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THE TARIFF OF 1842 VINDICATED.
SPEECH
OF
GEORGE EVANS, OF MAINE,
IN REPLY TO
THE HON. MR. McDUFFlE, OF SOUTH CAROLINA,
*
ON THE1 TARIFF..
DELIVERED IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES,
January 22 and 23, 1844.
WASHINGTON :
JPBINTED BY GALES AJTD 9XATOS.
1844.
/ vTV 0 t
y
SPEECH.
IN SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, JANUARY 22, 1844.
The Senate resumed the consideration of the following report from the
Committee on Finance:
January 9, 1844.—Mr. Evans, from the Committee on Finance, reported the following reso¬
lutions :
Resolved, That the bill entitled " A bill to revive the act of the 2d March, 1833, usually called
the Compromise Act, and to modify the existing duties upon foreign imports, in conformity with
its provisions," is a bill " for raising revenue," within the meaning of the 7t'n section of the 1st ar¬
ticle of the Constitution, and cannot therefore originate in the Senate ; therefore,
Resolved, That it be indefinitely postponed.
Mr. EVANS rose and addressed the Senate as follows :
I confess, Mr. President, that I enter upon the discussion of the subjects
which are now before the Senate with much reluctance. Seldom have I
undertaken to address a legislative body with so little feeling of interest
as on the present occasion. This does not arise from any want of just
appreciation of the importance of the questions which are involved,
for I agree that they are of great and paramount importance; but from
a consciousness, which I cannot shake off, that I am speaking upon worn-
out and thread-bare topics, with which the public mind is already quite
familiar. They have been so often discussed, here and elsewhere, that
nothing of novelty or freshness remains in them, and little farther intellect¬
ual effort is required in conducting the argument than the exercise of the
memory. But while I consider this debate out of place,out of time,and,as the
question is now presented in the report of the committee, out of order, I am
nevertheless not at liberty to decline it; I have not invited—but it does not
become me to shrink from it.
These subjects, I have remarked, are exceedingly familiar. The hon¬
orable Senator from South Carolina (Mr. McDuffie) is fully aware of
it; for, he seemed to anticipate what he called "stereotyped arguments,"
in reply to the able speech with which he instructed the Senate. What
would he hear ? Truth, sir, is eternal. What was true last year and the
year before, upon these grave matters, is equally true now. What were
just and sound principles of political economy, and of national policy, two
years ago, or ten years ago, are just and sound principles to-day ; and is
it expected that they will not be maintained again, when the occasion de¬
mands it ? The same weapons which were used then to refute error and
expose sophistry, must be used again, and hereafter, and as often as the
same error and the same sophistry require to be refuted and exposed. We
have nothing new in these matters but experience—fresher and fuller ex¬
perience—and from that source alone, can the subject be invested with
any new interest or attraction.
The honorable Senator (Mr. McDuffif.) has spoken, as he always
speaks, especially upon questions of this character, with extraordinary zeal
and warmth. He deals very largely in strong and positive assertions.
That part of speech which grammarians call adjective, and whose use adds
so much to the grace and beauty of style, as well as to its force, the Sena¬
tor uses very freely, but almost invariably in the supeilative degree. He
speaks of the policy of the act of 1842, as the most odious, most unjust,
most abominable, with many other phrases of similar import, of any which
was ever imposed on a free people, and the arguments by which it is sus¬
tained, as the most fallacious and most absurd that were ever addressed to
the mind of man. Now, all this is assertion, and assertion merely ; bold,
strong, vehement, indeed, but still nothing but assertion. It proves, un¬
doubtedly, what I am free to admit, the sincerity, the deep conviction of
the honorable Senator, in the truth of his opinions, but it proves nothing
more. Strong expressions, vehement denunciations, accumulated epithets,
however frequently repeated, are not among the best modes of discovering
truth, though they are among the most efficient means of propagating error.
I shall endeavor not to speak with any undue positivetiess, nor to be¬
tray any extreme earnestness in the opinions or arguments I may advance,
though I can assure the honorable Senator, if I fall behind him in this re¬
spect, my convictions of the truth of the principles I advocate, are no less
well founded and sincere than are his own, in the sentiments which he has
advanced.
I proceed, in the lirst place, Mr. President, to consider an objection which
the honorable Senator has raised to the policy which our Government has
so long observed, of supplying its revenue mainly, if not wholly, by im¬
posing duties 011 foreign imports. He considers this unequal, and therefore
unjust. It is not practised, he informs us, by any other nation. I hardly
perceive how the practice of other countries furnishes a guide more suita¬
ble for us to follow, in this respect, than in any other of their systems of
policy or forms of institutions. All the principal Powers of Europe, as we
well know, are deeply involved in debt, the interest upon which they do
not always find it easy to meet. They are encumbered with expensive
establishments, civil, military, and ecclesiastical. To obtain the means of
sustaining the enormously heavy expenditures occasioned by these causes,
they are obliged to resort to all the modes of taxation which the skill of
their ablest financiers can devise. They are constrained, not from choice,
but necessity, to resort to excises, direct taxation, income taxes, stamp du¬
ties, and all the other modes of obtaining money, which the ingenuity of
their statesmen can invent. Is there a nation in Europe that would not
gladly abandon all its onerous internal taxes, if it could obtain revenue
sufficient to meet its wants from the customs ? Our situation is different—
wholly different. We can obtain all that is necessary for the purposes of
our Government from this source. Why, then, resort to other modes, which,
in all times, and in all countries, have been justly regarded as most burden¬
some and oppressive ? Besides, there is a peculiar reason why all the rev¬
enues of the General Government should, if practicable, be obtained from
customs. The people of this country maintain two Governments, and are
taxed for the support of both—State and National : other nations for the
support of one only. The taxation for the support of the State Govern-
ments.falls wholly 011 other objects than imports. They are maintained by
direct taxes, personal or property taxes, excises, &c. Now, when we consider
that the aggregate of all the sums raised in these modes, probably far ex¬
ceeds the revenue of the General Government derived from customs, we per¬
ceive that, even upon the example of other nations, it is proper to supply
the revenues of the General Government from an imposition of duties upon
foreign imports. In doing this, no such injustice or inequality is perpetrated
as the honorable Senator has supposed. In Great Britain, he stated that
no more than one-tenth part of the revenue was derived from the customs;
but the honorable Senator lias himself discovered his mistake, finding that
it was during a period of war, when imports were probably few, and the
necessities for revenue great, that such relative proportions existed. I find
5
by Spackman's Statistics of the British Empire, for 1S43, (a very valuable
work,) that in 1841 the whole revenue of the Kingdom amounted to about
fifty-three millions sterling, of which over twenty-three millions were de¬
rived from customs—almost one-half. In 1S42 it was very nearly the
same. I hazard little in the opinion, that if the whole amount of the rev¬
enues of the States and of the National Government could be accurately
ascertained, it would result that a much smaller proportion of the whole is
obtained from the customs than is obtained from this source in England,
in proportion to its whole revenue. The example of other nations, there¬
fore, so far from being against the policy which we have hitherto observ¬
ed, is directly in favor of it. The honorable Senator, although he speaks
quite strongly of the injustice of this mode of furnishing the revenue of the
Government, does not, as I understand, propose to change it. If he should
ever make the attempt, he will find very slight support, I imagine, in any
section of the country. No portion of it, and no party in it, will be wil¬
ling, in my judgment, to abandon, in any degree, the revenue from the du¬
ties on foreign imports, if the deficiency thereby created is to be supplied
by excises or direct taxes. From the very origin of the Government, if
any thing was well understood, and well approved, it was the policy of
supplying the National Treasury in this mode. Writers on political econ¬
omy assign as one of the reasons in favor of it, that a part of the burden
thus imposed, is borne by the foreign producer. Experience proves this.
What do the tobacco growers of this country now complain of, but that the
high duties imposed on that article by other nations, operate to reduce
their profits ? that a part, and no small part, of the fruits of their industry
goes into the exchequers of foreign Governments ? I shall recur to this il¬
lustration hereafter.
The honorable Senator, in the next place, proceeded to discuss the char¬
acter of the act of 1842, by which additional duties were imposed on for¬
eign merchandise. As a revenue measure he says it has "fraud and de¬
ception stamped on the very face of it"—" that it was not designed for pur¬
poses of revenue, but for purposes of plunder"—"that it is destructive of
commerce"—"that it is a foul and faithless violation of the compromise act"—
" that it is iniquitous, oppressive, and unjust,"—and " that it is a monster
which only requires to be stripped of the veil which conceals it, to be uni¬
versally execrated."
I propose, Mr. President, notwithstanding the warmth of these denun¬
ciations, ta say something in defence of this act, and to examine it in the
various aspects in which the Senator has presented it. And first, as regards
its effect upon the revenue. The honorable Senator has founded his argu¬
ment on this head, upon a very few facts. He furnishes a schedule of
a small number of dutiable articles, the revenue from which, under any
rate of duty, has always been quite inconsiderable. Finding that the rate
of duty upon them is very high, he infers or asserts that the importation of
them is nearly if not wholly prohibited, and that no act which has this ef¬
fect, in any instance, can be called a revenue act. The principle which the
Senator thinks should be observed, in framing a revenue law, is to take
each article by itself, and to assess on it 'such a rate of duty as will admit
of the largest importation, and yield the most to the Treasury. I submit,
sir, whether this be the true rule. Every article has relation to every other
article. The free importation of some may occasion a very diminished
importation of others. A diminished import or a total prohibition of some,
may render necessary or profitable a large import of others, yielding a
larger amount of revenue. An act laving duties, therefore, must be re-
©
gardcd as a whole, and not in insulated and detached parts. The true rule
would seem to be, so to graduate and adjust the duties upon the various
descriptions of articles imported, that upon the whole mass, and not
upon eacli separate parcel, the largest amount of revenue may be de¬
rived. You are to look to the aggregate of the duties received, in order to
judge of the character of the law. Does the honorable Senator suppose
that his bill, if it should become a law, will yield a larger amount of revenue
than the act of 1S42 yields? He appears to take it for proven that such
will be the case, when he has shown that, under its provisions, some of
the articles, separately considered, will furnish more than they do now.
Possibly, under his bill, several descriptions of merchandise may be import¬
ed more extensively than they are at present, and may yield more revenue
than they now yield. But might they not exclude other importations,
which yield us more still ? Might they not diminish consumption, by di¬
minishing the ability of the people to buy ? Revenue is not derived from
importation merely. There must be consumption also. If not consumed,
foreign fabrics will cease to be imported, and then revenue must cease also.
Whatever stimulates consumption, or, which is the same thing, what¬
ever adds to the ability of the people of the country to purchase, adds to
the importations, and adds to the revenue. Suppose, that by reason of
high duties, or by direct prohibition, you exclude foreign fabrics from the
country, which under a moderate duty would yield five or ten thousand
dollars to the revenue, do you necessarily impair the revenue to that ex¬
tent ? Not, if by reason of such exclusion, you call into exercise American
industry for the supply of the article, to such an extent as to enable hun¬
dreds or thousands of our people, by the profitable employment they ob¬
tain, to become purchasers and consumers of other commodities, necessaries,
and luxuries, which they could not otherwise have enjoyed, and upon
which an equal or greater amount of revenue is collected, than there would
have been upon the articles thus excluded. The entire prohibition of one
commodity, or of sqveral, which would furnish some revenue, may indeed
be ultimately beneficial to the Treasury. This is the case whenever the
exclusion of it gives occasion or creates a demand for an enlarged im¬
portation of other commodities, upon which a higher duty is exacted.
This,, sir, is experience. Gentlemen are often quite at a loss to compre¬
hend how it is, that we expect foreign imports to increase, when additional
duties have been imposed upon them. It is because we look to the aggre¬
gate of the merchandise imported. Particular descriptions of goods may
fall off, some may be prohibited entirely, but the whole mass is increased.
The consumption of the country will always be in proportion to its ability
to purchase. Whenever you advance industry, and give labor employ¬
ment which it had not before ; when you enable laborers to clothe them¬
selves and their families better than they did before, and obtain more of the
necessaries and comforts of life, and especially to become consumers of luxu¬
ries to which they were strangers, you enlarge the number of consumers
of dutiable imports—you make a new class which did not exist before, and
you necessarily increase the imports and increase the revenue.
It is now, Mr. President, something over two hundred years, I believe,
since a great revolution was accomplished in the intellectual and philoso¬
phical world, by one of the most distinguished men, that has ever lived in
the annals of English history. A man so proudly eminent for his intellect
and his genius, but so notorious for humiliating defects of character,
that one of the greatest of England's poets described him, as the " greatest,
wisest, meanest of mankind." However that may have been, it is certain.
7
he achieved a very great intellectual revolution ; and discovered, or applied
if he did not discover, a new process of reasoning—a new mode for
the ascertainment of truth—a new avenue to knowledge. The system of
reasoning which he established, has been called the inductive process ; and
that which it superseded, and overthrew, may be denominated the syllo¬
gistic, or scholastic. The great difference between the old and the new
philosophy was this—the old adopted some pre-established theory—ab¬
stract speculations—by which it endeavored to explain all facts, and with
which it labored to make them consistent. The new consisted in a careful
observation of facts and events, and from them, and from experience, de¬
ducing truths, and principles, and applying them to the daily concerns of
life. Now, with great respect for the honorable Senator from South Car¬
olina, I must say, that he seems to have gone hack to the old and the ex¬
ploded system of reasoning. He adopts theories—speculations ; and, how¬
ever opposed to them, are daily occurring facts, the theories must never¬
theless stand.
The honorable Senator asserts that the imposition of additional
duties by the act of 1842 has been destructive of the revenue—has
largely impaired our commerce—and has produced grievous burdens by
enhancing prices. He asserts this, because his pre-established theory is,
that all duties are restraints on commerce—that the higher the duties the
greater are the restraints—and the greater the restraints, the smaller the
revenue. According to these fixed principles, he contends that the act
of 1842 has produced these disastrous effects. But what is our ex¬
perience on this head ? How are the facts ? He cannot but admit that the
revenue has not actually declined, but has increased. He cannot deny
that prices of foreign merchandise have generally declined. These are
notorious facts, but he will say they are facts consistent with his theory.
He will say this has taken place not in consequence of that act,but in spite
of it. That was very much the way in which the old logicians got rid of
obstinate facts which came in conflict with their theories, and a very easy
and convenient way it was. Now, sir, I propose to examine this matter,
not by the rigid rules of any speculative theory, but according to facts and
experience. I propose to examine the practical operations of this act—its
workings and its bearings upon all the interests which the honorable Sen¬
ator says have been so deeply affected by it. There is no difficulty in ob¬
serving them. The sources of information are at hand, and open to us, if
we will but explore them. And in the first place I desire to examine this
act, so reprobated, in its effects upon the Treasury—as a revenue measure,
merely.
I observe it stated every now and then in some of the daily newspa¬
pers, that the revenue of the Government, under the pressure of this act
is rapidly declining—that the public debt is increasing, and that unless the
tariff of duties be reduced, so as to yield more revenue, a resort to other
modes of taxation will be necessary. When the honorable Senator from
South Carolina brought in the bill which is now before us, modifying that
act, he seemed, as did also his friend near him, to indulge the same ap¬
prehension. Something must be done, they said, to supply the Treasury—
something to enlarge our means of carrying on the Government and to
save the public credit. Now, sir, what are the facts in regard to this ? How
does the revenue of 1843, obtained under the act, compare with that of
1842, prior to the act ? The whole receipts from the imports of 1842, into
the Treasury, were about 13 millions of dollars, the rate of duty upon du¬
tiable commodities being about 23 per cent. The whole receipt
8
from the imports of 1843, were about seventeen millions of dollars, the
average rate of duty being something over 34 per cent. What is the
result of the comparison ? We have added over four millions to the
revenue. How does it bear on the honorable Senator's doctrine, that low
duties increase the revenue ? A rate of 23 percent., which is somewhat
above the point aimed at by the Senator, yielded but thirteen millions,
while a rate of 34 per cent, yielded seventeen millions. Which is the
revenue point? Can any thing be plainer, than that the act of 1842
has occasioned no actual diminution of revenue ? And, in my judg¬
ment, it is equally plain that it has added 4 millions to it.
Now, as to the relative imports in the two years : we have a recent re¬
port from the Treasury Department, showing that the amount of imports
for the commercial year ending September 30, 1843, was about eighty-eight
millions; being a falling off', I admit, of ten or twelve millions from the year
ending September, 1S42. But this does not present a fair comparison, by
which the effect of the act of 1842 is to be estimated. That act went into
operation about the first of September in that year. The imports of the
last quarter of 1842 and the first quarter of 1843, were very light, occasion¬
ed not at all by the passage of that act, but by the general prostration of
business, and the uncertainty which hung over the legislation of Congress.
At the last session of Congress this subject was discussed in this body, and
the honorable Senator then referred to the falling off in the imports in the
last quarter of 1842, as evidence of the prohibitory character of the act. I re¬
plied then, as I reply now, that the decline was not in consequence of the
law; and I ventured to predict that the imports would largely increase in
the third and fourth quarters of the year. That prediction has been ful¬
filled. He then assumed that the revenue of the year would not exceed
ten or twelve millions. I expressed a confident conviction that it would be
fully 17 millions. The result confirms my anticipations. While the law
was in agitation, and uncertainty hung over its final passage—while mer¬
chants and importers could not foresee what rates of duty would be impos¬
ed, and how prices abroad might be affected by it, they abstained from
giving orders for foreign merchandise.
Such orders are generally given several months before the goods are
wanted, or expected to arrive. The spring importations are ordered in
the preceding autumn—and the fall importations in the spring. Six
months, I presume, may fairly be considered as the average period of or¬
ders in advance. During the spring and summer of 1842, while the tariff
act was under consideration, few orders went forward. We anticipated
the falling off which happened in the two following quarters; but we also
anticipated, what has happened, that as soon as the law should become
understood, and its effects on business, and on prices at home and abroad,,
should be seen, commercial operations would recommence, imports
would increase, and a wholesome revival in all the pursuits and
branches of industry would take place. We have not been disappointed
in these expectations. Compare the imports of the second and third quar¬
ters of 1843, after the law had gone into full operation, after time had
been given to observe its effects, with the imports of the previous quar¬
ters. In the last quarter of 1S42, immediately succeeding the passage of
the law, the amount of dutiable articles imported was about seven and a
quarter millions. In the next quarter, about ten and a quarter. In the
second quarter of 1S43, they amounted to eleven and a half millions; a
great increase, when you consider that, generally, the larger portion of the
spring importations are made in the first quarter. I doubt whether another
f)
instance can be found, for many years past, where, as in this case, the im¬
ports of the second quarter exceeded those of the first. It is attributable to
the fact, that immediately upon the enactment of the law of 1842, when
the policy of the Government was seen and understood, importers trans¬
mitted their orders, which began to be supplied in the second quarter of
this year. These orders had been previously withheld, for the reasons I
have already suggested. Look now at the imports of the third quarter of
1843. Generally, the amount of imports in that quarter, is nearly the
same as that of the first quarter of the year ; but the dutiable imports of
the third quarter of 1843 amounted to the sum of nineteen millions six
hundred thousand dollars. I regret that I have not been able to obtain the
precise amount of those of the fourth quarter ; but enough is already ascer¬
tained, to show that they will greatly exceed those of the second, with
which they may usually be compared. It is evident, sir, from this exami¬
nation, that since the act of 1842 has gone into fair operation, the imports
have been increasing, and, consequently, the revenue has been improving.
The improvement has been steady and constant. I repeat the amounts in
the different quarters :
Dutiable imports.
4th quarter of 1842 ------- $7,228,502
1st quarter of 1S43 10,441,567
2d quarter of 1S43 11,491,228
Sd quarter of 1843 - - 19,634,059
The accruing duties have kept pace with the improvement in the imports:
Gross duties.
4th quarter of 1S42 $2,566,438
1st quarter of 1843 3,391,876
2d quarter of 1S43 4,376,356
3d quarter of 1843 6,659,357
With these undeniable facts before us, how can the honorable Senator
say, or how can it any where be supposed, that the revenue of the Gov¬
ernment is declining, and the Treasury in danger of bankruptcy? There
is another fact worth mentioning, which runs directly counter to the the¬
ory of the Senator from South Carolina. The free articles imported, in
the third quarter of 1843, amounted to $4,896,514 only—the aggregate
of the four quarters to that time, being $40,470,755. The average of
the four quarters, was something over ten millions ; but the quarter which
had much the largest imports of dutiable articles, had not half the average
of imports of the free articles. How could this happen, if the act of 1S42 had
such disastrous operation upon the revenue, and upon the imports from which
the revenue is derived ?—the free list diminishing, the dutiable increasing.
When the Senator brought in the bill which is before us, proposing to
modify and reduce, very essentially, the duties imposed by that act., I took
occasion to say, in answer to suggestions from the other side, that the rev¬
enue derived from the customs, with the other inconsiderable sources of
income, would be fully equal to all the expenditures of the Government
for ordinary purposes; and 1 pledged myself to vindicate that opinion on any
suitable occasion. The present discussion furnishes such an opportunity,
if it does not even demand the fulfilment of it on my part. An impression
seems to be entertained here, and probably more extensively abroad, that
the Treasury is embarrassed—on the eve of bankruptcy. No such thing,
sir. The Treasury, in my opinion, is in a very sound and good condition.
There need be no apprehension of bankruptcy or embarrassment—nothing
10
of the kind. The Secretary of the Treasury, I am aware, anticipates that
there may be a deficit of two and a half millions at the end of the fiscal
year. In this opinion I am constrained to differ from him. I said a year
ago, and I now repeat it, that if the revenue act of 1842 is permitted to
stand—if the subject is not again agitated—if there be no disturbing cause
operating on it—it will produce enough, with the other means of the Treas¬
ury, for all the ordinary expenditures of the Government. I know it is
in the power of Congress, and perhaps of leading gentlemen, to falsify this
prediction. They may renew the agitation and apprehensions which are
always attendant upon any attempt to modify the tariff acts. They may
introduce uncertainty and distrust in the community, and thus check busi¬
ness and impair (he revenue. But, without some such disturbing causes,
the result I have ventured to anticipate will happen.
The Secretary of the Treasury anticipates, as I have said, a deficiency of
two and a half millions for current expenses, on the 30th June next, to
which he supposes should be added one and a half millions more for con¬
tingencies and new appropriations. He estimates the expenditures of the
last three quarters of the fiscal year, at Si9,263,395, which, added to the
ascertained expenditure of the first quarter, 36,317,357, makes a total for
the year of 325,5S0,752. I am aware the Secretary is not responsible for the
proposed expenditures, if Congress makes the appropriation. The heads of
the other departments, the War and the Navy, through which almost three-
quarters of the disbursements are made, adopt their own measures, indepen-
dentof theTreasury Department, and furnish the estimates of thesums which
may be required for any given period. But I must say, that the sum pro¬
posed to be expended, from whatever department the proposition has
come, seems to me somewhat extravagant. The appropriations made by
the last Congress for the half calendar year ending June 30, 1S43, and for
the fiscal year ending June 30, 1S44, were but S24,66S,384, exclusive of
the amount for the Post Office Department. The total appropriations for
the fiscal year were 317,440,862. A pretty uniform rule has obtained at
the departments, of expending in the year an amount, as nearly as practi¬
cable, equal to the appropriations for it, leaving as much of it unexpended
at the end, as there was at the .commencement of former appropria¬
tions. This rule, if now observed, would limit the disbursements of the pre¬
sent fiscal year to seventeen or eighteen millions, instead of twenty-five
and a half, as appears to be contemplated by the Executive departments.
Sometimes, undoubtedly, an extraordinary exigency may arise, rendering it
expedient and necessary, toexpend withinthe year not only all the outstand¬
ing appropriations, but also all which may be made for the service of the
year, leaving nothing outstanding at the close of it. I do not know that
such an exigency does not now exist, or that it may not arise in the cur¬
rent year, and I do not therefore call in question the propriety of the
expenditures which the Secretary anticipates will be made. My purpose
is to show, that notwithstanding so heavy a disbursement as is expected,
the ordinary revenues of the year will still be sufficient to meet its expen¬
ditures. And, in the first place, if there should be a deficiency of two and
a half millions, as is anticipated, it will have been occasioned in part by ex¬
penditures for other than ordinary purposes. A considerable portion of it
will be attributable to the redemption of Treasury notes. The amount of
outstanding notes on 3d March, 1843, when I expressed the opinion as to
the sufficiency of the revenue, already adverted to, was 311,656,387.
The amount now outstanding is 32,607,123, showing that over nine mil¬
lions have since been redeemed. Of these, seven millions were taken up
11
by the proceeds of the loan then authorized, leaving over two millions
which have fallen upon the ordinary receipts of the Treasury. This alone
nearly balances the anticipated deficiency, and this amount may be reissued,
if necessary, to supply it to that extent. Authority was given at the last
session to redeem all the Treasury notes then out, by a new loan, expressly
with the view of freeing the Treasury from embarrassment, and leaving
the current receipts to meet the current expenses. If the means of the
Treasury have enabled the Secretary to redeem any portion of them, with¬
out the aid of a further loan, he has made a very favorable operation by
doing so; nor do I complain of it. But if the result has been, or shall be,
to occasion a deficiency, then I have to say, that it is a deficiency not
caused by any excess of expenditures over receipts for ordinary purposes.
Congress intended that these Treasury notes should not be a charge on
the revenue of the year, unless it was able to bear the charge. If it has
been able, it only strengthens the opinion I then expressed ; and if it has
not, it does not invalidate it. If this amount of Treasury notes thus re¬
deemed should be now funded or otherwise provided for, it would re¬
duce the estimated deficiency to about half a million. That can be account¬
ed for, also. The Secretary computes all the outstanding warrants, or which
were outstanding at the date of his report, as chargeable 011 the revenue,
and liable to be called for at any moment. So they are ; but as fast as
these warrants come in, in the ordinary course of business, others are
thrown out, and become also outstanding for longer or shorter periods.
They are not necessarily paid immediately 011 being issued ; some are
transmitted to great distances ; so that probably there never is a day when
there is not a considerable amount of outstanding warrants, which do not
come in till some time has elapsed. The Secretary considers all these im¬
mediately chargeable on the Treasury. They are so ; but credit ought to be
given for whatever amount, large, or small, shall be outstanding at the end
of the year. They do not fall exclusively on the revenue of the year, but on
whatever is received into the Treasury, up to the day of their payment. What
amounts may be outstanding at the close of the year we cannot, of course,
say ; for, 110 doubt, it may often happen that the amount outstanding at
the end of one year differs very considerably from that of the preceding
year. The Treasury is not always in a condition to meet all the outstanding
warrants if they should be suddenly presented, and still it is not insolvent.
Thus, according to the report of the Secretary, the outstanding warrants at
the close of 1841 amounted to over 800,000 dollars, which were not paid
until in 1842—falling upon the revenue of the latter year. If they had been
presented in 1841, they could not have been met by the means then in the
Treasury. They were thus thrown forward upon the succeeding year,
and their payment has of course absorbed so much of the revenue of
the succeeding year. I have not the means of showing what
amount was outstanding at the commencement of the present fis¬
cal year, which are in like manner a charge upon the revenue of the year.
If it was as much as at the end of 1S41, it more than extin¬
guishes the remaining half million of the anticipated deficit. I have lit¬
tle doubt that the deficiency, if one should occur, may be fully accounted
for on these grounds, still leaving my position firm, that the ordinary rev¬
enues of the year will meet its disbursements. But, besides this, I am
constrained to differ from the Secretary in his estimate of probable revenue
for the residue of the year. He estimates the receipts from customs, for
the quarter just closed, at 03,100,000 ; for the present quarter, at 04,600,000;
and for the last quarter, at $3,600,000. As to the quarter just closed, I
12
have endeavored to ascertain the precise amount received in it, but with¬
out success. Enough, however, is known to show that it will considera¬
bly exceed the estimate. The present quarter generally yields an amount
not very different from that ending in September. The receipts for that
quarter last year exceeded six millions. Looking to the large and increas¬
ing importations now coming in, I see no reason to doubt that the revenue
of this quarter will quite, if not fully, come up to that. This would add
nearly a million and a half to the estimate. But call it only a million.
For the last quarter, nearly as much more must be added. The receipts
of the corresponding quarter last year exceeded four millions, more by
half a million than is estimated for this year. Is there any reason to ex¬
pect a falling off? On the contrary, is there not every indication of in¬
creased business? My information from New York is, that the receipts at
that port are unusually large. The estimate for this quarter at that single
port is about three and a half millions. Formerly it was deemed a safe^
calculation, that about two-thirds of the revenue was received at New
York. The proportion since has been somewhat changed, and perhaps
not much over one-half is now collected there. If only half, this would
give a revenue for the quarter, from all the ports, of seven millions—or if
two-thirds, a revenue of $5,200,000. Laying out of view the quarter
just closed, I am very strongly of the opinion that the receipts of the pres¬
ent and the next will exceed, by between two and three millions, the es¬
timates of the Secretary. This alone would meet the anticipated deficien¬
cy, and would show an excess of receipts over expenditures by the
amount of Treasury notes redeemed and outstanding warrants paid, not¬
withstanding the disbursements should be kept up to the amount contem¬
plated by the department. I am aware of the hazards which one neces¬
sarily encounters in venturing upon prophecy, especially where so short a
time will test its fulfilment or its failure ; but I willingly incur these hazards,
deeming it, as I do, of much importance, that the country should see, and
our creditors should see, that we have the means of carrying on the Gov¬
ernment, (without additional debt, or taxes,) and of fulfilling all our en¬
gagements.
I proceed now to consider the probable condition of the Treasury at the
end of the fiscal year, June 30, 1S45. The Secretary of the Treasury an¬
ticipates a deficiency at that time, also, of about four millions and a half.
Acting upon the information derived from the other departments, he es¬
timates the expenditures of that year at $26,S77,059, which includes about
one million for the interest of the public debt, leaving the expenditures for
ordinary purposes at twenty-five millions and three-quarters, nearly. The
estimates of appropriations of the year, are, in round numbers, 22 mil¬
lions. To this is to be added the balance of former appropriations which
Avill be on hand, July 1, next, $2,60S,026, and permanent appropriations
by former laws, of $2,318,189—giving a total of $26,877,059, as I have
just stated. It is evident that the expenditures of (he year must depend al¬
most entirely upon the amount of appropriations made by Congress. The
whole matter is in our hands. I see very little reason to believe that this
amount will come near twenty-two millions, as anticipated. Look¬
ing at the estimates, I notice a million and a half for improvements of rivers
and harbors. Now, although I have no desire and no purpose to abandon
these improvements, I ant very sure that no such amount as that will be ap¬
propriated this session. If it reach halfa million, it will be as much as I ex¬
pect at the present time. That will reduce a million. The estimates for the
naval service are little short of nine millions. Strongly as I have supported,
13
hitherto, appropriations for that branch of the service, 1 have no belief
that it is proper or necessary to appropriate so large an amount now. But
I forbear going minutely into the estimates. Pretty distinct intimations
from the other House, render it quite evident that the appropriations will
fall short of the estimates several millions. I believe it is contemplated
by gentlemen in that branch, who have a leading control over the matter,
to keep the appropriations down to fifteen or sixteen millions at most; six or
seven millions short of the estimates. In my judgment, they may be very safe¬
ly limited to eighteen millions—four millions below the amount estimated by
the department, and very nearly meeting the whole deficiency expected by
the Secretary. But independent of this, it will be observed, that the es¬
timate of the Secretary is founded upon the assumption that the whole
amount of the appropriations will be expended within the year. This
never happens, and I might almost say, never or rarely can happen. It
is generally the case, and 1 believe is found very convenient and desirable
in practice,.that as large an unexpended balance of appropriations will
remain at the end of the year, as there was at the beginning of it, of pre¬
vious appropriations. At the commencement of the next fiscal year, the
amount unexpended of appropriations of former years, will be about two
millions and a half. Is there any reason to suppose it will not be as large
at the end of it? This amount ought then to be deducted from the esti¬
mated expenditure, and also the amount which will probably be carried
4o the surplus fund of former appropriations. At the close of the present
fiscal year, this sum is computed at over half a million. If it should be as
much next year, there would be three millions from these two sources to
be deducted from the proposed expenditure ; which, added to the four mil¬
lions of diminished appropriations, shows a deduction of seven millions
from the estimate ; thus, instead of a deficiency of four and a half millions,
leaving a surplus of two and a half.
All this is independent of the probable receipts of the year in ques¬
tion. Upon that subject, of course, much uncertainty must exist. The
Secretary estimates the revenues from the customs for that year at twen¬
ty millions. For myself, I shall be greatly surprised if they fall short
of twenty-three millions. Practical and intelligent merchants, I am
informed, in some of the cities, estimate them still higher—as high
even as twenty-five or twenty-six millions. Their opinions on ques¬
tions of this sort are entitled to much weight. From the nature of
their business, they have means of information, not generally possessed by
us. Looking to the present condition of affairs—to the advancing pros¬
perity of the country as exhibited in increasing commerce, in the appreciat¬
ing value of real estate in the commercial cities, in the formation of new
mercantile firms, in the restored confidence which now exists, in the
stimulus given to enterprise and industry—looking at all these evidences of
general improvement, I do not know that their expectations are very ex¬
travagant. We have not at the present moment as full information on
these subjects as is desirable. Two or three days will probably put us in
possession of facts and the condition of trade abroad, having a most im¬
portant bearing on these questions ; and I should have greatly preferred
a postponement of these remarks until that time. I have very little doubt
that intelligence will be received by the next steamer from England, now
hourly expected, which will give increased animation to business,and a
consequent increase of imports.
A peculiar state of things now exists. Notwithstanding the large
amount of imports coming in, the great staple of our export, cotton, is
not going abroad. The exports of it have been quite small-—unusually
14
so; and at the same time exchange is low. Holders of cotton on
this side of the Atlantic are waiting for higher prices in Liverpool;
while purchasers there are delaying operations, in the expectation of large
supplies to be received. If the intelligence by the Britannia should show
an advance in the price, which, I think, may be anticipated, undoubtedly
large shipments will be made, outward freights will rise, and increased
importations must necessarily follow. If, on the other hand, the price
abroad has declined, or remains stationary, so that holders cannot ship it
without danger of overstocking the foreign market and producing a fall,
then, as cotton will not go forward, exchange will rise, specie will be in
demand for export, the banks will curtail their discounts, the currency
will become contracted, and business brought to a pause. Imports may
fall oft", and the revenue consequently decline. All these contingencies are
to be kept in view. How long the present state of things is to continue
we cannot foresee, nor what is to be the change which shall next happen.
If, however, none of these contingencies occur, if there be no decline, none
of these disturbing causes, (and I see no ground to anticipate them to any
considerable extent,) 1 shall not be surprised if the opinion of very intelli¬
gent merchants, to which I have adverted, shall be realized. In that event,
instead of a deficiency, we shall have enough for all the purposes of the
Government and to redeem that portion of the public debt falling due next
year. That, however, I will not now calculate upon. But if the expen¬
ditures are reduced in the manner I have suggested, and if the imports of
the year are not materially obstructed from the causes suggested, the reve¬
nue of the fiscal year will meet all the expenditures of it, and leave a sur¬
plus of some millions in the Treasury. To give a revenue of twenty-
three millions, it is only necessary to import sixty-four or sixty-five mil¬
lions of dutiable merchandise. We have often imported much more than
that, when the rate of duties was higher than at present. And now, when
there is increased prosperity, when money is abundant, confidence re¬
stored, enterprises enlarged, all branches of business starling into fresh
life and vigor—what reason is there to expect we shall not be able to im¬
port from sixty to seventy millions as well as in times past? In¬
deed, I think we may very safely expect the imports of the year, calen¬
dar or fiscal, whether commencing in January or July, will amount to one
hundred millions. The proportion of dutiable imports, as indicated in the
returns of the third quarter of last year, is something over four-fifths of the
whole; and if the same proportion should continue, which I hardly ex¬
pect, it would give an import of over eighty millions dutiable, yielding a
revenue of twenty-eight millions of dollars. Thus, it will be seen, sir, in
any view which can be taken of it, I make a very liberal allowance in es¬
timating the receipts from the customs, for the fiscal year, at twenty-three
millions only.
I have deemed it necessary to say so much upon the state and pros¬
pects of the Treasury, with a view as well to vindicate the act of 1842
from the reproach of having destroyed the revenue of the country, as to
allay any apprehension of a deficiency in our means ; and I now return
to other topics discussed by the Senator from South Carolina.
The honorableSenatortakesstrongexceptions to theprincipleof discrimin¬
ation, which has so long prevailed in all our laws relating to duties. He would
make discriminations only for two purposes—first; for revenue, and next,
in favor of the poor. He would make none in favor of manufactures, or of
industry at home. I do not object to discriminating for purposes of reve¬
nue, though I strongly object to the mode by which he would accomplish
15
it. He proposes to lay the lightest duties on those articles of import which*
come ill competition with domestic productions, and the heaviest upon those
of which we produce none. He would not give the slightest protection to
American labor, by any discrimination in its favor. On the other hand, he
discriminates against it; and this for purposes of revenue. He regards the
two as incompatible ; I think otherwise. I think discrimination in favor
of our own industry, is entirely compatible with revenue. What is the
first and most important thing to be done to raise revenue from imports ?
Is it not to favor consumption ? Is it not to foster and promote the ability
of the people to buy dutiable articles ? Give them the ability to become
consumers, and they do become consumers. Discrimination, looking to
revenue, should be that which tends to favor consumption. The people of
our country, and of all countries, consume according to their means. If
these are little, they consume little ; if increased, they become consumers to
an increased extent. If rendered easy and affluent in circumstances, they
become consumers in a still greater degree, and of luxuries they never en¬
joyed before. Discrimination, to help revenue, must help consumption.
But the Senator would discriminate for the poor—the mass of the peo¬
ple—to relieve them. That is a very humane and very just object, un¬
doubtedly. But how does he propose to do it ? By imposing low duties
on articles of general use. Now, with great submission, I think there is
an object much more humane, more just, and far more statesmanlike, than
merely to relieve the poor—and that is, to have no poor, to abolish poverty.
Instead of legislating to lighten the burdens of the poor, I say legislate to
do away with poverty, by removing the causes of it. Improve the condi¬
tion of your people ; give them that with which to go to work; give them
employment; stimulate and protect their industry ; let them acquire com¬
petency and wealth. That is the only relief necessary or desirable to give
them. Merely to relieve them from a burden, is like indiscriminate charity—
their wants are perpetually returning. How much better is it to enable
them to relieye themselves by their own industry ? Charity is not what the
people of this country want, or ought to want. They want their legislation
adapted to their habits of enterprise, industry, and independence. There
is no want of proneness in our people to indulge in extravagance and lux¬
ury, whenever they are able to do so, and often when they are not. Give
them the ability to purchase articles yielding revenue, and they will as¬
suredly purchase them. Every one must have witnessed this in his own
neighborhood. I have myself known a family suffering from want, desi¬
rous of employment, but obtaining none, and, consequently, having very
little ability to consume. Since the revival of manufacturing industry, un¬
der the act of 1842, they have obtained employment at reasonable prices.
Their condition is greatly improved ; they live better, consume more, clothe
better, and partake of luxuries even wholly unattainable by them before.
They buy imported articles, and pay revenue, very far beyond what they
ever did before. They were in indigence and want; now they obtain
comfort and competence. Who does not see that not only are they vastly bet¬
ter off, taxed and oppressed as they are, but that the revenue is improved
by the change in their condition. Oppressively taxed ! No, sir; they are
relieved from the oppression and taxation of wretched poverty, and what
is true of them, is true of thousands of others. Thousands are lifted up to
become consumers, and to pay revenue, to add to your imports, to increase
your commerce, who were in want and penury before. What relief would
it have been to them to reduce duties? They had no means of purchas¬
ing, even at the lowest prices. They could pay no revenue, for they had
16
nothing to pay with. But, having given them employment, you have
given them real, substantial, enduring relief. These are the discrimina¬
tions, therefore, which I would make, not only for revenue, but for the
benefit of the poor; by rewarding, promoting, fostering their industry, and
not by prostrating it, whereby their ability to pay duties is destroyed, and
\ penury is inflicted upon them.
The next topic which the honorable Senator discussed, was the bearing
of the act of 1S42 upon the commerce of the country. He spoke ofcommerce
as rapidly declining. One-half of it had already been destroyed,and the other
half was destined speedily to follow. The honorable Senator undoubtedly
had reference to foreign commerce, and spoke very justly and very elo¬
quently of its value as a bond of harmony, a means of civilization and
Christianity, among nations. I agree to all he has said upon that sub¬
ject. But the question is, whether there is any danger that the com¬
merce, which effects such desirable results, is to be destroyed or impaired ?
None, whatever, in my judgment; especially if the act of 1842 is permit¬
ted to remain unmolested. Leave it to work out all the good it is calcu¬
lated to do, and there will be no occasion to mourn over the decay of our
loreign commerce. Much that I have already said in regard to the reve¬
nue, is also an answer to this portion of the Senator's argument. But, before
answering it further, allow me to ask, is there no other commerce but foreign
commerce ? Does our internal commerce deserve no encomium as a bond of
union and of harmony—as the promoter ofcivilizationand religion among our¬
selves ? Our foreign commerce,exports and importstogether,amount to about
two bund red millionsannually. The value of our internal commercecan hard¬
ly be estimated with accuracy. We know, however, that it employs a
larger amount of shipping than does the foreign, besides the vast transport¬
ation on the turnpikes and railroads, and by boats on the canals and rivers,
not appearing in the statistics of navigation ; all of which are in active em¬
ployment, from one extremity of the Union to the other. Is all this of no
account? Probably the internal commerce of the country is not far short
of one thousand millions, and much of it greatly dependent on the policy
of fostering our own labor, and exchanging with each other the products
of our own industry.
Does the Senator from South Carolina see in all this, nothing worthy of
securing and protecting ? He speaks of the importance of strengthening
our bonds of amity and peace with other nations, by a sedulous cultiva¬
tion of foreign commerce. Is it of no importance to strengthen the bonds
of our Union, our domestic ties, our harmony, by the cultivation and ex¬
tension of our domestic commerce? How can we better do it than by an
interchange of our various commodities and productions between the re¬
mote extremities of this extended Union ? It seems to me that this is an
exceedingly desirable object. It seems to me as desirable to cultivate the
relations of amity and peace, and mutual interest and mutual dependence,
among ourselves, as to enlarge foreign commerce, for the sake of keeping
the peace of the world.
But the Senator says the act of 1842 has struck down one-half of the
foreign commerce of the country. Where is the evidence of this? From
what quarter do we hear any complaint upon the subject? From our import¬
ing merchants ? From our shipping interests ? From our extensive mer¬
cantile houses ? Not one of these. If half the commerce of the country
has been lost, surely we should hear something about it from those most
interested in its preservation. So far from tint, we hear of directly the
reverse. We hear of renewed enterprise in trade with other countries—of
new ships being built—of improving freights—of great activity in com-
17
mercial pursuits. I am aware that a memorial was presented to the
Senate, some days ago, from a number of importers of hardware, and iron
manufactures, in the city of New York, representing that the rate of duty
upon the articles in which they deal is very high, and complaining of a
falling off in their business. This may, perhaps, be true. That their pro¬
fits have greatly declined, I do not doubt. Whether the country has suf¬
fered, or will sutler, from that cause, remains to be seen. An honorable
member of the other House (Mr. Irving, of Pennsylvania) has since then
forwarded a copy of that memorial to New York, and also to Philadelphia,
and has received replies, for the use of which I am greatly indebted to him.
From New York, he has received a counter memorial much more nu¬
merously signed, and by highly respectable persons, which I will read. It
is in these words:
" Your memorialists, merchants and others, of the cirty, county, and State
of New York, respectfully represent, that having been several years engaged
in business in this city, and having had abundant opportunity to observe
the relative advantages of the present tariff, as passed by the last Congress,
do fully and 'decidedly testify to the great advantages the people as a
whole are reaping from its effects. The market has arisen from its de¬
pression—manufacturers are being employed. A decided preference is
being given to American goods, many of which are cheaper and better
than the foreign goods formerly sold here, and a healthy state of feeling is
prevalent. That the opposers to our tariff are chiefly foreigners, importers,
and the like, and with whom patriotism and the general good of our
country are apparently lost sight of by personal interests.
" Your memorialists ardently pray that the tariff may be permitted to
remain as it now stands, and that this community may not be subject to
the disappointment and derangement of business consequent on such a
change."
The memorial, it will be observed, does not say any thing in regard to
particular articles, as does that to which it is a reply, but speaks in general
of the operations of the act. The signatures to it were obtained, as I
learn, in one or two streets, in a space of two hours, and there was
no time or opportunity to enter into details. But the memorial from Phil¬
adelphia, is more specific, showing most conclusively the fallacy of the
statements in that to which I first alluded, and especially in regard to
the effect of the act of 1842 upon the prices of the articles named. It is
evident, from these papers, that the profit upon the importation of these
articles has hitherto been very large. Since the act, these profits have been
very greatly reduced, and it is little to be wondered at, that complaint
should now be made by those who are affected by such reduction. The
prices of these articles have very much declined. Gentlemen seem to sup¬
pose that foreign commodities, when imported, are sold at the lowest cost
and charges. But this is not so. They are sold for the highest price
which the importer can obtain for them, and that price is regulated by
the supply of the article in the market, and the demand which exists for
it. Profits, and often enormous profits, are made. The memorials which
1 have referred to, show that the reduction in price has been chiefly effect¬
ed by the diminution of these profits.
[Mr. Woodbury asked if the signers to the memorials were not employed
in the sale of the American articles, a3 commission merchants, or con¬
signees.]
How that is I do not know. Probably in some instances such is the
2
18
case ; but that only gives credit to their statements, because it shows they
have a full knowledge of the matter on which they speak. The me¬
morial of the hardware dealers in New York is the only evidence of
which I have any knowledge, to which the honorable Senator could appeal
to sustain his position, that the act of 1842 had destroyed one-half of the
commerce of the country. He, said to be sure, that the imports last year
were only forty millions in value. Not so. The amount for the year end¬
ing September 30, 1S43, was over eighty-eight millions. The Senator
probably intended to speak only of the amount dutiable ; but they amount¬
ed to forty-eight millions, instead of forty, as he supposed.
[Mr. McDuffie. Eight millions were re-exported, leaving only forty
paying duty.]
That is so. Such is the course of business. A portion of every year's
import is and ever has been re-exported. But that does not alter the case ;
we go by comparison. The total imports, last year, were eighty-eight or
eighty-nine millions, only ten or twelve per cent, short of a fair average of
several years. This falling off may in part be accounted for by the decline
in prices generally. Our tables are made up on values, and not on quan¬
tities. If we had a table of quantity, who knows how it would compare
with former years ? Our imports have lately exceeded one hundred millions
in value annually, and in some years of high prices and enormous specula¬
tions have gone up to one hundred and sixty or one hundred and seventy mil¬
lions. Every body knows the consequences. Embarrassment, bankruptcy,
and universal distress, followed.
The honorable Senator from New Hampshire, (Mr. Woodbury,) when
he presided over the Treasury Department, attributed, in one of his annual
reports, much of the distress of the country to those excessive importations.
In the present state of affairs it is not desirable—indeed it would be at¬
tended with danger—if our imports should much exceed one hundred mil¬
lions. Any thing much beyond that—possibly one hundred and twenty
might be borne—should not be regarded as a sign of prosperity, but as a
dangerous stimulant, beyond the ability of the country to consume. The
imports will of themselves naturally increase with our population and ability
to consume, and beyond that they ought not to be expected or desired to
increase.
