300 
 
 Above 50 per cent. 
 Colonial. 
 
 .160 
 . 80 
 . 90 
 . 50 
 
 Foreign. Colonial. 
 
 Tobacco,. .250 (percent.) 200 
 Teas, . . . 200 or over. 
 Wines, 200 to 100 
 Fruit, ... 60 
 
 At and tinder 50 to 20 per cent. 
 
 1. Grain, t 
 
 2. Woollens, 
 
 (per cent.) 
 . . 50 . . 
 . .30 
 
 15 
 
 3. Wares, 
 
 4. Silk, . 
 
 (per cent.) 
 . 30 to 15 
 . . .30 
 
 1. Iron, . 
 
 2. Cotton, 
 
 Three articles selected at and under 20 per cent. 
 (per cent.) (per cent.) 
 
 . . . 20 13. Salt, free. 
 
 20 to 10 
 
 * Last price-current in England would make the duty near 100 per cent. 
 t All these are subject to 10 per cent, higher duty in certain foreign vessels this 
 side of Cape of Good Hope, and 20 per cent, the other side, if not teas. 
 t When price low, and lower if price high. 
 
 52* 
 
618 
 
 TABLES. 
 
 C. [No. 3.] 
 
 List of articles in this bill yielding most revenue. 
 
 Secretary Forward's report, No. 209, gives the quantity of imports in 1840, prices, 
 and duty now proposed, and amount from it. 
 
 The whole revenue, gross, is about 32 millions of dollars, and net 27^ millions of 
 dollars ; by it the average rate of duty is about 35 to 36 per cent, on 93 millions of 
 imports not free. 
 
 1. Silks yield by it near, . $4,000,000 
 
 2. Sugar, 3,700,000 
 
 3. Teas, 2,500,000 
 
 4. Coffee, 2,000,000 
 
 5. Spirits, 2,000,000 
 
 6. Woollens, 2,000,000 
 
 7. Iron, 1,500,000 
 
 Manufactures of, . 600,000 
 
 8. Cottons, 1,500,000 
 
 9. Linens, 1,200,000 
 
 10. Molasses, 1,000,000 
 
 22,000,000 
 
 11. Spices (pepper, one-half), $750,000 
 
 12. Salt, 500,000 
 
 13. Wines, 500,000 
 
 14. Fruits (mostly raisins), . 500,000 
 
 15. Crockery ware, 500,000 
 
 16. Coal, 300,000 
 
 17. Hides, 250,000 
 
 18. Tobacco, manufactured, . 200,000 
 
 8 articles, 
 10 articles, 
 
 18 articles, 
 
 . 3,500,000 
 22,000,000 
 
 $25,500,000 
 
 Note. — The chief changes from his plan in these articles are in tea, coffee, and salt. 
 The product from the first two, by the bill, will be near a million less, and from salt 
 about one-seventh of a million less. The aggregate of the first ten articles would 
 then be about $20,700,000 ; and of the whole, about $23,700,000. 
 
 Silks will not yield, in fact, one-half as much, because most have been free, and we 
 shall make more now. 
 
 Sugars will not be as much, because we make more, and from Indian corn, and 
 consume less when higher, as in England. So molasses. So make more iron. 
 
 Spirits. — Import less, as higher duty, and make more at home, and consume less 
 in temperance times. 
 
 Linen, tea, and coffee — All will be less used, as have been free ; other articles will 
 be substituted. 
 
 D. [No. 4.] 
 
 List of English articles yielding most revenue, 
 
 Among the witnesses examined before the committee was John M'Gregor, Esq., one 
 of the joint secretaries of the board of trade. He stated that the ten leading articles, 
 which produced £20,502,666 revenue in 1839, were : 
 
 Sugar and molasses, .... £4,826,917 
 
 Tea, 3,658,763 
 
 Spirits, . . . 2,615,413 
 
 Wine, 1,819,308 
 
 Tobacco 3,495,686 
 
 Coffee and cocoa, 749,818 
 
 Fruits of all kinds, . . . 
 Timber and dyewoods, . . 
 Corn, grain, meal, and rice, 
 
 Total, 
 
 £462,002 
 1.668,584 
 1,131,075 
 
 . £20,502,566 
 
TABLES. 
 
 619 
 
 E. [Table No. 1.] 
 
 Several articles which pay a higher duty by the tariff of 1842 than that of 1828. 
 
 Articles. 
 
 silk, 
 
 Boots, 
 Coal — 
 
 at 28 bushels per ton, 
 
 at 25 net, 
 Cordage, tarred, .... 
 Cottons,* 
 
 Cotton laces, . . 
 Glass, some kinds, 
 Glass bottles, 
 Molasses, . . . 
 Saddlery, . . . 
 Shoes, some, . . 
 Silks, some, . . 
 Steel, per cwt., . 
 
 Twine, 
 
 Ware, crockery, 
 Ware, Japanned, , 
 Woollens, some, . 
 Woollens, camlets, 
 
 1S23. 
 
 1342. 
 
 30 cents per pair. 
 G cents per bushel. 
 
 1.48 
 1 
 
 S) 
 
 4 cents per lb. 
 80 per cent. 
 4£ cents per square yard 
 
 12^ per cent. 
 400 per cent. 
 $2 to 3 per gross. 
 
 5 cents per gallon. 
 5 per cent. 
 
 J5 cents per pair. 
 20 per cent. 
 $1.50. 
 
 4 cents per lb. 
 30 per cent. 
 25 per cent. 
 50 per cent. 
 15 per cent. 
 
 40 cents per pair. 
 
 $1.50. 
 
 4.^ cents per lb. 
 
 100 per cent. 
 
 4 cents per square yard, 
 
 and 5 if gunny-cloth. 
 
 20 per cent. 
 
 500 or more. 
 
 m to 4. 
 
 $5| on weight. 
 
 30 per cent. 
 
 30 per cent. 
 
 30 to 60 per cent. 
 
 $2.50. 
 
 6 per lb. 
 
 30 per cent. 
 
 30 per cent. 
 
 40 to G7 per cent. 
 
 20 per cent. 
 
 [Table No. 1. — Continued.] 
 
 Others which pay nearly as high a duty by the act of 1842 as by that of 1828. 
 
 Articles. 
 
 1828. 
 
 1842. 
 
 
 $2 per cwt. 
 50 per cent. 
 4 cents per lb. 
 3£ cents per square foot. 
 C Soon falling to 10 cents 
 < per bushel by the act of 
 ( 1830. 
 3 cents per lb. 
 
 $2 per cwt. 
 
 50 per cent. 
 
 4 cents per lb. 
 
 3£ cents per square foot. 
 
 > 8 cents 
 
 2£ cents per lb. 
 
 Clothing, made up, 
 
 Glass, some kinds, 
 
 Salt,t 
 
 Sugar, f 
 
 * On one kind of cottons, such as printed handkerchiefs, the duty is more than a 
 hundred per cent, higher than in 182S ; and many of the specific duties in this table 
 would be much more above those in 1828, if reduced to a scale ad valorem. 
 
 t The specific duties in 1842, on these two articles, would be a higher per cent, on 
 their value in 1842 than those were in 1828, as the value of the articles then was so 
 much higher. Several other articles might be added which are in a similar situation. 
 
620 
 
 TABLES. 
 
 F. [Table No. 2.] 
 
 Several articles in the tariff of 1842, which pay a higher duty than 30 per cent, 
 when specific, reduced to a scale ad valorem, at the Treasury Department, except 
 when in brackets. 
 
 Boots, silk, 50 to 75 per ct. 
 
 Coal, 61 
 
 Cordage, 71 to 188 
 
 Cottons, 49 to 63 
 
 printed hkfs.,* . [132] 
 many others,! . [50 to 150] 
 Cotton-bagging, .... 53 to 55 
 
 gunny-cloth, . . [100] 
 Clothing, made up, ... 40 and 50 
 embroidered, . 50 
 
 Flour, wheat, 70 
 
 Fruits, 50 
 
 Glass, comp. by merch., . [186 to 243] 
 Gloves, children's, . . . 75 to 50 
 
 kid, 60 
 
 Hats, [35] 
 
 Hemp, [39] 
 
 Iron,:}: pig, 45 to 72 
 
 scrap, .50 
 
 bar, 85 
 
 rolled, 77 
 
 Leather, 53 
 
 Lead, [100] 
 
 whiting, 146 
 
 Linseed oil, [50] 
 
 Molasses, 51 
 
 Oil-cloth, 67 
 
 Opium, 75 
 
 Pepper, 130 
 
 Paper [97 by merch.], . 35 
 Salt, 80 [and Turk's Is.], 144] 
 
 Silks, 40 to 65 
 
 Shoes, 50 to 75 
 
 Soap, soft, 50 
 
 Sugar, brown, 71 
 
 refined, 101 
 
 syrup, .... [161 by merch.] 
 
 Spirits, i . 61 
 
 Spices, [50 to 90] 
 
 Tobacco, in cigars, ... 40 
 
 Wines, 60 to 67 
 
 Woollens 40 to 87 
 
 * Several articles pay so high a duty now as to stop all imports of them ; and 
 hence the rate has to be computed otherwise than at the department, and on the values 
 of 1840. 
 
 t See a schedule, computed on an English price-current of Steward & Co. 
 t Seventeen articles pay from 45 to 235 per cent, on their cost abroad. See table in 
 memorial from New York. See annexed the articles, and rate per cent, on the foreign 
 cost. 
 
 Articles. Ad valorem rate of 
 
 such duty. 
 
 Anvils, Wilkinson's warranted, 70 per cent. 
 
 Brass battery or hammered kettles, 50 per cent. 
 
 Butt hinges, cast iron, . . , . 731 per cent. 
 
 Hammers, blacksmiths', 67 per cent. 
 
 Iron, in bars, 112J per cent. 
 
 " " under 5.8 inch square, 240 per cent. 
 
 Irons, sad or smoothing, tailors' and hatters', 140 per cent. 
 
 Iron wire, No. to 6, 235 per cent. 
 
 " " No. 14, 230 per cent. 
 
 Iron wrought nails, rose-head, a bag of 100 lbs., 8d., 103 per cent. 
 
 Pins, mixed, 75 per cent. 
 
 Saws, cross-cut and\pit, 75 per cent. 
 
 Screws, iron, called wood-screws, 87 per cent. 
 
 Bright trace-chains, 61 feet, No. 3, iron, 144 per cent. 
 
 Kitchen furniture, such as saucepans, kettles, &c, tinned, .... 45 per cent. 
 
 Bright ox and log chains, 160 per cent. 
 
 Jack-chain, 96 per cent. 
 
TABLES. 
 
 621 
 
 G. [Table No. 3.] 
 
 Articles on which most of the duties arc paid under the present tariff, estimated on 
 imports* near the same as in 1840, in value. 
 
 Sugars yield near, $3,500,000 
 
 Silks.t 3,500,000 
 
 Spirits, 2,000,000 
 
 Woollens, 2,000,000 
 
 Iron, 1,500,000 
 
 " manufactures of, ... 500,000 
 
 Cottons, $1,500,000 
 
 Linens, 1,200,000 
 
 Molasses, 1,000,000 
 
 Revenue paid by 8 articles, $10,700,000 
 
 Note. — All are necessaries, except spirits, and some kinds of silk; and al 
 unfortunately happen to be rivalled here — even spirits. 
 
 II. [Table No. 4.] 
 
 Duties, discriminating for manufactures and against agriculture, §c. 
 
 Agriculture and other raw material, low. 
 