I do not know that there is reason to expect any very considerable im¬
provement in the condition of the people of Europe as consumers of our
exports. It is their improved capacity to consume our productions that
we are to depend upon tor an augmentation of our exports, and not upon
an excessive importation of their productions which we are in some way
to pay for.
If our exports, then, are not likely to be much increased, from any im¬
provement in the ability of other nations to consume them, there seems to
me no sufficient reason to expect an import much exceeding one hundred
millions annually. Any inducement to import more than that will be a
stimulus to import more than we can well pay for, and must be followed
by embarrassment and distress. The honorable Senator, however, supposes
that this amount may be much increased, and would be increased, if our
duties upon imports were less. High duties, he argues, prevent imports. Our
past experience does not confirm this position. The report of the Secretary
of the Treasury, submitted at the commencement of this session, contains
a table of imports in each year, running back to 1821, divided into several
periods, separated from each other by alterations, in the rate of duties
from that table it appears that the amount of dutiable imports from 1821
19
to 1824* inclusive, was 8264,960,000, being an average of sixty-six millions
annually. The average rate of duty during that term, was about thirty-
four per cent., yielding a revenue of over ninety millions. Since that time
our population has nearly doubled, having increased about eighty per cent,
adding as many more to the consumers of foreign productions. Can it be
doubted, then, that we are now able to import an equal amount, under nearly
an equal rate of duty, and yielding sufficient revenue ? But that is not the
point I am now considering. I am examining the question, whether an in¬
crease of duties tends to the destruction of commerce or not. In 1824 a
new tariff act was passed, increasing duties to an average of thirty-eight
per cent.; and, in the four years next following, the imports of dutiable
goods amounted to $301,550,000, being an average of over seventy-five
millions a year. Thus, notwithstanding the enhanced duties, there was a
considerable increase of imports. Then came another change in the tariff,
and duties were increased to average about forty-one per cent., and the
amount of imports for the four following years was $297,330,000, an ave¬
rage of $74,330,000—very nearly the average of the preceding period. Then
comes a period of nine years, 1S33 to 1841 inclusive, during which the
average rate of duty was about thirty-one per cent., being a considerable
| reduction from that of the preceding period. Did the imports increase in
consequence of this reduction, or did they increase at all from any cause ?
Population had increased, and it will be recollected, also, that during this
period, imports were much enlarged by extravagant speculations—by a re¬
dundant currency, and by vast loans contracted abroad, much of which
came to us in foreign manufactures. The aggregate of dutiable imports
for this period was six hundred and thirty-one millions, giving an average
of only seventy-one millions annually against seventy-four millions, when du¬
ties were ten per cent, higher. If the imports of 1835, 1836, and 1S37, had
i not, from the causes stated, been swelled far beyond the natural wants of
the country, and our capacity to buy, the average would have sunk down
to nearly sixty millions. Then comes the year 1842, when the average
rate of duty was about twenty-three per cent., quite low enough, I am sure,
to satisfy the honorable Senator, and to test his theory, that as duties de¬
cline, imports increase. The imports of that year amounted to sixty-nine
millions, falling off two millions from the average of the preceding nine
years—and less by five millions than the average of the period (1828 to
1832) when duties were forty-one per cent., a rate nearly double. Con¬
sumers, too, had increased about forty per cent., and still, with increased con¬
sumers and diminished duties, importsdeclined. If there is any inference
to be drawn from these facts, it certainly is, that the honorable Senator's
doctrine is not well founded. Our experience is altogether against it.
If the Senator relies on a comparison of the two years 1S42 and 1843,
he will find his theory equally unfortunate—the facts will not bear out his
arguments. For, although there was a falling off of something like 29 per
cent, in dutiable goods, was there not also a falling off in free goods ? It
will not be contended that the act of 1842 had any effect on free goods, and
yet they fell off something like 36 per cent. There was a very large dif¬
ference in the imports of the two years, I admit. The dutiable imports
were, for 1842, 69£ millions, and for 1S43, 48-J millions, a falling off of
nearly 29 per cent, How was that occasioned ? Not by the act, but for the
reasons 1 have already explained. The same causes operated on the free
goods, and still more disastrously. They fell off 34 per cent. It is admitted
the act of 1842 could not have any such operation on them. Indeed, the
effect is directly otherwise; for it generally happens, that when you increase
20
duties, or enact any other law which tends to keep out a portion of dutia¬
ble goods, the importation of free goods increases: that is to say, the
capital and shipping before employed in importing and transporting dutia¬
ble goods will be likely to be diverted to a commerce in free goods. But
no such result has been experienced since the act of 1842, which shows, as
fully as any argument can show, that to whatever this diminution may be
owing, it is not to that act. The same cause has operated as well on duti¬
able as on free goods, and that was, the agitation of the subject so long in
1842, and the uncertainty of the action of Congress in relation to it, at the
time orders for importation's in the ordinary way would have gone abroad.
But, sir, I perceive that I weary the Senate with these dry details, and
I will proceed to other considerations presented by the honorable Senator.
[The hour being late, Mr. Evans here gave way for a motion to adjourn ; and the next day, tho
debate being resumed, Mr. Evans continued his remarks as follows :]
Mr. President : 1 concluded yesterday the observations which 1
intended to submit to the Senate on two or three of the topics which the
Senator from South Carolina introduced into this discussion ; and endea¬
vored, as far as I was able, to rescue the act of 1842 from the imputations
which he had thrown upon it, of having destroyed the revenue of the
Government and the commerce of the country.
I will now proceed to some other matters discussed by him, and to his
other grounds of hostility to the policy of that act.
The first to which I will advert is, the effect which the Senator attri¬
butes to it, of increasing the burdens upon the people of the country, add¬
ing largely to their taxes, and operating onerously and oppressively on
all classes and sections. What are these heavy burdens to which the Sen¬
ator refers? He states them in this way : If you impose a duty of 40
per cent.—which he supposes this act does, though it does not—you
raise on ten millions of imports, four millions of revenue. So far, I agree
with him. But the burden, he says, does not stop here. The ten millions
which you import meet forty millions (as he supposes) of your own arti¬
cles of similar character in the market. As the ten millions imported are
advanced in cost to the consumer four millions, by the duty levied upon
them, so he supposes the forty millions will be advanced in the same pro¬
portion—that is, to lifty-six millions—throwing a burden on the consumer
of sixteen millions, without any benefit to the revenue. The honorable Sen¬
ator assumes the manufactures of this county to amount to one hundred
and sixty millions—one-half of which are thus enhanced in price ; and
he supposes that, on a fair revenue rate of duty, the imports would be in¬
creased forty millions, and domestic manufactures would decline to one
hundred and twenty millions.
Now, sir, the whole of this argument rests entirely on the idea, that, if
you impose a duty, be it what it may, on the importation of foreign mer¬
chandise, it will necessarily raise the price in the market of this country,
precisely in proportion to the duty you add ; and not only will it raise the
price of the imported article, but, it will bring up to its standard of price
every other article of similar character in the market.
In the first place, sir, all our experience is against the argument. In no
instance where duties have been advanced, has there been any considera¬
ble rise in the price of these articles, much less on the domestic articles in
competition with them, Generally speaking, the price has declined. This
is experience, and it has been uniform; but it is against the theory of the
honorable Senator—and he says, it can't be so ! The fact he cannot con-
21
trovert; but he denies that it is the consequence of the duty, and holds to
his theory, insisting that it is most unreasonable to suppose that if you add
any thing to the cost of delivering an article in our market, you do not add
to the price it will sell for.
The theory, and the argument which supports it, might do very well, if
there was to be no competition in the market; and if, in the second place,
the foreign manufacturer would consent at all times to sell at the lowest
price of cost and charges. But do we not know, that it never happens
that the imported article has the market exclusively to itself; and in the
next place, that the foreign article, whether free or dutiable, is never sold
merely for the cost of production and delivery ? That is not the rule which
governs prices. Is there no such thing as profits ? Are there no losses in
commercial operations ? What proportion of the price of commodities
paid by the consumer, goes to the score of profits, is not possible to as¬
certain. No inconsiderable part, in all probability. Now, what is the
great, the invariable law which regulates prices ? Is it not the relation be¬
tween supply and demand ? If the market be fully supplied, and the de¬
mand be limited, do not prices decline, without any regard whatever, or
scarcely any, to the cost of production? If the demand be great, and the
supply small, do not prices rise higher and higher, without the slightest
reference to the cost of the commodity ? In the one case, losses are sus¬
tained—in the other, profits accumulate. If we rely upon foreign manu¬
facturers, and upon importers for the supply of our wants, are they not
astute enough always to keep this relation between supply and demand so
nicely adjusted as that prices shall not decline ?—that profits shall not fail ?
Prices will be left pretty much at their control. Is it consistent with our
experience, with our knowledge of human nature, to expect that they will
furnish us at the mere cost of production ? The addition of four mil¬
lions, in the shape of duties levied, to ten millions of imports, does
not therefore, necessarily increase the price of the ten to fourteen mil¬
lions. That depends altogether upon whether there is demand sufficient to
take them up at that price. If there is, they may go up. If not, they
will not, and if there be an overstocked market they may sink even below
ten millions. We have a single fact, illustrating the effect of additional du¬
ties upon prices, in the article of crockery ware, directly in the face of the
honorable Senator's argument. This article is sold by a scale of prices
established as long ago as 1814, which has never been altered, but
sales are made at an established discount from it. The rate of discount
prior to the act of 1842 was 45 per cent. Immediately after that act
passed, it was changed to 50 per cent. The act raised the duty from
20 per cent, to 30. Now, how stands the matter in regard to price ?
Before the act—Invoice at the scale of 1814 ... §100
Discount off------ - 45
Cost in England - 55
Duty 20 per cent. ----- - 11
Cost here 66
Since—Invoice as before §100
Discount 50 per cent 50
Cost in England ------- - 50
Duty 30 per cent. 15
Cost here -------- - 65
22
Showing an absolute diminution of the cost in our market, of about 2
per cent., one dollar on fifty, although you have added 10 per cent. tO'
the duty, and four dollars to the revenue. The cost to the consumer
has been diminished, by diminishing the profits of the manufacturer.
The importer, in order to carry on his business, must also reduce his pro¬
fits, and in this way it is that an increase of duties does not add to the
cost, but may reduce it. This is an illustration, but it is a fact also,
and is true of a great many articles besides. It explains the mystery
which perplexes gentlemen so much—how an increase of duties can di¬
minish prices.
If we depend mainly upon foreign producers for the supply of our
essential wants, will they not take care to obtain the largest remunera¬
tion for their labor ? They may, indeed, sometimes find it good policy to*
sell at the lowest rates, and below even the cost of production. When¬
ever their supply outruns the demand for home consumption, inas¬
much as by far the larger portion of their products is consumed at
home, the price of the whole naturally declines. It is then of the first
importance to ship the surplus to other nations, and to dispose of it
for whatever may be obtained. By sacrificing a small part of their pro¬
ductions, they keep the larger part from sinking. They run up the price
at home, by diminishing the stock in the market, and thus indemnify
themselves for losses sustained abroad. This every merchant and manu¬
facturer in England well understands. They watch the course of business
and the state of trade assiduously, and they take care, having the chief
control of the markets of the world, that prices shall not decline. The
consequence of such dependence on our part, is, at one time a scarcity and
high prices, and at another an excess and low prices—sometimes stag¬
nation in trade and commerce, sometimes speculations and excitements,
and at all times, uncertainty. What our country most wants is uniform¬
ity, stability, regularity ; and this is one of the benefits derived, and to
be still more enhanced, from the policy of protecting our own manufac¬
tures.
What effect on prices abroad does the honorable Senator suppose
an additional demand for forty millions would produce ? He desires to
import forty millions more. What would be the inevitable effect ? Most
unquestionably, a rise in the foreign price. Open a new market to that
extent, which is about one-fifth of the whole exports of manufactures from
England, and you will add 20 or 25 per cent, to the present demand
for exportation, and of course to the price. This matter of price is very
elastic. A light weight sinks it below the level which the additional burden
would naturally occasion ; and the removal of the pressure gives it an up¬
ward spring beyond what it would otherwise have reached. These things,
indeed, correct themselves in time. A year or two ago, when addressing
the Senate upon this subject, I read an original letter from a manufacturer
of iron in England, to his correspondent in this country—complaining
among other things of the extremely low price of iron there. He said the
business was then conducted at a ruinously low rate ; and they were look¬
ing with anxiety for an alteration of our tariff, and a reduction of the du¬
ty, in the confident expectation that the demand would increase, and pri¬
ces rise. The honorable Senator himself argues upon the same principle.
What does he desire ? To increase the demand for cotton abroad. For
what purpose ? To enhance its price. He goes entirely upon the ground
that by opening new markets for cotton abroad, or improving old ones,,
cotton will rise. So it will. And, by the same reasoning, a new and lar-
23
ger demand here for foreign productions, will occasion a rise in the price of
these productions abroad. If, then", prices rise abroad, how are our con¬
sumers benefited ? What is, and has been for some time, the great com¬
plaint of the tobacco growers of this country ? That foreign Governments
impose heavy, very heavy duties upon the importation of that article into
their territories. How does that injure them? It is largely in demand,
and markets are found for all which can be grown. According to the
Senator's argument, the duty imposed upon it adds exactly so much to its
price abroad; and the removal of the duty would by just so much dimin¬
ish the price. Of what consequence, then, is it to the planter, whether the
duty is on or off-—high or low ? No ; the truth is, if the duty were removed
the demand abroad would very greatly increase, and prices here would
rise in a corresponding degree. The tobacco planters of Virginia and
Maryland understand this full well, and have been making, through our
diplomatic agents, vigorous efforts to effect a reduction of the duties
levied by most of the nations of Europe upon their productions.
The act of 1S42 increased the duty on molasses. The immediate con¬
sequence was, the price of it in Cuba declined to a greater extent even
than the additional duty imposed. I have been informed there was so
little demand there for a time, that the manufacturers gave it away
to any body who would furnish the casks and be at the expense
of filling and removing them. The mere expectation that we were about
to lay a duty of "two cents a pound on coffee, occasioned a fall of price
in Rio, equal to that sum; and when Congress adjourned without im¬
posing the duty, it immediately rose again. Such is our experience in
these matters; and there is nothing strange or mysterious or incompre¬
hensible about it.
But the honorable Senator supposes that the effect of imposing a duty of
40 per cent, on ten millions of imports, is, to add to forty millions of do¬
mestic articles a similar rate of enhanced price; and that is the great
grievance complained of. Well, sir, I must say—if I understand the state¬
ment—it strikes me as very singular. He supposes we have got forty
millions of domestic articles already in the market, to which ten millions
of foreign articles of the same description are also brought, and that if we
impose four millions on the latter, making then fourteen millions, we also
impose the same rate of addition on the forty millions, raising them at once
to fifty-six millions—so. that the price of the original fifty millions, (forty
domestic, and ten foreign,) will be raised to 870,000,000. Now, my
theory on the matter would be this : If you have got forty millions
of domestic goods in the market, they have a certain value, the price
for which they can be sold, depending on the law of supply and* de¬
mand. If you have enough for the demand in forty millions, the price
will be no more than a fair remuneration for the production, includ¬
ing cost, charges, and the average profits of the country. If the sup¬
ply is not enough, the price will certainly rise beyond that standard.
What, then, will be the effect of adding ten millions to forty already
on hand? If the forty millions were as much as the wants of the
country required, you necessarily create a surplus in the market. You have
fifty millions of productions, where forty were sufficient. The price must
therefore inevitably decline. It matters not what it cost to bring the ten
millions in. There they are, and there they are not wanted. The certain
result is, that the price of the whole fifty millions, instead of rising up to
seventy as is supposed, must sink nearly, perhaps quite, to forty. If, however,
the forty millions were not adequate to the demand, and ten millions more
24
are brought into supply it, then, instead of advancing the price of the for¬
ty, the effect is to prevent the advance. The supply is now equal to the
demand. The holders of the forty millions are deprived of the opportu¬
nity of raising the price at their own will, as they couid have done if the
supply had been short. Burden your ten millions imported as you will,
when they come into the market they keep down the price of the forty
already there. They must sink to the level of that price, and cannot by
possibility raise it. It would be an extraordinary fact indeed, if the addi¬
tion of ten millions to the stock already in the market, could enhance the
price of the whole. What is the holder of the new supply to do with it ?
He comes to sell. He seeks a market. Can he say to purchasers, these
commodities, originally ten millions in value, have been raised to fourteen
by the duty I have paid on them, and you must therefore pay me four¬
teen millions? They would answer at once, we can buy of our own pro¬
ducers the same quantity for ten millions,equally good—why should we pay
you fourteen ? They would not purchase at all of him, until they could pur¬
chase as cheap or cheaper than elsewhere. Meanwhile, the holders of the
forty millions perceive there is an addition of 20 per cent, to the supply
in market. They are anxious to sell. They fear the effect of this increas¬
ed supply. More active competition takes place, and in order to secure
the sale of their forty millions, they reduce prices. These things are of
daily experience and daily observation. I have seen somewhere a good
illustration of it in this way. Suppose there is a village in which there
are nine stores, being sufficient for all the business of the place, and they
rent for $100 each a year. A new one is erected, not wanted for the trade
of the village. What is to be done with it ? It cannot be rented for $100,
as the others have been. There is no use for it. The owner, wishing
to have it rented, finally offers it for $90, and the occupant of one of the
others takes it, thereby saving $10 in his rent. That leaves another vacant,
which in like manner is rented for $90, and so on until the whole go down
to $90. One falls to $80, and this process of reduction is continued until
the rents get so low that one of the buildings can be better applied to some
other purpose, or until a new dealer, stimulated by low rents, deems it ad¬
visable to open a new place of trade. So it is with merchandise. When¬
ever an increase of supply takes place greater than the increase of de¬
mand, prices fall, and continue to fall, until they reach so low a point that
the increased consumption occasioned by their cheapness takes them all up.
So much, sir, I have deemed it proper to say in answer to the argument of
the Senator, that the effect of imposing duties on foreign imports, is to
add an equal amount to the price of the domestic production ; and I
suppose I shall be answered by the inquiry, if this be not so, why does
the domestic manufacturer require any protection ? Why does he ask
for higher duties, unless it be to increase the price of his fabrics ? Espe¬
cially if the tendency and the ultimate effect of high duties is to reduce
prices, why does he desire them ? Is it any benefit to him ? Certainly it
is; and in this way:—he obtains the supply of the market ; he sells his
commodities in preference to the foreign manufacture; his goods are ta¬
ken for consumption when otherwise they would not be, except at
prices for which they could not be afforded. Take for instance the coarse
cotton cloths, upon which it is supposed our manufacturers need no protec¬
tion. They can furnish them at prices as low as foreign manufacturers
can. Why, then, do they need protection ? Because foreign manufacturers
can furnish them as low as they can ; and the question is, who shall
do it ? Who shall have the profits of the manufacture ? Suppose the
25
consumption of the country requires 100,000 bales, or any other given
quantity. We can supply the whole of it at a certain price, say five
cents the yard. England can do it for the same. If our manufacturers
send their 100,000 bales into market, and the English send their 100,000
also, it is evident you have double the quantity which is wanted. The
price must decline to four cents or 3 cents a yard. It is a losing busi¬
ness as well to them as to us. Who can endure this state of things
longest ? A country where labor is cheap or where it is dear ? Where
money and capital abounds, or where it is comparatively scarce ? Where
the rate of interest is 2 per cent., or where it is 6 or 7 per cent. ? The re¬
sult is inevitable. Our manufacturers cannot stand the competition, and
must be destroyed. What happens then ? The foreign producer has
the market exclusively to himself. Prices advance, and he takes good
care to indemnify himself for the losses he has sustained, while engaged in
the process of breaking down our establishments. Our laborers cannot
stand the competition, unless they are content to live as the laborers of
Europe live—poorly fed, poorly clad, in miserable habitations scantily fur¬
nished. This they will not do, and ought not to do. They have been ac¬
customed to partake more largely of the comforts, and in a moderate de¬
gree of the luxuries of civilized society ; and how is it to be expected that
they can reduce the price of their labor to the level of those who have
never enjoyed these advantages, and are contented to dispense with them?
No, sir ; they cannot do it, and ought not to do it. I'hey ought not to be
compelled to sell at less than fair remunerating prices. The effect of the
competition, for a short period, I admit, would be to reduce prices very
considerably—far below what either producer could afford. But is this just
or desirable ? This effect is temporary. The ultimate one is to restore if
not to enhance the original price. What our manufacturers desire, there¬
fore, is, the privilege of supplying the consumption of the country, not at
exaggerated and inflated prices, but at prices as low as can be afforded
by other nations. I have used the article of coarse cottons as an
illustration. The same argument applies to other commodities, and, in¬
deed, to all others which we have the skill, capacity, and capital to manu¬
facture. But in regard to cotton goods, what would be the effect of ob¬
taining all our supplies from England, in another point of view ? The
English fabric, I have said, can be afforded here as cheap, perhaps a little
cheaper than our own. This is owing to the fact that it is an inferior arti¬
cle—made in part of a cheaper and inferior cotton, grown in India. Our
fabrics are made of American cotton, of a dearer and better quality. If,
then, you displace the American article, to make way for the foreign, you
diminish to that extent the consumption of the American raw material.
You not only employ foreign labor, to the exclusion of our own, but you
employ it on a foreign grown material.
Let us look now to the inevitable and final result of all this. The Senator
says, our imports may be increased forty millions. He admits, however,
that these forty millions are to take the place of forty millions of the man¬
ufactures of our own country. What are the American manufacturers,
thus thrown out of employment, to do ? How are they to live ? What are
they to turn to for subsistence ? Where is the capital liberated by the ope¬
ration, if you have not wholly destroyed it, to be employed ? But, above
all, where is the labor to go ? I apprehend it would be very undesirable
to employ it in raising cotton ; that would never do, as I shall attempt to
show by and by. No, sir; it will be driven to increase the already exces¬
sive productions of agriculture, which are now so largely beyond the de-
26
rnand for them, that prices are exceedingly depressed. Agricultural pro¬
ducts are already abundant. We need more and better markets, and not
more producers. Nothing, in my mind, unless it be opening such markets,
would more improve the agriculture of our country, than the diversion
of a portion of the labor now employed in it, to other pursuits. Who
is to consume the additional forty millions of imports? Those who had
previously consumed the same amount of American production ? How
are they to pay for them ? A large number of laborers have been thrown
out of employment; their consumption must, of course, greatly dimmish.
The farmer, who formerly supplied them, has lost the market for his pro¬
ducts. He must diminish his consumption. There is a surplus of labor
thrown upon the country ; wages must fall; idleness will prevail; poverty
must increase. Is it not evident that your forty millions cannot be con¬
sumed by those who consumed before, because they cannot pay for them ?
The honorable Senator urges us to import forty millions more, because, he
says, it adds so much to the ability of Europe to take and consume our cot¬
ton. That is to say, increase the comfort, the capacity, the wealth, the
means of buying, of the foreign manufacturer, though you thereby dimin¬
ish those of your own citizens. The honorable Senator signifies his dissent
to this statement. He does not seem to admit it as a just consequence of
his argument. But how does the matter stand ? We now employ a cer¬
tain number of our own countrymen in manufactures. This gives them the
means of living and of consuming foreign and domestic articles. A por¬
tion of these means is employed in the consumption of cotton goods, made
of American cotton. So far as this consumption goes, it promotes the
growth of American cotton. Now, the honorable Senator says, import forty
millions more from abroad, and foreigners will take forty millions more of
our cotton to pay for it. He supposes that all their increased capacity to
consume will be exhausted in the consumption of cotton. But is this so ?
A very small part of the consumption of any people is composed of cotton
fabrics. Look to the manufacturers of England, whom the honorable Sen¬
ator proposes to employ. How will they expend the additional wages which
they earn in manufacturing forty millions more ? In wearing cotton fab¬
rics ? No, sir. A very large part of their wages is expended in the means
of living—in purchasing the agricultural products of England. The ne¬
cessity for consuming cotton is comparatively small. Wearing apparel is
the least of their expenses. They are not going to spend all their wages on
cotton or cotton goods, but in buying more of the necessaries of life produced
by their own soil, such as grain and meat, and every species of food, or in ar¬
ticles brought from other countries—coffee, tea, sugar, and wines. Employ
them, and you undoubtedly enable them to live better, have better habita¬
tions and clothing, and to become consumers, to a larger extent, of their own
agricultural products: but you do it at the expense of our own laborers, who
are thereby thrown out of employment. Those now engaged in man¬
ufacturing these forty millions for home consumption, would be impover¬
ished for the benefit of laborers abroad ; adding very little to the ability of
the latter to become consumers of our raw cotion, but very much to their
means of buying the productions of their own country. All the advantage
would inure to the foreign manufacturers and laborers, and not to the cot¬
ton planters, as the Senator from South Carolina imagines.
The honorable Senator does not seem to contemplate the extent to which
this destruction of American labor would be carried. He speaks of a few
manufacturers as the only persons interested. He confines himself to the
owners of buildings and machinery, and of the capital employed, as if they •
27
alone reaped the benefit of the home market, and of the protective policy j.
as if the laborers in their employment share no part of its advantages and
blessings. The Senator appeals to the enormous profits supposed
to be made by them, and denounces them as plunderers and monopo¬
lists. The tendency of this, I am aware, is to stir up prejudice and resent¬
ment against capitalists, and against manufacturing establishments. It is
the old and stale harangue of taxing the many for the benefit of the few. All
this is grossly faliacions. Is there nobody but the few wealthy capitalists
interested in this policy ? How can capital earn any thing except by giv¬
ing employment to labor ? How many hundreds and thousands of per¬
sons do these capitalists employ in conducting their operations ? From the
time the first spade is struck into the earth, from the moment the first brick
is made, to the time when the finished fabric is sold, it is all labor—labor,
which would otherwise want employment. How many agriculturists are
engaged in raising food for these laborers? How many machinists, in
their vocation ? How many seamen and cartmen, in transportation? But
besides the numbers employed in large incorporated manufacturing estab¬
lishments, how many thousands and tens of thousands are at work in their
houses and ahops, in fabricating articles which would otherwise be sup¬
plied from abroad ? The workers in iron, and copper, and brass, and the
other metals ; the makers of nails, and scythes, and cutlery of every de¬
scription ; the manufacturers of hats, and shoes, and clothes, and harnesses,
and of all the articles connected with them ; of buttons, and buckles, and'
of the innumerable variety of commodities which enter into daily con¬
sumption : all these compose a vast multitude who are interested in this
policy. Go into into the great cities—New York, Philadelphia, Boston,
Baltimore—great as they are as commercial emporia, they are also great,
if not greater, regarding the numbers employed, as manufacturing cities.
Visit the shops of the artisans in all the various trades ; see industry busy
at the bench, and the vice, and the anvil; see the lathe in motion, and hear
the sound of the hammer, ringing from sun to sun. Are these the wealthy
few, whom alone this policy is designed to favor ? Are the widowed seam¬
stresses the aristocratic capitalists, against whom popular odium is to be
excited? Are the hardy miners of the hills of Pennsylvania in the same
category ?
Now, sir, these are plain, and palpable, and speaking facts. The bene¬
fit of this policy is not for the few, but for the many. It puts labor in mo¬
tion. It employs the many. What is most wanted and most necessary
for a nation ambitious of attaining power, and wealth, and happiness, is
profitable employment for its people. Whatever nation furnishes this, will
have no occasion to seek out modes of relieving their burdens, for they
have no burdens which they cannot easily sustain. Contentment and har¬
mony will prevail; the laws will be respected, and Government will be
felt only in the blessings it dispenses.
I wish to say a single word, Mr. President, in regard to the excessive
profits which the honorable Senator supposes some of the cotton manufac¬
turing establishments have realized. He says they are making dividends
of 30 or 40 per cent, upon their capital? Where does the Senator obtain
his information ? On what data does he make his calculation ? The cen¬
sus statistics, which he used as the ground of his computations, are known
to be quite imperfect. Without very minute knowledge upon this matter,
I nevertheless venture to affirm, that the profits of the capital invested in
cotton manufactures, from the commencement to this time, has not aver¬
aged six per cent.
28
[Mr. McDuffie asked what they were now.]
1 cannot certainly inform the Senator; but I am assured that, all together,
they will not average twelve per cent.; some may be more, many are less.
The honorable Senator falls into errors by adopting newspaper statements,
without examining or tracing out the circumstances, or the causes of what
seems to be an excessive profit, and then supposing it to be applicable to all
institutions of the kind. There are various reasons why, in particular
cases, there should be a high dividend. Some of these establishments have
suffered severe losses—to the extent, perhaps of half their capital—and have
declared dividends upon their reduced capital, instead of reserving them to
restore the losses. What, in such cases, appears to be a dividend of twelve
per cent., is, in reality, but a dividend of six per cent, on the original in¬
vestment. In some cases, manufacturing corporations have wholly failed;
and their buildings, machinery, and fixtures, have been sold at an enor¬
mous sacrifice—perhaps for one-quarter of the original cost. The new
purchaser makes dividends upon the capital which he has invested ; and if
he has made a favorable investment, his dividends may be large; but that
arises not because the profits of the business are ordinarily large, but be¬
cause he has been fortunate in obtaining a valuable privilege at a small
cost. The idea that capital, in any branch of business in this country, can
realize thirty or forty per cent., for any length of time, when the ordinary
profits of every other pursuit is far below that, is preposterous. Capital is
always seeking the most profitable investments ; and if any one employ
ment is so much more lucrative than all others, it would be immediate¬
ly crowded with capital withdrawn from other pursuits, until an equality
should be restored. It may sometimes happen, under peculiar circum¬
stances, that a manufacturing company will realize large profits, and make
great dividends. For instance : if it should purchase a large supply of the
raw material, when the price was low, and subsequently, from an increased
demand, it should largely appreciate, occasioning, of course, an advance in
the price of the manufactured fabric. The profit, in such a case, is made
by the manufacturer, not because he is a manufacturer, not by the process
of manufacturing, but by the rise of the cotton on his hands, precisely as
the planter or the merchant would have made it, if he had kept the cotton
until the rise occurred. This is no part of the profit of manufacturing. It
more nearly resembles the profits of the merchant or the speculator. In
such cases, is it reasonable to infer that all other manufacturers, not of cot¬
ton merely, but of wool and iron, are making excessive profits also ? Is
the business of manufacturing to be judged of by that standard ? Are all
to be judged by the good fortune of one ? Nothing could be more unrea¬
sonable or erroneous. Then, sir, I repeat, there has been no such enor¬
mous profit in manufacturing operations, generally, not even in cottons, as
the honorable Senator has assumed. Manufacturing stock is, perhaps, at
this moment, rather advancing in the market; but that is no proof of ex¬
cessive profits. Other descriptions of property are rising also. Money is
plenty, interest low. Capitalists are seeking opportunities of investments.
The natural consequence is, that prices of slocks of all sorts, of real estate,
and of property generally, yielding income, rises. I repeat, sir, it is wholly
out of the question, that the cotton manufactures, or any investments in
any other business, can yield, for any length of time, a profit of thirty or
forty per cent., unless that be the average rate in other employments also.
While, as I have already said, I do not believe that, from the commence¬
ment of the cotton manufacture in this country, it has yielded an average
of six per cent., less, I believe, than the average profits of commerce, I am
29
very sure that, in other branches of manufacture, much less still has been
derived. How is it with woollens? The profits there, we know, have
been very low ; great losses have been sustained, and the stock has been
generally far under par. In the iron business, the Senator from Pennsyl¬
vania (Mr. Buchanan) has told us that many of the furnaces have ceased
operations.
With plain and conclusive facts like these before us, with what justice
or propriety can the act of 1842 be stigmatized as an act to legalize plun¬
der and oppression ; or the policy, as a policy to enrich the manufacturer
and the capitalist at the expense of the laborer ? These are charges, sir,
easily made, but they are not sustained, and cannot be sustained, by any
proof drawn from experience, or the practical operation of the system.
The views which I have already presented, are strengthened and con¬
firmed by reference to the commercial and manufacturing statistics of Great:
Britain. The honorable Senator supposes that Great Britain will consume
forty millions more of American cotton, if the United States will open a
market for an equal amount of her manufactured productions : that is to
say, if we will increase her manufactures forty millions, she will take the
whole payment for it in one article, and that, cotton. Let us see whether this
is probable. The total produce of the manufactures of the Kingdom, as stated
by Spackman, for 1841, was 42173,136,316, equal to about gS65,000,000.
This is probably a fair average of a series of years. Of this amount, fifty-
two millions sterling, about two hundred and sixty millions of dollars,
were in manufactures of cotton. Are gentlemen aware of the large propor¬
tion of these manufactures which England consumes at home? Of the
eight hundred and sixty-five millions produced, six hundred and thirty-
millions were consumed in the Kingdom, and only two hundred and thirty
five millions exported to foreign places, her vast colonial possessions in¬
cluded. Of the two hundred and sixty millions of manufactures of cotton,
she consumes one hundred and forty millions. Now, look at the amount
of imports. The value of the whole, from all places, colonial and foreign,
for the same period, is stated at 4264,377,962, equal to about $320,000,000.
From our own commercial tables, it appears that the value of cotton export¬
ed to England that year, was about thirty-six millions of dollars, only
eleven per cent, of the whole imports of Great Britain.
We may state the proposition in various ways. The question is, what
additional demand for cotton will an additional consumption of forty mil¬
lions in value, of British manufactures of all descriptions, occasion ? It will
be noticed that the increased consumption of manufactures is not confined to
manufactures of cotton, but extends to all kinds of commodities. If the eight
hundred and sixty-five millions of manufactured productions require only
thirty six millions worth of cotton, how much will forty millions more add ?
Aboutamillion and two thirds,instead of forty millions,which the Senator ex¬
pects. But if we should receive the whole return in cotton fabrics, how would
it stand ? If two hundredand sixty millions of manufactures consume thirty-
six millions of cotton, how much would an additional forty millions re¬
quire ? About five millions. That is to say, in order to sell five millions
more to her, we take forty millions more from her. We buy forty millions;
she pays it by adding thirty-five millions of her labor to five millions of
our labor. How long can we stand such a process as that ? But what is
England to do with forty millions more of cotton; about double her pres¬
ent demand ? Can she double her domestic consumption of the man¬
ufactured fabrics? She consumes now one hundred and forty millions. Can
•lie then consume two hundred and eighty millions ? Because we consume
30
forty millions more of her manufactures, can she consume one hundred
and forty millions more ? Can she double her exports ? Do other na¬
tions require such an increase? Can they pay for it? Great Britain
will not take forty millions more of the raw material, until she finds con¬
sumers for the additional mass of manufactures made from it—until she finds
purchasers of five hundred and twenty millions, instead of two hundred
and sixty. The raw cotton imported into England, appears to be
about 11 percent of the whole imports. If England could export forty
millions more, as the Senator desires she should, she could import forty mil¬
lions more undoubtedly, and would probably do so, but it would be in the
same commodities and the same relative proportions in which she now im¬
ports, because her imports are according to the wants of the people. This
would give an additional import of four millions and a half only of cotton.
For the sake of selling four and a half millions of our productions, we must
take forty millions of her productions. The balance must be paid in some
other way—in somethingshe couldexchange with other nations,to meet the
imports she would make from them; and if we have nothing else she
wants, we must pay in money.
Look at these facts in another point of view. Much as Great Britain
manufactures for other nations, she manufactures more for herself.
Of her cotton manufactures, we take ten millions, or nearly that, out of two
hundred and sixty millions. Who does not see that the great solicitude
of her manufacturers, must be to keep up prices at home ? If we are to
depend mainly on her for our supply, when prices are high there, in her
greatest and best market, we must pay high. When they are low, we shall
be inundated with the surplus of her productions. Prices will be per¬
petually fluctuating. But, sirj I fear I have wearied the Senate by dwel¬
ling so long on this branch of the subject. To discuss it as it ought to be
discussed, would require much more time than it would be preper for me
under any circumstances, and especially now, to exact from the Senate ; and
I proceed, therefore, to another topic.
The Senator from South Carolina, attributes to the tariff an unequal
and unjust operation on different sections of the country. He says:
Wrhile it imposes burdens on the people of the whole country, it imposes
them on the people of the South in an undue degree, and to such an un¬
equal extent that he cannot but look on this Government as more iniqui¬
tous, unjust, and disastrous, to that section of the Union, and to its com¬
merce, than all the pirates and plunderers that ever infested the ocean.
Now, sir, the act of 1842, and the policy of which it is a part, can
only affect the South in one of two ways. It can only operate inju¬
riously by enhancing the price of the articles they consume, or by di¬
minishing the price of those they sell. [Mr. McDuffie said, both.] The
honorable Senator says both. I will endeavor to show the reverse—that
it does not operate injuriously in either way. If the price of articles pur¬
chased has been enhanced, point us to the instance. When and where, and of
what commodity, has this been the case ? Exhibit the proof. Show us
the prices current. It is quite notorious that the great majority of im¬
ported merchandise has declined in price. Whether the act of 1S42 has
occasioned it or not, in point of truth and fact a reduction in almost all articles
of consumption, whether imported or made here, has since taken place.
The grievance is not, therefore, in the enhanced price of commodities which
the South has to buy. On the other hand, the price of the staple export
of the South has also increased. I give the fact. Look at the price of last
31
year. A newspaper published at New Orleans has been handed to me this
morning, giving the price current at this time, and in January last year:
Thus it will be seen that on the inferior qualities, prices have advanced
at New Orleans since last January, 75 or 80 per cent., on the middling
qualities, 40 to 50 percent, and on the best 20 to 30. I have been informed
that at this moment, some of the manufacturers in Massachusetts are pay¬
ing 50 per cent more than they paid last year; so that it will not be extra¬
ordinary if there should be a rise in the price of manufactured fabrics. I
believe such an advance has actually taken place. If so, I hope it is not
to be set down to the prohibitory character of the act, but to the true
cause, the increase in the price of cotton. The same is true also, though no4
to so great an extent, in regard to tobacco.
[Mr. E. read the prices at New Orleans, in January, 1843, and January,
1844.]
The advance is small to be sure, but it is something—four or five per
cent.; enough at all events to show there has been no such falling off as
the honorable Senator supposes.
Now, if these facts be so, and I do not see how they can be controverted,
how can it be said that the act of 1S42 has been ruinous to the South ?
They buy cheaper ; they sell dearer. Is that injurious ? The Senator no
doubt will say, so far as this result has been brought about, it is very good;
but it is not the consequence of your act; if that had not passed, we should
have done better still; it has prevented us from buying still lower,and sell¬
ing still higher. That can never be known. It is a mere speculation. I
must be allowed, however, very strongly to doubt it. The honorable Sena¬
tor's theory, to be sure, leads that way; but I know of no facts, no expe¬
rience, to justify such a conclusion. They are all the other way.
The honorable Senator's great purpose is to increase the price of cotton,
and to diminish the price of manufactures. These are what he de¬
sires. Does the honorable Senator suppose that if he can enhance the
price of cotton, other things are not to rise also ? Are they to decline
while cotton goes up ? In the first place, it is evident that manufactures of
cotton must rise. The fabrics with which cotton manufactures come in
competition will rise also ; woollens, silks, linens, and other manufactured
articles. What does the honorable Senator gain by that ? He sells higher,
but he pays higher. How is the consumer benefited ? In the honorable
Senator's theory, these commodities are chiefly to come from abroad. Our
own producers are to have none of the benefit of this improvement in
prices, because if they supply the demand the additional forty millions will
not be imported ; and if not imported, cotton will not advance. That is
-to be effected only by increased importations, taking the place of domestic
productions.
The honorable Senator argues that the Southern States are the great
exporting States, and hence that the burden falls upon them. He assumes
that there is no difference between levying the duty upon the exported and
the imported article ; in either case, it falls upon the exporter. I hardly
•know whether it is worth while to stop to consider the argument that
Prices of Jan.. 1843. Prices of Jan., 1844.
Inferior
Ordinary
Middling
Middling fail-
Fair
Good fair
Good and line
4 to 7i to 7j
44 to 5 8 to 8J
5 to 5J to 8J
5J to 6j 9 to 9i
6 to6j 9J to 9|
6j to 7i 10i to 10J
8 to 9J ll| to —
32
the South is the great exporting section of the country. That it produces
upon its soil, and beneath its genial skies, much the largest portion of our
exported productions, I freely admit. It furnishes the articles of export,
but who exports them ? At whose risk? For whose profit ? No incon¬
siderable proportion is purchased and paid for and exported by agents of
foreign manufacturers and foreign houses themselves. If every bale is
shipwrecked on the voyage, does the South lose it ? But I omit that matter.
The honorable Senator says, practically the exports of the South pay the
duties—that there is no difference between taxing the exports, and taxing
the imports which are returned for them. Well, sir, if this be so, I do not
know upon the Senator's own argument that there is any ground of com¬
plaint. He contends, as a universal principle, if a duty be levied upon any
article, its price is raised exactly by that amount. What is it to the planter
or the exporter, then, if you do levy a tax upon his export ? When it
reaches Liverpool or Manchester, it goes into market enhanced in
price. The purchaser pays the duty, and nobody but he can complain.
So of the imports; if you levy a duty of forty per cent., according to
the Senator, you enhance their price forty per cent. What can the im¬
porter complain of? Nobody but the person who purchases of the im¬
porter is taxed, if the honorable Senator's doctrine be sound. In other
words, the burden falls on the consumer. If so, does the burden of our
revenue fall on the South ? Do they consume beyond their proportion of
the dutiable imports of the country ? Certainly not, sir ; and considering
the character and wants of a considerable part of its population, proba¬
bly the South does not consume an equal proportion according to its num¬
bers.
I admit, sir, if the South were the exporters of all that we send abroad,
and were the importers ot all that we bring home, and were more¬
over the consumers of all that is imported, the burden would fall upon
them, and it would make very little difference whether the revenue was
raised by a duty on exports or on imports. There is still, however, some
difference. The article upon which the duty is laid, goes to market
burdened with that duty, and naturally sinks in price—and it is bet¬
ter that the article which you buy should sink, than that which you sell.
If the honorable Senator exports cotton, and imports cloths in exchange,
xt is far better for him to sell his cotton at prices not depressed by duties,
and to purchase cloths which are thus depressed, than to sell low and pay
high. It would be easy to illustrate the difference to the exporter, whether
the duty is laid upon one or the other, but I have not time to pursue it. The
question is, whether the South pays an undue proportion of the revenue
derived from the customs. Let it be granted, if the Senator pleases, that
the South does actually make all the imports. What becomes of them ?
The South does not consume the whole. A large portion is sold and con¬
sumed in other sections. If then, by imposing duties on them, you add to
their cost, as the Senator contends, when they are sold the South obtains
full indemnity in the enhanced price which she receives. The Senator
says, if he imports one hundred bales of merchandise, and you stop twenty
of them at the custom-house for duties, you leave him but eighty for his
consumption. So you do ; but if this eighty will sell for as much in the
market as the one hundred would, where is the injury to him ? None,
unless he intends to consume the whole himself ; in that case, his consump¬
tion will, of course, be diminished. But, the South does not consume the
whole. The eighiy bales go to market, and, upon the Senator's own show¬
ing, are worth as much as the one hundred would have been.
[Mr. McDuffie : We consume more than we import.]
That may be so. So does every other section of the country. The
foreign imports entering into the general consumption of the country, are a
mere fraction of the whole. Do not the North and the West consume
more than they import, and far beyond the value of all their exports ? If
any such test as this be applied, it will be found that the South pays much
less than its proportion of the revenue.
The honorable Senator has said, that the imports, which are the returns
of our exports, are as really and truly the products of American labor, as
the same amount and description of articles which are manufactured in
this country—and hence, that it is altogether a fallacious idea, that there
is any competition between American labor and foreign labor in the pro¬
duction of them. There can be, he says, no competition between the
manufacturers of Manchester and the manufacturers of Lowell. The
competition takes place only when the foreign fabric has become Ameri¬
can property by being exchanged for American productions, and that it is
a competition entirely between American labor employed in manu¬
factures and American labor employed in planting—between one kind of
industry and another kind. This is more specious than solid. In order to
obtain eighty bales of foreign merchandise, the honorable Senator is obliged
to employ a considerable amount of foreign labor. He hires and pays the
laborers of another country, instead of his own. It is true they take the
fruits of his industry, which they want, in exchange. The operation is
highly beneficial to them. But if he would obtain the same amount of
American productions, in exchange for the fruits of his industry—if he
would hire and pay American laborers for the same work, would he not
benefit them instead of the foreigner? Is not the competition really be¬
tween the manufacturers of Lowell and the manufacturers of Manchester,
who shall do the labor which is required, and who shall be paid for it ?
If I employ a tailor in London to make my coat, or a boot maker in Paris
to make my boots, instead of the mechanics of my own village, do I not#
really and truly give them employment in preference to my neighbors ?
Do they not feel the inconveniences of that preference ? I may answer
them indeed, as the honorable Senator has answered—these clothes and
boots are my own—the fruit of my own industry. They are really and
truly- American productions, because they have been received in exchange
for American productions—there is no competition, therefore, between you
and the foreign mechanic. It is between you and me. They would be
quite likely to reply to this: we do not dispute that the coat and
the boots are your own property, but you hired strangers to make
them instead of us. You paid them in articles which we needed
for ourselves and our families, and should have been glad to have obtained
in exchange for our work—we wanted the employment and the profits of
it, but you have given it to others, and notwithstanding all you say, we
cannot help feeling that it is foreign labor, and not American, which has
come in competition with our own. I think, Mr. President, they would
have rather the best of the argument.
The honorable Senator, I will suppose, sends abroad one hundred bales
of cotton to be manufactured, and the value of it is to be returned in the
fabric which is made from it. Is he aware of the immense amount of hu¬
man labor which must be employed, before it is returned in the finished
form ? It is increased in value ten fold, twenty fold, and in some instan¬
ces one hundred fold or more. Now, if the Senator, instead of sending it
3
34
in the raw state, had employed the laborers in his neighborhood in advanc¬
ing it only one stage in this process of increase—if he had hired it spun
into yarn, and exported in that state, lie would have added greatly to its
value—he would have incorporated with the value of the raw material,
the value of the labor of hundreds of his neighbors, giving them employ¬
ment, remunerating them for their labor, enabling them to buy and con¬
sume more and better, instead of bestowing these advantages upon the la¬
borers of other nations, Between whom is thq competition ? Is it not be¬
tween the spinners in South Carolina, and the spinners in Manchester ?
He exports the raw material, the very smallest part of the value of the
manufactured article. It is returned, increased in value ten fold. His la¬
bor is but one-tenth, and foreign labor nine-tenths of its present value. If the
work had been done at home instead of abroad, the whole would have
been the produce of American labor, American spinning wheels, Ameri¬
can shuttles and looms, and the whole profit would have gone into Ameri¬
can pockets. Pray where is the competition ? Take another illustration.
Suppose I am residing upon a farm. In order to gather my crops, I want
to employ ten laborers in addition to those I have already. I can obtain
them among my neighbors,01* I can obtain them abroad. I choose to em¬
ploy the foreigners.
[Mr. McDuffie : Because you get them at half price.]
Not so. The matter of price I have already considered. I employ the
foreigners, pay them their wages,.which they carry home to expend in ad¬
vancing their comforts. In the mean time, my neighbors have been idle.
They have earned nothing; and if they complain to me, I say to them,
there has been no competition between your labor and foreign labor. These
crops are my property, paid for by my industry, and the only competition
is between you and me. If the foreigners have carried off my money, I
have got their labor in exchange. I doubt whether they would be per¬
fectly satisfied, that they were just as well off as if they had done the la-
Jror, and obtained the money, or that they would believe there was no com¬
petition when they were starving, and the foreigner was feasting. If there
be no competition, why are foreign nations so anxious to do our work ? Is
it not because it is valuable to them ? Does it not add to the comforts, the
advantages, the gains of their laborers, and the wealth of the nation? But
a word or two more in regard to the effect of the act of 1842 011 the price of
cotton. How does that act diminish the demand for this staple, or, what is
the same thing, the consumption of cotton fabrics in all the countries of
the world ? The price of cotton, like every thing else, is governed by the
demand which exists for the manufactured article, and the supply of the
raw material. So far as the policy of that act promotes our own indus¬
try, and rewards our own laborers, it adds to their ability to consume, as I
have already shown, and a portion of this increased capacity will be ex¬
ercised in the consumption of cotton. This country consumes already, I
think, about one-quarter of all the production of the planting States—or
nearly so. The annual product is about two millions of bales.
[Mr. Sevier said, sometimes it has been 2,400,000 bales.]
Perhaps so. The average, however, of a few years past, is not far from
two millions. The exports last year were 1,600,000 bales. If the Sena¬
tor from Arkansas is right as to the quantity produced, it would leave for
home consumption 800,000 bales, which is not probable. We probably
consume from 400,000 to 500,000 bales—from one-fifth to one-quarter
of the whole product. Now, the Senator from South Carolina proposes,
instead of retaining this quantity to be manufactured here, to send it
35
abroad, to Liverpool and Manchester. What is to be the effect on prices
there ? Does he not see that an export of 1,600,000 bales has very fully
supplied, if not over supplied, the foreign demand ? Any considerable
addition to that supply must inevitably reduce the price, unless the in¬
creased demand for the manufactured article keep pace with the supply.
What has reduced the price in Liverpool so low at the last dates, but an over
supply, and the expectation of a large crop in this country, yet to be receiv¬
ed there ? The price in New York is quite as high, and I believe higher, in
fact, than it was in Liverpool at the last dates from England.
Now, although they anticipated a crop of 1,800,000 bales only, yet they
did not expect much increase in the price, from the fact that so large a
supply was still on hand, equal to near four months' consumption. The
stock in Liverpool in December, was 450,000 bales, against 230,000 bales,
the corresponding period of the preceding year. If the honorable Senator
wishes to raise the price of cotton in Europe, the best mode of doing so
is to keep back a portion of the crops, instead of sending more. Let
him diminish the supply there, and he will do something towards en¬
hancing the price. But if the honorable Senator should be successful, if
•the price of cotton could be enhanced to what it was in 1835 and 1836,
how is the South to be permanently benefited ? What will be the final
result ? In the first place, production would be largely stimulated; price
of lands and laborers would rise, as well as the prices of every thing else
necessary in the cultivation of cotton. The planter might obtain more, but
he would be compelled to pay more. He would buy his lands and negroes at
greatly augmented prices. The excessive production would soon over sup ¬
ply the wants of the world, and rapid decline will be inevitable ; and
while his productions are thus falling, he will be obliged to retain his lands
and slaves at the aggravated price which he paid for them. His capital
remains fixed. There can be no permanent benefit or security in increas¬
ing the price of cotton, unless at the same time you can increase the de¬
mand and consumption of the fabrics made from it; for unless these be in¬
creased, any advance in it will be temporary, and will be followed by a
disastrous decline.
The honofable Senator says that all the South desires in this matter is,'
to be let alone ; to be allowed to manage their own affairs, in their own
way ; to seek their natural markets, and carry on their natural trade, un¬
obstructed. However desirable that may be to the South, whether fortu¬
nately or unfortunately for her, it cannot be done. That is not the basis
upon which South Carolina, arid the other States composing this Union,
erected this General Government as one Government, and established this
Constitution as one Constitution, for the whole. South Carolina has shar¬
ed largely in the securities of this Constitution, and participated in no
small degree in shaping the policy which the Government has pursued.
Sir, it is too late now to repine; she cannot be let alone, to pursue her
own separate policy, in relation to matters which she has confided to the Gen¬
eral Government. The very object and purpose of forming this Constitu¬
tion was, that no State should be left alone to pursue a system of meas¬
ures injurious to other States. She came into the Union for weal or for
woe. She came into it to share in the administration of the Government
of the whole Union. She has that right; but she must submit to the re¬
straint, voluntarily assumed, as others submit,also, for the common good. The
interests of the whole are leagued ; and the stability, the happiness, and the
renown of each are interwoven with those of the others. The establishment
of this Government was with a view to prevent the very thing which the
Senator sayshe seeks to accomplish. Itwas to preventthat State,oranyother
36
State, from admitting foreign commodities on terms different from the other
States. It was to establish one uniform policy, one system, one regulation of
trade, binding on the whole. The want of this general controlling power, had
been attended with the most mischievous consequences. Therefore it
was, sir, that no State was to be left alone, as the honorable Senator now
desires. Great Britain, at that day, was not regarded as the natural mar¬
ket of South Carolina. A very different feeling then existed in the bosoms of
her patriotic citizens—a feeling of union and attachment towards their
brethren of other sections—fellow-laborers and fellow-sufferers with them
in the great cause of freedom and independence.
No, sir; if South Carolina, and the other planting States,are laboring under
oppression and grievances, there are abundant causes for it independent of
the act of 1842, or the policy of protection, upon which it is supposed to be
founded. I have already alluded to one of them—the over-production of
cotton. That was occasioned, in a great degree, by the very state of things
which the honorable Senator wants to bring about again—a large increase in
its price. New and more fertile lands were brought into cultivation, and
sold for enormous prices. Speculation ran high ; credit was stretched to
the utmost. The production of cotton was immensely increased. This,
was a state of things which could not last; and in calmly surveying the
wrecks which it left behind, who can perceive that the Soiith has been, in
the smallest degree, benefited by the high prices which cotton attained in
those years of enormous speculation ? Who does not see that it is infi¬
nitely worse off? But, besides this cause, which applies to the South, gen¬
erally, South Carolina, and the older of the cotton-growing regions, labor
under another grievance peculiar to themselves; and that is, that they
cannot come in competition, in growing cotton, with the more productive
and fertile soils of Alabama and Mississippi. These latter States, by reason
of fresher fields, and a more genial climate, can raise this great staple very
considerably cheaper than South Carolina orGeorgiacan,andof course South
Carolina and Georgia must sell their productions, not at their own cost,
but at the cost of growing them in more favored spots. At the present prices
of cotton, Alabama and Mississippi would be most prosperous and flour¬
ishing States, if it were not for the heavy indebtedness whicfuthey incurred
for lands and labor during the period of excessive prices in 1835 and 1836.
If they had obtained their lands and laborers at anything like reasona¬
ble rates, compared with present prices, they would now be accumulating
' wealth, even when South Carolina and the older States are scarcely sus¬
taining themselves. And how far is this process of increasing the produc¬
tion to be carried ? What new regions are to be opened for its cultivation ?
If the United States are to stretch their boundaries, not only to the Pacific,
but, for any thing I know, to the equator, in this growing lust for domin¬
ion and territory, what boundless regions for the growth of cotton will be
opened ? Does South Carolina expect then to be able to compete with these
more fertile fields ? No, sir ; she will be obliged to do what the Senator sup¬
poses she may soon be driven to do from other causes—to become a manu¬
facturing State herself. Her planters will be compelled to emigrate to more
productive soils, or to apply their labor to other and better pursuits. They
can no more raise cotton in competition with their Southern neighbors, than
the Northern States can now raise it in competition with them. These, sir,
are the true causes of the depression of industry in South Carolina, if in¬
dustry is depressed there, as the honorable Senator affirms. Any thing
which he can do to stimulate the production of more cotton, will only add
to the depression which it now suffers.
37
The honorable Senator complains of the act of 1S42, as a violation of the
" compromise" act. What is the " compromise.'''' act ? Is there any
law on the statute book by that title ? Is there any law purporting
to be a law of compromise ? None, whatever. The word occurs in
no act whatever. Tl(e law referred to, is precisely like any other,
and every other enacted by Congress, to be amended, repealed, or modi¬
fied, whenever it becomes necessary, from a proper regard to public inter¬
est, to repeal, modify, or amend it. Now, sir, what was the last Congress to
do ? -What ought it to have done ? It found the revenue of the country
far short of its expenditures, and rapidly declining—public credit' prostrate—
business every where at a stand—distress spreading far and wide—and
general consternation pervading the community. What were we to do ?
Something was imperiously required of us. Were we to stop 011 the very
werge of national ruin? Wereweto seeallthe interestsof thecountry perilled,
rather than to touch a law enacted in 1832, (which had been the cause, as
we believed, of much of the mischief,) because it had been denominated
a compromise law ? No, sir; it was the duty of Congress, in some way,
to accomplish what has, in fact, been accomplished. Whether it is attri¬
butable to the act of 1842 or not, the revenue of the Government has been
restored—commerce has revived—public credit has been placed on a firm
foundation—the value of labor and of property has been enhanced—confi¬
dence prevails—and the cloud of dismay which overshadowed the land, has
been dispersed. These things have been done, and done in some way since the
act of 1842 passed. We attribute it mainly to the passage of that act. We
predicted such would be the consequences. We enacted the law with a
view to such results. And we now say,leave it undisturbed—let it work out
its full effects—test it by still further experience, agd if it fail to justify our
confident anticipations, it will be early enough to repeal it when that fail¬
ure shall become manifest.
The honorable Senator from South Carolina admonishes the manufac¬
turers not to pursue this policy too far. They will become, he says, the vic¬
tims of their own destructive system if they persevere 111 it any longer. He
addresses himself to the manufacturers. He supposes that they have had
the adroitness to force this measure upon Congress—that they dictated the
provisions of the act. No, sir; no such thing. It was forced upon us by
the prostrate condition of the country—by the ruin of the public credit—by
the bankruptcy of the Treasury. The manufacturers indeed ! they re¬
sponsible for the monstrous features of the bill—for the ingenuity of the
minimum principle! That principle, if I recollect aright, was first introduced
in the act of 1816, which passed under the lead of the late colleague of the
honorable Senator, (Mr. Calhoun,) and as I have always supposed was in
no small degree attributable to his agency. But the honorable Senator
says it is time this question was settled, and he admonishes the manufac¬
turers not to press it any further. Sir, they wish it settled as much as the
Senator or any body else can. They suppose it is settled. Who disturbs
it? Who renews agitation ? It is settled, and it will remain settled if the
honorable Senator and those who act with him will allow it to remain. If
he and they will allow it the benefit of two or three years' experience, he
will find it settled to general acceptance and satisfaction. Prove it, but do
not obstruct it. Look to results. Look to experience. If it be not settled
now, let it be settled by the new lights to be gained from these sources. It
can never be settled by agitation—by controversy—by theory; but by facts—
by experience—by knowledge.
The honorable Senator inquires what New England will do, if South
38
Carolina or the South should become manufacturing States, and should re¬
fuse to sell us their cotton ? I doubt whether South Carolina will ever
find it for her interest to refuse selling her cotton to any body who will pay
for it, (and I believe New England has hitherto contrived to do that;) she
will probably always be willing to sell it where she finds the readiest market
and best price. But, what will New England do ? Why, sir, she will do
the best she can. She has been able so far to meet all the difficulties which
have beset her, and to surmount them. New England, sir, had acquired
some little place among the nations of the earth, a great while before South
Carolina raised one pound of cotton. She had some population in 1776,
and some wealth. She had commerce and navigation of no inconsiderable
extent, which drew from one of the most elegant and philosophical states¬
man of Great Britain, a high and deserved eulogium. She began her navi¬
gation at a very early period. It was not twenty years from the landing
of the pilgrims on the rock of Plymouth, notwithstanding all the disas¬
ters attending their settlement, before that infant colony had forty sail of
vessels afloat. There was no cotton in South Carolina then. New Eng¬
land increased in population and wealth without manufacturing the cotton
of South Carolina, and was-able not only to sustain herself, but to fight
the battles of the mother country against her ancient enemy, and to con¬
quer for her no inconsiderable possessions on this continent. The blood of
New England was poured out on the heights of Mount Abraham, and on
many a battle field besides, in the war of 1756, between France and Eng¬
land. Considering all that she did in her infancy, and contrasting her ability
now in her maturity, I do not know but she might survive the great calamity
which the Senator supposes would overtake her, if South Carolina should
become a rival in manufacturing.
Sir, I believe it would add considerably to the wealth and prosperity of
New England, it by manufacturing or by any other means the prosperity
and population of South Carolina could be increased. If you can add to
her capacity of producing cotton the capacity of manufacturing it; you
add to her population, and thereby to her ability to become consumers of
the productions of the North. In that way you add to the prosperity of
New England. The more one is advanced, the more the 6ther will be
advanced. 1 have seen the cotton manufactures of Petersburg, in Vir¬
ginia, sold in Boston, and even in the village in which 1 reside. New Eng¬
land merchants buy them, and New England vessels bring them to us.
Why should I object to this? Why should New England object? Does
it not give business to those New England people who buy and transport
and sell them? Is it not the means of profit and gain to those who deal
in them? I shall be very glad to see more of this kind of intercourse.
My honorable friend before me (Mr. Bates) bought and used last year on
his farm, salt made in Ohio. It came in competition"with Massachusetts
salt—but what of that ? The purchase, transport, and sale of it, employed
many persons. It was paid for by some other New England production.
And if it did exclude so much of domestic salt, it opened a market for
.something else which New England could furnish, and which Ohio wanted.
The Senator indulges in a prophetic spirit. He says he has no doubt
that within five years the great West will join with him in repudiating this
tariff policy, and advocating that of free trade, which he so zealously rec¬
ommends. If we do not forget these theories and prophecies before that
time, we shall probably see how far they will be realized. It is not always
wise or prudent to venture upon prophecies. The honorable Senator,
and those who have hitherto opposed the protective system, have not at all
times found their predictions verified. But, hazardous as it is, I will ven-
39
Hue to predict, in my turn, that if he and I shall live to the common age of
man, and this policy is allowed to remain a few years undisturbed, he and
I will live long enough to see, not the great West repudiating and abandon¬
ing it, but the South itself upholding and supporting it. The people of the
South, as they experience more and more of its beneficial effects, will be¬
come relaxed in their hostility to it, and will finally, and at no distant day,
be among the firmest supporters of a system, under which they will see
their country advancing in wealth, and happiness, and power. No, sir ;
the doctrines which the honorable Senator has advocated with so much
sincerity, and so much ability, can have no permanent abiding place in the
South, any more than in any other section of the country. They have
grown up in this generation, and they will not survive it.
The honorable Senator has spoken several times of England as the
" natural market" for Southern productions. What makes it a natural
market ? What is meant by the term ? England is a great manufactur¬
ing nation, and has been for a long period. She was made so by the skill
of her people, and the wisdom of her Government, and not from any natu¬
ral causes. Cotton in this country is the production of less than half a
century; and the market for it, is precisely where the enterprise, ingenuity
and skill of men lead them to its manufacture. If Arkwright and the other
inventors of machinery had been born in Tunis instead Great Britain, and
the Government, and the people of Tunis had been wise enough and in¬
telligent enough to have turned these improvements to account, Tunis
might have been the manufacturer of cottons for the world, and then Tu¬
nis would have been the natural market of the South. No, sir; a market
for raw material is very much an artificial thing. It is where skill and
capacity lead to its manufacture—where the fosterftg care of Government
secures to the people the rewards of the labor which they employ in it.
Manchester and Liverpool are no more natural markets, than are Lowell
and Waltham, and the time may come when these latter will consume
more of the products of the South than the former.
But I see that I am wearying the Senate as well as myself. It was my
purpose, before concluding these remarks, to examine somewhat more mi¬
nutely the reply which the honorable Senator made to the arguments
in favor of the policy, upon which he supposed its friends most generally
rely. While he stated them briefly, and, with a single exception, perhaps,
fairly, as ihey are used by its advocates, I must say, I did not think the
honorable Senator very successful in his attempt to refute them. To re¬
state them, and to reply to the honorable Senator's attempted refutation of
them, would require more than the yet unexpired hours of this afternoon,
and I shall leave it to other gentlemen, and to another occasion, regret¬
ting that I have been obliged to occupy so much of the time of the Senate,
in a discussion which I regard as wholly-premature.
I do not feel the slightest apprehension that the bill of the honorable
Senator will become a law, or could obtain a respectable vote in either
House of Congress. I do not apprehend any change in our policy, at this
or the ensuing session of Congress, nor indeed until the operation of the
act shall produce a redundant revenue. At the same time, I am ready to
admit, that there are some clauses, some particular portions of it, that
I would readily concur in modifying, if it could be done without opening
the whole subject, and exposing the whole act to invasion. But if, as the
Senator supposes, the operation of the act will be to give an inadequate rev¬
enue—if it prove destructive to commerce—if it plainly appear to operate
so grievously—so oppresively—so unjustly on any section of the coun-
40
try as the honorable Senator supposes it does, I shall not be one to stand
here to uphold it, when I see such disastrous consequences. No, sir, not I.
But such cannot be its operation. All I ask of Congress, is to allow it to
be tested by experience—to refrain from arresting its progress—to cease
these agitations and exciterpents, which always attend the discussion of to¬
pics so important to the business of the country. And as I have always said,
when it has had a fair trial—when our experience is full—when the coun¬
try shall be found rising from all its embarrassments—and the South itself
partaking of the general prosperity—when all this is accomplished, I have
no belief that any serious attempt will be made any where to uproot a sys¬
tem which has produced so much good. Public men, I know, can some¬
times bring about the results they predict. If honorable gentlemen who
oppose this system, continue their attacks upon it—if the public mind is to
be kept in perpetual agitation—if the business of the country is to be al¬
ways the sport of legislative change, and experiment, commerce may de¬
cline—the revenue may fall off, and general distress may again prevail.
Such consequences, however, must not be charged to the adoption of the
act of 1S42. They will be the results, not of adhering to it, but of repudi¬
ating it—not of stability, but of vacillation—not of wisdom* but of folly.
DISCUSSION ON THE TARIFF.
REPLY
#>V
MR. EVANS, OF MAINE,
TO
MR. McDUFFIE'S SECOND SPEECH ON THE TARIFF.
*
siLirsns*
IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATUS,
February S and 7, I8Ai.
WASHINGTON:
YRIBTXD II GALIS ill) SS4T0JB.
1S44.
/
SPEECH.
Mr. EVANS said, that so many days had elapsed since the Senator
from South Carolina (Mr. McDuffie ) addressed the Senate for the second'
time upon the subject which was again under consideration, that the in¬
terest excited by that occasion had quite passed away, and he almost re¬
gretted that he did not forego the privilege of a reply, and permit the ques¬
tion to be taken and the whole matter disposed of, at the conclusion of
that Senator's remarks. He had already more than once inquired for
what purpose this debate was to be continued ? Did the honorable Sen¬
ator expect that the bill which he had brought in. or any which he propos¬
ed to substitute for it, would come to a vote in this body ? He imagined
the Senator had no such expectation, and still less could he expect that it
would become a law. Yet the Senator and his friends upon the other side
seemed exceedingly anxious to prolong debate. Discussion it seems is to
be kept up merely for the sake of discussion. Is it for the purpose of ef¬
fect elsewhere ? Is it designed to produce an impression upon public
opinion ? Is it for the sake of giving advice and instruction to the people,
to convince them of the oppressions under which they labor—to reason
them into a sense of evils which afflict them ? This, it appears to me,
(said Mr. E.,) is a very unnecessary and uncalled for effort on the part of
Congress. If the people really labor under any oppression or injustice ;
if their interests—their business—their prosperity, is affected injuriously
by existing laws, they are certainly sagacious enough to discover it, and
sensitive enough in every thing which pertains to their welfare, to make
it known, without waiting to be convinced of the reality of their sufferings
by discussions, however learned or elaborate, of " elementary principles,"
or of contested doctrines of political economy. They do not need the tes¬
timony of Adam Smith nor of any of his disciples, to prove to them whe¬
ther their affairs are prosperous or otherwise ; and if they do not discover
that they are grievously oppressed in any other manner than by what the
Senator calls " established truths in political economy," it is very much to
be questioned whether they will ever make the discovery at all. Now,
sir, with all deference, I submit whether it will not be quite early enough
for us to enter upon matters of such magnitude as we are now called upon
to consider with a view to alleviate pressing evils, when we hear proof of
the actual, not theoretical', existence of such evils, when the sufferers
themselves appeal to us for relief? But when we have nothing but asser¬
tion without proof—theory without fact—when we have no evidence of
popular discontents fomented by oppression and injustice—no complaints—
is it not rather too much to assume the existence of such evils, upon the
authority of any " elementary principles," from whatever source derived,
and by whatever names of authority sanctioned ? Are we, under such
4
■circumstances, performing the proper functions of legislation, in efforts to
impress the public mind with a sense of injustice and oppression—which
have no existence, and which, if they did exist, would be discovered much
more promptly by the experience and the common sense of the people
themselves, than by any argumentations which we can address to them?
If, however, it is deemed suitable,by Senators upon the other side, to pro¬
long this discussion, with a view to enlighten the country to a sense of the
wrongs which alllict it, to the country we will go, and we abide its ulti¬
mate decision, with the most unfaltering confidence.
When 1 had the honor to address the Senate, some days ago, upon this
subject, I made a very casual reference to the philosophy of Lord Bacon,
and remarked that it seemed to me the honorable Senator's mode of con¬
ducting the argument partook more of the exploded system of the school¬
men and sophists who preceded that philosopher, than it did of the new
and now universally established system, which is generally supposed to
have been the fruits of his discovery. 1 had no idea that a passing re¬
mark, thus made, would give occasion for so extended a notice as the
honorable Senator has bestowed upon it. He supposes that I omitted to ex¬
plain what were the principles of philosophical reasoning disclosed by
Lord Bacon ; the chief value of which he considers to be the establish¬
ment of certain great and fundamental laws, which are ever after to be as¬
sumed as unquestionable, in all investigations of science or art. The
Senator has remarked also that I omitted to state that the most successful
application of the inductive process of reasoning to the affairs of life, was
made by a distinguished philosopher of Scotland, Adam Smith, some 70
years ago, to the very science of political economy, which we are now
considering. That, by this process, he established certain fundamental
laws—certain elementary principles, which were not only true then, but
which are to remain true and unquestioned, through all changes of human
affairs—through all the revolutions in business—trade—commerce—agri¬
culture, occasioned by discoveries and improvements in arts and science,
in law, and government, whatever may be the experience of the world, or
of nations, or however they may be refuted by the plainest evidence of
our senses. The Senator further complains that I did not myself follow
the principles of reasoning which I commended to him. Now, sir, to all
this I have only to say that I did state, briefly to be sure, the principal dif¬
ference between the old philosophy and the new. I said that the old was
founded on theories and speculations ; the new, on facts, observations, and
experience. The old rested on the authority and the teachings of sophists
and schoolmen, and speculative projectors—the new, on plain, palpable,
daily occurring events, speaking to the senses and the judgments of men.
The former endeavored to promulgate for truth their own pre-conceived
opinions—dogmas—assertions ; the latter discovered it by following the
guide of experience and observation. Whether the Senator or myself has
most closely followed this process of reasoning, will appear from a brief
reference to the subjects discussed, and the manner in which they were
treated.
The Senator commenced his first address with a vehement denunciation
of the act of 1842. He denominated it a monster, with fraud and decep¬
tion stamped upon its face. This was the general charge. But he de-
5
scended to specifications. He asserted : 1st. That it was destructive to the
revenue of the country, exposing the Treasury to embarrassment and in¬
solvency. 2d. That it was destructive to the commerce of the country,one-
half of which had already sunk under its operation, and the other half was
doomed speedily to follow. 3d. That it imposed great and onerous burdens
upon the people of the United States by enhancing the cost of all manufac¬
tured and imported commodities of general consumption. 4th. That it ope¬
rated with peculiar oppression and injustice upon the planting section of the
country, by depressing the price of their principal articles of production,
and by increasing the price of every thing which they were obliged to
purchase. These were the main grounds of complaint against the law en-,
acted in 1842, and against the principle of piotection, upon which it was
supposed to rest. These were the topics to be discussed. And how did
the Senator make good his charge and his several specifications? By
facts? By experience ? Did he refer to the Treasury statements to as¬
certain whether the revenue had actually declined—whether one-half of
the foreign commerce had ceased? No, sir, not at all. He relied upon
the authority of Adam Smith—upon theories of political economy which
he says are "fundamental laws," never questioned and never to be ques¬
tioned. The matters in dispute between us ar c matters of fact. Has the
revenue declined ? Has commerce ceased ? All the theories and all the
fundamental laws in the world, cannot answer these questions; but plain
facts, accessible to every one of us, can and do answer them. I referred
to the Treasury statistics, showing, beyond all controversy or doubt, that
the revenue had actually increased, and is. still rapidly increasing, under
the operations of the act of 1842. Of consequence, commerce, from which
the revenue is derived, has increased and is increasing. So as to prices.
In the Senator's theory, they have risen. In point of fact, they have
fallen. I speak of prices of protected articles of general consumption. Not
a single instance has been adduced where any considerable advance has
taken place : but according to "fundamental laws"—"elementary princi¬
ples," such an advance ought to have taken place, and therefore the act
of 1842 is clearly onerous and oppressive. Then, as to the great staples of
Southern production. The complaint was, that they had declined in price,
inconsequence of that act. I proved, by a comparison of present prices
with those of last year at this time, that both cotton and tobacco had con¬
siderably advanced, and of course that no such oppression had been ex¬
perienced, as the Senator assumed to have been felt. These were the
matters in controversy, and I submit whether the Senator has maintained
or attempted to maintain a single one of his charges by reference to au¬
thentic, existing facts, by proofs, by experience ; or whether he has not
contented himself by positive assertions, resting upon theories, and dog¬
mas of political economists, just as the disciples of the ancient philosophy
maintained their creeds, upon what they deemed " fundamental laws," and
" elementary principles ?" The act ot 1842, which has proved so benefi¬
cial to all interests of the country, is not, 1 trust, to be overthrown or sha¬
ken by any such process of reasoning as the Senator has applied to it.
The truth is, and every man who will open his eyes cannot but see it,
that the country is recovering itself with great and astonishing rapidity
from the depression into which it had sunk at the expiration o{ the period
6
limited in the compromise act for the continuance of the duties which af¬
forded any beneficial protection. The revenue is improved, and is likely
to be adequate to all our wants, and to the extinguishment of the public
debt, long before it becomes payable. Public credit is restored, and
stands on a firm foundation. Business, in every branch, every department,
every section, is reviving. Confidence has returned, and men look for¬
ward with cheerfulness, and labor goes to its work with a lighter heart,
and a surer reward. These are things open to our senses, seen by our
eyes, heard with our ears, not to be denied, not to be disguised. To
these proofs I appeal, for an answer to each and all of the Senator's
charges and specifications, and for a complete vindication of the act which
he has so repeatedly and vehemently denounced as the author of unnum¬
bered woes. And how does the Senator deal with these undeniable evi¬
dences of public prosperity ? While he cannot and does not deny their
existence, he says, they are not in consequence of the act, but in spite of
it. Events which are nearly connected in point of time are not necessa¬
rily connected as cause and effect. Prosperity has returned, he admits,
since the passage of the act, but not in consequence of it. Now, sir, I
was not, in the first instance, discussing the causes of that returning pros¬
perity. I was replying to the Senator's assertions, that commerce and
revenue had declined—prices of manufactured articles enhanced, and of
the productions of the South diminished. It was to disprove these allega¬
tions, that I introduced the pi oofs, and not mainly with a view to attribute
the improved condition of affairs to the enactment of that law. But I had
no doubt then, and I have none now, that it is mainly attributable to that
act. I have no sort of doubt that there is a nearer connexion than one
merely of time, between the re-establishment of the policy of protection,
and the general advancement in the business of the country. And I ask
whether we have not a perfect right to claim this result as a fair and legit¬
imate result from that act? Did we not predict in advance that such
would be the consequence? Did we not advocate and urge the passage
of that law, expressly for the purpose of accomplishing what in fact has
been accomplished—for the supply of revenue—for the restoration of pub¬
lic credit—for the re-invigoration of commerce as well as of manufactures ?
Did we not appeal to past experience to demonstrate that these would be
the certain and beneficial results ? While, on the other hand, did not the
opponents of the measure predict directly the opposite results—diminished
revenue, decaying commerce, oppressive prices, reduced value of the
, great staples of export ? They told us these would be the results of pass¬
ing the bill, while prosperity would return if we would remain inactive.
We followed our own opinions ; and now, when all our expectations have
been realized, when our predictions have been fulfilled, when theirs have
been signally disappointed, they coolly tell us, Oh, all this would have
happened without your law. flow do they know that ? We trace an im¬
mediate connexion between the law and the revival of business. We
saw labor and industry forthwith finding employment—artisans and me¬
chanics called into active employment—general confidence inspired, pro¬
fessedly and avowedly in consequence of the action of Congress. Are we
not justified, then, in our convictions that our returning prosperity dates
tfrom the passage of that law ? But we rest not upon our experience un-
7
der that act alone. We refer to our repeated and renewed experience under
every previous act, from the origin of the Government to this hour, which
has been founded on protective principles.
I ask the honorable Senator whether, in every discussion which the pro¬
tective policy has undergone, from 1816 down to this time, it has not uni¬
formly been vindicated upon the grounds which we stand upon to-day?
That it would not prove ruinous to the revenue, nor to commerce, nor add
to prices, nor impair the demands of foreign nations for the great articles
of our exports ? These have been the grounds upon which the policy has
been advocated. How has it been resisted ? Precisely as it has been re¬
sisted now, by the Senator from South Carolina. Speech upon speech
has been made, memorial after memorial presented, prediction multiplied
upon prediction, all to the end, that direct taxation would be rendered ne¬
cessary to supply revenue—that our ships would rot at the wharves for
want of employment, and that the poor and the laboring men would
be grievously taxed and oppressed by excessive prices. What has been
the result—the uniform, constant, invariable result ? Why, sir, that not
one of these evils has been experienced. The revenue, under the high¬
est duties, has been not merely abundant, but excessive—far beyond the
wants of the Treasury. Commerce has largely increased. Prices of alt
the articles fabricated in this country, generally and gradually declined,,
under the operation of protective laws. The demand for the great staple
of Southern production has not only not been impaired, but has immensely
» increased, and the production of it has been immensely enhancedj The
country has advanced in all its great interests with a rapidity which al¬
most startles belief. And all this during the period of the highest duties.
In striking but just contrast and contradiction to all the anticipations and
predictions of the opponents of this policy, I heard, a year or two ago, a
distinguished Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Calhoun) attribute all
the evils which have come upon the country since 1836—'37, to the enor¬
mous accumulation of revenue, and the vast expansion given to business,
in consequence of the act of 1828, which has most unjustly been called the
" bill of abominations." That was a title given to it in advance, by its en¬
emies, It was a bill of abominations in their estimation, because it
was to produce all the disastrous effects upon revenue and commerce,
which had been predicted. It proved, in the opinion of the Sen¬
ator I have alluded to, a bill of abominations, because it produced direct¬
ly the opposite effects—because, instead of destroying revenue, it yielded
a most inconvenient accumulation—because, instead of destroying com¬
merce, it stimulated it to an undue extension, infecting the currency, cre¬
ating fictitious credit, and producing a general system of over-trading and
over-producing. It produced just that state of things which the retiring
President had in view, on the 4th March, 1837, when he announced that
he left this great country " prosperous and happy." I am very far from
concurring in the views which the Senator from South Carolina (Mr.
Calhoun) then presented. On the contrary, I think the evils of which he
complained had their origin in wholly different causes; but I refer to his
opinions, expressed at that time, as a clear admission that none of the con¬
sequences anticipated by him and his friends, the opponents of the act of
1828, were realized. Commerce increased, wealth increased, manufac-
8
tures increased, internal communications and improvements greatly in¬
creased, and general prosperity was every where exhibited.
Now, sir, with all this experience fresh in our recollection, with such
results predicted on the one hand, and denied on the other, I ask if we
are not justified in the conclusion, upon the principles of inductive philos¬
ophy, that these are really and truly the consequences of the policy
which they so immediately and so uniformly follow—especially when
directly the opposite results have uniformly attended the opposite policy ?
What was the condition of the country prior to (he enactment of the tariff
of 1824, which may be regarded as the first really efficient measure of
protection adopted by the Government? The act of 1789 wasdeelared on
the face of it to be a measure designed, among other things, "for the en¬
couragement and protection of manufactures." The duties were gener¬
ally low, but still were high enough in the then state of things for some
protection. The condition of the world for a quarter of a century rendered
the prosecution of commerce more important to us, than that of manufac¬
tures. All the capital of the country, of which we had very little compar¬
ed with the present time, was devoted to commerce, and manufactures
were deemed of secondary importance. After the peace, the act of 1816
was passed; but, although designed for efficient protection, it afforded very
little, except to coarse cottons. Notwithstanding very heavy importations
of foreign merchandise for some years afterwards, the revenue was not
adequate to the wants of the Government. Commerce languished—man¬
ufactures declined—real estate fell every where—money was borrowed
for the ordinary support of Government, in a time of peace, and signs of
general distress and alarm peryaded the country. After two or three
years' effort, the act of 1824 was passed, giving to most branches of indus-
try efficient protection. The country prospered. It prospered still more
under the act of 1828. Then came the " compromise " act of 1832, which
provided for a gradual reduction of duties. The minimum rate, however,
was not reached until June, 1842. The rate during the years 1839, 1S40,
and 1841, was in several respects, not in all instances, too low for protec¬
tion. What was the state of things in these years, and especially in 1842,
when the duties had fallen to the lowest point ? The revenue fell short
of the expenditures several millions annually. Business was suspended.
Commerce declined. The wages of labor were reduced, and laborers
were without employment. Precisely such a state of things as existed
prior to the adoption of the Constitution and the enactment of the first law
on the subject of duties, which was also designed lor the " encourage¬
ment and protection of manufactures"—and such also as existed prior to
the act of 1824. Take the three periods of low duties, prior to the tariff
of 1789, of 1824, and of 1842, and we find the same general features of
stagnation, decline, and embarrassment, in the affairs of the country ; and
we find, moreover, improvement and advancement uniformly following
the adoption of measures calculated and intended to protect the labor and
industry and productions of our people. What more legitimate inference,
then, can be drawn, than that these beneficial results, this steady prosper¬
ity constantly succeeding the enactment of protective laws, are truly the
consequences' of such laws ? The Senator from South Carolina, I know,
controverts these Conclusions. They do not accord with his theory. They
9
are not reconcilable with the " fundamental laws" of national wealth, cre¬
ated and promulgated by Adam Smith, and which are therefore fixed, es¬
tablished, incontrovertible. 1 am well aware, sir, that in the exact
sciences, in mathematics, geometry, &e., truths once established are (ruths
forever, and may always be assumed in all future reasoning. They do
not require to be proved anew, whenever fresh occasion to use them
arises. No experience, no researches, no discovery, can prove that the
three angles of a triangle are not equal to two right angles, nor can change
the relation of numbers to each other. Two and two will always make
four, and five times ten will never be less than fifty. So in natural philos¬
ophy, the laws of motion and of gravitation, now well established, may
with undoubting confidence be always assumed. No discoveries, no ex¬
perience, no theories, in all human probability, can ever shake them. But
in moral philosophy, in metaphysics, in political economy, the same un¬
doubting confidence cannot always, perhaps not often, be attained. Ab¬
solute demonstration cannot be reached, as in the sciences, which, because
they do admit of absolute certainty, are called exact sciences. In these,
new and further experience may overthrow many principles which were
deemed fundamental, and well established by earlier reasoners. Espe¬
cially in the science of political economy, in what regards national wealth,
what mighty revolutions have taken place in human affairs, since Adam
Smith investigated the subject! Has the world learned nothing since his
time ? Is the experience of the present day worth nothing in determining
the great questions discussed by him ? Above all, is our own experience
of no value in deciding upon our own interests, because Adam Smith's
conclusions, formed in his day, under different circumstances, are the set¬
tled law of the world now, and for all coming time ? Great and unforeseen
changes, new elements not then dreamed of by him, have since operated
on the condition and circumstances of nations. How enormously have the
productions of manufactures been increased by discoveries in machinery,
and by steam power, the great agent of modern times ? At the period
when Smith's book was written, this America of our day was composed of
several colonies; and, so far as he had any power to control their destinies,
he desired to keep them in a state of colonial dependence forever. His
book recommends it. He thought it would be greatly for their benefit.
That was one of the conclusions he reached by " the inductive process,"
and I suppose is among the "fundamental laws " established by him, which
are never to be brought in question. But we are now independent, and
our independence has of itself produced a great change and revolution in
the business of the world. Besides this, the article which has become
one of the greatest, if not the very greatest staple of the commerce of the
world, has not only almost grown up since his day from nothing, but in
this country has grown up entirely. Not a pound of cotton was raised in
the now United States, when he promulgated his doctrine of the wealth ot
nations. The idea that America was so soon to become not only inde¬
pendent, but also to be the second commercial Power of the world, and the
greatest producer of the greatest staple of that commerce, as well as of the
most extensive manufacture which the world had ever witnessed, never
entered into his conception. What effects these vast changes were to
produce upon the affairs of the world, his philosophy never dreamed of.
10
And with all our knowledge of these effects, with our experience of the
influences of so many active and operating causes as have been at work
for three-quarters of a century, are we to repose upon the conclusions,
however honestly made and however inductively reached, of one whose
eyes never opened upon the improved condition of the world at the pres¬
ent day ? Is the effect which has been produced upon the commercial
relations and condition of nations, the change from comparatively limited
intercourse, to one of almost unbounded expansion, which the whole world
has experienced, to be disregarded ? Unlike the mathematics and other
kindred sciences, political economy may be regarded as a progressive and
if you please a changing science. When a nation, as Venice did once,
and Holland afterwards, holds in its hand almost the entire commerce of
the world, that may be and would be deemed good policy, which under
other circumstances, when the sceptre of commerce and the trident of the
ocean were wielded by other hands, would be regarded as most pernicious.
The policy of nations must change as the affairs of the world change.
During the long wars of the French Revolution, our interests lay in com¬
merce and agriculture. Our policy was to reap the rich harvests which
those fields of industry yielded. But on the return of a general peace,
the world presented a wholly different aspect. We had no longer the
ocean to ourselves ; and the consumers of our agriculture became them¬
selves producers. We no longer found the markets abroad which we had
been accustomed to find. What more necessary and what more natural,
then, than that our policy should change, and that too without any regard
to the doctrines of Adam Smith ? The Senator supposes that the princi¬
ples of this distinguished philosopher have been universally recognised.
Oa the contrary, sir, I think they have been very much contested, and es¬
pecially contested in the United States, by some of the most distinguished
statesmen of our country. So also on the continent of Europe. They
have not only been disputed by statesmen and philosophers, but have been
practically repudiated by most of the nations at the present day. The
authority of Washington and Franklin, in what regards our national in¬
dependence and wealth, is quite as good authority for me as the doctrines
of Adam Smith.
[Mr. McDuffie. Franklin is against you. I will abide by his doc¬
trine. He is with me.]
I think not, sir. It will be quite easy to find, if I recollect right, opin¬
ions of Franklin in favor of building up American manufactures. He
thought we embraced within ourselves all the elements of national great¬
ness and wealth, which ought to be developed and fostered and promoted.
So thought and so said the Father of his Country, and so thought and so
said many, very many, of the eminent statesmen and patriots who achieved
the independence—established the liberty—and framed the Constitution
of our country.
The Senator took occasion to advert to another remark, incidentally
made by me, which, if he accurately comprehended, he has certainly not
very fairly answered. In reply to the Senator's argument for discriminat¬
ing in favor of the poor when duties are laid, 1 said, that it seemed to me
a much more humane and statesmanlike object, so to legislate, if possible,
as to do away with poverty entirely—so to shape our policy as to give em-
11
ployment to the poor, and thus to enable them to obtain for consumption '
what their necessities might require. The Senator affects to understand
me as recommending to legislate poverty out of existence, by a simple
enactment, by a law, declaring that from and after such a day, the first of
July next, " poverty be, and hereby is, abolished throughout the United
States." Did I utter any sentiment so foolishly absurd as that ? The
Senator finds it quite easy, I doubt not, to answer a proposition so ridicu¬
lous as that which he has stated. But, if he will deal with the argument
which I did employ, and upon which the protective policy mainly rests—
the mitigation of the evils of poverty, and removing the causes of it—by
giving profitable employment to labor—by encouraging industry—be may
not find it quite so easy to furnish a satisfactory reply. Congress, he says,
cannot give relief to poverty—" for we have nothing to give—we are as
poor as church mice." " Relief can only be afforded by giving either
our own money, or by taking it from one person to bestow upon another."
" Legislation cannot create wealth—it cannot make two blades of grass
grow where only one grew before." Government cannot, he says, " in
the very nature of things, give either money, wages, profits, or any thing
else, to one man or class of men, which it does not first take from another."
Now, sir, I must take leave to differ with the Senator entirely in theopin-
. ions he has expressed as to the effect, or want of effect, of legislative en¬
actments upon the business and industry and prosperity of a community.
The history of commerce—of manufactures—of agriculture—of the arts—
of every tiling—is full of instances of improvement, advancement, and
progress, in consequence of wise laws, adopted to foster and promote their
growth. The business of legislation is to open new avenues to industry—
to furnish new inducements to labor and enterprise, and thus to lead to
fresh and stronger efforts on the part of individuals in their various pur¬
suits. But nothing is gained by one, the Senator supposes, under such a
stimulus, but what is lost by another. Legislation can only transfer from
one man's pocket to another man's pocket. Well, sir, if this were really
so, I do not know that it would be a result much to be deprecated, if the
transfer were from the pockets of a foreign nation to the pockets of our
own—if the rewards of industry, the earnings of labor, were taken from
the manufacturer and laborer of Europe, and given to the manufacturer
and laborer of America ; the comforts—the competency—the enjoyments,
which such rewards and such earnings obtain, would thereby be transferred
from other people to our own people. It would be an addition to our
national strength and our national wealth. Look at the consequences re¬
sulting from the celebrated navigation acts of England, the first of which
was enacted in 1650. Can any body say that those acts—strictly protec¬
tive acts—did not call into existence wealth and power—individual and
national—to an extent beyond the operation of all other causes combined ?
Has it not made England the vast commercial and naval Power which she
is? Has it done nothing but transfer wealth from one to another? At
the time of the enactment of those great measures of national protection,
England was quite inconsiderable as a maritime State, compared with Hol¬
land. I am not able to state precisely their relative importance at that
period ; but, forty years afterwards, when England had undoubtedly made
great advances, and Holland had in some degree declined, the tonnage of
12
the former, according to MeCulloch, was only about 500,000 tons, while
that of Holland was over 900,000 ; fully equal to one-half of all the ton¬
nage of all Europe. Probably the difference was even greater than this,
as McPherson stales the tonnage of England, in 1701, to be only 261,222
tons, employing about 27,000 men. So vast a supremacy had Holland at
that period over the now boasted mistress of the seas. One of her pa¬
triotic songs, with a poetic license quite commendable, appeals to the
mariners of England :
" Whose flag has braved, a thousand years,
The battle and the breeze."
Yet it can scarcely be forgotten, that, not over a century and a half
before that noble strain was sung, "the meteor flag" had quite as much
as it could do to float in safety even in the Downs, where " the fleet was
'moored." The Dutch squadrons, on more than one occasion, entered the
Thames, and fought the English there, besides blockading and ravaging
their coast and ports in many places. Van Tromp, De Ruyter, and De
Witt, for a long time contested, and often successfully, the sovereignty
of the British channel; but at length the Dutch naval and commercial
power was humbled and vanished away before the rising and triumphant
splendor of the British flag. Nothing contributed so effectually to this
result as the navigation act of Cromwell, to which 1 have refeired. The
tonnage of that kingdom, which was estimated at 500,000 in 1790, but
probably much over-estimated, undoubtedly having been then largely in¬
creased after the passage of that act, has gone on steadily advancing, until
it is now nearly 4,000,000, spreading over every ocean of the habitable
globe—founding colonies in ever}' corner of the earth—sending manufac¬
tures and people to every clime, and bringing from the most distant lands
rich returns, to add to the wealth, and strength, and grandeur of the British
empire. In view of these immense results, does the Senator still suppose
that legislation can add nothing—-create nothing—build up nothing ? How
was it with our own navigation act? Why does not the Senator, or some
other advocate of free trade, strike at that, as a measure of odious protec¬
tion ? The navigation of this country, from a very early period, has been
a highly protected interest, and very wisely indeed has it been protected.
It has grown up with astonishing rapidity ; and has it added nothing to
our "wealth—to our national importance ? Can any body doubt that it is
owing, in a very great degree, to the protection it has received from acts
of legislation that it has so eminently pr ospered ? So of the sugar interests
of Louisiana. Have they not grown up under the fostering care of legis¬
lation, which the Senator says can do nothing but rob one for the benefit
of another ? Who has been injured by it ? Its cultivation has given new
markets to the Nor th and the West for provisions and manufactures—has
furnished new employment to our vessels in transporting these supplies—
and has also benefited the other cotton-growing regions, by withdrawing a
part of the land and the labor which would otherwise have been devoted
to the raising of that great staple. No body is injured. Every body is
benefited, ft has become a great and valuable national interest, promot¬
ing the agriculture, (he commerce, and the manufactures-of the country ;
and it is altogether the fruit of legislative protection. Take another illus¬
tration—railroads. A railroad cannot be constructed without an act of
13
legislation ; and yet a simple enactment, " that there shall be a railroad
from A to B," does nothing of itself. It does not spring into existence
from the mere mandate of the law. Laws do not execute themselves.
They require human agency to carry them into effect. If an act authoriz¬
ing the establishment of a railroad offer sufficient encouragement and suf¬
ficient inducement for its accomplishment, it will be accomplished by hu¬
man means. The law furnishes the inducement. Men do the work. Is
any body injured or robbed ? Is there any transfer of property from one
to another? On the other hand, the wealth of all is promoted. Agricul¬
ture finds readier and better markets—consumers cheaper and more abun¬
dant provisions—labor greater demand and surer reward. Does not all
this spring Iroin legislation—from law—from protection 9 We cannot, by
law, says the Senator, produce a blade of grass or an ear of corn, where
they did not grow before. Certainly, no act of Congress " ex propria
vigore " can do so—but if an act of Congress shall stimulate human hands
to greater effort—human skill and science to more vigorous improvement,
they will find methods to make not one only, but ten grow where none
grew before. Give incentives—give inducements—give encouragement—
give protection ; and industry and enterprise will accomplish results the
most important to individual and national wealth. The idea that an act of
legislation can add nothing to the amount of productions of human labor,
but that its whole effect is to transfer from one to another, seems to me
very much like the notion, which Adam Smith successfully refuted, that
neither commerce nor manufactures added any thing to the sutn of the
world's wealth. The doctrine of certain political economists before his day
was, that all wealth was derived from agriculture—from the fruits of the
earth. Here, they argued, was something positively gained—something
created which did not exist before. Manufactures, they said,only changed
the form of things—and nothing of wealth was gained by it, because the
manufacturer, while engaged in the process, consumed as much in value
of the productions of the earth as he added to the value of the raw ma¬
terial by changing its form. Commerce, they said, merely transported
commodities from piace to place. It added nothing to the bulk or quantity
of them. Nothing could be gained in commerce by one man or one na¬
tion, unless it was lost by another man or nation. It merely transferred.—
[Mr. McDuffie. That is not my doctrine.]
1 know it, and I do not impute it to the Senator ; but his argument
against the efficiency of legislative enactments to develop and call out
individual and national resources seemed to me, I said, very much of the
same kind. All these doctrines, to which I have adverted, Smith very
triumphantly refuted, demonstrating that both commerce and manufactures
do add largely to national wealth. Labor, he maintained, human labor,
was the source and foundation of all wealth ; and cannot labor be stimu¬
lated—promoted—encouraged by laws—by governmental protection ? If
it cannot, then all the civilized nations of modern times have greatly mis¬
taken the powers, and functions, and operations of government on human
affairs.