 Hides, % 5 per cent. 
 Linseed, 5 per cent. 
 Wool, cheap, 5 per cent. 
 Cork, bark, free. 
 Hags, for paper, 1\ cents per lb. 
 Quills, unprepared, 15 per cent. 
 Silk, raw, 50 cents per lb. 
 Bristles, 1 cent per lb. 
 
 Brass, crude, free, 
 
 Hemp, 30 to 32 per cent. 
 
 Cotton, 3 cents, or 33 to 25 per cent. 
 Flax, raw, 1 cent, or 7 to 9 per cent. 
 
 Lead, crude, 1^ to 3 cents per lb. 
 
 Tin, crude, in pigs, 1 per cent. 
 Wood, rough, 20 per cent. 
 
 The manufactured materials, high. 
 
 Leather, 35 per cent. 
 Linseed oil, 25 per cent. 
 Woollens, 28 to 60 per cent. 
 Corks, made, 25 to 30 per cent. 
 Paper, 15 to 17 cents per lb. 
 Quills, prepared, 25 per cent. 
 Silks, $2.50, &c. 
 Brushes, 30 per cent. 
 
 C Brass, manufactured, 30 per cent. 
 
 \ " kettles, 12 cents per lb. 
 
 5 Cordage, 100 to 130 per cent. 
 
 ( Cotton-bagging, 50 to 80 per cent. 
 Cotton cloths, 80 to 120 per cent. 
 Flax, manufactured, 25 to 50 per cent. 
 
 C Lead, pipes, &c, 4 cents per lb. 
 
 I " white & red, 4 cents per lb. 
 Tin, in plates, 2£ per cent. 
 Wood, manufactured, 30 per cent. 
 
 List of articles free, and connected tvith manufactures. 
 Models of machinery. 
 Berries, } 
 
 Nuts, and > used principally in dying. 
 Vegetables, } 
 All dye-woods in sticks. 
 Barilla. 
 
 Bark of the cork-tree, unmanufactured. 
 Bells, or bell metal, old and only fit to be remanufactured. 
 Brass in pigs or bars, and old brass only fit to be remanufactured. 
 
 * But imports were less in 1843 than in 1840: so that they did not yield over 
 47.500,000. 
 t Must have declined, as silks are now taxed so much higher than in 1840. 
 t 84,118,000 were the imports of only three articles out of the fifteen, in 1840 — viz. : 
 
 Hides, $2,750,214 
 
 Cheap wool (under 8 cents), 675,009 
 
 Hemp (all kinds), 686,777 
 
 $4,118,000 
 
622 
 
 TABLES. 
 
 Brazil wood. 
 
 Crude brimstone. 
 
 Burr-stones, unwrought. 
 
 Clay, unwrought. 
 
 Cochineal. 
 
 Old copper, fit only to be remanufactured. 
 
 India rubber, in bottles, or sheets, or otherwise unmanufactured. 
 
 Old junk and oakum. 
 
 Kelp. 
 
 Madder and madder-root. 
 
 Mother of pearl. 
 
 Nickel. 
 
 Palm-leaf, unmanufactured. 
 
 Pewter, when old and only fit to be remanufactured. 
 
 Platina, unmanufactured. 
 
 Ivory, unmanufactured. 
 
 Plaster of Paris, unground. 
 
 Rattans and reeds, unmanufactured. 
 
 Saltpetre, when crude. 
 
 Stones, called polishing stones. 
 
 Stones, called rotten stones. 
 
 Sumac. 
 
 Tartar, when crude. 
 
 Woods of all kinds, unmanufactured, not herein enumerated. 
 
 I. [Table No. 
 
 5.] 
 
 A list of agricultural articles, on which higher duties are imposed ; but which are 
 not raw materials for manufactures here, and are not rivalled abroad so as to be 
 imported much, or to need any protection here. 
 
 Duty by act Value imported 
 of 1842. in 1840. 
 
 70 cents per cwt. $430 
 
 20 " " " 00 
 
 10 " " bushel, 16,960 
 25 " " " 639 
 
 Articles. 
 
 Duty by 
 
 ict Value imported 
 
 Articles. 
 
 
 of 1842 
 
 
 in 1840. 
 
 
 Beef, 
 
 2 cents per lb. 
 
 $12,432 
 
 Wheat flour, 
 
 Pork, 
 
 2 « 
 
 " } 
 
 
 Indian meal, 
 
 Bacon, 
 
 3 « 
 
 " i 
 
 14,087 
 
 Potatoes, 
 
 Hams, 
 
 3 " 
 
 €t \ 
 
 
 Wheat, 
 
 Cheese, 
 
 9 « 
 
 CC 
 
 23,229 
 
 
 Butter, 
 
 5 " 
 
 CC 
 
 3,763 
 
 
 Lard, 
 
 3 " 
 
 (( 
 
 7 
 
 
 $71,547 
 
 J. [Table No. 6.] 
 
 Rates of duties before the war of 1812, and the act of 1816. 
 
 First act in 1790. 
 
 Coal, 2 cents per bushel. 
 
 Coffee, 2£ cents per lb. 
 
 Cordage (tarred), | of a cent per lb. 
 
 Clothing, made, 7£ per cent. 
 
 Cottons, 5 per cent. 
 
 Glass, 10 per cent. 
 
 Hemp, 60 cents per cwt. 
 
 Iron, rolled, 7£ per cent. 
 
 steel, ^ cent per lb f 
 
 nails, 1 cent. 
 Molasses, 2£ cents per gallon. 
 Salt, 6 cents per lb. 
 
 Raised in the same year, and in 1792, 1794, 1797, 
 &c, so as to be, from 1805 to 1812. 
 
 5 cents per bushel. 
 
 5 cents per lb. 
 
 2 cents per lb. 
 
 10 per cent. 
 
 15 & 2£. 
 
 150 pr foot (window). 
 
 100 per cwt. 
 
 15 & 2£. 
 
 4-i- 
 
 Free after 1807. 
 
TABLES. 
 
 623 
 
 First act in 1790. 
 
 Raised in the same year, and in 1792, 1794, 1797, 
 &c, so as to be, from 1805 to 1812. 
 
 ♦Sugar, brown, 1 cent per lb. 
 
 
 
 2J. 
 
 Shoes, leather, 7 cents per pair. 
 
 
 
 15. 
 
 Silks, 5 per cent. 
 
 
 
 15. 
 
 Teas, per lb., 6 to 20 cents. 
 
 
 
 12 to 40. 
 
 Ware, crockery, 10 per cent. 
 
 
 
 15 & 2£. 
 
 Woollens, 5 per cent. 
 
 
 
 15 & 2£. 
 
 Articles not enumerated in the act, 
 
 5 
 
 per 
 
 
 cent. 
 
 
 
 u. 
 
 K. [Table No. 7.] 
 
 Prices of several manufactured articles, and others connected with manufactures, in 
 
 England. 
 
 
 Salt, per 
 
 
 Saltpetre, 
 
 Logwood, per 
 
 Cochineal, 
 
 Pearlashes, 
 
 
 bushel. 
 
 
 cwt. 
 
 ton. 
 
 cwt. 
 
 cwt. 
 
 
 s. d. 
 
 s. d. 
 
 s. d. 
 
 s. d. 
 
 s. d. 
 
 s. d. 
 
 1795 
 
 5 
 
 2 8 
 
 135 
 
 11 
 
 12 
 
 56 
 
 1806 
 
 6 4 
 
 3 
 
 63 
 
 20 
 
 26 
 
 51 
 
 1821 
 
 19 4 
 
 3 
 
 27 
 
 6 10 
 
 24 
 
 27 
 
 1824 
 
 4 9 
 
 3 
 
 21 6 
 
 9 
 
 16 
 
 31 
 
 1835 
 
 1 3 
 
 3 
 
 24 6 
 
 5 
 
 7 6 
 
 26 
 
 1836 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 5 
 
 7 
 
 36 
 
 1838 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 21 
 
 7 
 
 6 4 
 
 25 
 
 (t) 
 
 (t) 
 
 (§) 
 
 (ID 
 
 00 
 
 (**) 
 
 
 L. [Table No. 8.] 
 
 Prices of several agricultural products, with tea, coffee, and spices, in England. 
 
 Years. 
 
 Cheese, per 
 
 Butter, per 
 
 Beef, per 
 
 Flour, per 
 
 
 Tea, Hyson, 
 
 Spices, per 
 
 
 lb. 
 
 lb. 
 
 tierce. 
 
 sack. 
 
 
 per lb. 
 
 lb. 
 
 
 d. 
 
 d. 
 
 s. 
 
 s. d. 
 
 s. 
 
 8. d. 
 
 s. d. 
 
 1795 
 
 H 
 
 H 
 
 92 
 
 3 5 
 
 72 a 95 
 
 4 6 
 
 11 
 
 1806 
 
 n 
 
 m 
 
 135 
 
 4 2 
 
 115 a 143 
 
 4 8 
 
 4 9 
 
 1821 
 
 6 
 
 8| 
 
 120 
 
 2 5 
 
 105 a 125 
 
 5 5 
 
 8 6 
 
 1824 
 
 4| 
 
 H 
 
 90 
 
 2 6 
 
 60 a 73 
 
 3 8 
 
 6 7 
 
 1835 
 
 4 
 
 U 
 
 100 
 
 1 11 
 
 56 a 81 
 
 3 2 
 
 8 
 
 1836 
 
 _ 
 
 10 
 
 107 
 
 - 
 
 80 a 96 
 
 2 2 
 
 7 8 
 
 1838 
 
 _ 
 
 8* 
 
 112 
 
 - 
 
 63 a 81 
 
 2 3 
 
 6 6 
 
 
 
 (tt) 
 
 (tt) 
 
 (§§) 
 
 1 
 
 (HID 
 
 * The specific duties on sugar, molasses, salt, &c, were much less, when computed 
 ad valorem, than like duties would be now, as the prices of the articles are much 
 lower. 
 
 + See 2 Tooke, 397 ; and 2 McCulloch's Dictionary, p. 350. 
 
 t Salt is free, and has naturally fallen. 
 
 § On a high duty, and risen. 
 
 || Under a lower duty, and fallen much. 
 
 IT Fallen under a low duty. 
 
 ** Fallen under a low duty. 
 
 tt High duty, and higher price. 
 
 tt High duty, and higher price. 
 
 §§ Duty lower, and fallen. 
 
 Illl Duty lower, and some fall. 
 
624 
 
 TABLES. 
 
 M. [Table No. 9.] 
 
 Prices of leading domestic and foreign articles of produce, at Boston, for a series 
 
 of years. 
 
 
 W 
 
 hd 
 
 ►n 
 
 
 H 
 
 O 
 
 H 
 
 o 
 
 
 
 g 
 
 p 
 
 cd 
 
 CD 
 
 13 
 
 CD 
 
 i 
 
 CD 
 
 cr 
 
 o 
 
 13 
 
 CD 
 
 C 
 2 
 
 <-l p 
 c i—i 
 
 C p 
 
 S*a 
 
 CD CO 
 
 i~ a 
 
 o 
 o 
 
 •a 
 
 o 
 o 
 
 35 
 
 o 
 a 
 
 13 
 
 CD 
 
 c 
 
 p 
 
 o o 
 
 <• o 
 
 £ p 
 
 CD 
 
 o 
 
 CD 5 
 «P 
 
 •d 
 
 CD 
 
 cr 
 
 H 
 
 CD 
 CD 
 
 J? 
 
 J? 
 
 p" 
 
 13 
 
 CD 
 
 Years. 
 
 Dollars. 
 
 Dol's 
 
 Dollars. 
 
 Dol's 
 
 Dollars. 
 
 Cents. 
 