The Senator has attributed to me another argument, which I certainly
did not use. He says that I maintained the position that it was better to
buy at high prices at home, than at low prices abroad—to buy dear than
v
14
to buy cheap. Now, sir, I maintained no such thing. On the contrary, I
endeavored to demonstrate that one of the great benefits of the protective
policy was, that we were thereby enabled to buy cheaper at home than we
could if compelled to rely solely on foreign manufacturers. For the
proof of this I referred to our repeated experience. I said there was
a great deal of delusion as to what constituted buying cheap, and attempt¬
ed to illustrate that it was often really cheaper to buy of one, though at a
higher nominal price, than of another at a nominally less price. Whether
an article be cheaper or dearer in the one place or the other, depends in
a very great degree on the facility of payment. That is the cheapest
where payment is the easiest. Buying and selling is but an exchange of
labor for labor, and he buys cheapest who obtains most for his own pro¬
ductions. Now, although the price abroad, represented in money—the
standard of value—may be lower than the price of similar articles of do¬
mestic origin, yet, when we come to look at the facilities of payment,
it may be and often is really higher. Can a farmer in Illinois get more
of cotton, or woollen, or iron manufactures, for his wheat and flour, or a
farmer in Maine for his hay and his potatoes, in Liverpool and Manches¬
ter, or in Lowell or Pittsburg? Can he not make the exchange on
better terms at home than abroad? If, then, he pay easier and obtain
more, he buys cheaper, notwithstanding the nominal price abroad be less.
Suppose a farmer has a bushel of wheat to sell, and wishes to buy a
shovel. He can obtain one made in Birmingham of the importer for 90
cents. The domestic manufacturer cannot sell one of similar kind short
of a dollar. So far the foreign is cheaper. But how is he to pay ? The
importer does not want the wheat, but the money to send abroad. He
will, however, take the wheat, trusting to find a market at seventy-five
cents the bushel. The home manufacturer needs it for consumption in
his own family, and will give a dollar for it. In the one case he obtains a
shovel for his wheat, and fifteen cents besides, and in the other he obtains
it for his wheat alone, saving fifteen cents to buy something else for his
wife and children. Which is cheapest ? Now, sir, I recommend to buy
where you can buy cheapest—where you can obtain most for your own pro¬
ductions ; and 1 maintain the protective policy, because it adds greater
value to our own labor and industry, enabling us to receive more in ex¬
change for it, laying out of view the mere nominal prices, upon which so
much stress is laid. Potatoes are a great deal cheaper in Ireland than
they are here ; but hundreds and thousands of Irishmen prefer to come
here, where they are so much dearer, and where they can get a bit of beef,
too, to put in the same pot. The answer of-one of them solved the whole
mystery of cheapness. He complained of the shilling a peck which he
had to pay here, saying he could get them in Ireland for a six pence.
" And why did you come here, then—why did you not stay where they are
so cheap ?" "And sure it's the six pence 1 could not get there, at all at all,"
said he ; and his answer contained the whole philosophy of cheapness.
The Senator attributes to me not only the argument that it is best to
buy dear, but also that it is good policy to sell cheap. He is quite as
much out of the way in the latter as in the former supposition. I did not
at all admit that the act of 1342, or any act of protection, could or did
affect the prices of ths great staples of export, of which the Senator com¬
plained. I maintained that the price of cotton in the markets of the world
15
would be governed by the great law of supply and demand. If it can be
shown that, in consequence of our policy, there is a less demand for, and
consumption of, cotton fabrics than there otherwise would be, the argument
would be entitled to some consideration. But who can doubt that the con¬
sumption of cotton is in fact considerably increased by the domestic man¬
ufacture of it, and at the same time that the price abroad is enhanced by
the competition which the demand for it here occasions ? Cotton from
Brazil, Egypt, India, meets American cotton in Liverpool, and undersells
it, keeping the price down. Does any body suppose that our cotton sells
for any less, because we have a protective tariff, and that theirs sells for
more because they have none ? Such a thing is impossible. Suppose all
our imports from France should be free of duty—does any one imagine
that cotton would bear a higher price in Havre than in Liverpool ? How-
is it now ? Is it more profitable to import a cargo of free goods than of
dutiable ? Is it more advantageous to the seller of cotton to exchange it
for foreign productions which pay no duty, or for specie, than for commod¬
ities which do pay ? All other things being equal, the commerce being
fairly conducted, there is and there can be no difference. I maintain no
such policy as that of reducing the prices of our staples abroad, but on
the other hand endeavored to prove that no such effect followed from the
protective policy. I showed how very inconsiderable a demand for cotton
would arise from an increased import of British manufactures of forty mil¬
lions value—a demand more than counterbalanced by the inevitable de¬
cline which would take place in the consumption of it in our own country,
I have reason to complain, also, that another portion of the argument
which I had the honor to deliver to the Senate, has not been fairly met, or
fairly understood by the Senator. He says that I maintained the bold prop¬
osition, "that a high rate of duties upon imports diminishes their price,
and a low rate enhances them ?" He supposes that I have asserted
as a general, an invariable principle—without limitation—without excep¬
tion; that the effect of imposing high duties is to reduce the price of the
article upon which they are levied. Now, sir, I have asserted no such
thing. What I said, in the first place, was in reply to the honorable Sena¬
tor upon a matter of fact. He asserted that the act of 1842 had operated
very oppressively by increasing prices. This I controverted, and showed
that the fact was not as he supposed—prices had not increased—but in
many instances had diminished. The Senator asks, how can this be ?
Does high duty reduce prices ? The " fundamental law" in political
economy teaches that it enhances prices precisely to the extent of the duty
imposed. Now, sir, I freely admit that the tendency of increased duty is
to increase the price of the article, the identical article upon which it is
imposed; and such would generally be the effect, if not counteracted by
other causes. I have not maintained that the imposition of the duty, of
itself', reduces prices, but I have maintained that it calls into action—into
being—other operating and efficient causes which do produce that result.
It is not the duty as a duty, the tax as a tax, which effects this, but it is
the existence of other agencies and other influences, which have their
origin in the stimulations which the imposition of such a duty affords. It
is not the duty which of itself does this, but it is the competition in the
supply of a similar kind of article that occasions it. If there were no
domestic production consequent upon the duty—if the markets and the
16
consumption of the country were still dependent upon foreign supply, un¬
doubtedly the imposition of duty would enhance the price ; but when the
effect is otherwise—when domestic competition meets the foreign—when,
in addition to the foreign supply, the home production is added, nothing is
more reasonable than to expect a reduction of price. I have not asserted
that the article on which a duty is imposed sinks in price as the immedi¬
ate consequence of that duly—but 1 do maintain that it sinks in conse¬
quence of meeting a similar article in the market, brought there in compe¬
tition with it under the operation of the protective policy. That is the
cause of the decline, and not the duty, " per se." Hence it is manifest, that
upon a great many articles, the imposition of a duty, high or low, has no
effect whatever. All descriptions of commodities which we wholly or in
great degree supply ourselves, such as hay, beef, pork, corn, &c., are
of this class. Foreign nations raise none of these things to supply our
markets. Of course, a high duty on them excludes nothing designed for
us, and has no effect on prices abroad. On some articles, undoubtedly, an
increased duty would enhance the price. This is the case with nearly all
such as we do not and cannot furnish for ourselves, and with which we
have nothing to come in competition. Quicksilver is an instance of this,
and perhaps tin also, and probably madder, and divers other articles of
dye stuffs. But even to this, there are some exceptions ; we do not pro¬
duce coffee or tea; and yet it has not been found, practically, that a small
duty upon them increases the price at all. The reason is, that these, are
commodities abundantly produced, the consumption of which is very great
in this country—greater in proportion to numbers, I believe, than in any
other country on the globe. Any thing, therefore, which should check their
importation in any sensible degree, would throw a large surplus upon the
other markets of the world, or leave it uncalled for in the hands of the
producer. As the demand for our consumption would be reduced if prices
here increased, and thus a surplus be occasioned abroad, the natural ten¬
dency is, that the price abroad sinks, as it invariably does, when the de¬
mand declines ; and if it sink abroad, the articles can be imported, not¬
withstanding the duty, and sold as low as before. The class of articles,
therefore, which are ultimately affected in price by protective duties, are
those which other nations extensively manufacture for us, but which we
have the skill—capital—ability, to manufacture for ourselves. If they are
articles not supplied to us by other nations, then the duty cannot affect
them at all. If we have not the means to supply them ourselves, nor any
substitutes for them, they are generally liable to be enhanced by additional
duties. But wherever there is an extensive production abroad for our
consumption of commodities which we can readily furnish for ourselves,
any thing which tends to bring our own supply into the market, whether
it be high duties or any thing else, any cause which enlarges and increases
the amount of our products, necessarily and inevitably tends to reduce
the price of the foreign. If this competition reduce it in a greater de¬
gree than the duty would otherwise have raised it, then the price posi¬
tively declines. It becomes actually less than it was before—not because
a duty is imposed upon it, but because a rival article has met it in the
market. Sir, I hope I ain understood in this matter, for I do not desire to
be represented as maintaining the broad, unqualified proposition that a
high duty, under all circumstances, upon whatever article imposed, neces-
17
I
sarily reduces its price. That the ultimate effect of protecting American
manufactures and American industry, is to reduce the prices of all com¬
modities thus made at home, is corroborated by so long a course of obser¬
vation and experience, as no longer to admit of doubt. Not to see it, is
not to see the plainest evidences which can be addressed to our senses or
our understanding. But the Senator regards all this as "incomprehensible,"
as a "confusion of ideas." How can foreign commerce increase under
high and prohibitory duties ? " How do you increase competition by ex¬
cluding the cheapest competition ?" These questions imply two things,
which are not true in point of fact: First, that the duties are prohibitory,
and next that the foreign competition can or does furnish at the cheapest
rates. Foreign commerce, it is admitted, could not be benefited by a
scale of duties generally, or in great degree, prohibitory. That such is
not the character of the act of 1842, is demonstrated by the fact, that
very excessive—-loo excessive imports are now daily made—too excessive,
I mean, if the same proportion should long continue. If the act is not pro¬
hibitory, then I can well understand how foreign commerce maybe im¬
proved, and imports increased, by every thing and any thing which im¬
proves the capacity and ability of the country to obtain and consume arti¬
cles of foreign origin ; and 1 endeavored in my former remarks to show
that the protection and encouragement of our own laborers, and our own
people, was the most efficient means of improving their ability to consume
such commodities. High duties or low duties—it matters not, your for¬
eign commer ce has nothing else to rest upon, but the ability of the people
of the country to buy and pay—and if you would increase your imports,
you must increase the means of payment of those who are to consume
them ; and this you can do in no way so effectually, as by protecting their
labor, and securing them a fair reward for what they do.
Nor is it true that we exclude the cheapest competitor. Our experi¬
ence has not been so. When the foreigner, under low duties, had the
market almost exclusively to himself, he exacted his own prices. If he
could produce cheaper, it did not follow that he would sell cheaper. He
added what profits he pleased. There was indeed scarcely any competi¬
tion.. All we have said to the foreigner in the enactment of protective
laws is, not that we will exclude you ; but we have said, you have made
enormous profits—you exact high prices. If you come to our markets you
shall pay a part of these profits for that privilege, to the support of our
Government. The effect is, that domestic competitors supply and more
than supply the vacancy occasioned by his withdrawal. The country is
abundantly furnished with every thing which it needs, as cheap or cheaper
than before. The domestic producer cau afford to supply and actually
does supply at the cheaper rates, because he is now sure of a market.
He knows what to rely upon. He has no apprehension of being compel¬
led to work at a loss—to sell at a sacrifice—by the sudden and excessive
influx of a surplus of foreign manufactures, designed perhaps for his de¬
struction, so that the foreigner may again recover the market, at his former
prices. It is the certainty—the stability—the assurance which he has of
meeting ready sales, that enables him to extend his operations, and to af¬
ford his fabrics at the cheapest rates. The presence of a "cheaper com¬
petitor'' might, it is true, reduce prices for a short period, at much loss to
both; but when the domestic producer is destroyed, and his productioni
2
IS
driven from (he market, it will be found, and it always has been found",,
that the cheap competitor becomes in reality the dearer. I have no doubt
that if we were now to make a large reduction in our rate of duties,
prices would decline ; but this would be a temporary effect only. It
might continue a year or two—long enough to prostrate utterly all our
manufacturing establishments, and turn thousands of laborers out of em¬
ployment. The competition would then cease—our markets would not
be overstocked, and prices would be raised by the foreign producer, and
the importer, to suit their own interests and advance their own profits. The
final result would be, that instead of excluding the foreign competitor, as
the Senator from South Carolina supposes is now done, we should effectu¬
ally break down the domestic one, and subvert the hopes and happiness
and prosperity of tens of thousands of industrious and intelligent Amer¬
ican laborers.
In the course of the observations which I had the honor to submit some
days ago, in reply to the first speech of the Senator from South Carolina, I
endeavored to show him the fallacy of the position which he had maintained,
that there was no competition, and could be none, between the laborers and
manufacturers of this country and of Europe, in the supply of the commod¬
ities for our general consumption. I attempted to demonstrate, and I think
not unsuccessfully, that the competition was directly and immediately be¬
tween American workmen and foreign workmen. And how does the
Senator meet that argument ? Why, he turns round, and demands to know
if he has not a right to employ foreigners, if he chooses to do so ? Has
he not a right to do with his own as he pleases ? He employs them—
they employ him. He buys their fabrics—they buy his cotton. Is not
this mutually beneficial r Now, sir, nobody has denied his right to do so..
The question is not a question of right—but of policy and expediency,
founded on enlarged considerations and comprehensive views of national
interests. The question is, whether such employment, in preference to
employing our own people, is not injurious to our people—whether it does
not bring their labor in competition with that of others who live poorer,
work harder, and sutler more severely the ills of penury and ignorance?
I do not doubt his employment of foreign laborers is beneficial to them—
that it adds to their means of subsistence and comfort; but I affirm that it
detracts precisely so much from the ability and means of subsistence and
happiness of our citizens, who are seeking the opportunity of profitable
labor, which is thus bestowed abroad. 1 affirm that it tends to reduce the
condition of the laboiing men and laboring women of the United States
to that of the suffering and ill-requited operatives of England, and of the
older countries of Europe. That is the matter to be considered, and not
the mere abstract right of the thing. [Mr. McDuffie said : His proposi¬
tion was, that foreigners employed precisely as much of his labor as he did
of theirs—and that, but for their employment of his labor, he would not
have so much profitable labor himself.] Well, sir, I will consider that,
when I come to his argument of "homogeneous interests," and I will en¬
deavor to satisfy the honorable Senator that the foreign manufacturer does
no ruch thing as he imagines—that they do not return labor for labor—or
any thing like it; that, on the contrary, a very small part of their labor pays
for a large part of his. But 1 pass it for the present. 1 am now endeavor¬
ing to show how vastly better it is, in a national point of view, to give em-
19
ployment and the benefits and rewards of employment to our own people,
than to bestow them upon foreigners. Would it not be a positive addition
to national wealth ? Suppose the Senator should send abroad one hundred
bales of cotton, worth fifty dollars a bale, and have it spun, wove, printed,
and colored abroad, giving employment to thousands of persons. The
finished fabric is returned to him enhanced in value ten-fold. He sent
abroad 85,000 of American labor, and he brings back forty-five thousand
of foreign labor added to it. Could not this forty-five thousand have been
retained at home, and would it not have made the nation just so much
richer ? But he will say, no—1 bring back only five thousand dollars of
manufactures, just as much as I sent abroad—the balance is retained, to pay
the expenses of manufacture. So be it—the result is the same. They
work up for him ten bales of his cotton, and he pays them with the ninety
bales which they work up for somebody else. Have not all the profits of
the labor gone abroad ? Has not every dollar of his labor given employ¬
ment to foreign labor nine times greater, which might have been given to
American labor? The Senator made one admission, which seemed tome
to give up the whole argument. He admitted that the demand for our pro¬
ductions by other nations would depend upon their ability to buy and con- *
sume them, and that their ability would depend upon the employment
•which they have ; and he maintained, that but for our protective policy,
they would be employed in manufacturing fifty millions more for us, thus
enabling them to buy fifty millions more of us. Now, sir, let us turn this
argument round, if I may so express it—let us apply it to ourselves, to our
own condition. I endeavored to demonstrate before what the Senator
admits, that our consumption as well of foreign as of domestic productions
depends upon our ability to pay for them ; and that ability depends upon t ie
employment which we have—upon the industry, and the rewards of the
labor of our people. It is equally true of us as of other nations. Hence,
I maintained that our true and sound policy is, to encourage and protect
and promote our own labor and industry, with a view to the comfort and
happiness of our people, and the elevation of their condition, increasing
their consumption, thereby increasing the demand, and thus adding to the
commerce as well as to the manufactures of the country. All this 1 maintain¬
ed as well as I could in my former remarks. The honorable Senator ad¬
mits the premises. Is not the conclusion irresistible ? Is not the policy
of sustaining home industry vindicated and justified ? But as to the con¬
clusion which the Senator has come to in another particular, I differ from
him entirely—wholh'-—unqualifiedly. He supposes, but for our laws, we
should take fifty millions more of foreign productions, which would o f
course require fifty millions more of our productions, cotton chiefly, if not
entirely, he supposed, to be exported in payment. Now, I admit if we
should buy fifty millions more, we must pay fifty more, unless we repudi¬
ate ; of which there would, in a few years process of that sort, be some
danger. If we take it. This if sir, is a great word. Should we take it ?
How are we to pay ? The ability of a nation, remember, depends upon
the employment of its people. We should throw out of employment thou¬
sands and hundreds of thousands, who are now directly and indirectly con¬
cerned in the manufacture of the articles which the imported fifty millions
■would displace. All these would no longer have the means of consump¬
tion. In the infinite and diversified interests and ramifications of society
20
and business, what affects one branch, or one class, more or less affects all.
A general stagnation—a general prostration—must take place, and consump¬
tion generally would decline. We could not import the fifty millions, be¬
cause we could not pay for them. But if we could pay, bow is it to be
done ? In cotton ? Sir, I argued this before. 1 showed that England
cannot take fifty millions more of cotton, unless there be a corresponding
demand for the fabrics of cotton. Cotton i3 a raw material, of little value
compared with the fabrics made from it. Fifty millions of raw material is
equal to five hundred millions of finished production. Now, is it possible
that an additional consumption by us of fifty millions, composed of all de¬
scriptions of articles, of woollens, silks, linens, iron, and cutlery, hats,
coal, salt, can give an increased consumption in the rest of the world of
five hundred millions of cotton fabrics? The profits of manufactuiing
fifty millions, I cannot even conjecture—but, for illustration, suppose it to
be thirty millions—that is, of fifty millions of manufactured articles, the
raw material may be twenty millions, and the labor thirty. Does any body
suppose that, by giving employment to thirty millions more of labor, so
enormous a stimulus can be afforded to the manufacture of cotton, as to
require fifty millions more of raw material and four hundred and fifty mil¬
lions of labor ? If cotton were an article of subsistence, to which no ad¬
ditional value could be given by manufacturing, like flour, beef, coffee, su¬
gar, &c., it would be quite reasonable to suppose that other nations who
require it for consumption, would take as much in value from us, as we
would take of their manufactured productions. The laborer who earned
a dollar in working for us, would be likely to want his pay in an article of
subsistence. But if we pay him a dollar now, he requires very little of it
for cotton fabrics. lie needs it for bread and meat, which he will not take
from us—and tea and coffee and sugar, of which we produce none to sup¬
ply him. No, sir ; we may buy fifty millions more of foreign fabrics if we
please, but it would afford a very small additional demand indeed for our
cotton,—less than it would destroy at home.
The Senator has spoken of the great interests of the different sections
of the United States, as conflicting interests ; and he expressed a fervent
wish that all our interests were alike—homogeneous; and in the conclu¬
sion of his remarks he illustrated his meaning by supposing the Union to
be divided into three distinct confederacies—the Northern and Eastern,
composed of manufacturing and navigating States—the West of agricultul-
ral, and the South and Southwest of planting. Each of these would hare
homogeneous interests, or rather each would have but one. interest. Now,
sir, I am very sure the honorable Senator finds no warrant in Adam Smith,
lor the preference he has expressed of a nation of homogeneous interests ;
but on the other hand, I think he will find opinions, and very strongly ex¬
pressed ones, directly opposed to these which he has now advanced. What
nation in the world ever attained permanent eminence, or wealth, or power,
but by the prosecution and pursuit of several and various and diversified
interests ?
[Mr. McDuffie said—what he meant was, a general diffusion of all
interests throughout every section of the Union.]
In the nature of things, that is impossible. The North can never raise
cotton or rice—and the West can never become navigating. So far as a
diffusion of interests can be effected, the protective policy is calculated to
21
effect it. Manufactures are more and more spreading, both South and West,
and many ybars will not elapse before they will become objects of great
solicitude and importance to these sections. Speaking of the importance
of promoting and developing all the three great interests of nations—agricul¬
ture, commerce, and manufactures—Adam Smith says: " The country which
" has not capital sufficient for all these three purposes, has not arrived at
" that degree of opulence for which it seems naturally destined." Again:
iC the revenue of a trading and manufacturing country, must, other things
" being equal, always be much greater than that of one without trade or
" manufactures." These conclusions are most unquestionably true, and
the great end and object of the protective policy is to foster and build up
all these interests, so essential to national strength and power, and to in¬
dividual happiness and comfort. No nation, from the pursuit of any one
of these great branches of human labor alone, not even from commerce,
ever attained to permanent or enduring pre-eminence and prosperity.
How was it with Venice, the greatest commercial Power of the middle
ages? Venice, proud—aspiring—wealthy—
" A ruler of the waters and their powers;
And such she was. Her daughters had their dowers
From spoils of nations ; and the exhaustless East
Poured in her lap all gems in sparkling showers;
In purple was she robed, and of her feast
Monarchs partook, and deemed their dignity increased."
Such was Venice ; but what is Venice now ? Owing her grandeur and
magnificence wholly to her commerce, when that declined, from causes
beyond her control, she sank almost beneath the waves of the ocean from
which she at first arose. With no agriculture, and scarcely any manufac¬
ture, she had but one interest to sustain her, and to prop up her falling
greatness. So also it has been with Holland, the greatest commercial
nation of the seventeenth century—to which the other Powers of Europe
were tributary in large degree. Yet, from causes before adverted to,
Holland fell from her proud and lofty pre-eminence. Her glory and her
strength waned away before the rising greatness of England—a commer¬
cial, an agricultural, and a manufacturing nation—and the thunders of a
Van Tromp and a De Ruyter will never again be heard upon the bosom
of the ocean. Sir, I differ entirely from the Senator in the opinion he has
expressed, that the interests ef the different sections of this country are
in conflict, or that there is any hostility between them. They are different
undoubtedly, but, not adverse. It is this very fact of difference that con¬
stitutes their harmony. " All nature's difference makes all nature's peace."
The Senator supposes that, in view of this conflict of interests between
the different sections of the country, the framers of the Constitution wisely
and expressly limited the powers conferred upon tliG General Govern¬
ment to our foreign relations ; leaving our whole domestic policy, much
the most important of the two, wholly free from the control of that Govern¬
ment which they were about to establish. I do not so read the history of
that day. On the contrary, the fiamers of the Constitution, and the sages
of the Revolution, looked upon this diversity and variety of interests—
this difference of soil, climate, productions, and pursuits, as among the
causes most favorable to the permanency of the Union, and the indepen-
22
der.ce and prosperity of the whole country. They regarded the mutual de¬
pendence of the different sections of the country upon each other—the
capacity to supply each other's wants—the markets afforded for each
other's productions—as tending to erect and establish, not rivalry and con¬
flict, but harmony and peace—mutual intercourse—fraternal regard, and
indissoluble union. Mr. Madison, in an early number of the Federalist,
says: i
"It has often given me pleasure to observe that independent America was not composed of de¬
tached and distant territories, but that one connected, fertile, wide-spreading country was the portion
of our Western sons of liberty. Providence has, in a. particular manner, blessed it with a variety
of soils and productions, and watered it with innumerable streams, for the delight and accommoda¬
tion of its inhabitants. A succession of navigable waters forms a kind of chain round its borders,
as if to bind it together ; whilst the most noble rivers in the world, running at convenient distances,
present them with highways for the easy communication of friendly aids, and the mutual trans¬
portation and exchange of their various commodities. "
"This country and this people seem to have been made for each other ; and it appears as if it
was the design of Providence that an inheritance so proper and convenient for a band of brethren,
united to each other by the strongest ties, should never be split into a number of unsocial, jealous,
and alien sovereignties. Similar sentiments have hitherto prevailed among all orders and denomi¬
nations among us."
I could find and read, if it were necessary, much more of the same im¬
port, from the most eminent of the patriots of that day. The idea of a
conflict of interests never prevailed any where. The very diversity
and variety was regarded as most fortunate. The convention at Anna¬
polis, therefore, could have been influenced by no such considerations, and
they accordingly bestowed upon the General Government the whole power
over commerce, both foreign and domestic. Indeed, does not the Sena¬
tor well remember that one of the leading objects of that convention was
to invest the Government of the whole with this very power of imposing
uniform duties upon foreign imports, for the regulation of trade, and
for the purpose of arresting what was then a great evil, an exces-
tive importation and consumption of foreign productions, to the great
injury of the industry of the country ? The power wb conferred,
with a view to being exercised, for the very end we now exercise
it; and the very first exercise of it, in the first Congress, where
so many of the eminent framers of the Constitution sat, was de¬
clared to be, among other objects, '■'•for the encouragement and pro¬
tection of manufactures." I see no evidence, therefore, that the wise
men who established our form of government were actuated by any such
opinion as the Senator has ascribed to them, that the interests of different
sections of the United States are in conflict with each other. Differing
again with the Senator, I hold it to be exceedingly fortunate that there
can be no such diffusion of interests as he desires. What would be
the result if such a state of things actually existed? The North and
East producing every thing which the South and the West produces,
and they in their turn producing every thing which the East and the
North produced, what internal commerce could exist? What commu¬
nication between the different sections? What occasion for canals
and railroads? There could be 110 trade—no transportation of com¬
modities—no domestic and interior navigation ; but, on the contrary,
23
■•the trade of every part, if trade it could have at all, would be with for¬
eign dependencies—rivalries and jealousies would grow up, and interests
really conflicting would inevitably ensue. With no internal commerce,<
no business connexions, little or no personal intercourse, the different
parts of the Union would be almost wholly strangers to each other, feebly
held together, and ready to break asunder on the slightest occasion. The
Senator desires this diffusion of interests, so that the practical operation
of all laws should be equal on every section of the country—a very desi¬
rable object, I am free to admit. I have before endeavored to maintain
that the protective policy does not bear upon the South in the oppressive
manner which the Senator contends it does, and I am not about to repeat
that argument; but I will here make a brief reply, which I promised just
now, to the suggestion of the Senator, that foreigners take just as much of
his labor in exchange for their productions, as he takes of theirs. I pro¬
mised to show that this was not so ; and if it be not so, he may find in
that, one chief cause of the decline of Southern prosperity, if it have re¬
ally declined in the manner which he has supposed. 1 have already
stated that no instance can be found, of a nation becoming permanently
great and prosperous, which has but one single interest to rely upon ; and
I will add, that no instance can be found of a nation exporting all its raw
productions being able to maintain a competition, in wealth or power,
with another which retains and manufactures them for exportation.
Hear what Adam Smith says on this matter :
"A small quantity of manufactured produce, purchases a great quantity of rude produce. A
trading and manufacturing country, therefore, naturally purchases with a small part of its manufac¬
tured produce a great part of the rude produce of other countries ; while, on the contrary, a country
without trade or manufactures, is generally obliged to purchase at the expense of a great part of its
rude produce a very small part of the manufactured produce of other countries."
This is the condition of the South. It exports only its rude produce ;
the raw material, very little enhanced in value by labor. It requires,
therefore, a very large proportion of its whole production, to be given in
exchange for a very small proportion of the production of the foreign man-
4 ufaeturer, with whom the exchange is made. The Senator says he ex¬
changes labor for labor; so he does : but he exchanges a great deal of his
labor, for a very little of their labor; a large part of his production, for a
small part of their production. Manufactures are, in a great degree, the
production of machinery; and a very little human labor, aided by ma¬
chinery, compensates a vast amount of labor employed in the production
of the rude material. For illustration, the cotton crop of South Carolina,
f may be assumed to be of the value of five millions of dollars. I presume
that it requires, at least, the labor of one hundred and fifty thousand per¬
sons, actually employed. Now, the whole cotton manufacture of Eng¬
land. amounting to two hundred and sixty millions of dollars, requires, ac¬
cording to Spackman, the labor of only about two hundred and fifty thou¬
sand persons. Deducting from the total produce, the value of the raw
material, say fifty millions, and you have the labor of two hundred and
fifty thousand persons, amounting to two hundred and ten millions. To
purchase, therefore, the labor of one hundred and fifty thousand persons,
employed in growing the raw material, the labor of less than six thousand
persons, engaged in the manufacture of it, is necessary. I lay out of
view, on both sides, the capital employed, which, undoubtedly, is much
24
greater in manufacturing, than in raising the raw material, as I am not en¬
tering into a comparison of profits, but merely elucidating the idea, that a
nation which exports all its labor, in the shape of rude produce, obtains
jvery much less of (he labor of others, in a manufactured form, in exchange
for it. The power of machinery, in Great Britain, is stated by Dupin to
be equal to eight millions of men; but tlie number of persons actually
employed in manufactures, is said by Spackman to be only four hundred
and twenty-four thousand two hundred and nine, in five of the most im¬
portant branches of manufactures. Of the number employed in other
branches, 1 have no certain data for computing; but of human labor,
Great Britain, I doubt not, employs less in producing the enormous amount
of eight hundred and sixty millions of manufactured productions, (de¬
ducting the value of the raw materials employed, probably one-third is
ample,) than is employed in the United States, in raising all the cotton,
tobacco, and rice, which is produced here, not exceeding, probably, sixty
or seventy millions of dollars, and employing one and a half million, or
more, of actual laborers. It is very evident, that a nation whose whole
labor is given for one-half the labor of another nation, of equal popula¬
tion, cannot long maintain an equality in wealth or power. The value
of the labor of one, is but one-half that of the other.
But, sir, notwithstanding this inequality, growing out of the nature of
the different kinds of labor, the Senator is quite mistaken, I think, in the
opinion which he has reiterated, that capital, at the Sou£h, receives much
less than that which is employed in manufacturing. He reaffirms that the
profits of manufacturing, are twenty, thirty, and even forty per cent.,
while the profits of the planter do not exceed five per cent. Is this so ?
The Senator has opened a great question, which many will be ready
enough to discuss with him—the value of slave labor, compared with that
of free labor; but 1 have not the time, nor the ability, and, perhaps, not the
inclination, to pursue it fully. I content myself with pointing out some
of the errors into which, in my judgment, he has fallen. And, in the
first place, let us settle the meaning of terms. What does he mean by
" capital ?" What by "profits'? Under the head of capital, he includes
lands, slaves, implements of all kinds, necessary to the cultivation of his
plantation. Profits, he considers the nett receipts of his crop of cotton,
tobacco, and rice. All his labor is capital. It seems to me, sir, that to
make a fair comparison between the profits of the planter and the manu¬
facturer, he should either strike out this item of capital, or should make a
just allowance to the capital of the manufacturer for the labor employed
by him. But a better mode to test the relative profits of labor, at the
South and the North, would be to ascertain the relative amount of pro¬
duction ; for if it should appear that the South produces as much in value,
according to its population, as the North, I apprehend it can have no
ground of complaint or jealousy, if, from other causes, it does not make
so large a dividend on the capital which it chooses to employ. If it em¬
ploy an expensive capital, of course it cannot expect the same profit (hat
a less expensive one would make. I feel under great obligations, and I
am sure the country is, and Congress also, to a gentleman of much dis¬
tinction, in Virginia, formerly a member of Congress, Mr. Tucker, pro¬
fessor of moral philosophy and political economy in the University of Vir¬
ginia, for what seems to me an exceedingly valuable book, just published,
25
showing the progress of the United States in population and wealth, in
the last fifty years. The work is prepared from authentic sources, and
exhibits great industry, research, and fairness, and 1 hope its intelligent
author may find sufficient encouragement to pursue his inquiries and in¬
vestigations, and to favor the country with an extended edition. Among
the valuable tables contained in it, 1 find one, entitled, "Summary of the
annual products of industry in the several States, with the proportional
amount to each individual of the whole of the free population in each
State." From this it appears that the total annual product of the six
New England States, is $187,657,294, being an average of eighty-four
dollars per head, of their population. The total product of the Middle
Slates, to and including the District of Columbia, is $390,558, 303, being
an average of seventy-seven dollars per head, of the free population. Of
the Southern States, Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, and
the Territory of Flor ida, the total value of the production is $175,321,836,
giving an average for the free population of eighty-seven dollars per head.
The Southwestern States produce $138,607,378, an average of ninety-
seven dollars per head, of their free population. The total product of the
Northwestern States, including Missouri, Kentucky, and the Territories,
is $170,989,925, being an average of forty-four dollars per head, of the
free population. While, therefore, the average production for every in¬
habitant of New England, is eighty-four dollars, it is, for every free per¬
son of the Southern States, eighty-seven dollars, and for the Southwestern
cotton-growing States, ninety-seven dollars. In South Carolina, the
whole product is $27,173,536, an average of one hundred and one dollars
for every free inhabitant—considerably exceeding the average of New
England, and quite equal to that of Massachusetts, notwithstanding Mas¬
sachusetts must have a much larger capital employed. I admit that these
are averages founded upon the free population; and it is right that it
should be so. The Southern labor is regarded as capital, and not as per¬
sons ; and the Senator computes his profits, regarding it as capital. He
cannot treat it as capital, when he speaks of profits ; and persons, when he
speaks of product. The free population of the South, by the use of so
much capital, produce a given amount of value; and so of the free popula¬
tion of the North ; and the just comparison is to be made between these
two products.
But, sir, to pursue this matter a little further. The Senator says that
the profits of the planting interest do not exceed five per cent., in South
Carolina; that is to say, that the cotton and rice produced pay no more
than five per cent, on the capital, land, labor, and all, invested in plant¬
ing. He takes into view nothing but cotton and rice. But does South
Carolina produce nothing but these ? One would suppose, from the man¬
ner of the discussion, that these were her chief, if not sole products: but
the whole product of South Carolina amounts to twenty-seven millions
and over, less than one quarter of which consists of cotton and rice.
The value of Indian corn, produced in that State, is considerably greater than that of
both together, being ...... - $7,361,402
Whereas cotton amounts to ..... $4,628,270
Andriceto ------ 1,514,771
6,143,041
Balance in favor of corn
1,218,361
26
It is abundantly manifest, therefore, that all the capital and labor of
South Carolina is not devoted to raising cotton and rice. If these two
give a profit of five per cent., then the whole product ol the State would
give a profit of over twenty per cent. Why are the other products kept
out of view ? Why is the whole wear and tear of capital thrown on cot¬
ton and rice alone ? I take it, before the Senator can say that labor and
capital are not as well rewarded in South Carolina, as they are at the
North, he must take the ivhole product into the account, and not that
only which he chooses to sell for money. Let the same mode be pur¬
sued in both instances, and the true relative value will be seen.
[Mr. McDuffie said : I do not know what argument of mine the Sen¬
ator is answering. I ain not conscious of having said any thing to which
his argument applies. I merely stated that the profits of cotton planters
did not amount to five per cent, on their capital.]
I know that; and I know that the Senator stated, also, that the profits of
manufacturers were twenty, thirty, and even forty per cent.; and, on ac¬
count of this inequality, he denounced, with great vehemence, the pro¬
tective policy, to which he attributed it. I am endeavoring to show that
no such inequality exists; that the productions of labor and capital are as
great at the South as at the North ; and I repeat, that he is not to throw the
whole cost of all the productions of South Carolina on cotton and rice
alone, when much of its labor and capital are otherwise employed. The
labor and capital of that State yield a product of over twenty-seven mil¬
lions, less than one-quarter of which, cotton and rice, pays a profit, ac¬
cording to the Senator, of five per cent. If he will include all the pro¬
ducts ot that labor and capital, the profits will be near twenty-five per cent.
Why are these excluded from his calculation? The Senator will, un¬
doubtedly, answer, that he makes no account of the other agricultural
productions, because they are all necessary to the sustenance of the labor¬
ers themselves, and are consumed by them, yielding no profit to the
planter; that he gets no returns for them. But this will be no satisfactory
reply. If he chooses to employ as capital, a kind of labor which earns
little or nothing beyond its own subsistence, he cannot, of course, expect
very large profits, or even any profits at all; nor does it furnish any just
ground of complaint, that investments in other pursuits, where the capital
does not require so great expense of maintenance, is more lucrative. It
is one of the inseparable circumstances and conditions of his mode of in¬
vestment, that the capital requires so large a portion of its earnings to sus¬
tain itself—its daily preservation and subsistence. If the machinery of
the manufacturer required such expensive repairs and preservation, the
profits of investments in those pursuits would be found quite as low as
those which the Senator supposes the Southern planter now to derive.
If the machinery of the planter expends one-half or two-thirds of its
power in providing support for itself, can he expect to obtain the same
rate of profits on the capital invested, as others obtain, whose machinery
does not expend one-twentieth or one-fiftieth of its power for the same
purpose ? Professor Tucker furnishes data on this subject, by which some
estimate may be made of the very expensive nature of the capital invested
in Southern labor. He computes, that only three-fifths of the whole num¬
ber of slaves are employed as actual producers. He says :
'27
r
"The slaves.—As in this part of the population, both women and children are employed in
field labor, especially in the cotton-growing States, we are led to assign to the laboring class a far
greater proportion of the whole number than is usual; but, on the other hand, that proportion
must be greatly reduced when we recollect that nearly 3d per cent, of the whole number are un¬
der ten years of age ; and that much the larger part of the females, as well as a considerable num¬
ber of the males, both adults and boys, are employed as household servants, who were not reckon¬
ed in this part of the census. When, to these deductions, we make a fair allowance for the in¬
firm and superannuated, two-fifths of the whole number would seem to be a liberal estimate for
the slave labor comprehended in the census ; and this rough estimate receives confirmation from a
careful inspection of the returns, and a comparison between the number of productive laborers in
the slaveholding and other States."
The meaning of this last sentence is not very clearly expressed ; but
from the paragraphs which follow it, we perceive that the author intended
to express the opinion that three-fifths of the whole number of slaves are
producers, and two-fifths non-producers. Now, when you consider that
two-fifths of the capital (perhaps not so large a proportion in value, how¬
ever, but, at all events, no inconsiderable proportion) is not only wholly
unproductive, but is a positive burden upon the productive portion, ought
it to be a matter of much surprise, that no more than a profit of five per
cent, can be realized upon the whole of it? If rice and cotton together,
amounting, in value, to six millions of dollars, be only about one-third of
the whole agricultural product of South Carolina, leaving out of view the
raising of animals, which is four millions more, it is apparent that what
the Senator calls the projils of the planter, is only the product of one-
third of three-fifths of the capital thus invested—that is, of one-fifth only.
Now, sir, this is far beyond any profits derived from manufacturing. One-
fifth of the capital thus invested, yields no such returns ; indeed, the
whole capital, in a series of years past, in no branch of manufactures, has
yielded, on an average, even six per cent. In order to any just compar¬
ison of profits between the planting interest and the manufacturing inter¬
est, the Senator must do one of two things : He must either regard his
, labor, as mere labor, and not as capital, or he must add to the capital in¬
vested in manufactures the labor actually employed, and two-fifths more,
unemployed, together with all the subsistence ot that labor, all the ex- •
penses of sustenance of the laborers themselves, and of the non-producing
members of their families. He will see that, in this way, the capital will
be swelled enormously, and the profits, of course, proportionally dimin¬
ished. But, regarding the question as one of the products of industry in
the different sections, he will find that the average, per capita, is greater
in the planting States, than in the manufacturing States. The tables, how¬
ever, in Mr. Tucker's book, do not give so full information as to the exact
products of labor, as is desirable. The product stated, is the product of
labor and capital combined ; and this is to be kept in view; otherwise, very
delusive results would be reached. For instance, it appears that the total
product of the Northwestern States and Territories—Missouri, Kentucky,
Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa—is $170,989,925,
being an average of only forty-four dollars per head, of the population ;
whereas, the average in New England is eighty-four dollars, and in Mas¬
sachusetts, one hundred and two dollars, and in Rhode Island one hun¬
dred and ten dollars. But, after all, these new States are increasing
28
much more rapidly in wealth and population, and the earnings of labor
are undoubtedly as great there, as elsewhere. Else, why such a vast
emigration to (hem ? It must be considered that the forty-four dollars
earned there, is almost entirely for labor. The capital employed is very
small. Lands are cheap, stock and agricultural implements, of no large
amount. But in New England, a large capital is employed to enable the
laborers to earn the eighty-four dollars per head. The interest of this,
the wear and tear of machinery, the loss and decay of ships, are all to be
provided for, leaving the balance for labor; and after all these deductions
are made, there can be no question but that the average earnings of labor
are as great in the Western States, as in the East. To illustrate this,
suppose there are one hundred men in New England, whose annual pro¬
duction, as exhibted in the tables, is one hundred dollars each, amounting
to ten thousand dollars; while the same number, in South Carolina or
Indiana, appear to have produced seventy-five dollars each, amounting to
seven thousand five hundred dollars. It would appear, at first view, that
the production was twenty-five per cent, greater in the former, than in
the latter. But, in order to earn the ten thousand dollars, suppose they
have been obliged to employ a capital of fifty thousand dollars in their
operations, the interest of which is three thousand. It is apparent that
they have really earned only seven thousand dollars for labor, which is
less than the same number, without capital, produced in the other States.
We are, therefore, to take into careful consideration, all the circumstances
attendant upon the production, to determine the just proportions which
capital and labor earn in the different sections of the country ; and when
this is done, 1 am confident, there will be no occasion for supposing that
any one of them is obtaining a disproportionate reward, at the expense of
any other.
The Senator from South Carolina, in the concluding part of his speech,
broached another idea, to which I feel bound to pay some attention, and
which I may as well bestow upon it here, as in connexion with the topic
which he illustrated by it. He affirms that the Northern and Eastern sec¬
tions of the country "now receive the greater portion (probably nine-
tenths) of the enormous disbursements of this wasteful and extravagant
Government;" and he attributes no small share of their prosperity to this
cause. I hardly know what this has to do with the act of 1S42, if the fact
were so. It would be a very fit subject for consideration and for adjust¬
ment, when the appropriation bills, or other bills authorizing disburse¬
ments, are on their passage ; but, at present, the discussion of such a topic
seems to me inappropriate. But, as it is affirmed, I must take the occa¬
sion to deny it altogether. I assert that there is no such disproportion as
the Senator supposes. He certainly cannot have investigated the subject,
or he would have discovered that his opinions have no foundation in fact.
Some years ago, in the other House, 1 was under the necessity of meet¬
ing this same assertion ; and I then did examine the matter with some care,
especially in reference to one very considerable item of expenditure—for¬
tifications; and I assure Senators the facts were very different from what
is supposed. No such inequality exists. A full proportion of disburse¬
ments is made at the South, and for the benefit and protection of that sec¬
tion. No injustice has been done. I deny it altogether. I call for the
29
proofs. I demand the specifications. Assertions of this sort have been
so frequently made, in one or the other House of Congress, that many
persons are led to believe them well founded, and to attribute the pros¬
perity of the North to Government expenditure. During a considerable
portion of the time since the protective policy has been in operation, the
whole expenditures of the Government were but thirteen or fourteen mil¬
lions, annually. Does the Senator suppose that thirteen or fourteen mil¬
lions, even il every dollar of it had been lavished there, was the occasion
of the prosperity of the North? If the whole amount were actually
given to the North, without any return for it, the effect upon the
general business of the country would be very insignificant. But
the North pays for all it receives. It renders value for value.—
Twelve or fourteen millions of dollars, or even twenty millions, is
a very inconsiderable fraction of the vast business of the Northern
and Middle States—of the commerce, navigation, fisheries, agricul¬
ture, manufactures, mining, of over seven millions of people, producing,
annually, six hundred millions of dollars value. The city of New York,
by a single conflagration, a few years ago, lost thirty millions of dollars
in a single night; a great disaster, undoubtedly. Yet the space over
which the destroyer passed was small, and hardly visible in that extended
emporium. It was soon rebuilt, and in a short time all traces of the loss
had disappeared. Much individual suffering, much want, was undoubt¬
edly experienced ; but, as an object of importance to the nation, or even
to the State or the city of New York, it was of very little moment. It
bore a very insignificant relation to the great mass of business, wealth,
and expenditure, of that great city. Sir, if every dollar of public expen¬
diture should be withdrawn from the North, no visible effect upon the
business or prosperity of that region would be experienced. A few con¬
tractors and agents would lose opportunities of acquiring considerable pro¬
fits ; a few laborers would be required to seek other employment; but
the great mass of the people would be wholly unaffected by it.
Mr. President: I have but little more to say in reply to the Senator
t from South Carolina, and that relates to the view which he has presented,
in the way of illustration, of the effects of a peaceable separation of our
Union into distinct confederacies, upon the welfare and prosperity of
each.
[Mr. Morehead here requested Mr. Evans to postpone his observations
on this head, until to-morrow ; and on his motion, the Senate adjourned.
On the following day, Mr. Evans continued his remarks, as follows:]
I assure you, Mr. President, that it was with very great reluctance I
consented, yesterday, at the request of several friends near me, to post¬
pone, until this morning, the few remaining observations which I have to
make, in reply to the Senator from South Carolina. I am fully sensible
that I have occupied, already, far too much of the time and attention of
the Senate, in the discussion which has been forced upon me, and I have
only to express the sincere hope and trust, that, in the further prosecution
of it, nothing may occur to render it necessary for me again to tax the
patience of Senators upon these topics. The concluding portions of the
Senator's speech, touching the separation of this Union into various con¬
federacies, is what I propose now to consider.
In order to bring his views " to a ■practical test" as he says, and to
30
demonstrate the injustice and inequality of the protective system, the hon¬
orable Senator has drawn very largely upon his imagination. lie in¬
dulges liberally in the exercise of this creative faculty of the mind a
faculty, however brilliant, however desirable, which has never been re¬
garded, in any school of philosophy that J am aware of, as a very severe
" practical test." The regions of fancy, though ever so thoroughly ex¬
plored, are not productive of those plain, obstinate, convincing things,
called facts, to whose tribunal all theories, and all speculations, must sub¬
mit themselves, and by whose decision they must stand or fall.
The Senator from South Carolina, for the purpose of applying this prac¬
tical test to his theories, indulges in the supposition of a peaceable sepa¬
ration of our Union into three distinct confederacies—a supposition by
the way, which 1 think always exceedingly to be regretted when made,
even though it be merely for purposes of illustration. Elsewhere it may
be taken as matter of serious recommendation and advice. Men of more
zeal than the Senator, (if such can be found any where,) and of less dis¬
cretion, (and such undoubtedly may be found every where,) led captive
by the gorgeous delineations of happiness and wealth to be realized by
such an ill-starred event as that which the Senator has supposed, may be
hurried on to the accomplishment of what seems to them so full ot promise
and of hope. But, sir, it is not for me to complain of the mode of illus¬
tration, which Senators deem suitable to employ. I shall content myself
with attempting to show that, in the piesent case, it is altogether falla¬
cious and delusive.
The Senator, 1 am aware, is not the first who has ventured to look be¬
yond a dissolution of this Union, and to portray the prospects which
spread out to his view in that far off region. Others, in different sections,
impelled by a sense of wrongs, real or imaginary, have at times speculat¬
ed upon the consequences of such an event; but, so far as I know, none
of them have discovered any thing but danger, disaster, and wo, to the
institutions, the liberty, the prosperity, not only of the whole country,
but of every section of it. Those who have favored it, in times of high
excitement, have looked upon it, not as a positive good—a desirable thing
to any section, but only as tolerable—a thing to be endured, to escape what
seemed greater evil. But the Senator, in the fervor of his imagination,
while he admits that to one section of the country it would prove a blight¬
ing curse, terrible as burning lava, yet finds in it, for the other sections,
unnumbered blessings—the source of wealth, and power, and happiness,
unknown to any nation before. 1 look upon it, far—very far otherwise.
I regard it as the opening of a copious fountain of bitterness and evil, for¬
ever, and to every body.
To illustrate his views, the honorable Senator has supposed our exist¬
ing blessed Union to be now peaceably dissolved ; and that, instead of it,
three separate confederacies should be formed—one composed of the
Middle and Eastern States, whose skill and labor would be employed in
manufactures; one formed of the Western and Northwestern States, de¬
voted to agriculture ; and the third, of the South and Southwestem, em¬
ployed exclusively in planting—in raising cotton, rice, and tobacco. The
"practical tcstf to which the Senator brings his views, consists in de¬
scribing what he supposes would be the condition of these confederacies,
after the experience of a few years, under the operation of the policy
31
which he also supposes they would severally adopt. The Northern con¬
federacy he condemns to utter destruction and ruin—as inevitable as if
ten thousand craters were pouring their molten wrath upon its devoted
head. I have no desire to utter a syllable to prove that a disruption of
our present Union would not be highly disastrous to that section of the
country ; though I do not admit—far, far from it—that the portraiture
which the Senator has sketched, would be likely to find the slightest veri¬
fication in the actual condition of things. But let that pass.
The Senator foresees not only the desolations of that section, but he
warms and brightens in beholding the glorions visions of boundless felicity
which awaits the Southern confederacy. He seems to forget that all this
is in prospect—yet to be realized. He speaks of " the historical fidelity"
which he has observed in drawing the picture. Now, sir, considering
that history relates only to the past, I must think that the Senator, in his
ardent zeal, has somewhat overleaped " the bounds of time," if not of
space. He has " stated nothing speculative—-but results only which must
take place." " Must take place !" Really, sir, if all this be not specula¬
tion, it seems to me exceedingly like it. He has described, in very glow¬
ing language, the happiness, prosperity, and wealth, which the Southern
confederacy, of homogeneous interests, must experience, if permitted to
pursue its own policy, under its own separate Government. The long-
dreamed-of Fortunate Islands are discovered at last. The favored re¬
gions of the South, smiling in eternal spring,
" Like those Hesperian gardens, famed of old,
Fortunate fields and groves, and flowery meads,
Thrice happy isles,"
are to be forever the abode of peace and happiness on earth. No obsta¬
cle lies in the way of the bright and glorious career which opens before
them. The convulsions which shake other nations like an earthquake,
shall never visit them. " Grim-visaged war will smooth his wrinkled
front," and peace, eternal peace, hold her benignant reign, while human
governments exist on earth.
" Jam—redeunt Satumia regna."
It is not a very agreeable office, I am aware, to distuib such happy vis¬
ions, and to bring back these soaring thoughts to the dull realities ol earth.
But where does the honorable Senator find any warrant in human history
for the confident anticipations in which he has indulged ? In the example
of other nations broken up and dismembered ? In the annals of small
States or Confederacies? In the history of any nation that ever lived
upon earth, with but one single interest—one pursuit, one object of na¬
tional importance ? No, sir ; in none of these does he find any warrant for
his expectations. But let us examine this matter a little more closely.
The Southern confederacy is to revel in unbounded wealth. Its com¬
merce is to be forever unmolested—always prosperous—no storms shall
scatter it—the policy of other nations shall never reach it—but it shall
glide safely, as " on the smooth surface of a summer sea." The South is
to produce for export at least one hundred millions of cotton, rice, and
tobacco, and to receive in return one hundred and twenty millions of for¬
eign manufactures—the twenty millions being the profit on the export.
This large amount it is to have the exclusive privilege of consuming it¬
self, or of exchanging with the Western confederacy for such articles
of production as it cannot raise at home.
It must still retain some connexions, some trade with its neighbors, on
this side the ocean. If the Southern confederacy oannot get on for a
moment without some intercourse with the West, why not unite the
two into one ? What need of a Western confederacy ? But that would at
once destroy the homogencousness of the Southern interest, and the
same questions would be likely to grow up, as now exist between the
South and the North. The Southern confederacy is to have but one
interest—that of planting. Its productions are all to be exported, and
by this operation twenty millions of profits are to be realized. By whom ?
The South ? Not at all. The profits, be they large or small, go to the
navigating interest, to the shippers, and ship owners, to the exporting
merchants. And who will conduct this business? Not the planters, for
all their capital and means are to be employed in growing the articles.
The South is not to become also a commercial or navigating State, for
that also would destroy the identity and singleness of interest which is
to prevail there. The export must therefore inevitably be made in
British ships, by British merchants, and agents of foreign manufacturers ;
and all the profit of such operations must go, not to the South, but
abroad. Besides, it must be carried on by foreign hands, for. another
reason ; and that is, the policy of enriching foreign labor, by giving it all
the employment possible, in order to enable it to consume more largely
of our productions. But passing by this, and assuming that the South
is to have one hundred and twenty millions of foreign imports, who is
to consume them? What is the South to do with them? She will
have a population of about six millions. The United States have now
a population of twenty millions ; and we find one hundred millions of
imports ample for our whole consumption. Is it probable—nay, is it
possible—that the population of six millions, in the Southern confede¬
racy will consume as much of foreign productions, of luxuries, as the
whole Union does now ? A large portion of foreign manufactures are
of costly fabrics, not suited for, nor wanted by, a considerable part of
the Southern population. Undoutedly the wealthy portion of Southern pop¬
ulation consume as liberally, or more so, of luxuries and expensive commodi¬
ties, as those of any other section ; but then a very large class of persons there
consume far less than the laboring people of the North and West. How much,
for instance, of silks, linens, fine woollens, glass, cutlery, carpeting, &c., and
which go to make up the bulk of our imports, are consumed by the two and
a half millions of Southern population who are to be the laborers in the
production of the one hundred millions of exports? How much of tea
and coffe£, of wines and sugar, and the thousand other things which our
tables of imports exhibit ? Making all due allowances for the character
of a portion of the population, does any body deem it possible that the
South could consume this enormous amount of foreign productions ? No ;
she must trade with some other nation, and obtain some other articles of
greater necessity, for the South cannot subsist on manufactured products
alone. She will not trade with the North, lor that is wholly interdicted
in the theory of the Senator—but she will trade with the West. She
33
will sell to the West. But what will she buy in exchange ? What splen¬
did inducements are held out to the West to enter into this commercial
league? The Senator says, that the West will thus be enabled to buy all
she wants at low rates, and to sell all her productions at high prices. Let
us see if this be so. What will the South take of the West? 1 believe
the only thing indicated by the Senator, as an article of much importance,
was live animals, which are now chiefly obtained from that section. Of
most other articles of agricultural production, necessary to the subsistence
of Southern laborers, a sufficient supply is raised at home—and from some
of them considerable quantities are exported to the North. But that ex¬
port is then to cease. The West then, the boundless West, its spreading
and fertile prairies, its millions upon millions of free, industrious people,
are to have the mighty privilege of supplying the South with all the live
stock it may require ; and, in return, is to be wholly dependent upon
Southern imports of foreign manufactures for every commodity of that
description which it may need.
Of the other products of the fertile West, the South is to take nothing.
It will not require the cotton bagging and bale rope of Kentucky and
Missouri; for they are manufactures, and, if made at home, necessarily di¬
minish the demand for the foreign import received in return for Southern
export, and of course diminishes the ability of Dundee and Glasgow to
consume the cotton of the South. The hemp and wool of the West, for
wool is yet to be a great staple there, cannot be taken, for the same rea¬
son, and for the additional one that the South will have no occasion for
them. But the Senator said, inadvertently, 1 must think, that the West
would export, through the free ports of the South, all its surplus produc¬
tion. Why, sir, that breaks up the whole arrangement at once. If the
West export any thing, she will import also ; and she will then cease to
be a purchaser of the South. She will import for herself, and who then is
to consume the one hundred and twenty millions of Southern imports ? If
the products of the West are hereafter to form considerable portions of
American exports, as I hope they may, I see no reason why they may
not be made through Northern ports, in American ships, under one Gov¬
ernment, as well as in a separate confederacy. But the whole theory of
the Senator rests upon the ground that they are not to become exporters
at all. The whole scope and policy, aim, end, and object of his measures,
are, to induce larger imports of foreign fabrics, with a view to create lar¬
ger demands for Southern productions, not Western. If this enlarged
import should occasion a demand for Western product instead of South¬
ern, then the peculiar oppression and grievance of the South would be just
as great as it is now. Nor can the West be allowed to become a manu¬
facturing region either. If it manufacture for itself, it will not require
the foreign fabrics which the South proposes to furnish. The countless
millions who are hereafter to inhabit these vast regions, spreading out
toward the setting sun, are neither to produce for exportation, nor to
manufacture for themselves, but are to find in the markets of the South,
of six or eight millions of consumers, full demand for all their surplus
productions—productions, not one of which, be it remembered, must come
in competition with the labor of foreign nations. This is the mighty boon
held out to the West, in the new arrangement, which the Senator has
supposed. The West, I doubt not, is destined to become a great manu¬
facturing region. It is so already to no inconsiderable extent, and its true
3
31
interests lie in that direction. It is becoming a great producer of wool,
and the next step must be, the manufacture of' it ; and this, almost of ne¬
cessity. There are no markets for it abroad, and it must seek and have
a home market. All nations are becoming growers of wool—and even
remote Australia is beginning to furnish it to Europe and America. In
such a state of things, the wool of America must be manufactured in
O ' 1 .
America, just as the iron of our hills must be manufactured here or lie
forever buried in the earth. So the wool of the West, and the iron of
the West, must at no distant day be manufactured in the West. But the
Senator's partition does not look to that at all. It looks to keep the West
always dependent for manufactured articles on the labor of others, not of
itself, with no other means of payment but the raising of animal provi¬
sions, alive or cured, for a population far inferior to its own. It is to be
borne in mind, that the North is to be no longer a consumer of Western
production, for that also would disturb the symmetry of the Senator's por¬
traiture. The North is to be too impoverished to deal with anybody. It
will have nothing to sell, and of course can buy nothing any where, so far
as trade and commerce are concerned, and may be considered wholly ob¬
literated from the map of American confederacies.
But, sir, is there no danger of collision in the Southern confederacy itsell ;
no jarring of different branches of the homogeneous interest ? The sole sta¬
ples of export are to be cotton, tobacco, and rice, and these are to furnish all
the manufactured articles required for the whole confederacy. Virginia
raises no cotton, I think, or to a very inconsiderable amount, not worth men¬
tioning. Its only production for export is tobacco ; of which, it grows about
three millions and a half of dollars in value. It has a population of about
a million and a quarter. South Carolina, with about half the population of
Virginia, produces neaily double the value of exportable commodi¬
ties. Compared with Alabama, the disparity is greater still; and
with Mississippi, still greater. Alabama, with a population less than
six hundred thousand, produces over eight millions of exports ; and Mis¬
sissippi, with three hundred and seventy-five thousand, over fifteen mil¬
lions. Now, how is Virginia to obtain her fair share of the one hundred
and twenty millions of imports? She exports but three and a half mil¬
lions, and of course can import but that amount. She raises nothing
which South Carolina, or Alabama, or Mississippi, want. There can be
no trade between them. Her consumption should be in proportion to her
population, double that of the two former, and quadruple that of the lat¬
ter State. How is she to pay for her excess of consumption? The re¬
sult would be, that, in a short time, Virginia would come to some reckon¬
ing with the other more favored States of the confederation, and demand
some adjustment on a more equitable basis. She would say to her neigh¬
bors, our good friends in Europe, which is our national market, impose a
duty on njf tobacco of several hundred, in some instances, two thousand
per cent., while your cotton is almost free. Something must be done to
equalize this matter. You must pay me a drawback on my tobacco, or we
cannot buy your imports. You must buy more of us, or we cannot buy
of you. We must manufacture for ourselves, and for you too, or we have
nothing to pay. Then comes the question of taxation, of production, of
home industry, the same which arises now. Virginia must insist and will
insist that her coal and iron shall be consumed in preference to that of
England—that her cotton manufactures shall be protected, and soon she
will have woollen manufactures too. Finding herself possessed of every
35
element of national wealth, she would insist, and justly insist, on develop¬
ing her rich and exhaustless resources. She would enter largely into
manufactures, into mining, salt works, glass works, navigation, foreign and
internal commerce, and every other branch of human industry. She would,
and will yet, and must, become, what she has illimitable means of becom¬
ing, a manufacturing and commercial, as well as an agricultural State. She
ought long ago to have been such. In the new confederacy she would
be made more deeply sensible of her true interests, with far less experi¬
ence than she has already had. Hitherto, the North has furnished large
markets for her flour and corn, but in the new order of things this is to cease.
The North is to be too poor to consume these products of Virginia; and,
besides, it would disturb the harmony of the system. If the North should
presume to buy'the corn and flour of Virginia, they might pay for it in
American manufactures ; and that again would destrby, to that extent, the
demand for the foreign-made fabric which South Carolina imports. It is
apparent that Virginia would very soon become a manufacturing State,
and would insist upon paying South Carolina, for whatever of British
productions she might want, in Virginia manufactures. She would say,
we will take your raw cotton, and spin and weave it; but you must buy of
us the cloth which you require, that is made from it. We will buy the
silks and wines you get from France, but you must take our iron and iron
manufactures in exchange—and our wool and woollens. Our ships must
be protected and encouraged to carry your productions, and to return your
imports—and if South Carolina would not accede to all this, Virginia and
South Carolina would be quite as much at variance as the South and North
now are. The homogeneousness would be utterly broken up. But worse
than this—how would South Carolina herself get along ? How could she
stand the competition with Alabama and Mississippi?' With a less popu¬
lation, they would make by far the largest portion of the imports. How
is South Carolina to obtain her equal share for consumption ? What one
single thing does South Carolina produce, which Mississippi wants? For
the same reason that would operate on Virginia, South Carolina also
would inevitably be compelled to manufacture for her own consumption.
In this new confederacy, with but one interest, the growth of raw mate¬
rial for exportation, she would be very far behind Alabama, Mississippi,
and Louisiana, in the relative proportion of her productions. She would
have nothing which either of these States wanted, with which to purchase
her just share of the imports, and would be compelled to enter upon some
new field of industry, to save herself from utter ruin.
South Carolina, with a population, in round numbers, of six hundred
thousand, produces six millions for export; while Mississippi, with three
hundred and seventy-five thousand, produces fifteen millions. Mississippi,
therefore, as compared with South Carolina, imports as fifteen to six. Mis¬
sissippi can import, and, according to the Senator's argument, can consume
at the rate of forty dollars a head for all her population, while South Car¬
olina can only import and consume at the rate often dollars, and Virginia,
less than three dollars. This would be a state of things which could not
last. The inevitable result would be, that the northernmost States of the
confederacy, utterly unable to obtain for all their labor, devoted to the
growth of rude produce, sufficient for their wants in the manufactures of
Europe, would, of absolute necessity, begin to supply themselves by home
production ; and then the same questions of tariffs, and protection, would
grow up, and would finally be settled, just as they are now settled, in fa-
36
vor ot home industry. Theie can be no other possible result. Can any
Senator point out in what way those States, which are to be the smallest
producers of exportable articles, are to be the largest consumers of the
imports? No, sir; there is no possible way in which it can be done.
Then, as between the Southern and the Western confederacies, dif¬
ficulties of no small embarrassment must grow up. I have already
shown that the West must not be an exporter, nor a manufacturer,
for either of these destroys the whole foundation on which the prosperity
of the South is to be built up. in such a state of things, how is the
Western confederacy to be supported ? Whence its revenue ? The hon¬
orable Senator says, that the Southern confederacy, by imposing a duty of
10 per cent, on the one hundred and twenty millions of imports, will ob¬
tain a revenue of twelve millions annually, fully sufficient for all its wants.
But what is the West to do ? Supposing her confederacy to need no more
than twelve millions also, how is she to obtain it? Admitting that she is
able to consume half the imports, sixty millions, she will be compelled,
if she raise her revenue on imports, to pay a duty, first, the 10 per cent al¬
ready assessed in the South, and next, 20 per cent, more for her own pur¬
poses—that is, six millions to the revenue of the South, and twelve mil¬
lions to her own Treasury—in all, eighteen millions on an import of sixty
millions. This calculation supposes, of course, that all imports are dutia¬
ble. Nothing is to be free. Neither tea, nor coffee, nor salt, nor even
specie. Every thing fs to be taxed; and the Western confederacy is to
have the great privilege of paying one-half of all (he revenue of the
Southern confederacy, and to pay, in the whole, fully as much on imports
as was paid last year by all the United States together.. It is not easy to
conjecture what amount of revenue will be necessary for the support of
the ultra-montane confederation. What are to be its limits? If it is to
stretch across the Rocky Mountains, and wave its sceptre on the shores
of the Pacific, how many mounted regiments, how many troops, how
many fortifications, how many military roads and military posts, will be
required for its security, no one can foretell. That its expenditures will
be great, cannot be doubted. If the revenue be derived from duties on the
imports which it makes from the Southern confederacy, the Southern, in
return, will begin to impose duties on the provisions and live animals re¬
ceived in return. Then follow retaliatory regulations, counter legislation,
border difficulties, and all the preliminary and incipient measures of ani¬
mosity and strife. If, finally, from these, or from any causes, open war
should break out between any two of these confederacies, or with any
foreign nation, how is the prosperity and happiness of the Southern con¬
federacy^ to be affected ? She, under no circumstances whatever, could
engage in hostilities with England, her " natural market.'''' Deprived
of her only customer, cut off from all her accustomed supplies, a single
year would prove uteriy ruinous to her. Remember, she is to have no
intercourse with theimpoverished North. She is not to be a navigating,
and hence not a naval Power Her sole resource is in planting and in
exchanging her rude produce with Europe. How long can she endure a
total suspension of that intercourse, even though she should not be called
upon to pay one dollar for defence, nor to have her coasts ravaged and her
cities laid waste ? Suppose, for a single moment, that the manufactures
of colton in the Middle and Eastern States should now be annihilated, as
they are to be in the new state of things which the Senator imagines,
thus removing all demand for cotton for home consumption ; and suppose,
37
further, that without the perils and expenses and dangers of a foreign
war, Europe, or England alone, should refuse to take another pound of cot¬
ton from the United States. What would be the condition of the South?
If industry there is depressed now, if the profits of planting are small, if
the South is becoming more and more impoverished, as the Senator as¬
serts, what must it be in such a case ? And if thus brought to the verge
of ruin, what would she be, if, superadded to all this, she should be
plunged in war with the most powerful nation of the world, and left alone,
single handed, to sustain the conflict? Let Senators consider for them¬
selves.
Again : if instead of a war with England, or sotne other Power of Eu¬
rope, the Southern confederacy should be brought into collision with either
of the others, deeply to be deplored certainly, but not impossible, perhaps
not improbable—does the South see in such a calamity nothing to be ap¬
prehended disastrous to Southern interests ? She cannot, on a sudden emer¬
gency, become very strong as a naval Power, though her citizens be ever
so brave or chivalrous. She must have allies who command the ocean ;
and who but her best customers, and her sole manufacturers, the English ?
British fleets will ride in her harbors and upon her coasts, if not British
bayonets defend her soil. Does the Senator see any security for South¬
ern institutions ill such an alliance? Is British feeling, British policy,
not to say philanthropy, is " the grasping ambition of England," of which
we hear so much, all to be calmed, allayed, soothed down, in favor of South¬
ern peculiar institutions? Is British policy to take a new direction? Is
that proud boast, in the inflated language of one of her orators, about " the
sacred soil of Britain," where the altar and the God fall together, and the
chains are unriveted, before " the genius of universal emancipation," to
be all unsaid and unwritten ? But, independent of all interference or al¬
liance in that quarter, are Southern interests more likely to be respected or
protected, under the new confederacies which are to be formed, than they
are now ? What at this moment is the great security under which they
rest ? What but the Constitution of these United States? To that they
( cling—and under that, and that alone, they insist upon the enjoyment of
all which it guaranties to them. Is there any thing in the signs of the
times, in the condition of public opinion in this country, to induce the
South to believe that when this Constitution is broken up, and new forms
of Government are established, any greater security will be provided for
their interests than is now furnished ? Is that "spirit of fanaticism," as
the Senator has called it, which he supposes to prevail at the North, hos¬
tile to the interests of the South, to be allayed and quieted, when the
restraints of the Constitution are removed, and when the anxious solici¬
tude for harmony and peace and fraternal regard, which animate much
the larger portion of the free States,is turned into alienation and distrust?
What remedies does the Senator expect will be voluntarily provided for
the escape of fugitives " held to service," in the language of the Consti¬
tution, by the new Government to be instituted in the free States? No,
sir; when all connexions and mutual obligations are dissolved, all consti¬
tutional restraints abrogated, the South will in vain look for any relief or
support of its institutions from the neighboring confederacies. A half
century would not go by—no, not the half of it, if such a deplorable
event as that which the Senator supposes should take place—belore the
South would exhibit, not the flowery and smiling fields which he has
pictured, not the wealth and prosperity and happiness which he dreams
38
of—but decay and desolation, and dreary wastes and poverty, of which
he has no conception. No nation, as I endeavored to show yesterday,
ever did, no nation ever will, or ever can, become permanently great or
powerful or wealthy, whose whole labor is devoted to one, and only one
pursuit, especially if that be the production of rude materials, which
other nations enjoy the profit of manufacturing. It is against all history,
against all philosophy, against every doctrine of political economy, which
has ever found respectable support any where. The great|ind only secu¬
rity for the South is to remain a component part, a great part of a nation
where diversity of interests and of pursuits prevail—where, by free in¬
tercommunication and exchange, the profits of labor and industry in all
the sections will be equalized, and where the benefit of one promotes the
benefit of all. But the Senator rejects all this. His faith is strong,
against all experience, against the history of all nations, against all the
warnings, and admonitions, and legacies bequeathed to us by the fathers
of the country—the patriots and sages and statesmen of the purer and
earlier age of the'Republic. Sir, this matter was early considered, early
discussed. The value of internal commerce as a bond of union, the di¬
versity of soil, climate, and pursuit, as a source of wealth and national
strength, occupied much of the patriotic thought and patriotic hope of the
framersof the Constitution.
I could read upon this topic what every Senator no doubt has often
read, but which I fear few remember and ponder, as it deserves to be re¬
membered and pondered, the farewell admonition of him so justly styled
the " Father of his Country"—an admonition from one not only of singu¬
lar purity of life and integrity, and of practical wisdom, but of compre¬
hensive views and far-reaching sagacity, as to the true interests of the
country, and of the danger to which it would be exposed. In reading
this address, it almost seems that the very discussion we are now engaged
in was foreseen by him ; for how admirably has he answered many of the
suggestions and arguments which have been used on this occasion.
Allow me to call the attention of the Senator to an extract or two from
this venerable and venerated bequest: ,
"The unity of Government which constitutes you one people is also now dear to you. It is
justly so ; for it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence ; the support of your
tranquillity at home ; your peace abroad ; of your safety ; of your prosperity ; of that very lib¬
erty which you so highly prize. But as it is easy to foresee that, from different causes and from
different quarters, much pains will be taken, many artifices employed, to weaken in your minds
the conviction of this truth—as this is the point in your political fortress against which the batte¬
ries of internal and external enemies will be most constantly and actively (though often covertly
and insidiously) directed."
How different this, from the glowing imagery of the Senator from South
Carolina, who sees all these blessings, " independence," " tranquillity,"
peace," " safety," "prosperity," ay, " liberty," too, in a separate Gov¬
ernment for each of the great divisions of the country. But to go on and
hear his paternal advice :
" It is of infinite moment that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national
Union to your collective and individual happiness ; that you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and
immovable attachment to it; accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it as of the palladium
of your political safety and prosperity ; watching for its preservation with jealous anxiety ; discoun¬
tenancing whatever may suggest even a suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned ; and in¬
dignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our countiy
from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts,"
39
Again, in reference to diversity of interests, furnshing stronger and ad¬
ditional inducements for Union :
" Every portion of our country finds the most commanding motives for carefully guarding and
preserving the Union of the whole.
" The North, in an unrestrained intercourse with the South, protected by the equal laws of a
common Government, finds in the productions of the latter great additional resources of maritime
and commercial enterprise, and precious materials of manufacturing industry. The South, in the
same intercourse, benefiting by the same agency of the North, sees its agriculture grow and its
commerce expand. Turning partly into its own channels the seamen of the North, it finds its par¬
ticular navigation invigorated ; and, while it contributes in different ways to nourish and increase
the general mass of the national navigation, it looks forward to the protection of a maritime strength
to which itself is unequally adapted. The East, in like intercourse with the West, already finds,
and in the progressive improvement of interior communications by land and water will more and
more find, a valuable vent for the commodities which it brings from abroad or manufactures at
home."
Again :
"The West derives from the East supplies requisite to its growth and comfort, and, what is
perhaps of still greater consequence, it must of necessity owe the secure enjoyment of indispensa¬
ble outlets for its own productions to the weight, influence, and the future maritime strength of
the Atlantic side of the Union, directed by an indissoluble community of interest as one nation.
Any other tenure by which the West can hold this essential advantage, whether derived from its
own separate strength, or from an apostate and unnatural connexion with any foreign Power, must
be intrinsically precarious.
"While, then, every part of our country thus feels an immediate and particular interest in
union, all the parts combined cannot fail to find in the united mass of means and efforts greater
strength, greater resource, proportionably greater security from external danger, a less frequent in¬
terruption of their peace by foreign nations ; and, what is of inestimable value, they must derive
from union an exemption from those broils and wars between themselves, which so frequently af¬
flict neighboring countries not tied together by the same Government, which their own rivalships
alone wbuld be sufficient to produce, but which opposite foreign alliances, attachments, and in¬
trigues, would stimulate and imbitter."
Then, as to the causes which may be apprehended as operating to im¬
pair the Union, how pointedly and emphatically does General Washing¬
ton put the seal of his condemnation on the idea, that there is any real
difference of local interests :
" In contemplating the causes which may disturb our Union, it occurs as matter of serious con¬
cern that any ground should have been furnished for characterizing parties by geographical discrim¬
inations—Northern and Southern, Atlantic and Western—whence designing men may endeavor
to excite a belief that there is a real difference of local interests and views. 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 yourselves too much against the jealousies and heartburnings
which spring from these misrepresentations; they tend to render alien to each other those who
ought to be bound together by fraternal affection."
Sir, there is much more of this immortal legacy, whose value no money
can measure', which I should be happy to read ; but I am aware that I am
repeating what is familiar to us all, and I forbear.
Mr. President, the honorable Senator, in his estimate of the advantages
to be gained by the South from a separate confederacy, makes no account
whatever of national strength, and national renown. He lorgets that or¬
deal of fire through which we passed in the establishment of our inde-
40
pendence, and through which we could never have gone if we had not
been united. The glorious past he leaves out of view altogether, while
his ardent imagination revels in the brighter visions of the future. Let
the separation of which he speaks take place, and that day, on whose
annual return ten thousand times ten thousand American hearts beat
higher and quicker—that day which first beheld us an independent na¬
tion—is to be blotted from the calendar. For the South, at least, it can
bring no joyous recollections, no patriotic, heart-stirring emotions. The
achievements of our ancestors are to be all forgotten. Camden and King's
Mountain may indeed remain within the limits of the new confederacy—
but none of the renown and the glory which attach to them will belong to
it. All of gallantry and prowess and noble bearing which were then dis¬
played,all of high renown, ever-during fame, honor,glory, there acquired,
belonged, and ever will belong, in all history, to United, United, United
America. It can never be divided—God grant it may never be obliterat¬
ed and forgotten. No account is to be taken of the glorious spectacle
which we have presented to the world, in the solution of the great prob¬
lem of the capacity of mankind for self-government—no account of the
great advance which has taken place in government, and the progress of
free institutions, all over the world, from our example. The various
events of our unparalleled Revolution, the renown achieved in that mo¬
mentous struggle—the veneration for the great and good, the patriots
whose fame is our country's inheritance, the sacred bequest of 1 iberty,
unity, strength, purchased with so much blood and so much treasure, are
all, all to be abandoned, all sacrificed, if, in the Providence of God, so
deplorable an event should occur, as that which the Senator, for the pur¬
poses of illustration, has supposed. But no, sir ; none of these things will
happen. I have no belief that the honorable Senatorhimself contemplates
or desires such a calamity—1 have no belief that his honored State enter¬
tains the slightest wish, the faintest hope, for a separation of our Union. I
am sure I should do him, and it, great injustice, to attribute such a purpose
to either. No man is reckless enough to covet the fame, the eternity of
infamy, which must await him who shall bring upon this happy land the
desolation and war which such an event must produce. The adventurous
youth who undertook but for a single day to guide the chariot of the sun,
paid for his temerity with the forfeit of his life. Happy will it be for him
who, impelled by a mad ambition, shall kindle up our system in universal
conflagration, to escape with so light a penalty. He will live, live in the
reproaches and execrations of mankind, in all time. He will live in his¬
tory—mot on the page where are inscribed the names of the benefactors
of our race, not with the good, the wise, the great, but with the en¬
emies of the liberties and happiness of mankind, with the oppressors of
their race, with the scourges whom God has permitted to desolate nations,
and to quench human happiness in tears and blood.
Sir, we are one. VVe cannot be divided. VVe have a common coun¬
try, a common history, common distinction, renown, pre-eminence. They
all belong to one, and one only. We have common and mutual interests
which bind us together, and which cannot be severed. Batids stronger
than iron or steel hold us in indissoluble connexion.
•' One sacred oath has tied
Our loves ; one destiny our life shall guide,
Nor wild, nor deep, our common way divide."
J
SPEECH OF MR. STEWART, OF PENN.
IN DEFENCE OF
THE TARIFF AND DISTRIBUTION.
delivered in tue house of representatives of the u. s., march 13, 1844.
Mr. Stewart, of Ponn., rose to inquire of the Chair whether the previous question, which
had been called on the engrossment of the bill, would preclude discussion on the question now
propounded by the Chair, « Shall this bill pass."
'The Speaker having replied in the negative—
Mr. Stewart said: However unprepared, I am nevertheless glad, sir, of
the opportunity thus unexpectedly acquired of saying a few words, on this im¬
portant measure before its final passage. On coming into the hall a few minutes
since, I was surprised, sir, to learn that this bill to repeal the Distribution Law,
reported by the Committee of Ways and Means within the last hour, had been
already read a first and second time under the previous question, and was now
on its final passage. Sir, is this fair ? is it right, that this bill, by far the most
important that has occupied the attention of the present Congress, should thus
be hurried through all its stages, and finally passed, under the gag, without
amendment or debate ? Why this hurry and haste ? Why post with such dex¬
terity to this destructive deed ? Why is this important measure to be thus de¬
spatched in an hour, when days and months have been spent in the discussion
of matters of comparative insignificance ? The motive cannot be mistaken : its
friends are afraid of discussion; they fear the development of facts which must
prostrate them before the people ; but they cannot escape, sir. They may, by
the gag, suppress debate here, but they cannot, thank God, gag the people and
the press ; they can and will speak out, in tones of thunder, against the doings
of this day.
The proceeds of the sales of the public lands of this country belonged to the
States of this Union. It is a fund which this Government holds in trust for the
people of the States ; and a period has arrived in our history when, by the mal¬
administration of this Government, a state of things has been brought about in
which the States are involved in debt, a debt which was not only crushing the
people of the country under taxation, but was driving some of the States to re¬
pudiation and bankruptcy. Is this Government to furnish no relief to the States
of this Union? Does it owe no obligations to the States and to the people?
Are we to sit here calmly and see the States and the people of the Union
crushed under the weight of direct taxation, see the character of the country dis¬
graced, see repudiation stalking forth throughout the land, and this House and
this Government, which had the power to relieve the people from their burdens
and redeem this Government from disgrace, do nothing ? This was a matter iu
which this Government was deeply interested. The interest and honor of this
Government must be sustained or destroyed with the interest and honor of the
States—they are inseparable—we are one people in the estimation of mankind,
and share in the same glory and in the same disgrace.
Sir, you will have a surplus in the Treasury, at the end of the year, derived
from the existing tariff, if let alone. And what will you do with it? Why not
give the proceeds of the land to the States, to which it justly and fairly belongs ?
j. & G. S. Gideon, Printers, Ninth Street, Washington!
2
If you do not, you will be driven to the necessity of another Distribution Law
to divide the surplus revenue among the States.
GENERAE JACKSON IN FAVOR OE DISTRIBUTION.
This policy was strongly recommended and urged by Gen. Jackson, not in one,
but inthree of his annual messages, and it had been adopted in Congress by a major¬
ity of more than four to one, 155 to 38 in the House, and 24 to 6 in the Senate.
Yet gentlemen now contend that this measure is notonly highly inexpedient, but
unconstitutional; and Mr. Van Buren, in his Indiana letter, declares that the people
would " stultify" themselves by its adoption—a declaration by which he not only
stultifies Gen. Jackson, but himself also. Gen. Jackson, in his first message, advo¬
cates the policy of distribution, and says, " the most safe, just, and federaLdisposi-
tion that can be made of the surplus revenue will be its distribution among the States
.according to their ratio of representation." In his next message of 1830, he re¬
news this recommendation, and takes up and answers, at great length, and with
great ability, all the objections that had been urged against the policy of distribu¬
tion—the very same objections that are here urged by Mr. Van Buren and his
friends, he answered and overturned, in their order, No. 1. 2. 3, 4, occupying
several pages of his message, to which he commended the gentleman from 1 ir-
ginia, (Mr. Dromgoole,) who had reported this bill. In his message of 1832,
Gen. Jackson again took up and discussed, at great length, the subject of the
public lands: lie says they ought to " cease, as soon as practicable, to be a source
of revenue that " the idea of raising revenue from them ought to be aban¬
doned;" that they would endanger the "harmony and union of the States;
and he expressly declares, what is unquestionably true, that these lands were
pledged to the General Government to pay the revolutionary war debt, and that
that debt being now discharged, the " lands were released from the pledge, and
it is in the discretion of Congress," he says, " to dispose of them in such way as
may seem to them best." Such are the sound and deliberate opinions of Gen.
Jackson; yet Mr. Van Buren, who concurred with him at the time, now says,
in his Indiana letter, that the people would " stultify themselves by the adoption
of a proposition so preposterous." These are his words—a high compliment to
his "illustrious predecessor"—" a preposterous proposition," which, Mr. Van
Buren says, no one but a fool would think of, and that " its agitation, he regrets
to say, is calculated to degrade the character of tire American people ill the esti¬
mation of mankind."
These, sir, are perhaps some of the developments which gentlemen intended
to suppress by the previous question.
Why not give the land proceeds to the States ? We are now receiving under
the tariff of '42 more revenue than we want; during the last month we have
received more than two millions of dollars in the single port of New York.
Suppose we receive in all the other ports in the Union no more than is received
in New York, and it will amount to four millions per month, equal to forty-
eight millions per year. Still gentlemen are not satisfied, and a bill has been
reported by the Ways and Means to repeal the tariff of '42, because it has de¬
stroyed the revenue, and they have substituted one which they say will increase
the revenue. Yes, sir, the Globe also, in an editorial article of the 10th last
month, stated that the last Whig Congress had "doubled the expenditures of
the Government, and reduced the revenue one-half'—a statement made in the
face of official documents showing that the reverse was much nearer the truth,
Yes, sir, the report on the finances at the opening of this session shows that the
ordinary expenditures during Mr. Van Buren's administration amounted to near¬
ly thirty-four millions in one year, and averaged more than twenty-eight mil¬
lions; while in 1842 and '43, under a Whig Congress, the average was little
over twenty-three, and that the revenue had been increased by the Whig tariff
3
of '42 from less than fourteen millions in 1840 and '41 to more than eighteen
millions in 1842 and 1843, and it would be more than twenty-five, and might
possibly reach thirty millions the present year. Yet the Globe says in the face
of these facts that the Whigs have " doubled the expenditures and reduced the
revenues one-half!"
From present prospects, am I not justified, sir, in saying that we shall have
a large surplus over and above the current expenditures ? Why not then
give the proceeds of the lands to the States to relieve the people of the indebted
States from the loads of taxation by which they are now ground down to the
earth ? This fund justly belongs to the States—in the language of Gen. Jack¬
son, this Government now holds it in trust for the States after the paying of the
revolutionary debt for which it was pledged, and a court of chancery, upon a
bill filed, would decree this fund to the States on proof of the payment of the
debt for which it was pledged. You have no use for this fund, then why I re¬
peat, sir, not give it to the States to which it rightfully belongs ? What better
use can you make of it?
Mr. Dromgoole said, pay off the Whig debt with it!
The Whig debt! I thank the gendeman for the suggestion—the Van Buren
■debt he should have said. Yes, sir, the existing debt was inherited by the
Whigs from the gentleman and his party; it was the only legacy Mr. Van Bu¬
ren had left to his country when he retired from office. He had found the
treasury with a surplus of more than sixteen millions of dollars over and above
the amount deposited with the States, to which add the proceeds of the bank
stock, and the amount he received exceeded twenty-four millions. Well, sir,
he not only expended this 24 millions with all the revenues of the Government,
but he left the people saddled with a debt of $17,356,998, consisting of treasury-
notes, unpaid appropriations, and debts outstanding; and this was the debt the
gentleman (Mr. Dromgoole) is pleased to call the Whig debt—it is ours,
but we got it by descent, it came from that gentlemen and his party; but the
Whigs could pay it, and would pay it, if gentlemen would let the present tariff
alone a few years longer. The Whigs had paid part of it, and would soon pay the
whole. But if gentlemen succeeded in reducing the tariff as proposed by the
Committee of Ways and Means, to which the gentleman (Mr. Dromgoole) be¬
longed, (seven out of nine of that committee were Van Buren men,) this debt
will soon be again doubled, especially if you superadd the extravagance and
prodigality of another Van Buren administration—of which however, sir, I am
happy to believe there is not the slightest probability.
But why, let me ask gentlemen, repeal the distribution law? it is not now in
operation, and it cannot operate till all the duties are brought down to 20 per
cent. Why repeal it then, unless the Committee of Ways and Means contem¬
plate the reduction of the duties to 20 per cent., for till this is done there can be
no distribution under the existing law. But I have another question to ask the
committee—if you repeal a part, why not repeal the whole of the law? This
law gives to each of the new States 500,000 acres of choice land over and above
their distributive share. This part of the law is left unrepealed, and in full
force, while all the rest of the States are deprived of all the benefits of this law
now and forever. As to the old States the law is repealed, but the new States
are left to enjoy the benefits of its provision. Why is this so? This certainly
requires explanation, and it was perhaps partly to avoid this also that the pre¬
vious question has been called.
The revenue plans of the Committee of Ways and Means are wholly unin¬
telligible to me—precisely the same measure is proposed at one time to reduce,
and at another time to increase, the revenue ; whether there be too much or too
4
Kttle revenue, the same remedy is recommended, a " reduction of the tariff—
down with the tariff." So these political doctors have, it seems, the same remedy
for all diseases. In 1832, when we had a surplus revenue of upwards of
$17,000,000, to relieve the treasury, Mr. McDuffie, then chairman of the Ways
and Means, reported just such a bill as this reducing duties, and it was then sup¬
ported by the present chairman (Mr. McKay, of N. G.) as a measure calculated to
reduce the revenue. Now that honorable gentleman reports a similar bill reducing
the duties for the contrary purpose, the increase of the revenue; how the same mea¬
sure is to have opposite effects at different times, I am at a loss to discover,
perhaps the honorable chairman can explain it. This bill proposes to reduce the
duties to about what they were in 1840 and '41, when the revenue from imports
was about fourteen millions ef dollars. Now, under the present law, (the act of
'42,) the revenue would probably be about double that amount, yet the Commit¬
tee of Ways and Means propose to repeal the act of '42, and reduce the duties
to about what they were in 1840 and '41 for the avowed purpose of increasing
the revenue. This surely requires explanation ; I cannot understand it, nor do
I see how any body else can. But how, I ask, is a general reduction of duties
to increase the revenue? Clearly this could only be done by a corresponding
increase of imports. If you reduce your duties one-half, you must certainly
double your imports to get the same amount of revenue. The Secretary of the
Treasury says we will have twenty millions of revenue under the existing law,
and he wants five millions more, and the Committee of Ways and Means to accom¬
plish this object, instead of increasing the duties one-fourth, reduce them
one-fourth; clearly then they must increase imports one-half. Our imports
have averaged for some years past about one hundred millions; on this, with the
present tariff, the Secretary says we will this year have twenty millions of
revenue; reduce it one-fourth and we will have but fifteen. To make up this
loss, we must import twenty-five millions more goods; and to add five millions,
the required amount to the revenue, we must import twenty-five millions addi¬
tional, making an increased importation of fifty millions, to get five millions of
revenue which is not wanted, and would never be acquired by this measure if it
were.
effects on faitmers and mechanics.
But our present amount of foreign imports, viz., one hundred millions, is suf¬
ficient to supply the demand; how then are you to make room for fifty millions
more ? this can only be done by destroying fifty millions of dollars of our
own domestic productions, to make way for that amount of the productions of
foreign industry. We must, according to this financial scheme, not only destroy
fifty millions of dollars worth annually of our productive industry, but we must
send fifty millions of dollars of hard cash to foreign countries, to purchase what we
now do produce, can produce, and ought to produce at home; and for what ? to-
raise five millions of revenue by taxation, which is not wanted ! Now, sir, I submit,
is this a wise, is it an American policy ? Is it not rather a British policy, a
plan to reduce the duties and open our ports to the importation of British goods,
to the sacrifice and destruction of our own mechanics, farmers, and manufacturers ?
Yes, sir, and this is to be done by an American Congress, and by the represen¬
tatives of the American people ! Can such an anti-American—such a British,
system as this, stand for a moment before this free and enlightened people? Pass
this bill, sir, take five dollars off bar iron, and still more off iron in all its other
forms, and, sir, you will go far to extinguish the fires of every furnace and of
every forge in Pennsylvania. By this bill you will strike down your own me¬
chanics—your hatters, your shoemakers, your blacksmiths, your tailors, your
sadlers ; in short, all your mechanics ; you will paralyze and prostrate your glass
* orks, paper mills, tanneries, salt works, collieries, lead mines—your woollem
5
and cotton factories; but above all, you aim a death blow at the American far¬
mers, not only by destroying their home markets, almost the only markets they
now have, but what is still worse, you will convert the mechanics and manu¬
facturers thus thrown out of employment into agriculturists, into producers in¬
stead of consumers of agricultural productions. When you double production
and diminish consumption one-half, do you not ruin and destroy the farmers of
this country ? And, sir, allow me to say, that in a country like this, where seven-
eights of the entire population is engaged in agriculture, when agriculture is
destroyed, the country itself is destroyed. Agriculture is the great basis and
foundation on which everything else depends; when the farmer prospers, all
prosper; when he sinks, all the rest, professional men, mechanics, and all go
down with him. It is the great object therefore to take care of agriculture, make
this prosperous and the whole country will prosper; and how is agriculture to
be made prosperous but by building up and sustaining home markets. It is
therefore not for the manufacturers, but for the mechanics and farmers, yes, sir,
for the farmers, that I advocate the protective policy. There is one important
fact which lies deep at the foundation of the whole subject, to which I am anxious
to attract the attention of the farmers and politicians of this country, and it is
this, that half, and more than half, of the entire price of the hundred millions of
dollars a year of foreign goods imported into this country is agricultural produce
raised on a foreign soil, worked up and manufactured into goods, and then sent
here for sale; and that the farmers and people of this country send in this way
fifty millions of dollars a year to purchase foreign agricultural produce, in the
shape of goods, while foreigners take little or nothing from us; our whole agricul¬
tural exports to all the world (excepting cotton and tobacco) do not amount to ten
millions of dollars a year; thus, sir, we purchase five dollars' worth of foreign ag¬
ricultural produce to every dollar's worth we sell; this may seem strange, but it
is strictly true; I defy contradiction—I challenge investigation. Let gentlemen
disposed to contest it select an article of foreign goods, a yard of cloth, a ton of
iron, a hat, a coat, a pair of shoes, any thing, "from a needle to an anchor,"
examine its constituent parts, the raw material, the clothing and the subsistence
of the labor employed in its manufacture, and it would be discovered that more
than half, often three-fourths, of the whole price is made up of agricultural pro¬
duce. It is a well known fact that farmers often make hundreds of dollars worth
of domestic goods, cloths, &c., without using a dollar's worth of any thing not
produced on their own farms; goods and cloth thus made are therefore entirely
agricultural; and are not the same materials used in the manufacture of goods,
whether made on a farm or in a factory ?
Mr. S. said he had ascertained the fact from his own books kept at a fur¬
nace, that more than three-fourths of the price of every ton of iron sold, was
paid to the neighboring farmers for their domestic goods, their meat and flour,
that clothed and fed his hands ; for their hay, corn, oats, &c., that sustained his
horses, mules, and oxen, employed about his works. In England, iron is made
of the same materials that constitute it here; well,we now import, manufactured
and unmanufactured, eight millions of dollars worth of iron and steel; say only
half its value is agricultural produce, thus, then, we send four millions of
dollars a year to purchase foreign agricultural produce, converted into iron,
and sent here for sale, while our own country is filled with ore and coal, buried
and useless, and the produce of our farmers left without markets. Will the far¬
mers of this country submit to such a system as this—openly advocated and
adopted to favor foreign industry at the expense of our own? Will they tamely
and silently agree thus to be crushed and sacrificed ? No, sir, they will not;
they will speak out against this unjust and ruinous measure ; your tables will
6
soon groan under the weight of their remonstrances against it. I call on them
to do so ; I call on them to come to the rescue before it is too late.
DKITISU BILL.
The avowed object of this bill is to open our ports to the importation of British
goods—to favor foreign farmers and mechanics, and destroy our own. Sir, give the
people time to be heard, and this bill cannot pass ; let it be discussed, and it can ne¬
ver pass an American Congress. There is one way in which it can pass—send it
to tire British Parliament, and it will be passed by acclamation. England would
give millions to secure its passage. It had recently been stated in an official re¬
port, read in the House of Commons, that unless the American Tariff of 1842
was modified and reduced, Great Britain would have to pay the CTnited States
cash for their cotton, instead of paying in goods as she formerly had done ; and
xhis bill accordingly modifies and reduces the Tariff of 1842 to suit the wishes
of the British Chancellor, who, while he recommends free trade and low duties
to us, takes special care to adhere to his own prohibitory system. While this bill
proposes greatly to reduce the duties on foreign distilled spirits, England exacts a
duty of 2,700 per cent, on ours ; and this is reciprocity ! This b.ll reduces the
duties on tobacco and its manufactures, while England demands 1,200 per cent,
on ours, and actually collects 22 millions dollars of revenue annually from our
tobacco, equal to the whole revenue of this Government—such is British recipro¬
city and free trade. Since the Tariff of 1842, the tables with England have
been turned; las t year the balance of trade with Great Britain exceeded $13,000,000
in our favor, instead of being about that amount against us, as in former years.