 Dol's 
 
 Cents. 
 
 Dollars. 
 
 Cents. 
 
 Cents. 
 
 1795 
 
 15 00 
 
 18 00 
 
 12 00 
 
 1 00 
 
 7 00 
 
 33 
 
 6 00 
 
 21 
 
 1 33 
 
 14 
 
 60 
 
 1800 
 
 8 00 
 
 17 00 
 
 1000 
 
 75 
 
 4 50 
 
 40 
 
 5 00 
 
 25 
 
 1 34 
 
 14 
 
 48 
 
 1805 
 
 10 00 
 
 16 50 
 
 13 00 
 
 1 25 
 
 6 50 
 
 25 
 
 8 00 
 
 31 
 
 1 20 
 
 14J 
 
 40 
 
 1810 
 
 10 00 
 
 19 00 
 
 8 25 
 
 1 15 
 
 400 
 
 16 
 
 8 00 
 
 24 
 
 100 
 
 12£ 
 
 48 
 
 1815 
 
 12 50 
 
 25 00 
 
 9 25 
 
 1 00 
 
 3 63 
 
 20 
 
 7 00 
 
 23 
 
 1 75 
 
 16 
 
 
 1820 
 
 10 00 
 
 14 50 
 
 5 37 
 
 60 
 
 3 50 
 
 16 
 
 7 00 
 
 26 
 
 95 
 
 10 
 
 34 
 
 1825 
 
 7 50 
 
 14 00 
 
 5 37 
 
 53 
 
 3 75 
 
 20 
 
 10 00 
 
 18 
 
 100 
 
 11 
 
 28 
 
 1830 
 
 7 75 
 
 12 00 
 
 5 00 
 
 55 
 
 300 
 
 11 
 
 6 00 
 
 12 
 
 90 
 
 9* 
 10i 
 
 25 
 
 1834* 
 
 8 50 
 
 12 00 
 
 5 50 
 
 66 
 
 3 36 
 
 m 
 
 7 00 
 
 12 
 
 70 
 
 34 
 
 1844 
 
 4 33£ 
 
 7 25 
 
 4 81 to 5 62 
 
 47 
 
 2 25 to 3 00 
 
 8 to 10 
 
 3 to 6 
 
 7 to 5 
 
 25 to 40 
 
 6±to 8 
 
 25 to 31 
 
 N. [Table No. 10.] 
 
 Wholesale prices at New York for a series of years 
 
 Years. 
 
 Salt, per bushel. 
 
 Sugar, per pound. 
 
 Coffee, per pound. 
 
 Tea, per pound. 
 
 Molasses, per 
 gallon. 
 
 1805 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 31 
 
 
 _ 
 
 1811 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 21 
 
 #1.70 
 
 _ 
 
 1815 
 
 80 a 85 
 
 15 a 17 
 
 24 a 27 
 
 1.25 a $1.50 
 
 60 a 75 
 
 1825 
 
 41 a 48 
 
 9 a 12 
 
 11 a 17 a 21 
 
 30 a 1.35 
 
 24 a 30 
 
 1830 
 
 39 a 42 
 
 7 a 10 
 
 11 a 13 
 
 30 a 1.30 
 
 27 
 
 1834 
 
 31 a 36 
 
 7a 9 
 
 10 a 13 
 
 13 a 1.00 
 
 22 a 31 
 
 1836 
 
 30 a 33 
 
 10 a 13 
 
 11 a 14 
 
 18 a 1.10 
 
 36 a 40 
 
 1844 
 
 22 a 27 
 
 6 a 7 
 
 5h all 
 
 20 a 90 
 
 25 a 30 
 
 No. 10 — continued. 
 
 Years. 
 
 Logwood, per 
 ton. 
 
 Hides, per lb. 
 
 Rags, per lb. 
 
 Copper, per 
 lb. 
 
 Lead, per lb. 
 
 Coal, per ton. 
 
 1805 
 
 _ 
 
 - 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 Dollars. 
 
 1811 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 14 
 
 
 1815 
 
 35 a 40 
 
 13 a 14 
 
 6 a 10 
 
 _ 
 
 9 a 11 
 
 20 a 22 
 
 1825 
 
 22 a 26 
 
 12 a 14 
 
 7 a 10 
 
 16 a 26 
 
 7£a 8 
 
 
 1830 
 
 23 a 28 
 
 11 a 15 
 
 3 a 5 
 
 16 a 22 
 
 4£a 5 
 
 
 1834 
 
 15 a 25 
 
 12 a 13 
 
 2a 8 
 
 16 a 24 
 
 5 a 6£ 
 
 7 a 10 
 
 1836 
 
 15 a 27 
 
 9 a 14 
 
 5a 8 
 
 19 a 25 
 
 6 
 
 8 a 12 
 
 1844 
 
 16 a 27 
 
 9 a 12 
 
 6a 7 
 
 16 a 23 
 
 8£a 4i 
 
 8a 8 50 
 
 *2 McCulloch's Dictionary— "Prices. 
 
TABLES. 
 
 G25 
 
 No. 10 — continued. 
 
 
 Iron. 
 
 Years. 
 
 Pig, per ton. 
 
 Bar, per ton. 
 
 Rolled, per ton. 
 
 Nails and sheet, per lb. 
 
 1805 
 
 - 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 1811 
 
 - 
 
 $120 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 1815 
 
 $50 a $55 
 
 105 a $ 115 
 
 $90 a $120 
 
 - 
 
 1825 
 
 35 a 50 
 
 70 a 75 
 
 100 a 110 
 
 6£ cts. a 8 cts. 
 
 1830 
 
 40 a 50 
 
 80 a 85 
 
 72 a 75 
 
 6 a 8 
 
 1834 
 
 38 a 45 
 
 72 a 75 
 
 75 
 
 6£ 
 
 1836 
 
 40 a 45 
 
 75 a 90 
 
 80 a 85 
 
 64 
 
 1844 
 
 25 a 34 
 
 70 a 100 
 
 57 a 70 
 
 11 a 12 
 
 No. 10 — continued. 
 
 Years. 
 
 Plaster of 
 Paris, p'rt'n. 
 
 Beef, per bbl. 
 
 Pork, per bbl. 
 
 Butter, per lb. 
 
 
 1805 
 
 _ 
 
 $10 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 
 1811 
 
 $20 
 
 10 50 
 
 $22 
 
 - 
 
 
 1815 
 
 10 50 
 
 12 50 a $14 
 
 20 
 
 20 cts. a 23 cts. 
 
 
 1825 
 
 5 25 
 
 7 50 
 
 10 50 
 
 8 a 16 
 
 
 1830 
 
 4 
 
 5 50 
 
 9 25 
 
 12 a 16 
 
 
 1834 
 
 3 
 
 5 75 a 6 
 
 9 50 a $10 50 
 
 12 a 16 
 
 
 1836 
 
 4 
 
 9 75 a 10 25 
 
 17 50 a 18 
 
 20 a 26 
 
 
 1844 
 
 2 25 
 
 4 a 4 75 
 
 7 a 7 75 
 
 8 a 12 
 
 
 No. 10 — continued. 
 
 Years. 
 
 Cheese, per lb. 
 
 Northern corn, 
 per bushel. 
 
 Wheat, per hushel. 
 
 Flour, per bbl. 
 
 1805 
 
 _ 
 
 $1 25 
 
 _ 
 
 $13 
 
 1811 
 
 _ 
 
 1 15 
 
 $1 26 
 
 7 50 
 
 1815 
 
 11 cts. 
 
 1 12 
 
 1 75 
 
 8 50 
 
 1825 
 
 5 a 7 cts. 
 
 42 a 53 
 
 1 
 
 5 25 
 
 1830 
 
 6 a 8 
 
 52 a 53 
 
 80 
 
 5 
 
 1834 
 
 7£ a 9 
 
 60 
 
 
 4 75 a $5 
 
 1836 
 
 6 a 9 
 
 53 a 85 
 
 1 75 
 
 7 a 8 
 
 1844 
 
 4£ a 5£ 
 
 47 a 48 
 
 1 a $1 10 
 
 4 75 a 5 75 
 
 No. 10 — continued. 
 
 Years. 
 
 Common wool, per lb. 
 
 Flax, per lb. 
 
 Hemp, per ton. 
 
 Cotton, per lb. 
 
 1805 
 
 _ 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 25 cts. 
 
 1811 
 
 _ 
 
 - 
 
 $300 
 
 21 
 
 1815 
 
 50 cts. a 60 cts. 
 
 11 cts. a 12 cts. 
 
 300 
 
 20 
 
 1825 
 
 30 a 35 
 
 - 
 
 155 a $170 
 
 20 
 
 1830 
 
 16 a 22 
 
 9 
 
 210 
 
 11 
 
 1834 
 
 30 a 35 
 
 9 a 11 
 
 150 a 175 
 
 10 a 13 cts. 
 
 1836 
 
 35 a 40 
 
 8 a 11 
 
 170 a 200 
 
 9 a 20 
 
 1844 
 
 27 a 29 
 
 8 a 11 
 
 127 a 180 
 
 8 a 10 
 
 53 
 
626 
 
 TABLES. 
 
 0. [Table No. 11.] 
 
 Wholesale prices, at New York, of the following articles. 
 
 Years. 
 
 Cordage, per lb. 
 
 Duck, per bolt. 
 
 Cotton-bagging, per yard. 
 
 1805 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 1811 
 
 - 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 1815 
 
 12 cts. 
 
 15 cts. a 28 cts. 
 
 _ 
 
 1825 
 
 7£ a 10 cts. 
 
 U a 18£ 
 
 17 cts. a 21 cts. 
 
 1830 
 
 % a 10£ 
 
 10 a 18 
 
 13 a 21 
 
 1834 
 
 94 a 10 
 
 11 a 17 
 
 17 a 21 
 
 1836 
 
 8 a 10 
 
 11 a 16 
 
 15 a 22 
 
 1844 
 
 11 a 12 
 
 7£ a 17 
 
 13 a 18 
 
 No. 11 — continued. 
 
 Years. 
 
 Shirtings, per yard. 
 
 Calicoes, per yard. 
 
 Leather, per lb. 
 
 Lumber, per 1000 feet. 
 
 1805 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 1811 
 
 _ 
 
 - 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 1815 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 22 cts. a 28 cts. 
 
 23 cts. 
 
 1825 
 
 11 cts. a 15 cts. 
 
 15 cts. 
 
 22 a 28 
 
 15 
 
 1830 
 
 8 a 11 
 
 
 18 a 25 
 
 13 a 15 cts. 
 
 1834 
 
 6 a 9 
 
 9 a 20 cts. 
 
 16 a 27 
 
 17 a 18 
 
 1836 
 
 10 a 12 
 
 
 14 a 24 
 
 17 a 18 
 
 1844 
 
 5 a 8 
 
 6 a 8 
 
 14 a 19 
 
 10 a 11 
 
 [Table No. 12.] 
 
 Exports abroad. 
 
 Date. 
 
 Pork and lard. 
 
 Beef, cattle, &c 
 
 Butter and cheese. 
 
 1840 
 1841 
 1842 
 1843 
 
 $1,800,000 
 2,000,000 
 2,100,000 
 2,600,000 
 
 600,000 cwt. 
 
 900,000 
 1,200,000 
 1,300,000 
 
 200,000 lbs. 
 500,000 
 300 to 400,000 
 600,000 
 
 
 
 
 
 13.] 
 
 
 
 Q. [Table No. 
 
 
 Year. 
 
 To England and her 
 dependencies. 
 
 To all the world. 
 
 Year. 
 
 To England and her To all the world, 
 dependencies. 
 