The imports of specie had in the last year reached the unprecedented amount,
as appears by official reports, of more than 23 millions of dollars, most of it from
Great Britain. No wonder England and her statesmen were anxious for the re¬
duction of the American Whig Tariff' of '42. No wonder her Chancellor ex¬
claims against the Tariff, and says it will oblige them to send us specie instead
of goods hereafter to pay for cotton. No wonder our country is rapidly recover¬
ing from its late depression—.that its course is again onward and upward—that
its former prosperity is returning—a prosperity it always had and always would
have under an efficient protective system, but which it never had and never would
have without it. No wonder specie had become abundant—that the banks had
resumed—that exchanges had become equalized and interest reduced—that man¬
ufactures had revived—that agriculture was recovering—that the mechanic
and every other branch of the national industry was fully and profitably em¬
ployed. All these were the necessary and undeniable fruits of the existing tariff
policy—results seen, felt, and acknowledged throughout the land—yet, in the
face of all these facts—shutting their eyes to these great lights blazing up before
them—the Committee of Ways and Means have reported a bill to repeal this
beneficial act of 1842, and bring us back to the low duties and the low condition
of 1840. They have struck a death-blow at this policy—a policy which had
vindicated its adoption by all its fruits, which had fulfilled all the hopes of its
friends, and falsified all the predictions of its enemies ; but shall this blow be un¬
availing? No, sir, it will recoil and overwhelm its authors. The people who
have experienced the benefits and the blessings of this measure, will not abandon
it. Even its enemies are now disposed to give it a fair and full trial, and con¬
demn it only when it fails. Then why not, sir, wait till the people have an op¬
portunity to pass upon this question at the approaching elections ? They will
then settle it one way or the other. If the enemies of the Tariff policy prevail,
they can and will repeal it; but if you repeal it now, and its friends are success¬
ful, it will be immediately restored. Then why not let it abide this result ? Let
it go to the people, let them decide it, and, for one, sir, I am prepared to ac¬
quiesce in their decision. The Committee deprecate agitation; why not, then,
7
let the matter rest. Let the experiment be tried, and if it fails, put it down.
Whence the urgent necessity of a change ; what interest in the country calls for
it; who has demanded it; who has petitioned for this or any other change ? No
one ; but the Committee of Ways and Means say we must have more revenue—
more revenue—and how do they propose to raise it? By reducing the duties ;
and this, my word for it, will result, as it always has resulted, in a reduction of
revenue ; it is the necessary and natural consequence. This was once the opi¬
nion of the honorable Chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means (Mr.*
McKay) himself, and as there is now every prospect of a redundant revenue,
1 should not be surprised if, before the bill is disposed of, it should be advocated
as a measure to reduce the revenue, and this report be amended by striking out
the words " a bill to increase the revenue," and inserting the words, " a
bill to reduce the revenue." I affirm it as a fact, and here challenge contradic¬
tion, that the revenues of the country always have been increased or diminished,
as we increased or diminished the duties on foreign goods ; and why will this not
be the result now ? (Here Mr. McKay called Mr. Stewart to order, and said
it would be time enough to discuss the Tariff when that measure came up for
discussion.)
Yes, said Mr. S., the gentleman has got a vote to print and circulate 25,000
copies of his report—his speech in favor of his bill—and no doubt he is anxious
to suppress any reply; but, sir, I have accidentally got in between two previous
questions, and I wish to say a little on the other side, and little it will be com¬
pared with the voluminous report of the Committee of Ways and Means, which
report I assure the gentleman I will take great pleasure in sending to my
eonstituents, who will readily comprehend and appreciate its destructive doc¬
trines. But the gentleman tells me to wait till the tariff comes up for discussion;
sir, this may never happen; may not the majority pass that bill, as they are
passing this important hill, under the previous question ? a majority may take
the bill out of committee and pass it under the gag without amendment or debate;
and from the disposition evinced to suppress debate on this occasion, have we
not a right to apprehend that the same course will be pursued on the subject of
the tariff, which, if passed at all, must be passed under the gag—it will not bear
debate.
But, sir, when I was interrupted by the honorable chairman of the Committee
of Ways and Means, I was about to say, that if this bill increases the revenue to
meet the demands of the treasury, it can only fulfil this office by nearly doubling
importations. It repudiates protection, and adopts the horizontal plan; with a
few exceptions it brings every thing down to thirty per cent, till the 1st of Sep¬
tember, 1845, when there is to be a general reduction of all ad valorem duties to
twenty-five per cent, and under, resulting in a reduction of the duties imposed
by the tariff of 1842 about one-third, or say one-fourth; then it is manifest that
you must import one-fourth more foreign goods to make good the loss of revenue
by this reduction, and one-fourth more to raise the additional five millions re¬
quired, making an increase of one-half, viz., fifty millions, which must of course
destroy that amount of our own production; for instance, by this bill one-half
the protection is taken off hats ; two-fifths off ready-made clothing; two-thirds
off shoes; one-half off manufactures of iron; so that the hatters, tailors, shoe¬
makers, and blacksmiths loose one-half of their protection, and the Treasury
oue-half the revenue ; and to make up for this loss of revenue we must of course
double the importation of hats, shoes, manufactures of iron, and ready-made
clothing, destroying a corresponding amount of our own production, as the con¬
sumption will continue the same whether the supply be furnished at home or
from abroad; three cents is taken off every pound of imported wool costing over
8
seven cents; of course we must greatly increase the importation of wool to make
good this loss of revenue.
To understand the injurious operation of this bill upon every branch of the
national industry, agricultural, manufacturing, and mechanical, I would suggest
to the reader to turn to the table marked " C " in the appendix to the report of
the Committee of Ways and Means, where they would see the precise extent
to which every branch of industry would be affected by this measure. This re¬
port itself would thus furnish the best and most conclusive evidence of the
destructive effect of the proposed measure upon American labor, and its bene¬
ficial effects upon foreign, and especially British industry; hence he had denom¬
inated this a " British bill," because it was calculated to advance the interest of
British mechanics, manufacturers, and farmers, at the expense of our own.
But, sir, if more revenue is wanted, why not increase the duties on luxuries
consumed by the rich, rather than thus strike down the poor man's labor, and
take the bread from the mouth of his children, to make room for the importation
of fifty millions of dollars worth of foreign goods? Is this, sir, an American
measure, can it receive the support of an American Congress, or the representa¬
tives of the Ameiican people? I call on the authors of this ruinous measure to
come forth in its defence. I call on them to assign some reason for its adoption.
I can readily discover reasons enough why England should desire its adoption,
but they are the very reasons why we should reject it; just so far as it benefits
them it injures us; this is a contest between foreign and American mechanics,
farmers, and manufacturers, for the American market, and the question is, which
side shall we take ? The tariff of 1842 shuts out the foreigner and gives the
Americans the market; this bill proposes to repeal the tariff of 1842, and give
it to the foreigner; to open our ports and again flood our country with foreign
goods, and export money by ship-loads to pay for them; and why ? I again
ask the committee upon what principle of national policy this measure is
sustained ?
THE TATtlFF DEMOCRATIC—FREE TRADE MONARCHICAL.
Mr. Droaigoole replied to enable bare-headed people to buy cheap hats!
To enable bare-headed people to buy cheap hats ! Sir, let me tell the gentle¬
man if he carries this measure, the poor people of this country would not only
go bare-headed but bare-backed ; they would be doomed, like the paupers of
Europe, to go half fed and half clad. The tariff, sir, is "the poor man's law;"
it is this and this alone that gives him employment and wages. Just as the tariff
goes down, the wages of labor will go down with it. Repeal the tariff—adopt
the gentleman's favorite plan of" free-trade," and you will bring down the labor
here, in every department of industry, to the level of the labor of the serfs and
paupers of Europe. This is certain—it is inevitable. As certain as the laws of
gravitation—as inevitable as that the removal of an obstruction between two un¬
equal bodies of water, will reduce the one to the level of the other. Repeal the
tariff, and what is there to prevent our country from being instantly inundated
with the productions of the low priced labor of Europe. When hatters, shoe¬
makers, blacksmiths, and all must come down and work as cheap as they do, or
give up the market! With the present facilities of intercourse by steamships,
you might as well attempt to establish higher wages and higher prices on one side
of a street than on the other, as to establish and sustain higher prices and wages
here than in Europe, under the delusive and Eutopian scheme of " free-trade."
But, sir, this scheme would bring in its train other and more fearful consequences.
Adopt this scheme, and you will soon bring down and degrade the now free and
prosperous labor of this country, not only to the moral, but to the political con¬
dition of the slaves and serfs of Europe. By reducing their wages, you deprive
the poor man of the means of educating his children and fitting them to be free.
9
By thus depressing one class of your people, you necessarily elevate another.
You divide society horizontally into upper and lower classes—distinctions and
titles supervene—jealousies and finally hostilities follow, and liberty itself is in
the end swallowed up in monarchy. Such are the political and moral tendencies
of every step in the direction of free trade. The protective policy is therefore
democratic in its character and tendencies, it is a policy which promotes equality,
not by depressing one class, but by elevating all—by elevating, sustaining, and
protecting the labor of your own country against the ruinous and degrading effects
of a too free competition with the low priced and depressed labor of Europe.
These are views which belong to this subject, and should not be overlooked or
disregarded by those who represent the free labor of this country, and especially
by those who make jorofessions of democracy and love of the people. Now is
the time, and this is the question, to test their sincerity. Those who represent
slaves may be excused, but those representing freemen will be held to a strict
accountability.
THE DUTIES ADDED TO THE PRTCE, NOT TRUE.
The great and leading objection to the protective policy is, that the duties are
added to the price, and paid by the consumers. This objection lies at the foun¬
dation of the opposition to this policy; and, if unfounded, this opposition ought
to cease. The duty is added to the price; this is the theory. Now, sir, how
is the fact; what says experience? All experience proves that this objection has
no existence, save in the imaginations of those who make it.
Now, sir, I lay it down as a general proposition, that there never was a high
protective duty imposed upon any article, from the foundation of this Govern¬
ment to the present day, the price of which has not been in the end reduced—
greatly reduced—in many instances to one-half, one-third, and one-fourth of what
it had been before these protective duties were imposed. This, sir, may seem
to gentlemen on the other side to be a strong declaration; but, sir, I make it de¬
liberately, with a full conviction of its truth, and I challenge gentlemen to dis¬
prove it—I defy them to point out a single instance to the contrary. Let them
examine, and they will find invariably that, wherever the duties have been high¬
est, the prices have ultimately come down the lowest, and for a very obvious
reason—high duties promote competition, and competition never fails to bring
down prices. This effect is invariable and universal; but unfortunately the du¬
ties always run up as the prices run down; hence the frightful lists of duties
exhibited by the Com. of Ways & Means, amounting to 200, 300, and 400 per cent.
When first imposed these duties were but 30 or 40 per cent.; but now, owing to
the reduction of prices, they have run up to 200 or 300 per cent. By way of
illustration take the article of glass, on which a duty of $4 a box was imposed at
a time when glass cost $12; this was then a duty of 33 per cent., fiut now when
home competition, induced by this protective duty, has brought down the price
to $2 a box, the duty, owing to this reduction of price, is 200 per cent, instead
of 33; the same is true of many ether articles on which the duty, when imposed,
did not exceed 20 or 30 per cent., but now, owing to reduction of price produced
by home competition, they amount to 2 or 300 per cent. When four cents per
pound duty was put on cut nails, the price was twelve cents per pound, and this
duty, of course, was 33 per cent.; but now, when the effect of this protective
duty has been to reduce the price of nails from twelve to three cents per pound,
the duty is increased to 100 per cent.; this is equally true of spikes, rods, wood
screws, &c. Again: eight cents a yard duty was imposed on coarse cottons
when imported at 20 cents, being a duty of 40 per cent., but now, when the
price has come down to five cents per yard, the duty goes up to 160 per cent.
Sir, I could go on and enumerate more than twenty such instances where the
duties, though moderate when imposed, now actually exceed the price of the
10
article; yet we are told that in all cases the duty is added to the price, and paid
by the consumer! That is, that the consumer pays $4 a box duty on glass that
he buys for $2; 4 cents a pound on nails that he buys for 3 ; and 8 cents a yard
on coarse cotton goods that he bnys for 5. Such are the absurdities into which
these stale anti-tariff theories involve their votaries; but suppose what they
allege were true in point of fact, and that the duty is really added to the price,
the cost of cotton goods being 20 cents when the duty of 8 cents was imposed,
add the duty, the price would be, of course, 28 cents a yard, and the duty only
28 per cent, instead of 1G0 as stated by the committee; hence, if you raise the
price five fold, then the duty is quite reasonable, and there will be no objection
whatever to its payment. Let the manufacturer, then, run up his price from 5
to 25 cents a yard, and he at once silences all the objections of the Committee of
Ways and Means, as this would fix the duty at 30 per cent., just what they
want it. But suppose the manufacturer were to reduce his price to one cent a
yard, then the duty, being 8 cents, would be 800 per cent. Ilorrid oppression!
who would submit to pay a duty of 800 per cent.? Who could then refuse to
go with the Committee of Ways and Means for reducing such enormous duties?
ABSURDITIES OF THE REPORT.
But the Committee of Ways and Means say that the object of this bill is to
increase the revenue by reducing the duties; yet, in the very same paragraph,
they say, that should the revenue be found redundant, to avoid the horrid evils
of deposites or distribution among the States, the duties should be instantly
reduced, so as to reduce the revenue to the wants of the Government; at this
time, the committee say, there is not revenue enough, and they propose to in¬
crease it by reducing the duties; but should it turn out that there is too much,
then they say reduce it by reducing the duties. Thus a reduction of duties is
alike effectual with the committee for a reduction or for an increase of reve¬
nue. Excellent disciples of Dr. Sangrado, who had but one remedy for all dis¬
eases, " bleeding and warm water." How such a palpable contradiction is to be
reconciled or explained I am at a loss to conjecture.
The committee proceed next to say that it is the true policy of every interest
in the country, except manufacturers, to advocate the proposed reduction of
duties, and they especially name agriculture. Now, sir, in my opinion the re¬
verse of this proposition is true; agriculture is much more interested in the
maintenance of the present protective tariff than the manufacturer, and for the
most obvious reasons: high protective duties are calculated to induce increased
investment in manufactures; the effect of this is clearly to increase the demand
for the raw material and bread stuffs produced by the farmers; and the neces¬
sary consequence of this increased demand is to increase the price of every thing
the farmer has to sell, and, by increasing the quantity, reduce the price of man¬
ufactured goods. Thus the protective policy enables the farmers to sell higher
and buy lower; while, on the other hand, increased competition obliges the man¬
ufacturer to sell lower and buy his supplies at higher rates; yet it is asserted in
this report, and in every anti-tariff speech, that high protective duties are imposed
for the benefit of the manufacturer at the expense of the farmer. Now I submit
whether practically the opposite of this proposition is not the truth; and whether
such is not the necessary and unavoidable result of the great laws of demand and
supply which regulate and control prices throughout the world.
But agriculture is still further benefitted by the.protective policy. By increasing
manufactures, it withdraws a portion of the capital and hands from agricul¬
ture, and converts them into consumers instead of producers, into customers instead
of rivals ; thus diminishing the quantity and increasing the demand for agricultural
supplies, and at the same time increasing the supply and reducing the price of
the manufactured goods which they get in exchange. Thus, in every point of
11
view in which the subject can be considered, the farmer is more benefitted than
the manufacturer by the adoption and maintenance of the protective policy. By
way of illustration—suppose in a village there is one manufacturing establish¬
ment of woollen goods; here the surrounding farmers sell their wool and other
agricultural supplies ; the manufacturer, having a monopoly, regulates his own
prices, as well as those of the farmers—he demands what he pleases, and gives
what he will; but suppose a high protective tariff on woollen goods is passed,
and instead of one woollen factory there springs into existence five or six in this
village, the existing monopoly is at once destroyed; there is six times the de¬
mand for wool and provisions; this increased demand necessarily increases the
price of every thing the farmer has to sell, and by glutting the market with six
times the quantity of woollen goods the price is necessarily reduced. Such are
the plain and obvious benefits of the protective policy to the farmers; yet poli¬
ticians would have them believe that they are oppressed and ruined by this policy,
which can alone render them prosperous.
MR. VAN BUREN'S OriNIONS ON THE TARIFF.
And here, sir, it may not be improper to remark, that Mr. Van Buren entirely
eoncurs with the Com. of Ways and Means. In his letter to the Indiana con¬
vention he says: " The great body of mechanics and laborers in every branch of
business, whose welfare should be an object of unceasing solicitude on the part
of every public man, have been the greatest sufferers by our high protective
tariff, and would continue so to be were that policy persisted in, is to my mind
too clear to require further elucidation;" but he further says, what is much nearer
the truth, that high duties are injurious to the manufacturers themselves, for
whose especial benefit we are told by the committee these high duties are im¬
posed. Mr. Van Buren says : " Excess of duties, which tempt to an undue and
ruinous investment of capital in their business, is injurious to the manufacturers;"
and how—by promoting competition, and reducing prices ? but is not this for the
benefit of the consumers?
But this is not all Mr. Van Buren says against the protective policy—he says,
" the period has passed away when a protective tariff can be kept up in this
eountry," that the tariff "increases the poor man's taxes in an inverse ratio to
his ability to pay," and that direct taxation is a more equal and just system of
revenue than duties on foreign goods. These, sir, are Mr. Van Buren's opinions
upon the tariff, as proclaimed to the world in his Indiana letter.
But let us look a little into the details and practical operation of this bill on the
great agricultural, manufacturing, and mechanical interests of our country.
In the first place it greatly reduces the duties on wool and woollens of all
kinds; three-fourths of the duties, and more, are taken from coarse cottons and
calicoes; lead is robbed of more than nine-tenths of its protection. But Penn¬
sylvania seems to be singled out for destruction. Her iron, her coal, her glass,
her paper, her salt, and leather, are all struck down together, and we are to go to
England for iron, coal, glass, &c. Yes, sir, in 1842 we imported more than four
millions of bushels of coal, under a duty of $1 75 per ton. This bill reduces it
to one dollar. Of course you must double, and doubtless you will treble the
quantity imported; and for what? To increase the revenue. A few days ago
Pennsylvania passed a resolution unanimously instructing us to go for protection
" without regard to revenue." Yes, sir, these are the words, protection " without
regard to revenue;" and here we are reversing the rule, going for a bill for
revenue without regard to protection ; voting for 20,000 copies of a report in fa¬
vor of this anti-tariff, anti-American, and British bill.
But this bill greatly, very greatly, reduces the duties on whiskey, brandy, gin,
and wine. We must import whiskey and brandy for revenue, and give the rich
12
their wine at one half the present duty, and they must of course drink double the
quantity or we loose revenue. What say you temperance men to this ? You
must all get drunk on foreign spirits to increase the revenue. Tax the poor by
direct State taxation, and let the rich indulge in wine, brandy, silks, and laces, at
lower rates ! No, put the duties high on luxuries, and distribute the proceeds of
the land among the States to relieve the poor from taxation. "Sir, pass this bill
to lighten the burdens of the rich, while you double the burdens, reduce the
wages, and destroy the labor of mechanics and the poor, and go home and hear
what they have to say on the subject.
The following abstract from table C, in the appendix to the report of the
committee, will show the practical operation of this bill upon the mechan¬
ical., agricultural, and manufacturing interests of the country.
Names of the articles.
4->
G to
O) o
ga
■c
S> »>
o ^
Names of the articles.
O) o
en ._
£ 3
T3
S 5
a.—
£
P 3
cu -a
Per ct.
Per ct.
EFFECT UPON MECHANICS.
Per ct.
Per ct.
Whale or fish oil - -
44
30
Clothing, ready made by tailors
50
30
Wool costing over 7 cts per lb.
3 c. pr.
lb. off.
Mits, caps, binding, and hosiery
30
20
Linseed oil -
43
30
Umbrellas, parasols, and
sun
Spirits from grain, 1st proof -
132
42*
shades
-
30
25
Brandy, &c., from other mate¬
Silk hats, bonnets, See.
55
25
rials - - -
180
38
Hat bodies
_
43
30
Coal, per ton -
$1 75
SI 00
Hats and bonnets ol vegetable
substances - - *
_
35
25
EFFECT UPON MANUFAC¬
Childrens' boots and shoes
_
60
30
TURERS.
India rubber shoes
_
30
20
Wool, all manufactures of -
40
30
Clocks
-
30
20
Carpetings, treble grain -
87
30
Un tarred cordage
-
188
30
Brussels - -
42
30
Iron cables or chains -
_
SO
30
Venitian - -
45
SO
Cut and wrought spikes
-
82
30
Other ingrain -
46
30
Cut nails
-
43
30
Coarse cottons, (being a reduc¬
30
Brass kettles, (hammered)
_
43
30
tion of three-fourths)
120
30
Japanned, plated, and gilt ware
30
25
Cotton bagging
53
30
Cutlery ot all kinds -
_
30
25
Oil cloth furniture - -
62
30
Sole leather - -
_
53
25
other kinds
54
30
Call skins
_
37
25
Iron, bolts and bars
77
61
Bricks and paving tiles
_
25
15
railroad - -
77
31
Metal buttons -
_
30
25
pigs -
72
56
Hard soap - -
_
51
30
nail and spike rods -
56
30
China ware -
-
39
20
vessels cast - -
wood screws - —
45
63
30
30
EFFECT UPON FARMERS.
Steel, cast, shear and German
Glass, cut -
36
21
Wheat
_
35
25
186
30
Beef and pork -
_
120
25
window, S bv 10
62
30
Cheese -
_
70
25
12 by 16
165
30
Vinegar
-
54
25
Lead, pigs and bars - -
66
30
Pearl or hulled barley
—
67
30
Gunpowuer - - -
51
30
The 12th section of the bill provides that, after the 1st of September, 1845,
all the duties above 25 per cent, is to be reduced to that horizontal standard, 25
per cent.
*In 1842, we imported more than four millions of gallons of wine, and nearly
two million gallons of distilled spirits. England imposes 2,700 per cent, duty
on our whiskey, and we, by way of reciprocity, now propose to reduce our duties
on English and Irish whiskey (1,650,000 gallons of which, with other distilled
13
spirits, was imported in 1842) to a mere nominal duty! The duty of 25 cents on
wheat would also be affected. This bill brings all duties above 30 per cent, down
to 30 per cent.—a horizontal tariff, except on a few specific articles ; and in one
year more, it brings the duties down to 25 per cent., discriminating for revenue
below that standard. This was bringing it nearly down to Mr. Van Buren's
standard, established in his famous Indiana letter. His maximum was 25 per
cent, till the debt was paid, and then 20 per cent., discriminating for revenue be¬
low that amount, but in no case above it for protection. This -was Mr. Van Buren's
plan, as laid down in that letter, to which he referred gentlemen who might be dis¬
posed to doubt it.
[Here Mr. S. was interrupted by a call to order from a Van Buren man.]
Mr. S. said gentlemen seemed very solicitous about order when their favorite
men and measures were assailed, but nothing was out of order when it suited their
purpose. Why was not the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Duncan) called to order,
when, on a bill to fix the time of holding elections, he had introduced a coon, a dead
coon, and had dissected it professionally, discussed it scientifically, inside and out;
he had introduced all the Whig banners and flags of the campaign of 1840, and dis¬
played them with great pomp, circumstance, and ceremony ; and all this, in the
estimation of gentlemen and of the Chair, was then perfectly in order.
distribution advocated.
From recent intelligence, coming in from all quarters, it is now manifest that
we shall have a surplus revenue at the end of the year, independent of the pro¬
ceeds of the public lands. If then the tariff yields revenue enough, as I doubt
not it will, why not distribute the land proceeds among the States, to relieve their
people from oppressive taxation ? Pennsylvania, sir, owes a debt of forty mil¬
lions of dollars, contracted in the prosecution of a stupendous, but ill advised,
system of internal improvement, equally important to Ohio and the whole West,
and hence she had claims for assistance on this Government.
[Mr. McKay said, if she has contracted a debt of forty millions let her pay it!]
Sir, if you withhold her share of the public lands, how is she to pay it? Her
debt is now increasing, by the addition of two millions annually, on account of
interest. She could pay it by doubling and trebling the present heavy taxation,
which now crush her people to the earth. Yes, double the taxes of Pennsylvania,
and it would not pay the interest of her debt, let alone the principal.
As a Pennsylvanian, therefore, I go for the proceeds of the public lands to aid
the people of Pennsylvania to pay their debt. Pennsylvania has a clear, legiti¬
mate, undoubted right to one-tenth part of the land or its proceeds. The popu¬
lation of Pennsylvania is one-tenth part of the population of the Union ; and if
we were to distribute the land itself to-morrow among the States of this Union,
Pennsylvania would get more than one hundred million acres of the public lands.
Would not that be an ample fund in the end to pay off the debt of Pennsylvania
thrice told? Now, I claim, as a Representative from Pennsylvania, her share
of the proceeds of the public lands ; and I hope no Representative from Penn¬
sylvania, who looks at the condition of his constituents, crushed under this weight
of taxation, of unceasing and increasing taxation, would vote against it. He
thought that no gentleman from Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Louisiana, Alabama,
Maryland, Michigan, Mississippi, and other indebted States, some of them more,
and others almost as much, indebted as Pennsylvania, in proportion to their popu¬
lation and means, ought, and he hoped none of the Representatives of these States
would vote, to withhold from their people their share of the land, and by so doing,
rivet taxation on them and their posterity forever. By the terms of the grants or
deeds of cession, these lands had been ceded by the States to the Union. And
for what ? To pay the Revolutionary war debt. And when that was paid, the
14
lands were to go to the States, including the new States, and those which had
made the cessions.
What does this Government want with this fund ? It has an abundance of rev¬
enue, and if we relieve the people of the States from taxation by giving them
what they are entitled to—the proceeds of the public lands—do we not relieve
the people of these United States ? Do we not relieve the people of this Gov¬
ernment from taxation, when we relieve the people of the States from taxation ?
(For the people of the States and the people of the United States are the same
people.)
I submit whether it is not right and fair to relieve the indebted States of this
Union from the heavy burden of taxation which is crushing their people, by giv¬
ing them their share of the proceeds of the public lands. The tariff, so far as it
operates as a tax upon the people, is the lightest form, and least felt, inasmuch as
the payment is entirely voluntary ; but the chief burden of taxation in this form
is thrown from the people of this country upon the foreigner, who is obliged to
reduce the profits and the prices of his goods, in order to get them into market,
wherever there is an American price established by American labor.
But, sir, there is another argument in favor of distribution—so long as the pro¬
ceeds of the public lands come into the Treasury of the General Government,
we never can have a firm, settled, established revenue policy. The fluctuations
in the proceeds of the sales of the lands in past years, varying as they have from
less than two millions to upwards of twenty-four millions per annum, if they
are suffered to remain in the general Treasury, we must raise and reduce the tariff
of the country correspondingly. I would take the proceeds of the lands and give
them to the States, if for no other reason than to relieve the Treasury from this
-unsettled policy, and to give the country a firm and established revenue system.
In 1836, the public lands yielded upwards of twenty-four millions, a sum suf¬
ficient to defray all the expenses of Government, and of course creating an im¬
mense surplus ; then we heard the cry of " repeal the tariff—down with the tariff—
too much revenue." But in two or three years the proceeds of the lands sunk
down to less than two millions of dollars ; then was raised the cry of " up with the
tariff." Thus, so long as the proceeds of the lands, this uncertain and fluctuating
source of revenue, goes into the Treasury, nothing can be settled or fixed in the
tariff policy of the Government.
I hope, therefore, the representatives of the indebted States will go with me
and vote down this bill to repeal the distribution act, and thus relieve their tax-
ridden people from the burdens of direct taxation, and at the same time relieve
the Treasury from this source of revenue, which unsettles and deranges not
only the finances, but the trade and business of the country. Sir, this measure
4)f distribution is equally important to the non-indebted States ; they receive au
equal proportion of the proceeds of the lands, which could be applied to pur¬
pose* of education or of improvement, or to whatever the wisdom of their peo¬
ple may direct.
This measure of distribution is a measure of relief to the States, and I now
predict that we will have two parties in this country—the "relief party," going for
distribution, and "the anti-relief and tax party," going for direct taxation. There
were only two ways of paying the State debts—distribution or taxation ; taxa¬
tion, unmitigated taxation, now, henceforth, and forever. Which are you for
is the question, and gentlemen must meet it. They must either go for distribu¬
tion and relief, or for taxation and no relief. They have their choice, they must
make it and be responsible to the people.
The improvements made by the States, and which had been the great cause of
involving them in debt, are highly beneficial to the United States, in connection
15
with the transportation of the mails, the promotion of commerce among the
States, and the defence of the country in time of war; and hence, the United
States was bound to help pay for them, by giving the proceeds of the public lands.
General Jackson advocated the distribution of the surplus revenue among the
States, on this ground. He contends, in his message of 1830, with great truth,
that the improvements made by the States, " constitute the surest mode of con¬
ferring permanent and substantial benefits on the whole Union." Besides, he
contends that the money distributed by the General Government among the
States, " would be more judiciously applied and economically expended, under
the direction of the State legislatures." Such were some of the arguments
urged by General Jackson in favor of this policy which Mr. Van Buren now de¬
nounces as a " preposterous proposition,"—the mere agitation of which, he
says, is disgraceful to the character of the American people, and which his
friends on this floor are now voting down, without a word of explanation or de¬
bate. What will the illustrious Chieftain of the Hermitage say to this ?
THE WHIG AND VAN BUHEN SYSTEMS.
But, sir, we are told that " the Whigs are a party without principles." Sir, are
not their principles known and avowed every where ? On this subject, the Whig
system is this: Remove from the National Treasury that disturbing source of reve¬
nue, the Public Lands, and give them to the States to which they rightfully belong,
to pay their debts, and relieve the people from taxation. Then regulate the
Tariff, so as to supply revenue enough for an economical administration of the
Federal Government, by imposing protective duties on such articles as we can
and ought to supply at home, and revenue duties on luxuries and articles not
produced, sufficient to supply the wants of Government. This is the Whig system.
Now, %ir, what is the Van Buren system ? Just the reverse. It is to refuse all
relief to the people and the States, by distribution or otherwise; to reduce the
Tariff, and let in foreign goods to the destruction of our own industry; ex¬
haust the wealth and currency of the country to pay for them; double the
expenses of Government, to enrich office-holders and favorites, and leave tire
Government again as they left it in 1840, after twelve years administration,
impoverished, and overwhelmed with bankruptcies and debts, State and
National, amounting to more than two hundred and twenty millions of dollars.
How was it, sir, during the twelve preceding years, when Whig policy pre¬
vailed ? Look at the official reports from the Treasury, and you will find, sir,
that during that period we paid off 141 millions of the war debt, expended
12 millions for internal improvements, and left the country with a surplus reve¬
nue of more than 12 millions a year, a sound currency and universal prosper¬
ity ; but in 1828 there came a change. The next twelve years was a period of
disastrous experiments, resulting in the excessive increase of banks, the ruin of
the currency, the inordinate importation of foreign goods, the consequent de¬
struction of agriculture, manufactures, and the mechanic arts, and the involve¬
ment of the States and people in a foreign debt of more than 250 millions, which
now hangs like a millstone about their necks. The people could stand it no
longer; they determined in 1840 to have a change—to throw off this incubus—
bu', by an unforeseen event, this was defeated. The period is, howfever, ra¬
pidly approaching when die people will again come to the rescue, and achieve
the great object they then had in view.
But we are told, sir, by Mr. Van Buren himself, that this glorious revolution of
1840, was the result of infatuation, folly, and madness, on the part of the people.
Sir, is this true ? Is it not a foul slander on the American character ? Is it not a
a gross insult to the people, and will it not be so regarded? Sir, that election was
the result of a deep and deliberate conviction of the ruinous effects of Mr. Van Bu-
jen's policy—effects seen and felt, severely felt, throughout this land. The pea-
16
pie saw-that nothing but a change—a thorough change—could save the country
from hopeless bankruptcy and ruin. That conviction has since been strengthened
and confirmed ; and the beneficial effects of the Whig tariff of '42, now rapidly
restoring the national prosperity, furnishes new and powerful motives to stimulate
and strengthen the friends of reform. Sir, if you want evidence, look to the un¬
equivocal indications of public opinion throughout the country. Is not the
" handwriting upon the wall", in characters so large and legible that "he who
runs may read?" In 1840, the people, by the unprecedented majority of
145.000. pronounced judgment against Mr. Van Buren. Can this be overcome
witnout a Cnange ? And where are the changes in his favor? Where is the man.
who voted against him then, who is for him now ? or if there be any such
changes, are there not two to one the other way ? But, sir, if there were nothing
else, the passage of this bill, withholding from the people, in their time of need,
their share of the Public Lands, and the attempt to repeal the Tariff of '42, and
again inundate the country with foreign goods, break down our own farmers,
mechanics, and manufacturers, by the passage of this destructive, anti-American,
anti-tariff bill, would of itself be abundantly sufficient to condemn any party, how¬
ever popular, with a vast majority of the free, enlightened, and patriotic people
of this country.
The people will not permit any man, or party of men, long to trample upon
their rights and interests with impunity. I know, sir, they have borne much for
the sake of party; they have excused bad actions by the ascription of good mo¬
tives. But there is a point where "forbearance ceases to be a virtue that
point has been reached and transcended. The people have decided upon a
change, and they will have it. They expressed this determination in 1840—
they will repeat it in 1844, with increased emphasis. The decree hgs gone
forth, and is irrevocable. It is seen on every hill—it is heard on every breeze—
and felt in every throb of the popular pulse. The hand is upraised, and the
blow will follow'as certain as the stroke of fate ; as well might you attempt to
avert the winged lightning or stop the thunderbolt of Jove. The popular will is
formed ; it is the true and just sovereignty in this land ; it must be respected and
obeyed. And politicians can no more stay it in its course, or divert it from its
purpose, than the tempest-tost mariner can control the winds and the waves
that overwhelm him.
For sale at Gideon's Phinting Office, Ninth Street, Washington. Price §1 per hundred.
SPEECH
OF
I
MR. JOHN WETHERED, OF MD.,
ox
THE TARIFF,
Delivered in the House of Representatives of the U. S., April 24, 1844.
WASHINGTON:
PRINTED BY JOHN T. TOWERS.
1844.
SPEECH
OF
MR. JOHN WETJIERED, OF MARYLAND,
ON
THE TARIFF.
Protection—" under thy wings all things prosper."
Mr. Chairman : In the remarks which I am about to make, I do not
intend to indulge in any fine spun theories, but shall leave all speculative
opinions and abstractions to gentlemen on the other side of the question,
and confine myself to a matter of fact discussion of the subject under con¬
sideration, believing that one fact is worth a thousand arguments.
I must here say that I am glad to find the party, who deny that Congress
has any constitutional power to protect the labor of the country, is narrowed
down to a very few members in this Congress. It is not an undue assump¬
tion to suppose that the distinguished gentlemen who framed the Constitu¬
tion, understood the powers of that instrument quite as well as the doubting
wiseacres of the present day. Can any gentleman have doubts of the
meaning of the language used by Mr. Madison, the father of the Constitu¬
tion, in the first general act of Congress, viz :
" Whereas it is necessary for the support of Government, for the discharge
of the debts of the United States, and for the encouragement and protec¬
tion of manufactures, that duties be laid on goods, wares, and merchandise
imported. Be it enacted," &c. This act was signed by President Wash¬
ington, the fourth of July, 1789.
The gentleman from Indiana, (Mr. Owen,) has declared he intended to
V
4
call things by (heir right names. I intend, too, to adopt this course, by
giving (his bill from (he Committee of Ways and Means its true name; that
is, a destructive British bill—a bill to destroy the manufacturers and mechanics
of our own country—to break up their workshops, and encourage those of
Europe. It was in character with the bill itself that the debate should have
been opened by the gentleman from Indiana, (Mr. Owen,) a gentleman so
lately a subject of Great Britain, and with all his predilections in favor of
the land of his birth. I do not object to the gentleman on account of his
foreign birth, but when the question arises, whether the workshops shall be
in England or the United States? I think, as a Representative on this floor
of American interest, it would be more becoming, and show more of Ameri¬
can feeljng, if he would lay ; side his foreign predilections, and sustain the
land of his adoption. I have no doubt, sir, if that gentleman were to emi¬
grate back to England, with his Free Trade speech in one hand and this
bill (a law) in the other, and make his best bow to Queen Victoria, and
kneel before her, she would strike him gently on the shoulder with a sword,
and greet him with the words, rise " Knight, Sir Robert Dale Owen," you
have done my State some service. Aye, sir, if the honorable committee
who reported this bill were to go into that country they would have their re¬
ward, and be honored with the titles of Earl McKay, Lord Dixon Lewis,
Duke Dromgoole, Sir John Weller, &c'. England generally rewards those
who promote her interests, and they certainly have some claim to conside¬
ration.
Sir, in framing this bill the committee (instead of sending for the farmers,
the manufacturers, and the mechanics of our own country, to learn from
them its practical effects upon their various interests) preferred writing to
the British importer, the British agent, and the British manufacturer; and
have actually, with the view of sustaining their suicidal measures, even
appended to their report a table furnished by a manufacturer of Manches¬
ter, showing ihe rates of duties on various articles made by him! !! If this
is not " going down to Egypt for strength," I would like to know what
would be.
I have examined this bill pretty thoroughly, and confess that I am at a
loss to say whether it is a Free Trade bill or not. It seems to me it might
much more appropriately be styled " a bill to entourage British interests."
It is true that iron, sugar,and spirits,are accommodated with specific duties
;setMewhnt protective. These baits have, no doubt, been thrown out to catch
ihe sweet gentlemen from Louisiana, and the patriotic Democratic members
from Pennsylvania, as some of these gentlemen, though willing to pull with
the committee, were soon driven back by their constituents. The purposes
of these distinctions are loo glaring to be mistaken, and the attempt to im¬
pose them upon this House must certainly fail. The committee should
have acted consistently, and whilst breaking down nearly every important
interest of the country, should have carried out their principles. If the bait
takes, the next attempt will no doubt be to destroy the few remaining in¬
terests not now assailed. If the enemies of domestic labor ever conquer, it
must be by creating divisions among their opponents; their maxim will be,
divide et impcra.
I wish the principles of this bill (which we are told was framed for reve¬
nue) contrasted with the existing law, framed for the same purpose, but
5
with very proper discriminations for protection. The latter was framed by
a gentleman from New York, (Mr. Fillmore.) chairman of the Com¬
mittee of Ways and Means, not now a member of this House; he was
brought up a practical mechanic, and consequently knew the wants, the
wishes, and the feelings of that valuable class of our community, and who
framed his bill so as to produce ample revenue, without inflicting injury on
any particular branch of the agricultural, manufacturing, or mechanical in¬
terests of the country.
I find gentlemen getting up here and declaring that commerce is injured
by the operation of the present Tariff. If this be so, why do we find so
many of the merchants, who certainly understand their own interests, and
know very well they cannot thrive except in a prosperous communityr.
among its warmest advocates? No longer ago than at the time of the last
Congress, my colleague from Baltimore, (Mr. Kennedy,) presented a pe¬
tition from 9,000 voters in his district, embracing the most commercial and
populous part of Baltimore, in favor of a protective Tariff, on which was
lound the signatures of almost every merchant in that. city. Now, as long:
as this class of our community are satisfied, I hope gentlemen will show 110
false sympathy for them.
The Committee of Ways and Means tell us that they propose to reduce
the duties for the purpose of raising revenue—that the revenue would be
short, and add that 25 millions will be necessary to carry on the Govern¬
ment. Now, let us examine into the facts of this matter. Before the ink
with which this bill was written was dry, we have returns from the custom
houses of the country, proving beyond all doubt or apprehension thai
abundant revenue would be derived from the existing Tariff, and that on
this score no change was necessary. In New York alone the receipts in the
months of January, February, and March, amounted to $5,731,000 ; which
exceeds the estimates of the Secretary of the Treasury for the whole country.
That pretext thus unexpectedly overthrown, we find the advocates of this
pernicious bill resorting to other arguments infavor of this yeleped Free
Trade bill. ,
The gentleman from Alabama, (Mr. Payne,) has asserted that protectis©
was an exclusive privilege to the owners of the spindle, shuttle, and ham¬
mer, Now, I assert, that protection is necessary to every interest of the
country—to the laborer, the man of business, the mechanic, the farmer, and!
even the cotton planter. Take away the duty on sugar, and I leave South¬
ern gentlemen to calculate what, this valuable interest having been destroyed,
would be the amount of cotton brought into market, in addition to what is
already brought in, and the effect it would produce on prices.
The gentleman from Indiana, (Mr. Wright,) asserted that the agricul¬
turists were injured by the protective policy ; that the consumer paid addi-
ional prices for all he used, and got less prices for all he raised.
Sir, I listened attentively to the remarks of the gentleman, expecting hina
to particularize some articles, the duties on which were found to be oppres¬
sive to his constituents; and after wandering a great deal through the broad
field of argument, he quietly melted down into the article of salt, and de¬
voted a large portion of his hour in endeavoring to convince the House that
his constituents were oppressed by the very burdensome duty of eight cents
per bushel on salt. I beg the gentleman will retain his briney tears for some
6
other event, as I will endeavor to remove the cause on this occasion for any
display of his sympathy. It- is known that we import about 6,350,000
bushels of salt for home consumption ; and it is estimated that we manufac¬
ture about ,the .same amount, say 6,350,000 bushels. Our population is
about 20,000,000; this would make about one-third of a bushel to each in¬
dividual. Now, if the price was increased to the amount of the duty, it
would impose the enormously oppressive tax of 2| cents upon each of his
constituents!!! But I will not admit that this is even the case, for it is well
known that nearly all the salt imported here comes in as ballast, at a mere
nominal freight; this, in connexion with domestic competition, keeps down
the price. To show that this is the case, I read from a table compiled by
the chairman of 'the Committee on Manufactures, (Mr. Hudson,) showing
the
Prices and duty on Salt from 1795 to 1843, inclusive,per bushel, at Boston.
YEAR.
PRICE.
DUTY.
YEAR.
PRICE.
DUTY.
YEAR.
PRICE.
DUTY-
1795
77 c.
12 c.
1812
61 c.
free.
1828
4Sc.
20c
1796
56
12
1813
66
u
1829
50
20
1797
47
12
1814
72
20 c.
1830
44
15
1798
69
20
1815
79
20
1831
46
15
1799
61
20
1816
70
20
1832
51
10
1800
61
20
1817
56
20
1833
38
10
1801
75
20
1818
58
20
1S34
32
9.5
1802
64
20
1819
64
20
1S35
34
9.5
1803
56
20
1820
5S
20
1836
36
8.9
1804
78
20
1821
52
20
1837
38
8.9
1805
72
20
1822
58
20
1838
37
7.4
1806
57
20
1823
54
20
1839
36
7.4
1807
64
20
1824
50
20
1840
34
6.1
1808
68
free.
1825
50
20
1841
35
6.1
1809
50
«
1826
44
20
1S42
28
*5.4
1810
44
u •
1827
47
20
1843
23
. 8
1811
• 57
Cf
* From 1834 to 1843, the duty was declining under the operation of the Compromise
Act. The amount of duty must depend upon the price. The above is only an estimate
of the duty, though probably not far from the truth.
I ask the gentleman how it happens that, two years ago, when salt paid
a duty of about 5^ cents, it sold for 28 cents per bushel? and that, at this
time, it pays a duty of 8 cents, and sells for 23 cents per bushel 1 If he can
discover any particular influence which the duty has upon this article, it is
more than I have been able to do.
I deny, sir, that the protective policy has the effect of permanently rais-
ing prices upon most things manufactured in this country ; and I need not
leave this Hall to prove this. The shirt that I now wear cost 12^ cents
per yard. It is the product of our own soil, and the manufacture of our
I
own citizens. Before we had a protective Tariff, the same article qould
not have been imported from England at a less cost than three times this
price. The cloth of my coat cost $4 per yard, and I assert that cloth of
equal value could not have been purchased, before American skill and
competition, by a protective Tariff, were brought into requisition, for $6
per yard. The pantaloons which I now wear cost $1 50 per yard, while
such goods were readily sold for $2 50 before they were protected here.—
These boots cost $3 50 per pair, and I will appeal to any gentleman who
hears me, if as good could have been produced for $6 before our bootma¬
kers were protected. That hat cost $4 ; before the manufacture of hats
was protected, the same article, of equal quality, could not ha^e been
bought for less than $8.
I feel proud in saying that these articles are all of American manufac¬
ture.
Mr. Chairman, I hold in my left hand a pattern card of French printed
muslins, at from 20 to 25 cents per yard, and, in my right hand, an Amer¬
ican article of similar style and quality, at from 124 to 16 cents the yard !
Verily, the country must be now afflicted with a most oppressive Tariff
upon the consumer!
Again, sir: This pattern card of American fabrics contains a great varie¬
ty of styles of woollen goods, used as cloaking for ladies' wear, and linings
for the cloaks of gentlemen. This manufacture has only been attempt¬
ed in our country within about two years past. Before that time, the
article was exclusively imported, and sold from $2 50 to $3. Already has
the enterprise and skill of our domestic manufacturers brought down the
prices to $1 and $1 50 per yard. In confirmation of the correctness of the
views I have endeavored to lay before you, I will, as concisely as possible,
submit the following additional evidences of the happy effects produced by
the operation of the existing Tariff upon various other articles, the manu¬
facture of which has been introduced into the United States, as furnished
me by an experienced merchant:
Relative value of sundry articles, made up from actual sales in 1841,
when the Tariff ranged the lowest, and in 1843, under the present
rates of duties.
Domestic Goods. January 1, 1841. January 1, 1844
Cotton oznaburgs, per yard S to 10 cents. 6^ to 7^ cents.
J brown shirtings. " 6^ to 8^ cents. 4| to 6|- cents.
a « " " 8| to ll" cents. 6^ to 8.^ cents,
f " sheetings " 11 to 14J cents. S£ to 10£ cents.
The prices of bleached goods have changed in the same ratio. Domes¬
tic prints, (staple styles,) to 18 cents—8£ to \2\ cents; domestic cloths
and cassimeres and sattinets reduced not less than 33^ per cent.
The effect of the Tariff on calicoes or prints is probably as great as on
any other article. During the year 1840, large quantities of British prints
were imported that cost from 22 to 28 cents per yard ; in 1843, prints of as
good quality were produced in this country as low as 15 cents per yard,
which entirely excluded British prints from our markets.
In 1841.
In 1843.
4
3 a 3£
7
a
12J a 16|
9 a 14
15 a 20
10 a 14
16
14
3 a 8
2\ a 6£
5 a 5{
3fa 4
Cast hollow ware, per lb.
Flat iron, per lb. -
Anvils, per lb. -
Vices, per lb.
Scythe blades, per dozen
Weeding and hilling hoes, per doz.
Nails, Richmond made -
Carpenter's knob locks average full 33( less in 1843 ; slock locks full 20
per cent, less; table knives and forks and pocket knives, 33| less; spades
and shovels, 20 per cent, less ; trace chains, 5 per cent, less ; cross-cut and1
mill saws, 124 per cent less.