 
 All Domestic Exports. 
 
 
 Tobacco. 
 
 
 1822 
 1832 
 1842 
 
 $30,041,337 
 37,268,556 
 52,306,650 
 
 Cotton. 
 
 $49,874,079 
 63,137,470 
 92,969,996 
 
 1822 
 1832 
 1841 
 1842 
 
 $2,860,173 
 2,516,073 
 5,849,581 1 < 
 3,624,945 $ } 
 
 $6,222,898 
 5,999,799 
 
 ' 12,576,703 
 9,540,755 
 
 1822 
 1832 
 1842 
 
 16,250,253 
 22,496,346 
 30,135,412 
 
 Breadstuffs. 
 
 24,035,058 
 31,724,682 
 47,593,464 
 
 1822 
 1832 
 1842 
 
 Beef and Cattle. 
 
 271,796 
 414,454 
 540,710 
 
 844,534 
 
 774,087 
 1,212,638 
 
 1822 
 1832 
 1842 
 
 1,760,703 
 
 2,386,829 
 6,750,682 
 
 6,263,237 
 5,583,990 
 
 9,888,176 
 
 1822 
 
 Butter and Cheese 
 41,017 
 
 221,041 
 

 
 TABLES. 
 
 627 
 
 Year. 
 
 To England and her To 
 dependencies. 
 
 all the world. 
 
 Year. 
 
 To England and her To all the world, 
 dependencies. 
 
 1832 
 
 $109,319 
 
 $290,820 
 
 1832 
 
 $22 $4,483 
 
 1842 
 
 245,280 
 Pork, Lard, fyc. 
 
 388,183 
 
 1842 
 
 90,888 523,428 
 
 1822 
 
 135,315 
 
 1,357,899 
 
 jYaval 
 
 Stores — Tar, Rosin, and Tur- 
 pentine. 
 
 1832 
 
 G28,583 
 
 1,928,196 
 
 
 1842 
 
 1,219,994 
 
 2,629,408 
 
 1822 
 
 434,733 457,562 
 
 
 Sperm Oil. 
 
 
 1832 
 
 435,425 470,291 
 
 1822 
 
 _ 
 
 8,972 
 
 1842 
 
 616,478 742,329 
 
 1832 
 
 2,457 
 
 38,104 
 
 
 
 1841 
 
 251,431 > 
 140,204 5 
 
 C 343,300 
 £233,114 
 
 
 Timber and Lumber. 
 
 1842 
 
 1822 
 
 542,874 1,657,401 
 
 
 Lead. 
 
 
 1832 
 
 708,576 2,149,651 
 
 1822 
 
 ~ 
 
 3,098 
 
 1842 
 
 784,754 3,230,023 
 
 R. [Table No. 14.] 
 
 Old and Neiv English Tariffs.* 
 
 Old. 
 
 /. 
 
 Cables, 
 
 Cider, 21 
 
 Cotton (cwt.), 2 
 
 Coffee, 
 
 Cordage, 
 
 Bacon, 1 
 
 Beef, 
 
 Hay, 1 
 
 Hemp, 4 
 
 Hides, 
 
 Lard, 
 
 Lead, 2 
 
 Leather (upper), 1 
 
 Pork, 
 
 Potatoes, 
 
 Rice 
 
 &oap, 
 
 Tar, 
 
 Turpentine, . . 
 Wood and lumber 
 Wheat,t 
 
 s. 
 
 d. 
 
 10 
 
 
 
 10 
 
 
 
 3 
 
 11 
 
 1 
 
 3 
 
 10 
 
 9 
 
 8 
 
 
 
 12 
 
 
 
 4 
 
 
 
 15 
 
 
 
 4 
 
 8 
 
 8 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 10 
 
 
 
 12 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 15 
 
 
 
 10 
 
 
 
 15 
 
 
 
 6 
 
 2 
 
 New — lower. 
 
 I. y. d. 
 
 6 cwt. 
 10 10 ton. 
 Same as only 7i per lb. 
 6 lb. 
 6 
 14 cwt. 
 8 do. 
 16 load. 
 
 4 cwt. 
 6 
 
 2 cwt. 
 10 pig and sheet, per ton. 
 12 
 8 cwt. 
 2 cwt, 
 6 not rough. 
 1 10 
 
 2 6 barrel. 
 
 5 cwt. 
 Reduced about one half. 
 
 4259 
 
 916 
 
 614 
 
 373 
 
 1500 
 
 82 
 
 S. [Table No. 15.] 
 
 Number of entries, from abroad, of American and foreign vessels, during 1842. 
 
 No. of Ameri- No. of foreign 
 can vessels. vessels. 
 
 From all foreign ports, exclusive of British North American, 
 
 Great Britain and Ireland, t 
 
 Spain and Spanish colonies, § 
 
 * The duties by both the old and new tariffs are lower, in most cases, on English 
 colonial products of the same descriptions. 
 
 t The average 3s., when cost 71s. per quarter, for wheat ; and about 32 per cent., 
 at their ordinary prices under the sliding scale. (British Almanac, 1843, p. 132.) 
 
 i The British colonies are peculiar in the laws, and in the frequent entries with 
 passengers, &c, and are omitted in the table. They are 2,586 American, and 3,689 
 British. 
 
 § Near two-thirds of these are from Cuba. 
 
628 
 
 TABLES. 
 
 No. of Ameri- 
 can vessels. 
 
 From France and French colonies, 406 
 
 Hayti, 194 
 
 Kingdom of the Netherlands and its colonies, .... 178 
 
 Brazil, 176 
 
 Denmark and Danish colonies, 144 
 
 Mexico, • 109 
 
 The Pacific Ocean, 127 
 
 Texas, 96 
 
 Venezuela, 86 
 
 Naples and Sicily, 69 
 
 The Atlantic Ocean, 56 
 
 Buenos Ayres, 49 
 
 Portugal and Portuguese colonies, 44 
 
 Hanse Towns, 43 
 
 Africa, 41 
 
 Belgium, 35 
 
 Russia, 28 
 
 China, 26 
 
 Sweden, 23 
 
 Turkey, 20 
 
 Italy, 17 
 
 Trieste and Austrian ports, 15 
 
 Central America, 14 
 
 New Grenada, 14 
 
 Asia, generally, 10 
 
 Prussia, 2 
 
 Sandwich Islands, . 2 
 
 Sardinia, 1 
 
 Peru, 1 
 
 No. of foreign 
 vessels. 
 
 74 
 3 
 
 19 
 26 
 23 
 13 
 
 23 
 19 
 
 7 
 112 
 
 20 
 12 
 
 47 
 
 3 
 1 
 
 T. [Table No. 16.] 
 
 Table of population, capital, and income, connected with each branch of industry 
 in the United States, in 1840. 
 
 Population by the census, as viewed by some. 
 
 Agriculture, 3,687,904 
 
 Manufactures, 554,168 
 
 Trades, 237,581 
 
 Navigation, commerce, and fisheries, . 206,604 
 Mines, forests, &c, 92,507 
 
 Aggregate, 4,798,769 
 
 Agriculture, 
 
 Manufactures, 
 
 Commerce (fisheries alone), 
 
 Mining forests, and professions (mines and forests), 
 Omissions 
 
 Aggregate,* 
 
 Income by the cen- 
 sus, computed 
 by Tucker. 
 
 $654,387,597 
 
 239,836,224 
 
 91,717,094 
 59,293,821 
 
 $1,045,134,736 
 
 By the Committee 
 on Manufactures, 
 in Seriate, 1642. 
 
 $1,252,682,223 
 
 457,875,238 
 
 15,204,142 
 
 69,927,130 
 
 204,310,257 
 
 $2,000,000,000 
 
 * In France, the annual produce from her land is computed at $652,221, 
 England, 81,400,000,000; and from manufactures only, about $840,000,000. 
 
 512 ; in 
 
TABLES. 
 
 629 
 
 Population by the census, apportioned and revised by me. 
 
 Capital by the ecu 
 
 sus, as computed 
 
 by me. 
 
 Income by the cen- 
 sus, computed 
 by myself. 
 
 Agriculture,* 12,750,000 
 
 Manufactures and trades, 1 ,500,000 
 
 Navigating, fisheries, &c, 1,250,000 
 
 Mines, forests, &c, ..." 1,500,000 
 
 §3,000,000,000 
 300,000,000 
 880,000,000 
 320,000,000 
 
 Aggregate, 
 
 . . 17,000,000 
 
 $4,000,000,000 
 
 $800,000,000 
 230,830,224 
 
 100,000,000 
 
 80,000,000 
 
 $1,210,836,224 
 
 U. [Table No. 17.] 
 
 Proportion of capital and income, in 1840, to each person connected with each 
 branch of industry in the United States. 
 
 Computed on the tables, as revised by me. 
 
 I Capital per head. | Income per head. 
 
 Agriculture, 
 
 Manufactures, .... 
 Navigation and fisheries, 
 Mines, forests, &c, . . 
 Aggregate and average,! 
 
 $235 
 
 $62 
 
 200 
 
 150 
 
 303 
 
 80 
 
 213 
 
 53 
 
 235 
 
 71 
 
 * In apportioning the numbers of our whole population among the different pursuits 
 in proportions as indicated by the late census, it is to be remembered that the census 
 does not, as in England, return only those above twenty years of age devoted to each 
 branch of business ; but it includes, usually, though not always, only the adult males 
 employed in agriculture and commerce, while in manufactures it embraces women 
 and children to the extent of more than one-half of the whole number, in some kinds. 
 
 t The average income per bead in the United States has before been estimated at 
 fifty to one hundred dollars. The medium, seventy-five dollars. — See Pitkins. 
 
 Professor Tucker makes the average eighty-four dollars in New England to one 
 hundred dollars elsewhere, and varies as confined to free persons, or all the population. 
 
 In England, the average income is, from all sources, about one hundred dollars per 
 head. — See Spademan's Statistical Tables, p. 160. 
 
 About the same to those connected with agriculture, and near one hundred and 
 thirty dollars per head to those connected with manufactures. 
 
 53* 
 
630 
 
 TABLES. 
 
 y. [R] 
 
 Currency in coin and bank-notes, at 
 
 
 ACTIVE CIRCULATION. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Paper. 
 
 Specie. 
 
 
 
 13 
 
 
 
 
 
 W 
 
 £| 
 
 
 
 
 
 What country. 
 
 Dates. 
 
 ll 
 
 
 
 
 
 e 
 
 
 
 
 
 as cj 
 
 
 2 
 
 i 
 
 "c3 
 
 ~B 
 a* 
 
 
 
 "S 
 
 ►5^ 
 
 "o 
 
 
 Jo 
 
 
 
 
 
 CU 
 
 fc 
 
 
 
 Lc 
 
 H 
 
 Cb 
 
 
 A. D. 
 
 Millions. 
 
 Millions. 
 
 Millions. 
 
 Mil's 
 
 Millions. 
 
 Millions. 
 
 United States, . . . 
 
 1774 
 
 _ 
 
 $3 
 
 m. 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 
 1775 
 
 $5 m. in 
 
 conti- 
 
 $4 to 94 
 
 m. 
 
 $11 m. 
 
 24 m. 
 
 
 
 nental m 
 
 oney & 
 
 ~\ 
 
 
 
 
 
 bills of cr 
 
 edit. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1780 
 
 _ 
 
 - 
 
 $5 
 
 m. 
 
 ... 
 
 _ 
 
 
 1784 
 
 2 
 
 m. 
 
 10 
 
 m. 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 
 1790 
 
 lm. 
 
 2 m. 
 
 7 to 16 
 
 m. 
 
 16 m. 
 
 4 
 
 
 1792 
 
 2 
 
 5 
 
 12 
 
 m. 
 
 19 
 
 44 
 
 
 1804 
 
 8 
 
 5 
 
 174 
 
 m. 
 
 304 
 
 6 
 
 
 1808 
 
 18 
 
 41 
 
 14 
 
 m. 
 
 36| 
 
 7 
 
 
 1811 
 
 224 
 
 5* 
 
 15 
 
 m. 
 
 43 
 
 74 
 
 
 1813 
 
 52 
 
 m. 
 
 8 
 
 m. 
 
 60 
 
 n 
 
 
 1814 
 
 46 
 
 m. 
 
 7 
 
 m. 
 
 53 
 
 8 
 
 
 1815' 
 
 444 
 
 m. 
 
 _ 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 
 1816 
 
 67 to 110 
 
 _ 
 
 u 
 
 m. 
 
 95 
 
 H 
 
 
 1819 
 
 52 
 
 104 
 
 8 
 
 m. 
 
 704 
 
 9 
 
 
 1819' 
 
 _ 
 
 - 
 
 44 
 
 m. 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 
 1820 
 
 394 
 
 4i 
 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 
 1829 
 
 40 
 
 12| 
 
 14 
 
 7 
 
 70| 
 
 12 
 
 
 1830 
 
 54 
 
 m. 
 
 
 10 
 
 64 
 
 13 
 
 
 1830 
 
 77 
 
 m. 
 
 _ 
 
 8 
 
 85 
 
 _ 
 
 
 1833 
 
 57 to 60 
 
 19J 
 
 12 
 
 m. 
 
 m 
 
 134 
 
 
 1833 
 
 60 
 
 20 
 
 4 
 
 m. 
 
 84 
 
 
 
 1834 
 
 57 to 68 
 
 16 
 
 4 
 
 16 
 
 98 
 
 14 
 
 
 Jan. 1, 1836 c 
 
 10 
 
 8 m. 
 
 2 
 
 5 
 
 141 
 
 14| 
 
 
 1837 
 
 11 
 
 3 
 
 _ 
 
 35 
 
 148 
 
 15J 
 
 
 1838 
 
 9 
 
 2 
 
 5 
 
 24 
 
 1444 
 
 16i 
 
 
 1840 
 
 8 
 
 6 
 
 5 
 
 
 
 136 
 
 17 
 
 England, alone, . . 
 
 1700 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 624 
 
 54 
 
 
 1750 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 91| 
 
 64 
 
 
 1763 
 
 - 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 114 
 
 7 
 
 
 1786 
 
 - 
 
 _ 
 
 110 
 
 m. 
 
 _ 
 
 - 
 
 
 1796 
 
 12 5 m. 
 
 150 
 
 m. 
 
 _ 
 
 - 
 
 
 1799 
 
 1154 
 
 m. 
 
 96 
 
 - 
 
 2114 
 
 9 
 
 
 1810 
 
 2204 
 
 m 
 
 - 
 
 — 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 
 1815 
 
 144 m. 
 
 1294 
 
 14 
 
 4 m - 
 
 287| 
 
 13 
 
 
 1820 
 
 52 
 
 122 
 
 - 
 
 _ 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 
 1825^ 
 
 70 
 
 96 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 - 
 
 
 1829 
 
 38£ 
 
 934 
 
 2014 
 
 94 
 
 343 
 
 14 
 
 
 1830 
 
 144 
 
 m. 
 
 1054 
 
 384 
 
 288 
 
 - 
 
 
 1833 d 
 
 120 
 
 to 140 
 
 172 
 
 40 
 
 342 
 
 15 
 
 
 1834 
 
 48 
 
 91 
 
 174 
 
 40 
 
 353 
 
 - 
 
 
 1834 
 
 36 
 
 864 
 
 125 
 
 334 
 
 281 
 
 154 
 
 
 1835- 7 ' 
 
 55 
 
 91 
 
 - 
 
 " 
 
 - 
 
 
TABLES. 
 
 631 
 
 E — continued. 
 
 different periods, in different countries. 
 
 s. 
 
 NOT CIRCULATING. 
 
 XJ 
 
 a 
 a 
 
 >. 
 
 3 1J C 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 O 
 
 
 'O . 
 
 d 
 
 03 ^ O 
 
 
 e 
 o 
 
 H 
 
 03 
 * 03 
 
 J2 C 
 
 oj 
 M 
 
 a 
 
 at 
 
 03 W 
 
 o3 a 
 
 — g 
 03 O 
 03 O 
 O 03 
 
 3 
 o 
 o 
 
 .5 
 
 S £13 
 •- £> 03 
 
 Authorities. 
 
 O 
 
 |i 
 
 JO 
 
 CJ3 
 
 .2 
 "3 
 
 £8.5 
 
 O 43 C 
 
 
 03 
 
 ° «3 
 
 35 
 
 
 a 
 
 ^■Si 
 
 
 •£ 
 
 Q> 
 
 
 ,Q 
 
 03 
 
 35-5 
 
 
 < 
 
 O 
 
 i*5 
 
 5. 
 CO 
 
 3 
 
 «3 
 
 £ 
 
 
 
 Millions. 
 
 Millions. 
 
 Millions. 
 
 Millions. 
 
 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 $10 
 
 Hamilton's Life, p. 248, vol. 1. 
 
 $5 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 Anonymous. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Hamilton's Life, vol. 1, p. 359. 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 Blodget. 
 
 4 
 
 _ 
 
 $3 m. 
 
 - 
 
 _ 
 
 - 
 
 Idem and Cox. 
 
 H 
 
 _ 
 
 5 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 Estimate. 
 
 5 
 
 _ 
 
 12 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 Anonymous and Blodget. 
 
 54 
 
 _ 
 
 24 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 Estimate and report to Congress. 
 
 6 
 
 .$8 m. 
 
 15 
 
 $36 m. 
 
 $30 m. 
 
 — 
 
 Gallatin. 
 
 7£ 
 
 10 m. 
 
 28 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 - 
 
 Crawford and estimates. 
 
 61 
 
 H 
 
 10 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 Gallatin. 
 
 
 
 17 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 — 
 
 Idem. 
 
 11 
 
 _ 
 
 15 to 19 
 
 _ 
 
 _. 
 
 - 
 
 Crawford, estimates, and Gallatin. 
 
 71 
 
 10 
 
 29 
 
 72 m. 
 
 37 
 
 12 
 
 Crawford. 
 
 
 _ 
 
 15£;ofthis 
 
 3 inU. 
 
 S. 
 
 - 
 
 Reports to Congress. 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 194 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 - 
 
 Gallatin. 
 
 6 
 
 16 
 
 22} 
 
 75 
 
 31 
 
 9 
 
 Anonymous and estimates. 
 
 5 
 
 10 
 
 23 
 
 64 
 
 33 
 
 8 
 
 Gallatin. 
 
 $k 
 
 
 15 
 
 77 
 
 23 
 
 8 
 
 Sandford. 
 
 61 
 
 20 
 
 80} 
 
 80 
 
 42} 
 
 9 
 
 Report to Congress. 
 
 6£ 
 
 _ 
 
 25 
 
 - 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 Taney. 
 
 7 
 
 18| 
 
 35 
 
 96 
 
 55 
 
 10 
 
 Estimate, December 1. 
 
 9§ 
 
 32 
 
 40 
 
 140 
 
 65 
 
 14 
 
 Treasury reports and estimates. 
 
 91 
 
 36 
 
 38 
 
 149 
 
 73 
 
 144 
 
 Treasury reports and estimates. 
 
 9 
 
 24 
 
 35 
 
 116 m. 
 
 874* 
 
 12 
 
 Treasury reports and estimates. 
 
 8 
 
 20 
 
 33 
 
 106 m. 
 
 83* 
 
 11 
 
 Treasury reports and estimates. 
 
 11 
 
 
 _ 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 Anonymous. 
 
 14£ 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 Anonymous. 
 
 16 
 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 - 
 
 Chalmers and A. Smith. 
 
 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 Chalmers. 
 
 
 _ 
 
 35 m. 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 - 
 
 Tooke and Lowe, p. 102. 
 
 23| 
 
 _ 
 
 36 
 
 _ 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 Report to Congress, 1832. 
 
 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 — 
 
 Gallatin. 
 
 22| 
 
 _ 
 
 26 
 
 _ 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 Hopkins and Martin. 
 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 — 
 
 Marshall. 
 
 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 - 
 
 Marshall. 
 
 24£ 
 
 _ 
 
 32£ 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 - 
 
 Marshall. [estimates. 
 
 20£ 
 
 _ 
 
 43£ 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 - 
 
 White's report, Feb. 1831, and 
 
 221 
 
 _ 
 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 - 
 
 Anonymous and returns. 
 
 23£ 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 Anonymous and returns. 
 
 181 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 — 
 
 Marshall. 
 
 
 30 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 Actual returns of issues out 
 
TABLES. 
 
 E — continued. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ACTIVE CIRCUL 
 
 A.TION. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Paper. 
 
 Specie. 
 
 
 CD 
 
 T3 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 a 
 
 •J 03 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 (n 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 O) 
 
 § 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 What country. 
 
 Dates. 
 
 11 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 c 
 
 2"° 
 
 CO jg 
 
 °S m 
 
 If 
 
 2 
 
 
 > 
 
 aj 
 
 .2 
 
 
 
 
 <2c/2 
 
 "o 
 
 
 
 o 
 
 o 
 
 
 
 PL, 
 
 & 
 
 O 
 
 
 W 
 
 H 
 
 C- 
 
 
 A. D. 
 
 Millions. 
 
 Millions. 
 
 Millions. 
 
 Mil's 
 
 Millions. 
 
 Millions. 
 
 England, alone, .... 
 
 1886./ 
 
 $60 
 
 $88 
 
 _ 
 
 
 - 
 
 _ 
 
 - 
 
 
 1837/ 
 
 54 
 
 90 
 
 _ 
 
 
 - 
 
 _ 
 
 - 
 
 
 1837/ 
 
 55 
 
 95 
 
 $100 
 
 
 $50 
 
 _ 
 
 - 
 
 
 1838 
 
 60 
 
 - 
 
 _ 
 
 
 _ 
 
 $300 
 
 18 
 
 
 1839 
 
 57 
 
 90 
 
 _ 
 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 
 1840 
 
 54 
 
 83 
 
 51m. 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 Scotland, 
 
 1832 
 
 16» 
 
 m. 
 
 
 n 
 
 m. 
 
 19 
 
 2 
 
 Ireland, 
 
 1832 
 
 22 to 
 
 30£ 
 
 7 
 
 
 - 
 
 35 
 
 7 
 
 Ireland, 
 
 1754 
 
 _ 
 
 - 
 
 
 2 
 
 m. 
 
 _ 
 
 n 
 
 England and Scotland, . 
 
 1811 
 
 220£ 
 
 m. 
 
 - 
 
 
 19£ 
 
 240 
 
 13 
 
 Engl'd, Scotl'd, & Irel'd, 
 
 1829 
 
 _ 
 
 - 
 
 _ 
 
 
 - 
 
 288 
 
 21 
 
 Engl'd, Wales, & Irel'd, 
 
 1829 
 
 144 
 
 m. 
 
 105£ 
 
 
 38£ 
 
 288 
 
 - 
 
 England and Ireland, . . 
 
 1840 
 
 17 
 
 5 m. 
 
 _ 
 
 
 - 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 France, 
 
 1789™ 
 
 _ 
 
 - 
 
 422 to 4' 
 
 m. 
 