.Gentlemen ask if all this be so, why is it we want protective duties, par¬
ticularly if their tendency be to reduce prices? We answer, that protection
is wanted to secure a market for our goods; the manufacturers only want
tegular trade and employment for every individual in the community. When
that is the case, they can run the whole of their machinery the full time-
Protection gives this ; it secures a healthy, steady demand, they constantly
have ready sales and quick returns; but when they have a.precarious, un¬
certain, fluctuating market, they are obliged to stop one-half, three-fourths,
or perhaps the whole of their machinery. This is the reason the manufac¬
turers above all things want steadiness of legislation ; this vacillating policy
did more to break up manufactures than any thing else. Let the same pro¬
tection be given to the American mechanic and manufacturer that these-
classes receive in all wisely administered and well regulated Governments
in Europe, and it will soon be demonstrated that Ameriea, in this depart¬
ment of social and political economy, as in every thing else, can successful¬
ly compete with the whole world.
If I am not sufficiently clear to gentlemen, I will endeavor to exemplify
" my meaning by relating a circumstance which happened a few days since.
A lady (the best authority in the world) informed me that she had called at
ihe shoemaker's shop of one of my constituents to purchase a pair of shoes,
for which he charged her 75 cents. Why, said the lady to him, do you now
only ask me 75 cents for these shoes, when I heretofore always paid one dol¬
lar for the same kind ? Wherefore have you fallen- in price ? Oh, madam,
'tis the glorious effects of the last tariff. How, then, said the lady, are you
in favor of a tariff which brings down the price of your shoes'? Simply be¬
cause every body now, owing to the improvement in all branches of busi¬
ness has employment, we lose no time, are paid in good money, and I do a
better business at 75 cents per pair than I did before at $1.
Sir, I hope in the face of all these facts, and the additional evidences I
shall lay before you, we shall have no more crocodile tears shed here for the
people, under a pretended sympathy on account of their being so much op¬
pressed by a protective tariff; all they ask is to be let alone. The people
have not called for a repeal of this tariff; they want no more experiments.
The honorable gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Wright) said that in 1810
twelve pages only were required to keep the account of dutiable articles at
tire Treasury Department, and was horror-struck at finding that forty-four
pages were new used for that purpose. 1 take this as decided evidence that
we are becoming, as a natioD, more independent, as our own mechanics
manufacture many articles now for which we were heretofore dependent
upon foreign nations. I trust that the list may go on to increase until we
are truly independent in every respect.
1 will now proceed to show some of the practical effects that the bill now
before us must produce if it becomes a law. With reference to the article of
wool, by the present tariff, upon that costing 7 cents per pound and under,
there was a duty of 5 per cent.; the gentlemen who reported the bill pro¬
posed a duty of 15 per cent., and one of the members of the committee pro¬
posed a duty of 30 per cent., (which was the amendment now before the
committee.) This lock of wool is a sample of the wool that comes in at 5
per cent, at present; not a single pound of it is raised in this country ; this
other lock is the coarsest American wool—any gentleman can see the differ¬
ence between them. Now, if the gentlemen of the committee had inform¬
ed themselves, they would never have reported such a bill as this. Blankets,
an article for which this wool was used, by this bill were suffered to come in
at an ad valorem duty of only ten per cent. If the bill was framed for rev¬
enue, it would utterly fail, for not one single pound of the wool would be
brought into the country if they destroyed the manufacturing of it; it
would go to Europe and be manufactured, and come here in the shape of
blankets.
the importance of the protective system to the farmer.
The gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Wright) stated that the agriculturist
is injured by the present tariff, and the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brink-
erhoff) that it would be impossible to create a home market for their ag¬
ricultural products. That his district alone has a large surplus to dispose of.
Sir, I can name a single manufacturing establishment which will consume
the surplus of his whole district.
In answer to these gentlemen (the representatives of agricultural districts)
I will endeavor to show that this protective tariff was the very thing their
constituents wanted. Gentlemen here might not understand it, but I think
their constituents would. The duty on wool under the present tariff was 3
cents per pound and 30 per cent ad valorem, and on woollens it was 40 per
cent. The gentleman represented this duty on woollens as forthe exclusive
benefit of the manufacturers. Now, I assert that the manufacturer of wool¬
lens has a protection of only about 15 per cent. One-half of the cost of
the cloth was wool; the wool grower then certainly got one-half of the pro¬
tection; the foreign manufacturer or shipper cheated him out of at least one-
quarter of the remaining duty, which left to the manufacturer barely a pro¬
tection of 15 per cent.
I will now show the importance of this interest to the agriculturists gen¬
erally :
There is estimated to be in the United States 25,000,000 sheep,
at $2 each - - - -' - - $50,000,000
it requires about one acre of land to support three sheep, say
8,500,000 acres of land, at $10 per acre - - 85,500,000
Amount invested for manufacturing woollens, in lands, water
and steam power, buildings, machinery, and cash capital - 60,000,000
Whole amount employed in the growth and manufacture of
wool - - - - - - - 195,500,000
This is considered a low estimate.
25,000,000 of sheep will produce 62,500,000 lbs. wool at 32
cents $20,000,000
The manufacturing of which will require the consumption
of other agricultural products, such as flour, meal, beef,
bacon, vegetables, wood, teazles, lard oil, lumber, &c., &c.,
of at least - 10,000,000
Annual consumption ..... 30,000,000
Value of woollen goods made from the above - - 40,000,000
which clearly proves that 75 per cent, of the cost of the woollen manufac¬
ture pass into the hands of the farmer. This branch of the business requires
the additional employment of at least $1,000,000 of capital for machine
making, &c. I have carried this branch of manufacture more into detail
for the reason that I am more familiar with it; the same remarks will, how¬
ever, apply to many other branches of the manufacturing and mechanic arts,
to cotton, iron, silk, flax, tobacco, leather, &c.; in fact, the principles here
set forth will be found to have nearly a universal application.
I will now present a statement of a single Cotton Factory in the district
which I have the honor to represent. This establishment consumes annu¬
ally 1,180,000 pounds of cotton, which, at 10 cents per pound, is $118,000
Other incidental articles, such as leather, pickers, reeds, twine, &c. 8,500
Potatoe starch, 36,000 pounds.
Oil, 2,500 gallons
Cash for wages, (supporting 1,000 souls) - 60,000
Transportation ------- 3,000
Commissions, &c. - - - - - - 10,000
Flour consumed on the premises, 1,000 barrels.
Corn " " 3,000 bushels.
Bacon " " 50,000 pounds.
Besides, fresh meat, poultry, vegetables, <fcc.
The amount of agricultural products consumed at this one place in 1S43
amounted to more than the whole exports (the growth of the State of Ma¬
ryland) during the same period. If gentlemen, more familar with agricul¬
ture than myself, will take these facts and figure them out, they will be sur¬
prised at the number of acres of land, and the amount of capital employed
in the lands, &c., for the supply of this single establishment; and they will
see that a large portion of the whole cost of the manufacture of cotton goods
goes into the hands of the planter and the farmer. Indeed, from all the cal¬
culations which I have made in connexion with this subject, it appears that
11
each person employed in ihe mechanical and manufacturing operations, con¬
sumes $40 worth of agricultural products yearly.
I now present a statement handed to me by a very intelligent iron manu¬
facturer, showing the value of the agricultural products consumed in the
manufacture of each ton of iron :
20 bushels grain, av. 75 cts. $15 00
57 lbs. bacon or pork, 5 2 85
43 lbs. beef, 5 2 15
10 lbs. butter, 12 1 20
2 bushels potatoes, 30 60
■}2 ton hay, at $7 - - $3 50
Horse - - - I 43
Vegetables, &c. - 1 00
27 73
The annual products of iron in Pennsylvania alone is $9,408,930; number
of hands employed in this branch, 16,664 ; dependent on them, 83,420 ; ma¬
king 100,000 persons who consume annually over $4,000,000 of agricultu¬
ral products, besides a large amount of manufactures; and let it be borne
in mind that Pennsylvania manufactures only one-third of the quantity
of iron made in the country.
The entire capital invested in all the manufactories of this country is
estimated at $400,000,000 ; number of persons employed in manufactures
and trades, 900,000; who, with their families and dependents, will
amount to 4,000,000 of people. To support these, requires at least 124
cents worth of agricultural products per day for each individual; and this
they do not raise for themselves, but obtain their provisions by purchase.
From the most accurate calculations which I can make, allowing five
per cent, interest, it requires an investment of $3,000,000,000 (three thou¬
sand millions) in lands, &c., for the supply of raw material, food, &c., for
those engaged in manufactures, mining, and mechanic arts. Now break
up the manufactures, as this British bill would, and these people must be
compelled to become producers themselves or starve. In the face of these
facts, how could any gentleman get up here and assert boldly that the agri¬
culturist was not benefitted by a protective tariff? This system of protection
is the very life and soul of agriculture. The home market is worth more,
far more, than all the markets in the world.
Sir, it has always been the policy of Engiand to take asjittle as possible
from us. The gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Wright) mentioned one fact,
inadvertently I suppose, in support of this assertion. He stated.that our
imports in one year had swelled up to fifty millions more than usual, whilst
our exports during that time had not increased.
free trade of england.
» t
England was cited by gentlemen on the other side as'a Free Trade nation
worthy of imitation. Now, sir, I have closely examined her free trade tariff,
and find a duty of only 1,000 per cent, on tobacco. It is true they tell
us this is for revenue. Well, I find 1,200 per cent, on manufactured tobacco;
now, the 200 per cent, difference was certainly to protect the manufacturer
of the article there, and the duty on other agricultural products, as appears
by the following
TABLE.
Articles.
Rates of duty.
Duties ad valorem.
Tobacco, unmanufactured -
72 cts. per lb.
1,000 pr ct.
manufactured
216 cts. per lb.
1,200
Prohibited.
stalks
—
Beef
88 cwt.
33 pr. ct.
Pork
2 88
• 33
Bacon and hams
6-72
109
Lard
1 92
27
Butter
4 80
70
Cheese ...
2 52
35
Tallow
76
Ashes
1 44
Indian corn -
-
averaging 30
Wheat -
24 cts. to $6 16 pr. qr.
30
Flour, equal to 38£ gallons
30
wheat
-
Oats
24 cts. to $3 pr. qr.
Potatoes
48 cts. cwt.
Rice
$3 60
Cotton
70
Cotton, from colonies
8
Spirits, from grain -
-
500
Spirits, from molasses • -
-
1,600
Soap
-
200
Boots and bootees, women -
$7 20 dozen.
Boots and bootees, men
12 96
cloth,ng £Woo||en .
-
40
20
20
Sperm and wax candles
60 cts. per lb.
Tallow
$15 20 cwt.
Hats ,
2 52 each.
Hemp, dressed
22 80 ton.
Hemp, undressed
2 cts.
Pins ...
-
20
Fish, cannon, fire arms, and
lead shot -
4
Prohibited.
The duties received on the imports from England into this country, in
1838, 1839, and 1840, amounted to $52,796,277, whilst she compelled us
to pay into her exchequer, on the articles of cotton and tobacco alpne,
$73,638,628. It has long been the policy of that nation to preach Free
Trade to all the world, but never to practice it; and it has been affirmed
that she has expended nearly half a million of dollars in New York, and
13
-elsewhere, for the purpose of disseminating her doctrines ; the whole drift
of which is to persuade us to exchange our raw materials for her manufac¬
tures. It is impossible for any nation to become rich and prosperous,
which exports its raw materials in exchange for the manufactures of other
countries. Are gentlemen aware that England takes one pound of our
best cotton, (Sea Island,) for which she pays us, at the most, 75 cents, and
returns it to us, in the shape of muslins, at a cost of perhaps $20 per pound,
leaving $19 in the pockets of her subjects. She has been built up to her
present greatness by this system—by being the workshop of the world.—
This system she compelled us to submit to when we were colonies, and
she is now seeking still to rivet it upon us.
The London Spectator, in 1843, says: "More general considerations
tend to show that the trade between the two countries most beneficial to
both, must be what is commonly called a colonial trade ; the new settled
country importing the manufactures of the old in exchange for its own raw
produce. In all economical relations, the United States still stand to Eng¬
land in the relation of colony to mother country ! !"
I am sorry, Mr. Chairman, to find that these truly British sentiments
have too many advocates in the Hall of the American Congress; but I am
proud to say, sir, that they find no echo in the breast of any Whig here. I
want the constituents of those gentlemen to know the.fact, that their Re¬
presentatives on this floor want to bring us back to the "relation of colonies
to the mother country to induce us to believe that the relation of colonies
to the mother country was the best for us. The gentleman from Indiana
tells us that he hates to hear the words " pauper labor." I hope he would
still more hate to see it. I have seen some of that pauper labor, and mustv
return thanks to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Owen) for the very in¬
teresting statistics he had given the House with reference to the pauper la¬
bor of Europe. On a visit to England 1 have seen her laborers, and deter¬
mined as long as I lived to do all in my power to keep up the barriers that
protected our own people from competition with such labor. I have seen
as fine looking girls as were to be met any day on our avenue, whose daily
occupation it was to pick up manure on the turnpike roads, from sunrise
until sunset, for the scanty, miserable pittance of 6d. per day ; I have seen
women breaking stone on their turnpikes. The gentleman from Indiana,
I suppose, has seen more than all this; and yet he would come here and
tell the freemen of America that they must break down the barriers now
that kept the product of that labor from us, and introduce it to the detri¬
ment of our own labor !
In reply to the remarks of the gentleman from Ohio, (Mr. Brinkerhoff,)
with reference to the immorality of the operatives engaged in manufactur¬
ing, I would tell the gentleman that a more virtuous population did not
exist than the wives and daughters of the manufacturer and mechanic ; and
if the gentleman would subscribe for the paper conducted exclusively by
these operatives in one of our manufacturing villages, he would alter his
opinion in regard to the morals of this useful class of the community.
I wish to call the particular attention of the Committee and of the country
to the fact, that these self-styled Democrats upon the floor of this Congress—
those who professed so much love for the people—are determined to disre¬
gard the voice of the American people, and pass this British Tariff Bill.—
14
Since this bill had been reported by the Committee, they had had memorials
from all classes of the community, entreating Congress not to interfere with
the present salutary Tariff law, in such numbers that, if left on the Speak¬
er's table, they would hide the Speaker entirely from the sight of the
House ; and it was also a fact, that not one single petition in favor of this
British destructive bill had been handed into the House.
Again, sir, I want the people to know the fact, that although the Demo¬
cratic majority of this House printed twenty thousand extra copies of the
report accompanying this bill from the Committee of Ways and Means,
they published only ten thousand of the minority report from the same
Committee, and refused to publish any extra copies of the able report of
the Committee on Manufactures in favor of the protective policy. Why
has this course been adopted by them ? Why did they vote down the re¬
solution of the honorable gentleman from Illinois, (Gen. Hardin,) calling
for informatian relative to Duff Green's semi-official visit to England?—
Sir, it looks very much as if they feared that the people would have too
much light on the subject, and would render a verdict against their Uto¬
pian free trade scheme. Happily for the best interests of the country, the
people are every where discussing this subject, being fully convinced of its
paramount importance. And I venture most confidently to predict, that
the friends of the protective policy on this floor will be sustained by their
constituents in all Sections of the Union.
Sir, these self-styled " Democrats" tapped the people on the head, saying
that they were their friends, while, at the same time, they were slabbing
them under the fifth rib. But the people are beginning to understand it.
In my own district, which gave a " Democratic" majority of 1,S60 hereto¬
fore, my opponent had taken the ground of opposition to a protective Tariff,
but was willing to go for a " revenue" and "judicious" one. I took the
broad ground in favor of a protective Tariff, and had overcome not only
the 1,860 opposite majority, but stand here with a majority of 534. That
was the ground on which the battle had been fought; and I warn gentle¬
men from the West and the North that the eyes of their constituents are on
them, and that the people, instead of setting them in one of these easy hair¬
cloth chairs, with brass rollers, with their feet (at least some of them) put
up in the faces of the ladies in the gallery and of the Speaker of the House,
will place them, should they persist in pressing this measure, in a. state of
dignified retirement, and give them full leisure to engage in the pursuits
and enjoyments of private'life:
a protective tariff ensures a good currency.
A sound currency is amongst the greatest blessings a commercial nation
can possibly enjoy, and is essential to the prosperity of every branch of
trade. In order to keep the circulating medium of this country in a heathy
state, we have only to continue the present Tariff system, the operations of
which already have turned and settled the balance of exchange in our favor,
and we shall continue to be blessed with a currency unsurpassed by any,
the natural effect of which will be to give stability to the value of labor and
property, and promote a general advancement in prosperity and national
wealth, in which every individual in the community is more or less inter-
15
ested. If, on the other hand, you pass this bill, the imports must be in¬
creased to such an extent, to afford revenue sufficient for the wants of the
Government, as far to overbalance the exports of the country, and the na¬
tural consequence will be to drain the nation of its specie, and inevitably
to introduce in its stead, as we have had already abundant evidence, a de¬
preciated paper currency. This consideration alone should admonish us to
profit by experience, and not interfere with the present Tariff law, which
has restored us to a sound currency.
Under this law we imported, during the year ending 1st
September, 1843, gold and silver amounting to - - $23,741,631
And exported during the same period - - - - 3,118,399
Leaving $20,623,232
to sustain the circulating medium of the country.
Mr. Chairman, if in opposition to the will of the people, totally disregard¬
ing the hundreds of petitions now on your table remonstrating against any
change in the present Tariff law, and without a single petition in favor of
the proposed bill, you recklessly pass this bill, so destructive of all the pro¬
tective features of the present law, you will every where stop the water-
wheels of our factories, you will extinguish the fires of our furnaces, you
will throw the man of business into the power of the grinding shaver or
money-lender, you will paralyze the arm of the mechanic, you will wrest
the needle from the fingers of the tailor and the seamstress, you will make
the rich richer and the industrial classes poorer; in a word, you will send
want and misery stalking through the land—all, all, for the purpose of car-
vying out your unhallowed parly schemes. But, sir, I warn gentlemen that
many here, who give their support to this measure will sign their political
death-warrant, and this destructive British Bill will prove their winding-
sheet.
jr
SPEECH
OF
MR. DAYTON, OF NEW JERSEY,
ON THE TARIFF.
delivered in the senate of the united states, april 29, 1644.
Mr. Dayton addressed the Senate as follows:
The tariff act of 1842 has realized—more than realized—the expectations of its friends.
As a measure of revenue, it has filled the empty coffers of our country ; as a measure of
vrotection to labor, its power has been almost miraculous ; it has raised domestic indus¬
try from the dead ; a thousand branches of industry have sprung up, as it were, in a
night.
It is my purpose to relieve this act, as far as I can, from the charge of partiality in its
benefits and operations. It has been charged, here and elsewhere, that the tariff act of
1842, as well as the system of which it is a part, is calculated to plunder the agricul¬
turist and enrich the manufacturer; or, in the emphatic language of the Senator from
New Hampshire, (Mr. Woodbury,) that it is a system for "skinning the farmers."
It is to that interest, and of that interest, I mean principally to speak. It is to the
farmers of the country that this system has been most misrepresented, and by them I
desire that it shall be understood. If it shall be found to be a system of robbery, let
them deal with those who sustain it accordingly. I think it may be demonstrated that
the agriculturists are interested in the perpetuity of this system, to an extent at least
equal to any other class of the community, and that, from the very beginning, they
themselves have been the recipients of its bounty and the objects of its care.
The first trace that we find of the protective principle in the legislation of this coun¬
try is in behalf of the farming interests. There is, perhaps, not a State in the Union
which has not at some time enacted laws protective of the crops, the poultry yards, and
sheep folds of the farmers. Bounties for the destruction of noxious animals, and pre¬
miums to encourage the growth of particular kinds of agricultural production, have been
universal; and yet no one has ever thought of denouncing the principle of taxing the
entire community to pay these bounties and premiums. The manufacturer, merchant,
and mechanic, have never complained of the system, as robbing them for the direct ben¬
efit of the farmer. All have felt that, whatever might be the direct benefit, indirectly
the benefit came to all.
It is not in State legislation alone, but in Federal legislation likewise, that the interests
of agriculture have been peculiarly consulted by this system. I need not go back to
the tariff of 1816, because that is claimed by the adversary as the beginning of the pro¬
tective system, j though I do not so consider it.) It will be necessary here that I recur
for a moment to the then condition of the country. It was well said by the Senator from-
Massachusetts, (Mr. Choate,) and others, that the wars of Europe and our neutrality'
had made us, prior to 1807, the common carriers of the world. We there had found!
scope for our enterprise and capital, while the foreign market was a profitable outlet for
our surplus products. That market was suddenly closed. The Berlin and Milan de¬
crees, the Orders in Council, the embargo, the non-intercourse acts, the war, and, lastly,
the disbanding of the armies of Europe, and their return to the arts of peace, was a new
era in the history of the world, " novus sseclorum nascitur orrfo." This brought with
it a terrible lesson as to the value and security of the foreign market. The products of
ihe farmer were rotting on his hands ; his lands were going down with an accelerated
Pruned at Gideon's, Ninth street, Washington.
2
velocity. He who had bought and paid half, was glad to abandon his purchase and be
relieved from the balance. No interest in this country ever suffered such cruel misfor¬
tune as did the agricultural interests of that day, by reason of the sudden closing of the
foreign markets. Thousands yet live in poverty, who will attest in their hearts the truth
of this remark. When Congress was deliberating in 1816 things were bad enough, but
worse were shadowed forth in the future. The desire was to stave off the blow as well
from agriculture as from manufactures. Mr. Madison, in his message at the commence¬
ment of the session, in recommending the protective system, told Congress that it would
" Be an additional recommendation of particular manufactures, where the materials for them are ex¬
tensively draXim from our agriculture, and consequently impart and insure to that great fund of national
prosperity and independence an encouragement which cannot fail to be rewarded."
Mr. Jefferson, in his letter to Benjamin Austin, of January 6, 1816, published in the
Intelligencer of this city, with a view, doubless, to its operation upon Congress, says:
" We must now place the manufacturer by the side of the agriculturist. He who is now against do¬
mestic manufactures, must be for reducing us either to dependence on that (a foreign) nation, or to be
clothed in skins, and to live like wild beasts in dens and caverns."
Such was the language of the great apostle of Democracy of that day ; the Democracy
of our day worships strange Gods.
The Committee on Commerce and Manufactures, of which Mr. Lowndes, of South
Carolina, was, I believe, chairman, and to whom this question was referred, report that
" The committee, keeping in view the interests of the nation, cannot refrain from stating that cotton
fabrics imported from India interfere not less with that encouragement to which agriculture is justly en¬
titled, than they do with that which ought reasonably to be accorded to the manufacturers of cotton
wool;" that they "are deeply impressed with a conviction that the manufacturing establishments of
cotton wool are of real utility to the agricultural interests&c., and under the influence of this convic¬
tion they report the bill.
Mr. Calhoun, in his speech of April *22, 1816, says, in reference to war:
" Our agriculture is cut off from its accustomed markets, the surplus product of the farmer perishes
on his hands, and he ceases to produce because he cannot sell."
He further says :
"The recent war fell with peculiar pressure on the growers of cotton and tobacco, and other great sta¬
ples of the country ; and the same state of things will occur in the event of another, unless prevented by
the foresight of this body."
These were the men under whose influence the tariff of 1816 was passed, and the
above extracts will show what they meant; whether they were concocting a system to
" skin the farmers."
The act of 1816 remained some years, when the act of 1824 was passed. I shall
make but a single extract to show with what view it was passed; but it is an extract
from the speech of one who is the personification, the very embodiment of the protec¬
tive system. Mr. Clay, in his speech on the bill, March 30 and 31, 1824, says :
" Oar agriculture is our greatest interest. It might ever to be predominant. All others should bend to it.
And, considering what is for its advantage, we should contemplate it in all its varieties, of planting, farm¬
ing, and grazing. Can we do nothing to invigorate it ! Nothing to correct the enors of the past and to
brighten the still more unpromising prospects which lie before us!"
This was the language of the great advocate of the bill of 1824, and it was with these
views that bill was passed. If the system, therefore, be a system for plundering the
agriculturist, we are indebted to the Senator from New Hampshire for the discovery ;
it has become so not only without the knowledge, but against the wishes of those who
made it.
The North invested in manufactures ; the South did not, for want of capital. All she
then had yielded full returns in the cultivation of the earth, Mankind will not, under
3
such circumstances, transfer capital from a business more certain to one that is less so
They generally speculate and adventure upon their surplus. " Seed time and harvest,
the early and the latter rain," are of the things which are promised, but there is no
such guarantee for commercial or manufacturing adventure. But as the capital of Caro¬
lina and Georgia shall increase, or as their cotton lands diminish in value, by reason of
the more productive lands of the Southwest coming into cultivation, they too will find
a surplus beyond what will bnn'g fair returns invested in lands, and this surplus may go
into manufactures. They have every thing necessary to give them eminent success,
save one—intelligence among their operatives. Manufactures require a care, judgment,
and skill, which can hardly be hoped for from the slaves of the South. This, however,
is a difficulty which may, and I trust will, be overcome.
Returning from this brief digression, I desire to show that, as this system commen¬
ced with an eye to the farmers, its continuance is peculiarly beneficial to that interest:
1. By reason of the direct protection it gives them upon their produce.
2. By reason of the indirect protection a duty on the manufactured article gives to
their raw material.
3. By reason of the home market it affords to their productions.
By reference to the act of 1842 it will be seen that the farmer is protected in every
thing that he can produce in sufficient quantities for the country, from his wheat dawn
to his butter and his lard.
The following is a list of part,.and but a part, of the protected articles, with the du¬
ties thereon, respectively, varying from 20 to perhaps 100 per cent.:
Wheat, per bushel - - - $0 25
Oats - - - - - 10
Barley - - - - - 20
Rye ..... 15
Potatoes - - - - - 10
Flaur, per 112 pounds - - - 70
Indian meal do . - - 20
Hops, per cent, ad val. - - - 20
Hemp, Russia and Italian, per ton - 40 00
Hemp, Manilla, &c. - - - 25 00
Hemp, Oodilla - • - - - 20 00
Flax, per ton - - - - 20 00
Feathers, per cent. - - 25
Pork, per pound .... cts. 2
Beef do - - - 2
Hams and bacon .... 3
Cheese ..... 9
Butter - ... . - 5
Lard ..... 3
Seeds, clover and timothy, 20 per cent, ad
valorem.
Candles, tallow, per pound - 4
Cotton, per lb. - - - 3 s
Vinegar, per gallon ... 8
Prepared meats, poultry, &c., 25 per cent.
ad val. - - - - 25
Now, I beg the attention of the farmers of the country to the above table. They will
see that this protective system does not throw its shield over the mechanic and manu¬
facturer only, but that they themselves are directly the subjects of its care. Ay, sir,
and I ask the opponents of this system in this Chamber whether these duties are not
strictly protective duties ? Twenty-five cents a bushel on wheat, ten cents on oats, fif¬
teen on rye, ten on potatoes, nine on cheese, two on beef and pork, and five on butter,
never could have been intended as revenue duties. They are, in the ordinary states of
the market, prohibitory. They were so intended—they were meant to protect the far¬
mer outright. But of this there is no complaint; the farmers of the country are too
heavy an interest to be attacked.
But it is contended by the Senator from New Hampshire that these duties are useless
:as a means of protection, as much so as would be a duty on granite in New Hampshire,
•or ice in Maine.
Sir, I call for the proof. The agricultural products of the country were thought to
need protection from the beginning, and therefore it is that from the act of 1816 (and,
indeed, by the earlier acts likewise) duties have been laid upon the importation of fo¬
reign agricultural production. But, furthermore, 1 aver that an examination of prices will
show the necessity of this protection ; that without it there is not one year in five when
our farmers will not be met in the markets of New York with competition from abroad,
in some one or more of the various articles of agricultural production. The farmers of
4
other parts of the world have (or at least some have) as bright a sun and as fertile a soil
as we ; and they have, in addition, that naked, starved, ill-paid labor, which, thank God,
we have not.
Without looking beyond our great agricultural staple, wheat, it is evident, from the
comparison of prices at home and abroad, that without duties we would be liable upon
every irregularity of the markets to be flooded with wheat from the countries adjoin¬
ing the Baltic or the Black sea. The following table .will give some idea of the rela¬
tive prices of wheat there and in our market. I have taken the lowest prices at Dant¬
zic, in Germany, in the several years, because, when we are speaking of the possibility
of their sending wheat to this country, we are to assume that they will export when it
is low at home :
Price.
Price.
1829,
at Dantzic -
- $0 86*
At New York
- $1 38
1830
do -
82
November 10 -
- 1 14
1831
do -
- 1 10*
October 29
- 1 20
»1832
do -
79*
Do
- 1 22*
1833
do -
72 §
Do
- 1 20
1834
do -
63*
November 1 -
- 1 06*
1835
do -
55*
Oc.ober 31
- 1 30
1836
do -
601
November 2 -
- 2 03
1837
do -
63*
November 1 -
- 1 96
1838
do -
66*
October 27
- 1 65
Next to Dantzic, Hamburg is the most important corn market in the north of Europe,
and the average price of wheat there for ten years prior to 1832 was nineteen cents per
bushel less than at Dantzic, though the wheat is not of so superior a quality. The
prices at Odessa, on the Black sea, are likewise much lower, I should judge, than at
Dantzic ; but the cost of importation from that market would, I suppose, be greater. It
needs no argument to show that, when the relative prices of wheat are such as are to
be found through many of these years, the foreign article will find its way to our mar¬
ket, if you take olf the duties. Indeed, so far from these duties being useless, the im¬
portations of the country show that, through a number of these years, even a duty of
twenty-five cents on the bushel would not keep it out. The foreign wheat came in,
paying the full duty, and yet underselling our own farmers in their own market. There
were imported through the following years the number of bushels opposite each, to wit:
1835 - 238.769 1 1837 ----- 3,921,259
1836 - - - - - 583,898 t 1838 - - - - - 894,536
I admit these importations were unusually heavy ; but how can it be alleged, in the
face of these facts, that a duty on wheat is as useless as on ice or granite ? Had there
been no duty, no man can tell the extent of importations which would have taken place-
Take" off the duty on agricultural production, and I repeat that an examination of piicesj
will show that our farmers are constantly liable to be interfered with by foreign compe¬
tition. There is not a year passes that foreigners do not knock at your door, and im¬
portunately ask for admission. The Senator from New Hampshire, speaking in refe¬
rence to the duties of 1842, used strong language ; said they were all a delusion, a hum¬
bug ; that the tendency, if not the object, " had been to throw dust in the eyes of the
-community," Sec. I shall not complain of his language, but will examine its correct¬
ness. He illustrates his position, that duties are useless, by a table, (No. 5 of his
speech,) in which he gives the duties, by the act of 1842, on beef, pork, bacon, hams,
cheese, butter, lard, wheat flour, Indian meal, potatoes, and wheat, and contends that
duties were not needed ; that they are a delusion, because, before the act of 1842, these
articles were imported to a very small extent, and needed no protection ; that in 1840
the imports of these articles amounted only to $71,547. Well, sir, if that be all that
came in when they had little or no protection, as every man will infer from this state¬
ment, there would be force in the position. It would have been but fair, however, to
5
have stated that the duties of 1842 on these articles were the same (with a single unim¬
portant exception) as they had been fixed by the tariff acts of 1824, 1828, and 1832,
and that the imports of 1840, instead of coming in free of duty, or at some very low
rate, as might be inferred, came in paying the full amount of duties laid by the act of
1842, except where some of them may have been partially affected by the reductions
of the compromise act. So far from the Senator's table proving his position that no du¬
ties were needed, the importations of that year and of other years, in despite of the du¬
ties charged, are the strongest argument to show the absolute necessity of duties for
protection of the farmer. If $71,547 worth of these ten articles came in paying a
heavy duty, can any man resist the conviction that importations would have been far
heavier if there had been no duty at all ? I think that with great fairness the mode in
which this table is prepared, and the omission to state the duties existing in 1840, may
justify a retort of the Senator's own language—the tendency, if not the object, of
the table " has been to throw dust in the eyes of the community."
I know it may be said that these importations, which are annually made, are very
small, as compared with our aggregate consumption. I concede it; but they are enough
to try our markets ; they are the falling drops which prelude the shower, reminding a
man of his umbrella. It is not the act of prudence to wait until after you are drench¬
ed before you seek mrotection.
It is thus that the tariff act of 1842 gives a direct protection to the farmer. But do
not let me be misunderstood. I do not mean to contend that, as a general thing, it
raises to any considerable degree the price of agricultural produce, although such is
doubtless its occasional effect. Nor do I believe that the duty on cottons raises as a
whole their price, though such may be its occasional effect. The advantage to the far¬
mer is the same as to the cotton manufacturer—it secures the market. To use the
most apt illustration of the Senator from Massachusetts, (Mr. Bates,) the duties are
kept -up as you keep up your fence around your wheat field ; it does not make the
wheat grow higher, but it makes sure that it will not be eaten up by vagrant cattle.
The duty provides against the irregularities of the markets of the world ; it serves as
an outer embankment, preventing our market being flooded from abroad whenever prices
shall happen to be high here or very low elsewhere.
But the bill of 1842 not only gives a direct, but an indirect, protection to the farmer.
A duty on the manufactured article helps not the one who made it only, but every one
who has contributed to its value. A duty on cloth helps the wool grower as well as the
manufacturer ; a duty on shoes helps not the shoemaker only, but it helps him who sup¬
plies the hides, and him who tans them, and him who furnishes the bark, and him who
provides the food for man and beast in all the departments of the labor. The price of
all these, the elements, depends on the price the whole will bring in market when the
same are brought together. It is a mistake to say that nobody gets the benefit of the
duty but the mechanic or manufacturer. It is on this incorrect assumption that the Se¬
nator has framed his other agricultural table, (No. 4,) entitled " duties discriminating for
manufactures and against agriculture," &c. This table is filled with inaccuracies and
mistakes. (As I have not space to dilate upon them here, I omit them.) But the ob¬
ject of the table is to show how unjust this bill is to the agriculturist; that it allows him,
for instance, only five per cent, on hides, but gives a heavy duty on leather ; one cent
per pound on bristles, hut a heavy duty on brushes. I wonder the Senator did not pur¬
sue his objection; there is a duty of only five per cent, on horns, but a heavy duty on
buttons ; a shameful discrimination against agriculture, surely ! Now, it is the first act
which, on most of these raw materials, ever laid a duty at all, and the farmer gets to a
oertain extent the benefit of the high duty on the manufactured articles, as before men¬
tioned ; but the truth is, that upon all such articles the duty is not laid on the raw ma¬
terial to protect the farmer. The articles are of that class generally of which the far¬
mer could not raise enough with any amount of duties. Suppose you double the duty
on hides, it will have no effect on production ; our farmers do not raise beef for the sake
6
of their hides. They can never compete with the Indian who throws the lasso, and
after stripping off the hide leaves the carcass smoking where it fell. Nor do they raise
hogs for the sake of their bristles; no amount of duty would produce a single bristle
more. On all such articles the small duty is for revenue ; but when the bill comes to
put the duty upon the farmer's staples, it protects him. Beef and pork are protected,
though hides, horns, anil bristles are not. There is an obvious reason why duties must,
as a general thing, be heavier on manufactured articles than raw material, because more
of the value of a manufactured article consists in labor ; and the object of the duty is
to protect, it must not be forgotten, against the cheaper labor of other countries. These
are my answers to the Senator's 4th table.
But the home market afforded our farmers is, after all, the great advantage derived
from this system of protection. Of the extent and value of this home market so much
has been said that I feel loth to add to it. Some conception of its extent may be gathered
from the number of mouths to be fed. It is estimated that the population of this country,
employed in the different departments of manufacturing and mechanical industry, amounts
to about 2,800,000; this, of course, includes the families, besides the workmen actually
employed. I recollect that the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. McDuffie) enlarged
upon the vast extent of market which the South would open to the great West; told
what quantities of their live strck, and other productions, might there be consumed.
Why, sir, the entire population of the Southern country, black and white, bond and free,
including North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and
Arkansas, (excluding Louisiana, a tariff State,) is only 3,157,667; and deducting from
this number those who are engaged in manufactures and trades, the balance would
scarcely equal in numbers the manufacturers and mechanics of the country. The South,
too, produces for itself the most of what it wants; while our mechanics and manufac¬
turers produce almost nothing connected with agriculture. Convert these consumers of
agricultural products into producers, and every farmer of the country knows the conse¬
quence.
But this home market, it is said, is obtained at the expense of all the markets of the
world; that our duties shut the ports of the world against our produce. But this is not
so; each nation shuts its own ports precisely as we have done. If we laid no duty, our
farmers could not exchange their produce abroad at its intrinsic value, for foreign manu¬
factures at their intrinsic value. There is not a nation with which we trade to any con¬
siderable extent, which does not charge heavier duties upon our agricultural produce,
before the same can be unshipped in their ports, than we charge upon their manufac¬
tures, before they can be unshipped in ours. It is so with the present British tariff.
That country raised on the imports from this, through the years 1838, 1839, and 1840,
an average duty of fifty and a half per cent. But this does not give a fair idea of the
extent of their duties, because on many articles the duty is so heavy that we cannot ex¬
port them at all. And, if reliance may be placed upon a report of a committee of the
American Institute, published last January in the city of New York, the average duties
on forty-eight articles, the growth and production of the United States, (all of which, it
is said, are, or might be, expor'ed,) is two hundred and eighty-nine per cent, upon the
New York market price of the articles. Excluding from the list cotton, tobacco, sugar,
and some other articles not grown by the farmer, or which are charged with duties in
a manufactured state, and the same report would make the average duties on eighteen
articles, commonly grown or produced by him, upwards of one hundred and three and
a half per cent. But, as I have no means at hand of verifying the accuracy of these es¬
timates, 1 prefer copying them from the report, that each may judge for himself.
7
Exhibit of rates of duty levied by the present British tariff\ on the following articles.
Articles.
New York
market price.
Rate on quantity.
Rate per cent.
Apples, per bushel - -
$0 50
£0
0
6
24
Do. dried - - - -
1 00
0
2
0
48
Bacon, hams, per 112 pounds -
6 72
0
14
0
50
Beef, per barrel -
5 75
0
16
0
67
Beans, per bushel - - - -
1 00
0
0
10
20
Batter, per 112 pounds -
13 44
1
0
0
36
Candles, do. -
12 32
0
10
0
19
Cheese, do. - - - -
5 60
0
10
6
45
Cider, per barrel -
1 00
1
15
0
840
Corn, Indian, average per bushel -
54
0
1)
9
33 J
Flour, average per barrel -
4 75
0
6
7}
33J
Hops, per 112 pounds -
7 S4
4
10
0
275
Pork, do.
5 60
0
8
0
34
Staves, hogshead, per 120 -
4 50
0
7
9
41
Tallow, per 112 pounds -
7 84
0
3
2
9
Vinegar, per barrel - - - -
6 00
3
3
0
252
Wheat, average per bushel -
1 00
0
1
4
32
Wool, per pound -
25
0
0
1
8
1,867
Average duty on these 18 articles
-
-
103 13 18
Suppose, then, it were true that the farmer paid an average of thirty four or thirty-five
per cent, on manufactures at home, where he pays nothing on the sale of his own pro¬
duction, would it not be wiser than to pay a far heavier duty on his own produce abroad ?
The glaring error is in applying the same doctrines to the Northern and Western
farmers, which the South applies plausibly, although erroneously, to its cotton. The
planter enters his crop abroad at seven and a half per cent, only, while the farmer, who
shall resort to the same market, must pay a duty on his crop absolutely ruinous; and
yet we are told that the whole South, using the foreign market, is wasting away. We
have had a picture, by the Senator from South Carolina, (Mr. McDuffie,) of its calam¬
itous condition, which made the heart ache ; we could almost see
" The serpents creep, and the wild beasts stray,
Where its chambers of state and its proud walls lay."
And yet it is recommended that the farmers, under far greater disadvantages, shall
abandon the home market, and buy and sell abroad.
But the consumer does not pay the full amount of the duly. It is admitted, on all
hands, that at least part of the duty is paid abroad. We contend that, although the im¬
mediate effect of the duty is sometimes to raise the price, it is never to the extent of the
duty; and that the final result, on articles where we can compete, has been uniformly
to lower prices. It gives to our own manufacturers a steady market; it gets up com¬
petition at home ; it relieves us from the ups and downs, the impositions and extortions,
practised upon us by combinations abroad. All this argument is hooted at by the Sen¬
ator from New Hampshire, who sums up what he has to say upon the subject by a sin¬
gle illustration. " Duties," says he, " increase price as naturally as fuel increases fire."
I will give him a better illustration; protective duties are not adding fuel to fire, but
flame to flame. It is the system of " fighting fire," as woodsmen term it; a scene of
wild magnificence, which the Senator may have seen among the hills of New Hamp¬
shire. The cloud is seen gathering afar off—black smoke and rolling flame. The
hardy woodsman, snuffing the gale, finds the wind will bring the fire on his cabin. He
does not wait the threatened destruction, but anticipates its coming; with his own hand
8
he lights up the woods around him ; and no sooner do the raging flames meet, than
both go out. It is thus, by counter production of the same article, that, when it and
the foreign meet in our market, both sink to a mere living profit, and nothing beyond it.
But there is still another matter which, in connexion with the home market, seems to
trouble the imagination of the Senator. These large cotton mills and woollen establish¬
ments, he says, are monopolies, hotbeds, &c., which have destroyed that honest, old
fashioned home manufacture, so much regretted by him. Well, sir, if this be so, it is
what the lawyers call " damnum absque injuria.'" But even this is not so; the far¬
mer may again bring down the big wheel whose merry hum in the olden time gave life
to labor; he may grope his way through the cobwebs to his loom, and there again ply
the shuttle; he may load his wagon for market by the side of a steam engine; in a
word, he may choose between the present and the past; he may abandon his wife, and
fall in love with his grandmother. But, whatever may be the taste of some politicians,
the farmers, the young farmers of the country, the children of this world, and not of the
last, know where to choose. They abandon home manufactures of choice, and because
these cotton mills, &.c., sell them goods cheaper than they can afford to make them.
In the mean time, their industry is employed in a field where it will produce as much
now as ever it would. They raise a bushel of wheat as easily as they ever did; and
for that bushel they get three yards of cotton cloths, where they got but one before.
Their property or their industry has increased in value just so much. Value is relative;
it matters not whether my property doubles in price, or whether that for which it is my
business to exchange it, sinks one-half, the effect is the same. It is thus that all the
improvements of modern times are peculiarly beneficial to our farming interests. Every
invention in machinery, every increased facility in transportation, every discovery in the
physical sciences, the explorations in chemistry, geology and mineralogy, all pour their
treasures into the lap of agriculture, the great nursing mother of mankind.
In estimating the returns of capital invested in lands, as compared with that invested
in manufactures, one thing seems to me to have been forgotten; and that is, the annual
increase in the value of the capital, the land itself. While capital invested in manufac¬
tures is wearing itself out at the rate of eight or ten per cent, annually, it is directly the
reverse with that invested in lands. Through the East and West, that husbandry which
brings the best return for the labor and capital expended, at the same time makes con¬
stant addition to the value of the land itself. It is difficult to ascertain, with any cer¬
tainty, the extent of that annual increase. In the following States, however, to wit, New
Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont, New York, Delaware,
Maryland, North Carolina, and Tennessee, valuations have been made of their lands at
different times, and the decennial increase in value was sixty-eight per cent; equal to
almost seven per cent, per annum. It is true that increased quantities of land must
have been brought into cultivation between the two valuations, but principally from the
profits of land already in culture. The decennial increase of population in the same
States was but 30.8 per cent.; leaving a difference between the annual increase in the
value of lands and population of more than three and a half per cent.
I reg'ret that I have not the data to show the citizens of my own State the annual in¬
crease in value of their lands ; persuaded as I am that no State in the Union has, as a
whole, grown in value faster than it within the last ten or fifteen years. An examina¬
tion of its annual production in agriculture, as compared with the numbers employed in
it, gives me a fact of which I am proud, and which its farmers ought to know. New
Jersey and Pennsylvania yield more value for the same amount of labor than anv other
of the farming States of the Union.
New Jersey yields, per capita $'285 88
Pennsylvania yields, per capita 328 53
This yield, per capita, assumes the numbers employed in agriculture, as given by die
last census, which counts the man employed as one, not regarding his family.
9
The production of those two States is far beyond the production of any other of the
farming States, and the value, per capita, is indeed almost double the majority of them.
Of the planting States, Louisiana is very far the heaviest producer, in proportion to
the numbers employed—the amount, per capita, being two hundred and eighty-eight
dollars and twenty cents; being two dollars and thirty-two cents per head beyond the
production of New Jersey, and standing in the Union next after Pennsylvania.
The productiveness of New Jersey and Pennsylvania will cause no surprise, when we
recollect that the value of production consists not in amount only, but in convenience of
market. The farmers of those States have been peculiarly benefitted by internal im¬
provements and local markets—that American system of which we hear so much.
The limestone of one region and the marl beds of another have thus been thrown broad¬
cast over the land. The agricultural produce of some is within reach of a railroad, and
for such the steam engine is made to " fetch and carry" like a Spaniel dog; others again
are within reach of a canal; others, off from our thoroughfares, are within hearing of
the water-wheel, or within sight of the forge and furnace fires, or glass works, which dot
the country, thus affording local markets to every neighborhood.
With us, no interest is more flourishing than the agricultural interest. I would appeal
to every farmer; let him look through his own neighborhood. Is it not becoming every
year better ditched, better drained, and better cleared ? Is there not a comfort and abun¬
dance among the farmers unknown among other classes ? While tradesmen and others
are forced to a stinted, pinched-up economy in their living, the home of the farmer is a
place of plenty ; " cornucopia" is one of the emblems of agriculture.
I have no faith in that oppression which needs argument and metaphysics to prove it.
When the farmer looks over his green fields and abundant harvest, when he and his
meet at the family board and invoke God's blessing, with thanks for its abundance, let
him distrust that voice which "squats at his ear," whispering "you are pilfered and
oppressed by your neighbor!" It is poison, rank poison, which will sour his affections
and corrupt his heart. The interests of the farmer, manufacturer, and mechanic are all
crossed and interwoven in a thousand ways—the web and woof of society. As their
interests have a common end and destiny, so let their sympathies unite. However well
meant, he is no friend of either who would sow among them the seeds of jealousy and
strife. This, the practical sense of the farming community will, I trust, not fail to dis¬
cover. We have solemn assurance that "he that diggeth a pit shall fall into it, and
whoso breaketh an hedge a serpent shall bite him."
But, sir, when Senators talk of this system of protection to manufactures being a means
of plundering the agriculturist, I ask^the agriculturist to look abroad ; let him remember _
that this system of protection is almost universal among the nations of the earth ; and let
him remember, too, the agricultural interest has every where the preponderance of power.
It is so in the counsels of despotism, of monarchies, and of republics. It is so here,
and now, as it has been heretofore and elsewhere. If, then, it be true that this system
is one of " skinning the farmers," the whole agricultural world, with the power in their
own hands, have, for at least from a quarter to a half a century, been engaged in the
unnatural operation of skinning themselves ! History affords no instance of any interest
having thus turned felo-de-se. Were the position true, that protection to manufactures
was hostile to the farming interest, the agriculture of the old world would long since
have been dead; aye, and justly buried at a cross road, with a stake through its body !
But, sir, the opinions of Franklin have been invoked by the Senator against the system
of protection. Some question has been made as to what those opinions were ; and the
Senator said, in order to see how the real truth was, " and the conclusions to which his
great experience and unrivalled sagacity had reached on this subject, 1 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." Then follow extracts from
different volumes of his works. The closing one is as follows :
10
" Great establishments of manufacture require great numbers of poor to do the work for small wages;
these 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 supported 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 make them neither happier nor
richer, since they on'y drink more and work less. Therefore, the Governments in America do nothing to
encourage such projects."