 432 
 
 25 
 
 
 1789 
 
 _ 
 
 - 
 
 
 355 
 
 m. 
 
 355 
 
 25 
 
 
 1800 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 
 500 
 
 m. 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 
 1829 
 
 _ 
 
 50 
 
 
 450 
 
 m. 
 
 500 
 
 _ 
 
 
 1833 
 
 _ 
 
 30 
 
 175 
 
 
 350 
 
 555 
 
 29 
 
 
 1834 
 
 _ 
 
 30 
 
 
 527 
 
 m. 
 
 557 
 
 29 
 
 
 1839 
 
 8 
 
 50 m. 
 
 
 500 
 
 m. 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 Russia, 
 
 1812 
 
 113 
 
 m. 
 
 19 
 
 
 _ 
 
 132 
 
 35 
 
 Russia, 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 1815 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 
 35£ 
 
 m. 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 Russia, 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1820 
 
 12 
 
 5 m. 
 
 - 
 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 Austria, 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1824 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 
 54 
 
 m. 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 Austria, 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 1810 
 
 10 
 
 lm. 
 
 - 
 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 Austria, 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1830 
 
 - 
 
 48 
 
 
 48 
 
 m. 
 
 96 
 
 21 
 
 Prussia, 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1805 
 
 _ 
 
 - 
 
 
 43 
 
 m. 
 
 - 
 
 5 to 7 
 
 Prussia, 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1810 
 
 None. 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 Prussia, 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1830 
 
 - 
 
 9 
 
 - 
 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 104 
 
 Holland, 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1830 
 
 - 
 
 5 
 
 - 
 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 5* 
 
 Spain, . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1782 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 
 86£ 
 
 m. 
 
 - 
 
 11 
 
 Europe, 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1824 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 1 
 
 Hl£ 
 
 m. 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 Europe and America, 
 
 
 1492 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 Europe and America, 
 
 
 1599 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 Europe and America, 
 
 
 1699 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 Europe and America, 
 
 
 1809 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 Europe and America, 
 
 
 1829 
 
 575 m. 
 
 
 1725 
 
 m. 
 
 2300 
 
 - 
 
 Europe and America, 
 
 
 1830 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 In the world, . . . 
 
 
 1802 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 
 - 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 In the world, . . . 
 
 
 1802 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
TABLES. 
 
 633 
 
 E — continued. 
 
 a 
 
 NOT CIHCULATING. 
 
 1 
 
 tA 
 
 £■0 ■ 
 
 3SC 
 
 
 
 fl 
 
 
 
 c 
 o 
 
 O 
 TO 
 M 73 
 
 
 2 >> 
 
 a 
 
 3 
 o 
 
 •5 js 'o 
 2 t- w 
 S « -a 
 
 
 11 
 
 3-3 
 
 03"" 
 
 d 
 
 TO — > 
 
 <o a 
 
 '" 3 
 
 TO O 
 
 o 
 is 
 
 •~ J7 TO 
 
 •2 a« 
 
 Authorities. 
 
 "<3 
 
 -C_fl 
 
 
 © 03 
 
 a 
 
 si§ 
 
 
 
 
 a 
 
 a <= 
 
 .2 
 
 
 
 <u 
 
 g^a 
 
 .2 
 
 S 
 
 o. 
 
 -2-5.2 
 
 
 <5 
 
 o 
 
 
 ^2 
 
 9 
 
 TO 
 
 < 
 
 
 
 
 Millions. 
 
 Millions. 
 
 Millions. 
 
 Millions. 
 
 
 
 - 
 
 _ 
 
 #20 
 
 - 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 Actual returns of issues out. 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 45 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 Actual returns of issues out. 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 _ 
 
 Actual returns of issues out. 
 
 #16* 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 _ 
 
 McCulloch. 
 
 - 
 
 _ 
 
 35 m. 
 
 - 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 Actual returns. 
 
 — 
 
 - 
 
 21m. 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 Actual returns, and Mr. Latham's 
 estimates. 
 
 H 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 - 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 Marshall. 
 
 5 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 Idem. 
 
 2 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 - 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 Dean Swift. 
 
 19 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 Gallatin. 
 
 14 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 - 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 Idem. 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 Idem. 
 
 - 
 
 _ 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 _ 
 
 - 
 
 Latham's estimates. 
 
 17 
 
 _ 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 Necker. 
 
 14£ 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 Peuchet. 
 
 
 _ 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 Schlotzer and Playfair. 
 
 13* to 15 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 Gallatin and Jacob. 
 
 19 
 
 _ 
 
 15 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 - 
 
 Estimate and Marshall. 
 
 19 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 Estimate and French papers. 
 
 - 
 
 _ 
 
 58 m. 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 - 
 
 Actual returns. 
 
 4 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 Gallatin. 
 
 - 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 Storch. 
 
 - 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 - 
 
 Jacob. 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 Sup. Encyclopedia Brit. 
 
 - 
 
 _ 
 
 - 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 Jacob. 
 
 41 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 - 
 
 McCulloch. 
 
 6 to 8 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 Sup. Encyclopedia Brit. 
 
 - 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 — 
 
 - 
 
 — 
 
 Jacob. 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 McCulloch. 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 Idem and Jacob. 
 
 8 
 
 _ 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 Sup. Encyclopedia Brit. 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 Sup. Encyclopedia Brit. 
 
 — 
 
 _ 
 
 — 
 
 - 
 
 $163 
 
 - 
 
 Jacob. 
 
 — 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 624 
 
 _ 
 
 [dem. 
 
 - 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 1425 
 
 _ 
 
 [dem. 
 
 - 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 1824 
 
 r - 
 
 [dem. 
 
 - 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 
 Grallatin. 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 1522 
 
 
 Jacob. 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 1580 
 
 m. 
 
 Flumboldt. 
 
 
 
 
 
 1824 
 
 m/ 
 
 Bowring, p. 490. Note. — He says 
 there is added in Europe, yearly, 
 about four millions. 
 
 Notes. 
 
 « Deposites in banks (at least one-third or half of which, in sea-ports, should 
 probably be deemed circulation, and the fluctuations in which affect banks very 
 
634 NOTES. 
 
 deeply) are not generally computed as currency, and arc, therefore, to prevent con- 
 fusion, omitted in this comparative statement, as well as any portion of ordinary 
 drafts and bills of exchange which enter into real circulation. Inland bills, current 
 in the United Kingdom, in 1840, estimated by Latham at $650,000,000. It is appre- 
 hended that the specie in Europe, in banks, is, in some cases quoted above, com- 
 puted as in active circulation ; and that no deduction is made from active circulation, 
 in consequence of notes or bills on hand. Hence, the 11th, 12th, and 13th columns 
 are not filled up, as regards Europe. 
 
 b Humboldt thinks, that in rich and commercial countries, if circulation be specie, 
 there is needed over $12 per head, e. g. in France ; over $10 in England and Holland^ 
 and about $5 in less commercial and rich countries. In Asia, the amount of currency 
 is very small per head. (Jacob, p. 347.) But McCulloch thinks England would 
 need $960,000,000, if all specie, or over $60 per head ; and Blodget (page 146) says, 
 in 1804, at $50» per head. But they must include bills of exchange, and all kinds of 
 legitimate commercial paper. 
 
 c All denominations of money are, in the above table, reduced to dollars, without 
 attention to small fractions; the pound sterling at $4.80 (except, see note g); and 
 where the kind of paper or specie was unknown, the sums are entered across the 
 dividing line. Some of those entered as estimates are compiled, in part, from actual 
 returns ; and some of those considered anonymous are from writers of authority, but 
 the names have not been recollected with certainty. The sums stated, it will be seen, 
 are in millions and large fractions, which were considered near enough for the pur- 
 poses of comparison. 
 
 d See amount of notes of Bank of England and country banks, from 1814 to 1831, 
 annually (Marshall's Statistics, 1833, pages 262, 263, 254, and 255). The circulation 
 fluctuated much, at times, in different parts of the same year, being in Bank of Eng- 
 land notes, in 1825, eight millions of pounds, or near forty millions of dollars, more 
 at some times than at others. Specie in circulation, in England, in 1833, is estimated 
 by McCulloch at only one hundred and fifty millions. (Dictionary, p. 317.) 
 
 e See circulation every year, from 1834 to 1840, inclusive, in the Treasury bank 
 reports for each year. These are on or near the first of January in each year. 
 
 / The whole circulation in coin is supposed to have diminished, from 1809 to 1829, 
 quite one-sixth, or 16§ per cent. (Tucker . on Money, 382; Jacob's Eng., ch. 26; 
 McCulloch's Com. Die, 946.) But some compute the reduction at only 5 per cent., 
 and others at lOi per cent. Silver is computed to have fallen in value, since 1492, 
 quite four to one, and gold three to one. (Tucker on Money, page 112.) Whole 
 precious metals, in Europe and America, in 1S30, estimated at $4,500,000,000. 
 (Gallatin on Currency, &c.) Some make them $5,320,000,000. (Tucker on Money, 
 p. 387.) Others make them only $3,422,000,000. (Jacob's Enq.) Silver sent to 
 Europe, from America, has been in ratio of fifty-five to one of gold. In Asia, the 
 produce is eleven to one. (See American Almanac, pp. 96 and 97, for 1840.) The 
 whole precious metals in Europe, America, and Asia, would seem to be computed at 
 not over $5,750,000,000. (See Jacob.) About one-third of them is estimated to be 
 in coin, by some writers. 
 
 e These are computed from pounds sterling, at 4s. 2d. per dollar, by Tucker (on 
 Money, p. 378). Increase in weight of all gold and silver in Europe and America, 
 since the discovery of the latter, is nearly fifteen-fold. (Gallatin's Essay.) 
 
 h The proportion of silver in the United States, in circulation in 1838, is computed 
 by Professor Tucker at three-fourths of the whole ; gold one-fifth ; and the rest proba- 
 bly copper. (Page 59.) In England, gold at three-fourths, and silver at one-fourth. 
 (Page 57.) 
 
 * Mr. Crawford estimated the bank-note circulation, in 1815, at $110,000,000 ; and 
 in one instance, that of 1819, at only $45,000,000. 
 
 J These returns, in 1835, 1836, and 1837, are at different periods in the year. It 
 was not practicable to get them all at one date. They differ in different parts of the 
 year. (See note d.) The specie in banks, in England, is only the bullion in the 
 Bank of England. The returns do not show what is held by other banks, if any, 
 since they can redeem their notes by law with the notes of the Bank of England. 
 
 k Some have estimated the whole specie in the country, in 1840, at $91,000,000, of 
 which $35,000,000 is in banks. Others have estimated it,*n 1833, at $29,000,000 ; in 
 1834, at $39,000,000 ; and in 1835, $60,000,000. (See American Almanac, p. 131, for 
 1838.) 
 
 ' In France, some portions of 1839, the circulation and specie appear to be less in 
 both the Bank of France and in the banks in the departments. About $3,000,000 of 
 the specie was in the latter banks. 
 
 m This is considered a mere guess by Neckar, according to Low on the State of 
 England, page 97. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 A. 
 
 Page 
 
 Adams, J. Q.., views of foreign pol- 
 icy of U. S., 77 
 
 Agriculture, Committee on, .... 13 
 
 exports of, 1825, 14 
 
 important interest of, 14 
 
 number of people engaged in, . . 19 
 how affected by a high tariff, 290, 291 
 
 interests of, 293 
 
 estimate of crops and average 
 
 prices of, 293 
 
 population engaged in, 294 
 
 its great importance (Mess, as 
 
 Gov. ofN. H.), 465 
 
 exports of, 466 
 
 Alien and sedition laws, ...... 90 
 
 Virginia vs., 100 
 
 American industry, protection of, . . 124 
 American system, truly one of equal, 
 
 not partial taxation, 292 
 
 constitutional protection of, . . . 296 
 Amphictyonic council, of Greece, . . 69 
 Anderson on agriculture, quoted, . . 22 
 
 Appendix, 549 
 
 Appropriations and expenditures, prac- 
 tice of department respecting, . 164 
 Arkansas, admission of as a State, . . 355 
 Athenian democracy, 537 
 
 B. 
 
 Bank, U. S., like the dying whale, &c, 154 
 
 no source of relief, 157 
 
 a public nuisance, 182 
 
 Banks, capital of, in the U. S., owned 
 
 abroad, 452 
 
 inability of, the specie-paying, . 425 
 losses from (Rep. Sec. Treas., 
 
 1841), - 432 
 
 paper of, losses from, . . . .432,440 
 aggregate losses from, since 1789, 446 
 Banking institutions, amount paid for 
 
 use of, annually, 444 
 
 losses of, from destruction of bank- 
 notes since 1789, 449 
 
 Breakwater at the mouth of Delaware 
 
 Bay, report, 455 
 
 Bolingbroke, Lord, prin. of his party, 128 
 
 Catholic college, Worcester, in favor 
 
 of chartering, 501 
 
 Catholics, rights of (speech), . . . .488 
 
 letter to, 495 
 
 Channing, his views of free trade, . . 533 
 
 Chili, treaty with, 70, 71 
 
 Christian civilization, progress of, . 214 
 Civilization and free trade, . . .515,516 
 
 progress of, 562 
 
 Colleges and academies to be sus- 
 tained, 465 
 
 Commerce, great centres of, .... 180 
 foreign, protected by the consti- 
 tution, 340 
 
 extent of, with different nations, . 342 
 
 promotion of, 469 
 
 like water, air, &c., 514 
 
 Common schools, amount of money 
 
 paid for in N. H., 464 
 
 Confederation of 1774, 69 
 
 Constitution, constructive liberties 
 
 taken with, 90, 91 
 
 tendency to consolidation, to mon- 
 archy, 94 
 
 Convention of Hillsboro' County, N. 
 
 H., respecting the war of 1812, 549 
 " Coon-skins and hard cider," . . .566 
 Corn laws (Brit.), cumbrous system of, 14 
 Cotton, greatest article of export of 
 
 U. States, 329 
 
 imported in 1821 and in 1842, . . 610 
 Court of Exchequer Chamber, ... 60 
 Supreme, checks and responsibil- 
 ities of, 61 
 
 Supreme of the U. States, busi- 
 ness of, 53,57 
 
 Criminal laws considered, 471 
 
 Cuba, position that the island cannot 
 be possessed by any nation but 
 
 by the U. S., 388 
 
 Currency, difficulties of, 507 
 
 D. 
 
 Debt-paying man, debt-paying State 
 
 (N. H.), 218 
 
 Delaware Bay, breakwater (report), . 455 
 
636 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Delaware Bay, dangers of to naviga- 
 tion, 456 
 
 Democracy, against bad systems, had 
 
 men, &c, 562 
 
 principles of, 90 
 
 of 1800, 91 
 
 of N. H., 93 
 
 of the east, 104 
 
 complimented hy Benton and 
 
 Hayne, 105 
 
 stigmatized, 106 
 
 accused for its justice to the 
 
 south, 109 
 
 old-fashioned, Ill 
 
 of the different States, Ill 
 
 for measures, not men, 113 
 
 true to the Union, 117 
 
 in the east, in the minority, . . . 120 
 epithets bestowed upon, . . . .121 
 
 spirit and firmness of, 121 
 
 of New Hampshire, . . 87, 91, 121 
 
 not vs. the south, 122 
 
 fathers of, 96, 572 
 
 progress of, in different States, 
 
 vs. whigs, 573,574 
 
 Democrats, called "white slaves of 
 
 the south," 109 
 
 Dorr, Gov., imprisonment of, in R. I., 597 
 
 E. 
 
 Education, importance of, 464 
 
 Eliot, Me., political speech at, 1844, 593 
 England, agricultural products of, 
 1840, 1841 and 1842, and in 
 1694, and manufactures com- 
 pared, 150 years, . . . .322,323 
 taxation of all kinds, estimated 
 
 amount of, 294 
 
 causes of fluctuation of prices 
 
 (50 years), 321 
 
 exports of 1822, 1832, 1842, . . .328 
 takes one-third of American ex- 
 ports of grain, 331 
 
 interference with respect to slav- 
 ery, 418 
 
 union with Texas, 420 
 
 English children, sad condition of, .615 
 Europe, presumption of, in giving ad- 
 vice to U. S. in respect to the 
 acquisition of territory, . . . .413 
 
 Evans, Mr., reply to, 163 
 
 Ewing, Mr., Sec. of Treasury, er- 
 rors of, 126,139 
 
 Excesses of 1836 and revulsions of 
 
 1837, 180 
 
 Exports, agricultural, 1825, 14 
 
 F. 
 
 Federalism, principles of, 90 
 
 Female instructors, importance of, . 464 
 
 Fish, exports of, 1825, 29 
 
 Fisheries, 608 
 
 report on, 1794, by Jefferson, . . 28 
 
 "Fiscal bank scheme," 137 
 
 Floridas, admission of as a State, . . 355 
 Foot's resolution respecting the sale 
 
 of the public lands, 85 
 
 Franklin, views respecting tariff pol- 
 icy, 312, 320, 327 
 
 advice to send schoolmasters to 
 Canada, rather than troops, . .585 
 Free discussion, life-blood of liberty, 126 
 Free trade, general principles of (ad- 
 dress), 510 
 
 important to the ship-owners and 
 
 farmers, 343 
 
 favorable to manufacturing inter- 
 ests, 343 
 
 favorable to toleration, 530 
 
 suited to a free people and a free 
 
 government, 532 
 
 and " sailors' rights," . . .301,572 
 French influence and falsehood, . . .120 
 
 G. 
 
 Gallatin, opinion of respecting duty 
 
 on salt, 18 
 
 his opinion respecting a public 
 debt, excesses, &c, . . .168,180 
 
 Government, enemies to, 557 
 
 of U. S., "a well-regulated dem- 
 ocracy " (Marshall), 242 
 
 "democratic," President (Harri- 
 son), 242 
 
 losses of, 566 
 
 Grains of U. S., estimated crops of, . 331 
 Great Britain, annual produce of, . . 336 
 
 Greece, sympathies for, 475 
 
 Guatemala, treaty with, 70, 71 
 
 Gubernatorial Message to Legislature 
 
 of N. H., 463 
 
 H. 
 
 Hamilton, his views respecting tariff 
 
 policy, 312 
 
 Hancock, abuse of, 109 
 
 Hanseatic league, 69 
 
 Harrison, Gen., Clay's prediction re- 
 specting, 153 
 
 view of the veto power, 238 
 
 Hartford Convention, . 102, 114, 116, 119 
 democracy of the east not respons- 
 ible for, 117 
 
 Hayne, of S. C, views of parties in 
 
 New England, 10? 
 
 Henry, Patrick, opposed to the con- 
 stitution, 243 
 
 " Home Market," policy delu- 
 sive, 332, 335 
 
 of England, . . • 336 
 
 Honesty in public as important as in 
 
 private life, 37 
 
 I. 
 
 Independence of the U. S., magnitude 
 
 of the event, 577 
 
 Industry not to be taxed to sustain 
 a few at the expense of the 
 many, 297 
 
 Imports and consumption per head, . 299 
 
INDEX. 
 
 637 
 
 Imports, before a high tariff, since, 
 
 and under a low tariff, .... 299 
 Internal improvements, singular test 
 
 of, 88 
 
 views of Jefferson, 91 
 
 of Madison, 91 
 
 resolutions of N. H. respecting, . 93 
 not opposed to them on constitu- 
 tional grounds, .... 94, 104, 105 
 recommended to Leg. of N. H., . 469 
 suggestions of 1823 verified in 
 
 1851, 470 
 
 Iron, imported in 1821 and 1841, . . 610 
 Italy, religious aid sent to, from N.Y., 531 
 
 J. 
 
 Jay's treaty, division upon, 90 
 
 resolution of N. H. respecting, . 552 
 
 Jefferson, his early party views, . . 90 
 views of internal improvement, . 91 
 impeachment of threatened, . .118 
 birth-day of, April 13, 1830, . . .536 
 
 Jirinciples of, 538 
 ast sentiment of, 539 
 
 Judges, increase of, speech against, . 41 
 
 Judicial system since 1789, 42 
 
 independence, 61 
 
 Judiciary of the U. S. (speech), . . 41 
 State, efficiency of considered, . . 473 
 Juries, to be carefully formed, . . . 472 
 Justice, national, to be preferred to 
 
 national parade, 40 
 
 K. 
 
 Kentucky resolutions, 1798, 90 
 
 L. 
 
 Lafayette, address to, 535 
 
 Lands, distribution bill, speech on, . 187 
 great innovation in concerns of 
 
 government, 187 
 
 public survey and sale of (speech), 85 
 to be disposed of for the common 
 
 benefit, 86 
 
 resolution of N. H. respecting 
 
 (1821), 87 
 
 donation of a thousand millions 
 
 of acres proposed, 187 
 
 as a source of revenue, considered, 188 
 resolution of N. H. respecting, . 199 
 impolicy as well as unconstitu- 
 tionality of, 202 
 
 Langdon, abuse of, . . 109 
 
 Legislative and executive power, 
 
 which most liable to abuse, . . 253 
 
 history of, 253 
 
 abuses of, .255 
 
 the source of tyranny in ancient 
 
 times, 263 
 
 Legislative power more to be feared 
 
 than the veto, 252 
 
 opinions of distinguished men re- 
 specting, in Rome, in France, 
 
 252, 263, 264 
 Liberty, preserved only by vigilance 
 
 and valor, t20 
 
 54 
 
 Loan bill, speech on, 212 
 
 Louisiana, admission of as a State, . 355 
 
 purchase of, U6 
 
 speech of Mr. Quincy respecting, 356 
 admission as a State voted by the 
 
 democrats, 356 
 
 Lumber, a great interest, 607 
 
 M. 
 
 Madison, his party influence, .... 90 
 views of internal improvement, . 91 
 
 deserved a halter, 118 
 
 impeachment of favored by one 
 
 vote, 392 
 
 Magna charta, 89 
 
 Magnanimity to opponents in power, 224 
 Manufactures, not promoted by the 
 
 tariff policy, 343 
 
 views of Franklin and Jefferson, 345 
 
 interests of, 468 
 
 Markets, home, compared with for- 
 eign, 297 
 
 Martial law, speech against the power 
 
 to declare, 485 
 
 Message to the Legislature of N. H., 
 
 1823, 463 
 
 Mexico, treaty with, 70 
 
 claims of to Texas considered, 361, 373 
 
 authorities cited 361 
 
 forfeited all right to control, . . 370 
 common-sense tests respecting, . 374 
 asserted " vigor" of, in the war, . 395 
 
 Santa Anna, the treaty, 395 
 
 claims of not sustained by laws 
 
 of nations, 398 
 
 Militia, relation of to General Gov- 
 ernment, 102 
 
 to be sustained, 472 
 
 Mississippi, ignorance of its import- 
 ance, 331 
 
 Missouri, admission of as a State, . 355 
 
 N. 
 Nantes, edict of retarded the pros- 
 perity of France, 530 
 
 Nashville memorial, 66 
 
 National bank and the democracy, . . 508 
 
 finances (speech), 212 
 
 treasury, state of (speech in U. S. 
 
 Senate), 126 
 
 treasury, state of, second (speech), 463 
 Nations, in what their independence 
 
 consists, 351 
 
 independence and recognition of, 377 
 independent before recognition, . 377 
 justifiable interference of, ... 405 
 reciprocal relations of, 
 
 405, 406, 407, 412 
 
 ruin of, examples, 561 
 
 Naval school, speech in favor of estab- 
 lishing one, 353 
 
 New England blood, 104 
 
 New England, politics of, 121 
 
 O. 
 
 Office, principle of rotation, .... 124 
 
638 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Oil, exports of, 1325, 29 
 
 "One man power," what it is, and 
 
 what it is not, 244 
 
 Oration, July 4, 1850, at Portsmouth, 
 
 to citizens of different parties, 575 
 
 P. 
 
 Panama, mission to, a speech in op- 
 position, 67 
 
 Congress of, its duties, 69 
 
 real object of, 74 
 
 Congress of, objects belligerent, 70, 82 
 
 Party, bedlamites of, 119 
 
 politics, only speech relating to 
 
 in Senate, 85 
 
 promises, fallacious ones, . . .216 
 prejudices, not based upon knowl- 
 edge, 381 
 
 subjects, speech in Faneuil Hall, 
 
 1841, 560 
 
 warfare of, 563 
 
 profligacy, 1840, 567 
 
 glorification, 567 
 
 Parties, constructive and State rights 
 
 developed in 1794, 89 
 
 warrant no neglect of self-respect, 1 08 
 
 taunts of, 109 
 
 sneers of, inconsistent, 110 
 
 position of, 1798, 1812 and 1828, 
 
 110, 112 
 
 position of, 1844, 593 
 
 Patriotism of the east, 114,115 
 
 Paupers, laws concerning (Rep. to N. 
 
 H. Leg.), 477 
 
 improvements suggested, .... 483 
 
 Peace party in war, 105 
 
 of New England, . . . 107, 114, 115 
 Peace, power of nations to compel 
 
 others to make, 393, 401 
 
 Pennsylvania, debt of, 207 
 
 People, greater than the throne, ... 95 
 deluded by the "Marats," the 
 
 "Dantons," &c, of Mass., . .117 
 rights of against tyranny, . .370,371 
 instincts of seldom wrong, . . .421 
 
 Perpetual leagues, 69, 70, 71 
 
 Peru, treaty with, 71 
 
 Political quackery, .... 154, 155, 156 
 Portsmouth, return to, 1841 (speech), 540 
 Precious metals (specie), arrangement 
 
 of, to save labor, 157 
 
 President Polk, address to on his visit 
 
 to Portsmouth, 544 
 
 Prices of articles of agricultural 
 
 growth, 1836, 1839, 1844, . . . 605 
 Progress of man, as connected with 
 
 free trade, 531 
 
 Property, estimated amount of in U. 
 
 S., 1842, 293 
 
 Property test for holding office, . . . 490 
 Protection to farmers less than to 
 
 manufacturers, 604 
 
 Protestant test for holding offices 
 
 (speech in N. H. Conv.,) . . 486 
 
 origin of, 487 
 
 Public credit, depreciation of, 1800, 
 
 1842 214 
 
 Public money, on the safe-keeping of 
 
 (report), 425 
 
 government depositories for, . . 425 
 
 suggestions respecting, 426 
 
 the keeping of left to Sec. Treas. 
 till 1816, 431 
 
 R. 
 
 " Reign of terror," in 1798, 1812, . . 557 
 
 Relief, singular measures of, to gov- 
 ernment, States, and individ- 
 uals, 159 
 
 Resolutions of Virginia and Ken- 
 tucky, 1788, principles of, . . 90 
 
 Revolution, surviving officers of, 
 
 claims of, 29 
 
 provision for, 1780, 32 
 
 Revolutionary officers, survivingones, 
 
 1828, 38 
 
 Revolution of 1776, results of, ... 576 
 commenced by argument, not 
 force, 579 
 
 S. 
 
 Salt, importance of a low duty on, . . 15 
 
 duty on, a war tax, 15 
 
 tax on, in France, 17 
 
 tax on, in England. 17 
 
 duty on, a tax on the poor, ... 18 
 as necessary to the farmer as the 
 
 elements, 18 
 
 duty on, repealed in 1807, .... 19 
 duty on, formerly intended only 
 
 as temporary, " 20 
 
 duties on, paid chiefly by the 
 people east of Alleghanies, . . 20 
 
 importation of, 1825, 20 
 
 low duty does not lessen revenue, 22 
 duty on not intended as a perma- 
 nent revenue, 20, 21, 22 
 
 its importance to cattle, .... 23 
 increased consumption favorable 
 
 to navigation, 23 
 
 facts concerning, 23,24 
 
 and luxuries compared, as articles 
 
 of duty, 24 
 
 requires no duty for protection, . 25 
 duty on, not required by interest 
 
 of manufacturers, 24,26 
 
 its importance to the freighting 
 
 interest, 26 
 
 Santa Anna, his power to make a 
 
 treaty, 396 
 
 Scientific surveys recommended, 1823, 466 
 first to suggest them, note, . . . 466 
 
 Ship-building, interest of, 300 
 
 Slavery, not favored by N. England, 122 
 white and black, lamented, . 387, 388 
 
 abolished in Mexico, 387 
 
 "Solitary grandeur," sectional par- 
 ties, 56 
 
 Sub-treasury, 426, 506 
 
 Sugars imported in 1821 and 1841, . . 610 
 Southern States, sustained by the 
 
 democracy of the east, . . . .109 
 
INDEX. 
 
 639 
 
 Southern States sustained by the de- 
 mocracy of New Hampshire, .110 
 Spain, resolved to subdue her prov- 
 inces, 73 
 
 Specie circular, 130 
 
 States, power of admitting new ones, 
 
 considered, 357 
 
 opinions of Story and others, re- 
 specting, 357, 358 
 
 State, what constitutes one, 375, 376, 377 
 
 State rights, 89, 93 
 
 opinions of Adams, Ames, Ham- 
 ilton, respecting, 94 
 
 decisions in different States re- 
 specting, 100 
 
 Supreme Court, power of, 96 
 
 Swift, remark of on taxation, .... 22 
 Swiss cantons, 69 
 
 T. 
 
 Tariff, resolutions of S. C. respect- 
 ing, 101 
 
 of 1823 not acceptable, 123 
 
 of 1842, 225 
 
 speech on, 1842, 266 
 
 a system of taxation, 267 
 
 taxation doubled by the whigs, . 269 
 low in France, Switzerland, Hol- 
 land, Cuba, and during the 
 
 Revolution, 274 
 
 of 1739, 1812 and 1807, 274 
 
 of 1816, 1824 and 1828, . . . . .275 
 low one tends to economy, a high 
 
 one to extravagance, 276 
 
 low one democratic, 276 
 
 effects of a high, 277,278 
 
 low one increases revenue, . . .281 
 high one leads to smuggling, 280, 231 
 should be graduated on horizontal 
 
 scale, 232 
 
 different ones, review of, ... . 234 
 resolutions passed by Mass. vs. 
 
 as a source of protection, . . . 287 
 policy, its effects on agriculture, 290 
 different ones as connected with 
 
 exports, war, revenue, &c, . . 299 
 second speech, respecting, . . . 302 
 of 1323 a bill of abominations, . 305 
 views of expressed by Silas 
 
 Wright, 306 
 
 Hamilton's views respecting, 312 
 
 Franklin's do., 312 
 
 of 1842 a bad revenue measure, 316 
 a high one increases prices, . 320 
 
 prevents consumption, 326 
 
 deprives U. S. of foreign markets, 332 
 results of a high one, . . .334,337 
 
 freights, affected by, 339 
 
 coasting trade, affected by, . . • 339 
 navigation interest, affected by, . 340 
 
 fisheries, affected by, 340 
 
 system, a selfish one, 352 
 
 adverse to progress, ...... 352 
 
 Swiss succeed without high duties, 523 
 Taxation, two and two do not always 
 
 make four, 22 
 
 Tea and coffee, necessaries of life, 
 ought to be free of duty 
 
 (speech), 182 
 
 Tea and coffee, amount imported 1822, 467 
 
 Tea, quantity imported in 1840, . . .185 
 
 Territory, wisdom of increasing, . . 359 
 
 illustrated by examples, .... 359 
 
 conceded to kings, denied to the 
 
 people, 372 
 
 national law in regard to alien- 
 ating, . 372 
 
 Texas, re-annexation of, speech in 
 
 favor of, 355 
 
 constitutionality of considered, . 355 
 
 precedents quoted, 355 
 
 nationality considered, 361 
 
 within the limits of Louisiana, . 364 
 
 history of, 364 
 
 its importance to the U. S., . 385, 336 
 
 boundaries of, 389, 390 
 
 prudential measures of U. S. re- 
 specting, 391,392 
 
 the occasion of war considered, 393,397 
 independence of (Webster), 394, 399 
 
 question of annexation, 613 
 
 Tonnage, for foreign trade, 299 
 
 increase of, 511 
 
 Tories of the Revolution, 562 
 
 Treasury department, report of, . . . 425 
 
 U. 
 
 Union, and schemes of disunion, . .114 
 threatened, 117 
 
 Union and fugitive slave law, 1850, . 534 
 
 Union, hroad principles of, 561 
 
 enemies to, in 1312, 557 
 
 United States, extent of territory, . . 14 
 
 foreign policy of, 77 
 
 articles of export of, 329 
 
 and England, mutual interests of, 331 
 
 V. 
 
 Van Burenism, "legacy of," . .134,140 
 
 Veto power, importance of (speech), . 236 
 
 claimed by kings as from Divine 
 
 right, 237,250 
 
 exercised by Queen Elizabeth 34 
 
 times in one session, . . . 237 
 approved by all the States in con- 
 vention on the ratification of 
 
 the constitution, 237 
 
 highly expedient, if used in the 
 spirit which was intended by 
 
 its authors, 238 
 
 defended by the illustrious of all 
 
 parties, 239 
 
 indispensable to avert hasty leg- 
 islation, 239 
 
 objections to examined, .... 240 
 exists in 17 State constitutions, .243 
 not exercised sufficiently, .... 243 
 commended by best writers, adopt- 
 ed by England, by France, . . 244 
 to prevent, not to do wrong, . . 244 
 
 a wise precaution, 246 
 
 why opposed, 248 
 
640 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Veto of G. B. equal to the defeat of 
 
 law, 250 
 
 less dangerous than legislative, . 252 
 Veto power, when exercised, has al- 
 ways been approved by the peo- 
 ple, 261 
 
 " Vigorous reduction," 174 
 
 Virginia resolutions, 1798, 90, 96, 97, 102 
 in favor of strict constructions, . 194 
 
 W. 
 
 War with Great Britain, 1812, ad- 
 dress to president U. S., . . . 549 
 
 resolutions respecting, 551 
 
 address to the people respecting, 557 
 
 Washington, his views respecting the 
 claims of the officers of the Rev- 
 olution, 33 
 
 Washington, views of veto power, , . 240 
 Webster, views of the tariff policy, . 124 
 on the independence of Texas, 
 
 394, 401, 402, 404 
 
 Whigs, rhetoric of, 167 
 
 exaggerations of, 565 
 
 hypocrisy of, 565 
 
 complaints of, 565 
 
 measures of, 564,570 
 
 Woodbury, Levi, biography of, . . . vn 
 Woollen manufactures, their inter- 
 ests, 603 
 
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