Ay, sir, and is that what the Senator calls a conclusion of " great experience and un¬
rivalled sagacity ?" " By which means the workmen are enabled to tax the home
consumer by greater prices, while the higher wages they receive make them neither
happier nor richer, since they only drink more and work less." Much is to be
forgiven to the great man who penned that sentiment half a century ago. He had not
before him the lights of our experience ; he judged by what he knew of the workshops of
the old world ; but that a statesman of our day, a statesman of New England, too,
should have extracted that sentiment, should have incorporated it into his speech, and
stamped upon it the seal of his approbation, is to me matter of unbounded surprise.
The whole of the extract 1 have copied might well have been omitted ; the first sentence
of it has been utterly disproved ; experience shows it does not " require great numbers
of poor to do the work for small wages but if the Senator felt disposed to extract and
sanction that, he might at least have concluded at that part of the extract which alleges
that the workmen are thus " enabled to tax the home consumer by greater prices."
The sentence and the sentiment would thus have been complete, without that most un¬
just imputation which follows upon the workmen of the country. I cannot but think
that the opinions of Franklin upon this subject, although endorsed by the high authority
of the Senator, have lost something of their weight by the experience of the last fifty
years.
[Mr. Woodbury here begged permission to explain ; and the floor being yielded him,
he said that his object in citing those extracts was merely to show what the opinions of
Franklin were, and that he did not mean to adopt them as his own.]
Mr. Dayton proceeded. I am glad the Senator does not adopt them. We were cer¬
tainly justified in supposing he approved of them, when he introduced them into his
speech as conclusions of Franklin's " great experience and unrivalled sagacity." When,
in speaking of any particular subject, we commend a man's great experience and saga¬
city, we naturally infer that it is not on general meters only, but more particularly in
reference to the matter in hand. But these opinions of Franklin, it seems, were quoted,
not to sanction them, nor for any value or worth the Senator attached to them, but
merely to show what they in fact were, and therefore I leave them without further
remark.
A further complaint is made, that too much of our Government income is raised from
customs ; but then it is conceded that we raise no more than we want; and indirect taxa¬
tion upon consumption is surely better than direct taxation upon property. If the latter
be adopted, it will fall with a double force upon the agricultural interest, which owns the
large mass of the ostensible property of the country ; and upon the planting interest it
would fall with a force quadrupled. It would call into exercise that latent power of the
Constitution which requires that a direct tax be levied upon a slave basis, in a propor¬
tion conforming to their representation.
But, sir, a complaint of heavy taxation in this country savors much of that unreason¬
able spirit which we are apt to find in the spoiled children of affluence and indulgence.
It almost seems an ungrateful return to a kind Providence for all its mercies to us as a
people. While the old world has suffered under the agony of that torture known to the
old law, u peine forte et dure;" a weight upon its breast, heavier, and heavier, and
heavier ! the burden upon us, as a whole, has rested lightly as a cork on a billow. There
has scarcely been a feather's weight upon the country at large.
11
Pennsylvania, for instance, has felt herself dreadfully oppressed; could scarcely stag¬
ger under her load ; reeled and tripped like a drunken man at every third step ; yet the
annual taxation of her citizens, per capita, necessary to meet every claim upon her,
■would be about one-fifth the amount now paid by the Netherlands, and which has been
paid annually by the British subject of the United Kingdom for nearly half a century.
Bat upon that, the Keystone State, a brighter day is dawning ; unless it come, and come
quickly, the next stone in the arch, of small size, but sound material, should be bap¬
tized with her name. But whatever may have been her past, 1 have not a doubt of her
future ; and in this connexion I might remind her farmers that those improvements which
have created her debt are a principal cause of the immense value of their agricultural
productions—a value far beyond and wholly disproportioned to that of any other State
of the Union.
But the agriculturists of our country have an interest in the protection of manufactures
of a more enlarged character. They have a deep interest in this question, as a question
of political economy, of national wealth. When they are invoked to abandon manufac¬
tures, and buy and sell abroad, they will count the cost.
1. The country is to sink the immense capital now invested in machinery, build¬
ings, &c.
2. The country is to sink the skill of its citizens—something of vast importance,
when you recollect the value of that skill, as compared with common labor, in the pro¬
duction of national wealth.
3. The country is to sink all that power for producing national wealth which lies in
machinery and its propelling agents—water, wind, steam, &c.—a power equal in this
country to many millions of men. All these must be abandoned to the foreign manufac¬
turer, while we return to the simple elementary agents of production. How much
wealth, as a nation, could we thus produce, compared with what we now produce ?
Have a people ever existed who have become wealthy in the production of raw material
alone? Would not that country necessarily become poor which should so engage it¬
self, and exchange the productions of its labor for the labor of another country engaged
in manufactures ? It would have to give the labor of at least five men at home in ex¬
change for the more valuable labor of one man engaged in manufactures and aided by ma¬
chinery abroad.
In every aspect of this question, the farmers of this country have personally and po¬
litically the deepest interest in the perpetuity of this system of protection to American
industry, and the development of American resources.
But, sir, I am here, and in this connexion, brought to consider so much of the argu¬
ment of the Senator from New York, (Mr. Wright,) as I heard. He objected to this
bill by reason of its probable effects upon labor—upon wages—and he illustrates by re¬
ference to agricultural wages. These wages he admits are graduated in a great measure
by the value of grain. The laborer of the harvest field may take his pay as a general
thing in money or in kind—a bushel of wheator a bushel's worth. This is a fact which
ought ever to be borne in mind by the laborer. It shows how completely his interests
are identified with the interests of the farmer, labor and capital sharing the same fate.
But the Senator deprecates these high duties, (as he chooses to consider them,) be¬
cause they promote high prices, and these again the great demand for labor at high
wages ; then comes a reverse, and labor not only sinks, but there is no demand. He
goes, therefore, for revenue duties and stable prices. Sir, these are very plausible pre¬
mises, but what is their exact application to the matter in hand ? It amounts to this
only: that these high duties, acting upon prices, will bring up at the same time wages
and demand for labor. Very well, I have no objection to that. But, then, the Senator
thinks these wages will be unstable ; but how so ? So far as they are affected by duties,
you may keep them as well at a high as a low level. Only keep your duties stable, and
12
•whether high or low, wages will be stable so far as they are affected by duties. But de-
story this act, vacillate in your duties, and you produce that very instability which the
Senator deprecates.
But, says that Senator, these high duties, as a protection against foreign labor, are of
modern origin ; they were orginally claimed on other grounds. Now, if it were at all
important, there is abundance of authority to show that protection was always claimed
principally upon that ground ; but whether so or not does not affect the question. The
Senator now says to the manufacturer, " You have been protected a long time ; in some
departments at least you must be perfect; if you cannot compete now without protec¬
tion, will you ever be able to do so, unless labor here is brought down to the level of
labor abroad ?"
Well, suppose not; what then? The Senator ends his syllogism, not with a con¬
clusion, but a question. Suppose, I say, we find that we cannot compete without con¬
tinued protection ; what then? The Senator from South Carolina would answer at
once, " You have had a fair trial; abandon the business." But is that the answer of the
Senator from New York? I would like to know if he would consent that these manu¬
factories go down. My answer would be, that upon all articles of primary necessity,
upon all such as involved the security and independence of the country, I would keep up
the duties, if necessary to competition, to the end of time.
But the Senator from New York depreciates the value of a home market for agricul¬
ture, because, (says he,) that will make manufactures our exporting interest, and this
engenders pauperism. This view he illustrates by the results of the manufacturing sys¬
tem in Great Britain. In the first place, it is unfair to take the state of things there for
the last two or three years as a standard, for we are told " that never before has the dis¬
tress in the manufacturing towns been so severe, so penetrating, or so prolonged." But,
sir, if there be poverty where manufactures is the exporting interest, is there none where
agriculture is the exporting interest ? Is there none in the countries bordering on the Baltic ?
None through down-trodden Poland? None in the south of Russia? None along the
Dneiper, the Dneister, the Danube, and along the shores of the Black Sea? What are the
wages of labor there ? Sir, they are sustenance—a bare, miserable sustenance—and little
more. I challenge a general comparison of the wages and comforts of laborers in man¬
ufactures and laborers in agriculture. Throughout the world the latter are worse paid,
worse fed, and worse clad. Distress in Great Britain comes of sudden revulsions, is
occasional, and incident to her crowded population; increasing, as they do, at the rate
of 230,000 annually, they must manufacture or starve. But, sir, agriculture will be our
great exporting interest. We do not anticipate that our manufactures will swallow all
the cotton and tobacco, and other agricultural products of the country.
But, sir, is it true that a transfer of labor in England, from agriculture to manufac¬
tures, has begotten pauperism ? The Senator gave prominence to this idea—spent much
time upon it; commenced as early as 1337, and gave us a detailed account of British
legislation, apparently intended to encourage manufactures, but really, he says, to en¬
courage agriculture; and then, in like manner, from an early period, traced down the
legislative history of bread stuffs, and finally concluded with the assertion that the effect
of all this system, commencing in the thirteenth century, had been " to make labor a
starved beggar."
Sir, I take issue with that Senator, and I ask no better illustration of the operation of
the system than that exemplified in the experience of Great Britain. What has the
system done for her labor ? To determine this, we must know with what and where it
started. Prior to the commencement of that system, labor was a slave—a bond serf to
a feudal lord; or at best a military vassal, bound to its master by "life, limb, and ter¬
rene honor." Free laborers grew out of the establishment of manufactories and trades,
and in that sense it may be said these originated national pauperism; the poverty of the
slave was a charge upon the master—the poverty of the freeman was a charge upon the
station.
13
When free labor first became known, what were its wages and condition? I must now
trouble the Senate with a little legislative history about this agricultural labor, thus re¬
duced by manufactures to pauperism! Eden, in his History of the Poor, says that the
hardships of servitude, and the demand for manufacturing labor, had converted many of
the villeins "into the more useful class of free laborers." They are noticed, for the
first time, by act of Parliament in 1350. The wages then paid to reapers, " during the
first week in August," were two pence per day, and from that time to the end of the
month, three pence, without food. To weeders and haymakers one penny per day.
But this is too large an estimate for labor throughout the year; a large part of the time
they were without employment.
In 1351, during the reign of Edward III, the statute of laborers was enacted, fixing
the wages of weeders and haymakers at the above sum of one penny per day in money,
or in wheat at ten pence a bushel, at the option of the employer. Thus, when wheat
was high they were paid in money, and when low in wheat—not enough, it is said, to
buy clothing. Other restrictions were laid on laborers, under penalties.
In 1360 this statute was confirmed by Parliament, and its penalties enforced on pain
of imprisonment, anu ourning in the;' orenead with ron. As these acts compelled la¬
borers to work, but not masters to employ, it is said great numbers of the former " turned
out sturdy rogues, and infected the kingdom with frequent robberies." The terrible
distress and oppression gave rise to the insurrection of Wat Tyler, whose followers were
principally of the class called villeins. In 1378 the Commons made great complaint
that these laborers run away, and got in towns, and became artisans.
In 1388 wages were again regulated, and a plough driver was allowed "seven shil¬
lings per annum, with food, but without clothing, or any other perquisite." The whole
wages of a year would buy seven yards of russet cloth, the material commonly worn by
the laborer.
In 1444 Parliament advanced wages to fifteen shillings per year, with three shillings
and four pence for clothing and meat and drink.
In 1496 wages were advanced to sixteen shillings eight pence per annum, and four
shillings for clothing.
In 1514 wages were again regulated, but fixed at the same price; and persons who
refused to work were to be imprisoned, and "every vagabond, whole and mighty in
body," was to be tied to the cart's tail, and whipped " till his body was bloody by means
of such whipping."
Early in the reign of Edward YI, (which commenced in 1547,) other acts were passed,
providing that if any man or woman, able to work, should refuse to labor, and live idly
for three days, he or she should be branded with* a red hot iron on the breast with the
letter V, and should be adjudged to be slaves for two years, of any person who should
inform against such idler; and if he ran away from his master fourteen days, he became
a slave for life, after being branded on the forehead or cheek with the letter S; and if
he ran away a second time, the punishment was death; and the master was authorized
to " put a ring of iron about the neck, arms, and leg of a slave, for a more knowledge
and surety of the keeping of him."
Not to pursue this matter further, I will merely add, that, as late as the reign of Eli¬
zabeth, a writer says, " the English husbandmen eat barley and brown bread, and pre¬
ferred it to white bread, as abiding longer in the stomach, and not so easily digested.''''
And McCulloch adds, "if their provisions were coarse and deficient, their clothing and
lodging were incomparably so."
This, sir, is a brief legislative history for about two hundred and fifty years of that
agricultural labor which the manufacturing system has cruelly reduced to pauperism!
Sir, the pauper of a modern English poor-house is a bon vivant, as compared with the
laborer of the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries. It is a little odd that the
Senator from New York, while tracing the legislative history of manufactures and bread-
stuffs, (matters merely collateral to the question of labor, about which he was talking,)
14
should not, by some accident, have hit upon the very vein of legislation which explored
the question.
But, sir, of whom did this labor then consist? Of a few operatives or a few peasants?
No ; but of the entire people of England. There were two classes only—the lord of the
soil and the laborer upon the soil; the gulf between was an impassable gulf.
This was the starting point of manufactures. It was from this point that agricultural
labor transferred itself to the trades, the handicrafts. I need not trace their history.
Every man has it by heart. It was on this middle ground, among the artisans, the
tradesmen of England, that labor first knew what comfort was. It was their constantly
increasing influence which reign after reign exacted concessions from power, and finally
shook the feudal system to its centre. Where now are the serfs of feudal lords ? Where
the vassals of ancient barons ? Where the labor of the twelfth, thirteenth, and four¬
teenth centuries ? It is there, in the mighty Commons of England. That is labor full
grown, developed by the operation of this system, through a course of six centuries. It
is to the labor of England, thus expanded and developed in its middle classes, that she
owes almost all that is glorious in her history and free in her institutions. The first
concession to freedom was wrung from a tyrant prince by his mailed barons. But mag¬
na charta, though a tower of strength, was a huge misshapen mass—rough, but grand in
its proportions ; it was the type of the times in which it was reared. From that time
onward, the eye of a philosophic observer sees little else than the handiwork of the mid¬
dle classes, as generation after generation extended and fashioned it to meet the growing
wants of the age. With plummet and line, with hammer and chisel, they have labored
to perfect its proportions, to fill up its gaps, and fit out the whole in a style of symmetri¬
cal beauty, which makes it the fit dwelling place for Justice herself.
Such have been the grand results, personal and political, of that system which com¬
menced by throwing agricultural labor into manufactures. To overlook the mighty
masses lifted up, and complain that there is still pauperism there, seems to me a narrow
view of a noble question.
But, suppose it were true that manufactures have generated pauperism in Great Britain,
must it be so here? Not at all. VVe have advantages which she has not. Owing to
the price of lands, her manufacturing labor cannot find its way into agriculture until it
has made heavy accumulations. Thus compressed in the workshop, it accumulates and
crowds itself. It is not so with us. Here cheap lands afford a constant vent from the
workshop. We may thus have all the benefits of the system we desire, and not be sub¬
ject even to its contingent evils.
But, sir, this question connects itself, too, with the intelligence and civilization of the
country. A high state of mechanical br manufacturing improvement has ever marked
a people of higher intelligence than those engaged in producing raw material. Apart
from England, already referred to, and looking to the continent, we cannot forget that
those beams of light which first fringed with silver the edge of the dark ages arose from
the cities of Germany, the early homes of mechanical and manufacturing industry.
It was from Ghent the woollen manufacture came to England. Nay, sir, we might al¬
most say that the universities of Germany are but higher emanations of the same spirit.
Geneva, with its little population of twenty-five thousand, has a fame which knows no
limit. It was among her artisans that the lights of the Reformation found an asylum
and a home. Yet her fame rests even more upon her tvatch makers than upon her uni¬
versities. They have grown together, each giving a warmth and support to the other,
without which, perhaps, both had long since been lifeless—cold as the waters of their
own Leman. 1 might run round the world, and upon every spot where mechanical or
manufacturing skill has flourished, show a people marked for intelligence and civiliza¬
tion. This, sir, is matter for consideration, when patriotism is invoked to shut up the
manufactory and the workshop.
From the influences of the system abroad, we naturally turn to its influences at home.
Shut up your manufactories and workshops—turn out their inmates to agriculture, with,
nothing but their hands to keep them, and what is the consequence ? Field labor is the
15
least productive, the cheapest of all labor. In every age and country where communi¬
ties have been engrossed in agriculture only, society has been divided into two classes;
he who owns the soil, and he who works upon the soil—a wide impassable gulf between.
Here the effect of a general return to agriculture would be of like character, though,
owing to the cheapness of land, not so marked in degree. Its tendencies would be to
create and fix our people in classes. Field labor with us, too, is the cheapest and least
productive of all labor. It is hard, now, in the old States, for a day laborer to become a
landed proprietor. And yet the first, the dearest wish of a poor man's heart is for land.
When he lies down to rest, he feels that his power for production stops. But lands,
like money at interest, work when he sleeps. Hence his hopes, if not for himself, for
his children. He cannot give them lands, but he can put them in the way to get them.
He can at least give them trades, and thus make their labor more valuable than his own.
These trades are now , as in earlier days, the bridge which spans the gulf; the grand
Rialto over which labor carries its load to the higher ground on the other side. Destroy
these trades, and you destroy in part those hopes which have urged the day laborer to
industry; which have made him a better citizen and a better man. Those who are
down, you help to keep down. Such an effect in a country like ours all must feel, all
deprecate.
But, sir, although in the latter part of my remarks I have avoided the beaten track of
this debate, I feel that I have detained the Senate too long. I can only beg, in conclusion,
that this question be suffered for the present to rest in peace. The business of the coun-
ry needs repose, and is in condition to profit by repose. I had hoped that in this gen-
teral assault of our adversarie upon the act of 1842, as well as upon the system of pro¬
tection, we might have heard a voice from Pennsylvania in its defence. Her senior
Senator, (Mr. Buchanan,) was a little coy upon the passage of the bill, and his authority
has been invoked by his friend, (Mr. Woodbury,) to justify the present assault. He
has had the benefit of a " sober second thought," and I anticipated, or at least hoped for,
an emphatic disclaimer of the views imputed to him. We need all our strength to meet
the terrible array against us. New Hampshire and South Carolina stand side by side.
The Senator from New York seems to have enlisted, at least for this campaign ; while
the Senator from Missouri, (Mr. Benton,) grown wise, he says, at last, doubts former
policy, and wheels into column. North, South, East, and West, thus make common
cause against us. New Jersey and Pennsylvania have common interests. 1 trust, for
the sake of both, that the latter will uot expend all her strength against an amendment
as to railroad iron. We have not been dipped in the waters of the Styx; we are vulner¬
able at more points than one. That amendment is but a skirmish, an affair of detach¬
ments ; here is the field fight; if the banner of protection go down now, all, all is lost.
Opinions of the Tariff and Free Trade Candidates for the Presidency.
MARK THE DIFFERENCE !
MR. CLAY.
Ashland, June 29, 1844.
Dear Sir: I hare received your favor, stating that our
political opponents represent ine as being a friend of protec¬
tion at the North, and for free trade at the South ; and you
desire an expression of my opinion, under my own hand, for
the purpose of correcting this misrepresentation. I am afraid
that you will find the effort vain to correct misrepresenta¬
tions of me. Those who choose to understand my opinions
can have no difficulty in clearly comprehending them. I
have repeatedly expressed them as late as this spring, and
several times in answer to letters from Pennsylvania. My
opinions, such as they are, have been recently quite as
freely expressed at the South as X ever uttered them at the
North. I have every where maintained, that in adjusting a
Tariff for revenue, discriminations ought to be made for Pro¬
tection : that the tariff of 1842 has operated mo-t
beneficially, and that I AM UTTERLY OPPOSED TO
ITS REPEAL. These opinions were announced by me at
public meetings in Alabama, Georgia, Charleston in South
Carolina, North Carolina, and in Virginia.
I am, respectfully, your friend and obed't servt,
H. CLAY.
Mr. Fred. J. Cope.
MR. POLK.
Winchester, May 29, 1843.
To the People of Tennessee:
The object which I had in proposing to Governor Jonep,
at Carrnllville, on the 12th of April last, that we should each
write out and publish our views and opinions on the subject
of the Tariff, was, that our respective positions might be dis¬
tinctly known and understood by the People. That mv opin¬
ions were already fully and distinctly known, I could not
doubt. 1 had steadily diring the period I wa8 a RE¬
presentative in Congress, been opposed to a Protec¬
tive Policy, as my recorded votes and published
speeches prove. Since 1 retired from Congress [had held
the same opinions. In the present canvass for Governor I
HAD AVOWED MY OPPOSITION TO THE TARIFF
ACT OF THE LAST WHIG CONGRESS, as being highly
protective in its -haracier, and not designed by its authors
as a revenue measure. I had avowed my opinion in my pub¬
lic speeches that the interests of the country, and especially
of the producing and exporting States—REQUIRED ITS
REPEAL, and the restoration of the principles of the Com¬
promise act of 1833.
JAMES K. POLK.
SPEECH
OF
MR. A. H. STEPHENS, OF GEORGIA,
AGAINST
THE TARIFF BILL
REPORTED BY
THE COMMITTEE OF WAYS AND MEANS.
Delivered in the House of Representatives, May 7, 1844.
WASHINGTON :
printed by john t. towers.
1844.
SPEECH.
In the House of Representatives, May 7, 1844.
The Tariff Bill reported by the Committee of Ways and Means being un¬
der consideration, in Committee of the Whole on the state of the Union—
Mr. Stephens said : Mr. Chairman, I do not rise to make a speech to
my constituents, as the gentleman who has just taken his seat said of him¬
self. When. I wish to address them, I prefer to be amongst ihem, and to
meet them face to face, as 1 have done, upon the subjects touched upon in
this debate, and as I shall always take pleasure in doing, when opportunity
affords, as well upon this as all other questions involving their interest.
But this will never be the place selected by me-for that purpose. I rise,
sir, at this time, to address myself to the members of this Committee—
to give them my views upon the subject before them—to notice some
of the remarks made by gentlemen who have preceded me in the dis¬
cussion—and to prevent, if possible, by anything I can say, the passage
of the bill now under consideration—as I consider it a measure not only
unwise in detail, but utterly destructive in its ends of the necessary revenues-
of the Government; apart from its injurious effects upon many of the gieat
interests of the country. Nor do I intend to follo.w gentlemen in their " fan¬
cy sketches," in declamation against "systems of legalized plunder and rob¬
bery," and " legislation for the benefit of the few to the injury of the many,"
or to " build up one class by the oppression of another," or to " enrich one
section at the expense of another."
These have been the general denunciations of those who advocate this
measure, against the act of 1842—who, instead of offering the House any
good reason for the passage of the present bill, have exhausted their time,
as well as their arguments, in the multiplication of violent and harsh epi¬
thets against the existing law. And to all such I have but a short answer:
To all "systems of plunder," whether legalized or not, I am as much op¬
posed as any member upon this floor; nor am I less opposed to all kinds of
" robbery," or "systems of legislation for the benefit of one class or one sec¬
tion to the injury of another." And in defence of the existing law, which
has been called the " odious Whig Tariff of 1842," and, by some, the " black
Tariff," I advocate no such doctrine as "taking money from one mail's
pocket and putting into that of anotl.c. f nor do those who agree with me
advocate any such doctrine. That ill sir, is founded upon no such prin¬
ciples, and no such consequences remit from itsAueraiions. It " robs" no¬
body—it " plunders " nobody.—nordm-«,it " bdild up any one interest in
the community at the expense of another."
The main object of the "act of 18-12" was to raise means to support
the Government. For several ytais preceding, the revenue fell far short
of meeting the annual expenditure. The consequence was the accu¬
mulation of a debt which now am mnts, according to the Report of the
Secretary of the Treasury, which 1 hate before me, to $26,743,049 99.—
(See Appendix, A.) The Whig Congtess found the Treasury not only
destitute of means and burthuied with a debi, but destitute of credit.
Such a state of things, in time of peace, was never before heard of
3
in this country, and all resulting directly from the ruinous policy of
the preceding Administration, for a restoiation of which the advocates of this
bill seem to be so exceedingly desirous. What was to be done but to in¬
crease the duties—to raise money to meet the current expenses, and to dis-
•charge the obligations already incurred? This was their duty, and this
was what they did; and by their actions the honor and character of the
country have been preserved—her prostrate credit has been revived, anct
with it, to some extent, public confidence has been restored, the wholesome
•and invigorating influences of which have already reached the remotest
parts of the Union. And if this be " robbery " or "plunder," then such
grave accusations may be laid to the charge of the Whig Congress of 1842,
for the passage of the Tariff of that year, but not otherwise.
Are not gentlemen in favor of raising sufficient revenue to support the Go¬
vernment ? They all admit that they are. Then 1 wish those who are so
•violent in their opposition to the act of 1812, to say if it will yield more re-
-venue than is necessary to support the Government and provide lor a gradual
payment of the present debt ? They frankly admit that it will not—they-^
•cannot do otherwise ; for the Secretary of the Treasury and the President of
the United States, at the commencement of the session, informed us that there
would even be a propable deficiency, to meet the current expenses of the
•year, much less to allow of any surplus to be applied to the extinguishment
of the public debt. But not only this : the committee themselves who re¬
ported the present bill to the House, admit in their report that the "act of
1842" will not yield more than the necessary wants of the Government
require. Indeed, their bill is founded upon the assumption that more reve¬
nue is required, and is presented with an avowed purpose of increasing the
revenue. And this is one of the objects declared by those who advocate its
passage ; the bare statement of which, it would seem, ought to be a sufficient
answer to all that has been said of the " heavy oppressions " of the present
act, and also quite sufficient to show that all such denunciations are more
properly attributable to party zeal than to any well-founded convictions.
But to escape from this conclusion, it is said that the reason no more reve¬
nue is derived from the act of 1842, and that a reduction of duties will
•cause an increase of revenue, is, that the rates under that act arc- too high for
revenue!—that it prohibits importations—and, therefore, prevents revenue.
And it is upon this principle the proposed measure is recommended—a
proposition which, I think, upon examination, will be found no less curious
in character than unfounded in fact. Indeed, I can consider it nothing but a
pretext and a last resort to cover a retreat from the stand taken ai first against
the act of 1842. When that act was first passed, for political effect a clamor
was raised against it, and it was denounced as " onerous and oppressive,
and ruinous to the country," asd " Repeal, Repeal," in the section from
which I come, was said to be the party watchword—that section which, it
was said, would, above all others, " be ground to the dust" under its oper¬
ations. But all such predictions in relation to its general effects upon the
country having failed, and experience having shown that it will not proba¬
bly yield enough revenue to support the Government and pay its debt, the
tone is now changed, and the position assumed that the duties under it are
so enormously high that importations are prohibited, and they are to be re¬
duced in order to increase the revenue. This I say, sir, I consider a pre¬
text of the last resort, and, in order to expose its fallacy, I propose to give
it a brief examination.
4
In the first place, what, says the Secretary of the Treasury, whose opi¬
nions upon this subject should certainly be entitled to some weight. In his
report, speaking of the duties under the existing act, the probable deficiency
of the revenue, and the best means of increasing it, he says:
"Looking at the subject exclusively in its bearings upon the revenue, the undersigned,
is not prepared to specify any very important rates of du'y that will bear reduction, un¬
less the deficiency be supplied by duties upon other articles
This opinion should certainly be good against the bare assumption of the
committee, that a reduction of the duties will increase the revenue, and par¬
ticularly when the committee do not undertake to conirovert the opinion of
the Secretary, or offer any reason for their difference from him, or give any
information upon this subject, or even attempt to inform the House as to-
what would be the probable amount of revenue to be derived from the bill
they have reported, and which we are now called upon to pass. The lan¬
guage of the report upon this point is so remarkable that I must ask the
House to give it their particular attention. I read from page 16:
"It inay be expected of the committee that they will make an estimate of the revenue
to be realized under the rates of duty they propose to establish, but they feel themselves
wholly incapacitated to do so to any useful purpose."
Was anything like this ever before heard of from a committee repotting,
a hill of the magnitude and importance of this? I speak it with no disre¬
spect to the committee. But this confession on their part should be a suffi¬
cient reason for the rejection of the measure. Sir, you will not pass the
smallest bill on your private calendar without a full investigation, and a
report giving the reasons for the relief asked for ; and how could any com¬
mittee reasonably expect that this House would unhinge, unsettle, and
change the whole revenue laws of the country at a bare random sugges¬
tion, without estimate and without auy information touching the probable
results or effects of the change, and especially when the proposed change is
in direct opposition to the opinion of the head of the Treasury Department?
But, in the second place, we are not without experience upon this sub¬
ject; and the random suggestions of the committee, that a reduction of
duties will give an increase of revenue, upon which the present bill is pre¬
dicated, will not Irear an examination by that standard. It is useless to
indulge in speculation and conjecture, when the teachings of history are
equally convenient and tnueh more to the point. The duties under the
acts of 1S28 and 1832 were in the main considerably higher than they are
under the act of 1S42. I know the contrary has been asserted, and that the
act of 1842 has been denounced as more oppressive than the act of 1S28,
which has been called the "bill of abominations;" but I have them all be¬
fore me, and I find that upon most of the leading articles the duties under
the last are much lower than under the former of these acts.
For instance: upon iron in bars, &c., by the Tariff of 182S, the duty
was $37 per ton ; by the act of 1832, it was $30 per ton ; and by the act
of 1842, it is only $25 per ton. Manufactures of woollen, by the act of
1828, were subjected to a duty of 45 per cent. ; by the act of 1832. to 50
per cent.; and by that of 1S42, to 40 per cent. Flannels, also, by the act
of 1828, bore a duty of 45 per cent., and, by the act of 1842, 14 cents a
square yard, equivalent to 21 per cent., according to the report of the com¬
mittee. And so with salt, sugar, and cotton bagging, upon all which the
duty is less : but 1 cannot detain the House by reciting them. (See ap¬
pendix, II.)
5
The act of 1842, in the whole, is not only considerably lower in the
amounts of the specific duties laid, but is also lower in the average ad valo¬
rem amount upon the aggregate of dutiable articles, than either of the a^Sa-
of 1832 or IS28. And, yet, what was the effect of those acts upon the Saas-
ports and revenues of the country? In House Doc. No. 7, of the present
session, we have a report from the Secretary of the Treasury, giving lire-
net annual revenue arising from imports, from 1821 to 1642, and U&zxt
which it appears that the average annual net revenue from this source, for
three different periods, was as follows:
For the years 1829, '30, '31, under the act of 1828, $25,144,312 49
For the years 1835, '36, '37, under gradual reduction, 20,364,419 65
For the years 1S40, '41, '42, when duties were lowest, 12,485,367 48
Could proof by experiment be more conclusive, than is here exhibited;,
that by reducing duties revenue cannot reasonably be expected to be incrascs-
ed ? Or shall we try another experiment when we are just recovering',
from the sad effects of the last ? Is it not apparent from the tables to which'
I allude, that the average revenue for any given series of years, within
times stated, have been greatest when the duties were highest, and teassr
when the duties were lowest; and if the act of 1828 did not prohibit, baS
gave an average annual revenue of $25,000,000, and upwards, for the yeass
1829, '30. and '31, how can it be said that the act of 1842 prohibits, which
is lower than that act was? And how does it happen, that, during the-
years 1840, '41, and '42, when the duties were subject to gradual reductMSE.
under the Compromise, until they reached the minimum rates, the lovresS
point under the act, the revenue decreased in a corresponding rati©,
much exceeding half enough to support the Government.
And again : If the assumption of the committee be correct, that, by a se¬
duction of the duties, an increase of revenue will be secured, how does is
happen that, since the increase of duty in 1842, under that act, we have
had an increase of revenue? From the receipts in the custom-houses, it ise
now believed that the revenue this year will be at least twenty three md.~
lions, aad most probably it will be more. What folly it is, then, to talk
seriously about increasing the revenue by reducing the duties. s
But, again, as to the importations, and the idea that the present act la.
prohibitory in its character. Upon this subject, also, we have the expe¬
rience of the past; but there is no necessity to go further than the tables-
furnished by the committee themselves, and appended to their report, Is*
prove the error of that assumption.
In table B, appended to the report, I see exhibited the annual averogs.-
value of the importations of all the principal articles subject to duty, for thsr
years 1837, 1838, and 1839, in one column, and a similar average forther
years 1840, 1841, and 1842, in another, contrasted with the partial retimrs
for the year 1843 in a third. Now, without stopping to show how unfairly
this exhibit has been made, so far as the partial returns for 1843 is ce&~
cerned—it requires nothing but an inspection of the average for the yesss.
which are given in full to perceive the error of the assumption upon wbisJfi/
the argument is founded, or, rather, upon which the assertion is bas®^
that is, that importations increase with a diminished duty, and that t5ar
act of 1842 is prohibitory in its character.
I commence with the article of carpeting, almost at the head of
6
list in the table to which I nlludtd. The average annual value of the im¬
portations of the various kinds ol litis ariicle,
For the years 1837, 1838, and 1S39, was $517,(120
For the yeais 1S40, 1841, and 1S42, was 308,766
Being a falling off', per annum, of $208,254
"vHhile the duties were considetably lower in the last series of years than the
JnrsL Again: The article of blankets, costing less than 75 cents each,
oosnes next in the list, and the average annual value of them imported,
For the years 1S37, 1S3S, and 1839, was $558 S30
For the years 1840, IS41, and 1S42, was 304,363
Showing a falling off, per annum, of $254,467
A similar result appears in telation to all other kinds of blankets. The
average for these,
For the years 1837, 1S38, and 1S39, was $528,652
For the years 1S40, 1841, and 1842, was 305,152
A falling off per annum of
$223,500
Again : The average importations of the manufactures of cotton,
For the years 1837, 183S, and 1S39, were $10,345,615
For the years 1840, 1841, and 1S42, were 8,710,651
A decrease per annum of $1,634,964
But 1 cannot pursue this table further. Similar results appear from corn-
"smog atonost every article given ; and all going to show that the average
•psigxsrtations, for the years 1837, 1838, and 1S39, were greater than in the
■fairs 1840, 1841, and 1S42, when the Tariff was comparatively lower.
But further still: In the same Doc. No. 7, to which I have referred, is
tskrmshed a table of the annual values of various articles for a series of years
Sack : and I find, upon an examination, the average value per annum of
the articles imported under the three leading heads of manufactures of wool,
manufactures of cotton, and iron and its manufactures, at three different pe-
to be as follows:
Articles.
Woollens -
•Oatton
Iran, &c. -
Average value per
an. for '33, '34, '35.
Average value per
an. for '37, '36, '39.
$14,335,420
11,057,738
4,744,55S
$12,863,052
10,886,114
5,549,163
Average value per
an. for '4U, '41, '42.
$9,482,745
9,280,011
3,670,980
From which it appears that the importations of these articles, which have
•ssvly been selected to illustrate what it is believed will be found true of most
csthers, were greater under the comparatively high Tariff of 1S32, than un-
ler the lowest duties of 1S40, 1S41, and 1S42 ; so that it could not be said
•.that even the Tariff of 1828 or 1832 prohibited importations, and much less
cirat the act of 1842 does.
But it is said that the act of 1S42 is " onerous and oppressiveand the
^gentleman from South Carolina, (Mr. Rhett,) said the people would not
izsbmit to it: and, as I am eaually opposed to bear unnecessary " burthens1'
7
myself, as I am to place them or continue them upon others, I would ac¬
quire where this oppression is felt ?—for I am disposed to think there is-
more of " humbuggery " in it than anything else,after all. When the gra®-
ple are oppressed, I believe they are generally apt to complain ; and whams
has any complaint been heard against the act of 1842, save from ceutoas®
politicians, and, perhaps, some foreign importers. Since the commeure-
ment of the present session, numerous petitions, from various parts of tic;?
country, it is true, have been sent up to this House against a change of titaast
act, but not one, that I know of, for its repeal.
But it is said that the South is "oppressed" by it. Well, sir, I ecsssk
from the South, and 1 know that my constituents, so far from feeling sup¬
pressed by the operation of that act, are getting on much better, by fur, »h»SD
they did in the "golden days" of 1840, 1841, and 1812, when the duties
were lowest, and when all the benefits to be derived from the minimum »f
the Compromise were in full fruition. If they are oppressed, of course '
must be by an enhancement of prices for what they are compelled to toy
and so far from this being the case, prices for what they buy for consiwsp-
tion are generally lower, and those for what they sell are generally higjbeiy
now than before the passage of the act of 1S42. Cotton bagging, an s®t5-
cle which was represented in the South as being so enormously taxed bjr
the act of 1S42, sells lower now than it did before the passage of the a>8rj
notwithstanding the e?iormous tax ! And the same may be said of mesa&il
our articles of consumption, which have been represented as being 3t> "raw--
erously burthened " with duties, to wit: iron, salt, molasses, sugar,. Besfej...
twine, &c., as well as cotton goods and woollens. I have before me ta-Ms®--
of prices from the most authentic sources in several of the cities, whkffv,
apprehend, cannot be denied, and which establish the facts which I asseslC
And if a people pay less for what they have to buy, and get more for wfes
fhey sell, after the adoption of a measure imposing duties upon import
than they did before, it will be difficult to make it appear that they S3®*
" burthened" by its operation. However clearly gentlemen may "cyphsn
it out," and make it appear, in figures, by their calculations, that 10f>, aaaSD
150, and 200 per cent, duty is paid by the consumer, notwithstanding Ita- -.
gets his article cheaper, yet it will be a difficult matter to make the oppsKs-
sion felt in this way. You might as well go out and undertake to co&Timirr
the first man you meet in the street that he is " burthened" and
ed " by the weight of the atmosphere in which he moves, by proving tar>
him that he bears fourteen pounds upon every square inch of the surfaev df
his body. This, I believe, by philosophers it is said, can be " cypfssrosM
out" and demonstrated to a mathematical certainty, and according So -wfifa-SL*
an ordinary man supports or sustains constantly not less than tweniy-^j&~~
thousand pounds!—an immense "burthen," according to figures, tot setf
that is neve.r felt in practical life. And it would be very difficult to piwti
to a man that he suffers much from this calculated pressure, or fhaS 5ae-
would be better oft'if it were removed. Heavy and enormous as the theo¬
rist and dealer in figures might make it, yet he knows that it is essential la
his health, vigor, action, and life—that without it he could not exist- asii" ■
that in it he literally "lives and moves and has his being."
But gentlemen say that they cannot see how it is that prices do noi rise
when duties are increased. Well, sir, that is not my object at this ttoa
to explain. All I am speaking of is facts that no man can gainsay ®r
"See Appendix C
8
•&eny. Duties on the articles to which I have alluded have been increased,
and prices on the same have not risev. It is very clear, therefore, that it can-
i not be said that the people have been "oppresstd" thereby. This may ap-
I pear strange, but no stranger than many things around us, which, however
little understood, are nevertheless known to be true. The laws of trade,
like the laws of nattue, must not be judged of by abstract theories, discon¬
nected from experience and observation. How the vapors ascend and form
the clouds in the firmanent above, and again fall in refreshing showers, to
water the earth and purify the air and sustain animal and vegetable life,
- amy not be very well understood or fully comprehended by all, and yet all
:sa<e quite sensible of the truth ot the fact.
What I am now speaking of, Mr. Chairman, is the fact that prices on
^most articles subject to duty have not risen since the passage of the law.
Tire most violent opposers of the act of 1S42 predicted that they would
iciae to an amount equal to the duty, making the whole fall as a tax upon
consumer, while those who advocated the measure were of a different
•sssgiitiion ; and I am now only speaking of the facts connected with the re-
•ssdtof the experiment.
|M'r. Belser, of Alabama, interrupted, and asked if prices had not cor¬
respondingly fallen in England ?]
Mr. Stephens replied : Yes. sir, they have, and that was just what was
.expected ; and if the same policy is pursued, they may fall lower there still.
Before the imposition of the duty, and the home competition increased by
itfee fostering influence of this encouragement and protection, the manufac-
.tiOTsrs of England had the market to themselves, and could sell to us at
..-jfeLQSt any profit. They could buy our cotton, our rice, our rosin, at their
-mwit prices, and sell us their manufactures upon the same terms. But
r®%tesi, by the policy of our Government, a home competition is established,
-.'.fey lower their prices in order to undersell; by which means their pre-
«ro3tis profits pass into our Treasury for the support of our Government,
iffstead of going into (heir pockets, while the purchaser can get as good an
article at even cheaper rales. Yarious illustrations of this could be given.
T will give the gentleman from Alabama the benefit of one :
■Some years ago, as I am informed, the city of Charleston, South Caro-
"fima, was supplied with ice mostly by a company, who sold it at prices
rfemght to be high and exorbitant. Other individuals, of less means and
flSEjHtal, undertook the business, and commenced supplying the same luxury
.ifctsauch fairer rates, making only a reasonable profit on their labor and capital
:®cq>loyed. No sooner was this done, than the first company commenced
i TOiderselling, and even putting their ice at a price that allowed no profit at
. ail, and which the weaker concern could not afford to do. The object of
< course was to break down their new rival—to get it out of the way, and then
rto have the market to themselves again, when they could restore previous
prices, or perhaps higher rates, to make up for losses. Th« result was, an
.appeal to the people, or the purchasers of ice, to sustain the opposition, or
domestic establishment. The people did so—the competition was kept up,
; sad the prices kept low. And so it is with English capitalists and manu-
, iaciurers—when they cannot sell to us at a large profit, they will take less;
md when they find that our artizans and mechanics and craftsmen of all
'Mads can make as good wares and articles of merchandise as theirs, and
rare likely to deprive them of the market of this country, they will doubt-
9
less even offer for a time to sell without any profit; in order, by undeseK-
ing, to break down American establishments. This is the operation—sel¬
fishness is at the bottom of it; and I tell the gentleman from Alabama^,
therefore, tlrat I am not to be influenced by the tables of British merchants—
such as is appended to the report of the committee accompanying this:
bill—to govern me in my opinion of the oppression we are suffering for:>
not buying from them as cheaply as they say they could sell, if only per¬
mitted, or allowed to enter our markets without paying quite so much du'tj
— timco Danaos et dona ferentes — a known enemy should never b&i-
trusted, and his gratuitous kindness always suspected. These men Ears-
interested in having all the workshops and factories, of every descrij»-
tion in this country, closed, and all our mechanics and manufacturers-
driven from employment. The policy of England has always been op¬
posed to the interests of the United States. It was so when they wes
colonies, and it continues to be so yet. Who does not recollect the beast
of the infamous Cobbett, that, "previous to the Revolution, we could not'
manufacture a single hob nail lor our own use." The same spirit still
exists. The course pursued towards us when colonies, was to keep us as
subject and as abject as possible, ever jealous of our acquiring real national.
independence. And what is her course towards us now, in her regulations
of trade? She taxes our wheat, 50 per cent.: flour, 50 per cent. • beef, .
59 per cent.; pitch, 23 per cent. ; rosin, 75 per cent.; spirits of gratB,, -
500 per cent.; rice, 30 per cent. ; butter, 70 per cent.; spirits of molasses,.
1,600 per cent.; tobacco, unmanufactured, 1,000 per cent. ; tobacco, manu ¬
factured, 1,200 per cent. ! And yet she would induce us to pursue the?
policy of fostering her manufacturers, artizans, and mechanics, instead ©ff
patronising our own. Sir, I don't subscribe to the doctrine; and gentle¬
men must excuse me if I tell them that it is, in my opinion, unpatriotic*
and anti-American.
But this brings me to what I intended more properly to say under ano¬
ther view 1 propose taking of the act of 1842. It has not only been saitk
that that act was onerous and burdensome, but that it is violative of ffee
Constitution of the country. This was the argument of the gentlemm,
from South Carolina; and I wish the gentleman was in his seat to tell tr.ee.-
wherein or in what provision that act violates the Constitution. Perhaps
the gentleman from Alabama can inform me, as he used the same argumerit,
[Mr. Belser answering, said, it violated the Constitution in the princi¬
ple of protection ]
Mr. Stepeiens continued : By the principle of protection, I suppose tt«.-
gentleman means the principle of discriminating in favor of the interest,
enterprise, and industry of our own people ?
[Mr. Belser said, yes: When a duty was laid with an eye to protec¬
tion, that was a violation of the Constitution. That a tariff laid on im¬
ports, with an eve alone to revenue, was constitutional; but when laid di¬
rectly with an eye to protection, it was unconstitutional.]
I understand, then, the argument of the gentleman from Alabama, like-
that of the gentleman from South Carolina, to be, that Government, vat
levying its necessary supplies, must have an eye to nothing but raising the.
amount required, without considering on what articles it can be most pjn®-
denily raised, or be most easily borne by the people; and if, in laying th«-
duties, it has an eye at all to the interest of the people, it is a violation ®f
the Constitution !
10
Sir, this is not my understanding of the Constitution. I always con-
..sfoJered that the Constitution required those to whom legislation is com-
eSKitted, to guard, watch over, and protect the rights and interests of the
tpesple in the passage of all laws, and especially to look to, and have an
Hleye directly," to their interest in the passage of revenue laws. While
1 hoM that not one dollar more should be raised by imposts than is neces¬
sary .to support the Government, ecomically administered ; yet I also be¬
lieve that great prudence and discrimination should be exercised in the
ruasirrer of levying the requisite amount. And it is in the proper exercise
'oftlrie discrimination that the interests of the people should be considered,
as well as the wants of the Government. This doctrine I also hold to be
founded upon the Constitution. And in this opinion I am sustained by
elite ablest and best men that, ever lived in this or any other country—men
formed and made the Constitution, and who ought to know what it
««eans. The House will indulge me while 1 adduce some of these author¬
ities in support of my proposition. Upon the point just made by the gen-
• iteiMan .from Alabama, Mr. Madison said:
It re venue be the sole object of a legitimate impost, and the encouragement of do-
'MBssstjc articles be not within the power of regulating trade, it would follow that no
'tmrstipolizing or unequal regulations of foreign uations could be counteracted—that nei-
rStut the staple articles of subsistence, nor the essential implements for the public safe-
s»f,<03uid. tinder any circumstances, be insured or fostered at home by regulations of
^tawttisierce, the usual and most convenient mode of providing for both."—(See Sup. to
Register, vol. 43, p. 33 )
T&e rule laid down by Mr. Jefferson, while Secretary of State, soon after
&Hae .organization of the Government, is familiar to all. He said:
-." When a nation imposes high duties on our productions," [and, I ask, is not this the
•iise with Great Britain now ?] " it may be proper for us to do the same thing by theirs,
Acsl St-tirthening or excluding those productions which they bring here in competition
<apizls.own of the same kind—imposing on those, duties lighter at first, but heavier and
■'xa*.trier afterwards, as other channels of supply open."
Uses this show that Mr. Jefferson thought that, in levying a Tariff or
laxpasing duties, Congress should have an eye solely to revenue, without
gtqgMtd. to other interests? But not only this: ampngst the earliest acts
^sasxaS by Congress, we find the first Tariff, bearing upon its face the fol-
'Skmwmg preamble :
Whereas, ii is necessary for the support of the Government, for the discharge of the
• Jse&K af the United States, and the encouragement and protection of manufactures, that
• .fcuisfS'be laid on goods, wares, and merchandise, imported," fee.
Titus bill, which thus by its very preamble, clearly showed its double
£3CSi.ff$rose of providing revenue and at the same time looking to the interests
frfdae -people of our own country, was advocated by Mr. Madison and pass-
■wafi ffiutanimously by the first Congress, and received the sanction of Presi-
dkfflt Washington, who himself, in his first address to Congress, brought
■ rSsss subject to their attention ; and, in his last communication to that body,
ja 1796, in reference to the same, uses the following language:
'"Congress have repeatedly, and not without success, directed their attention to the
ja-esieuagemenr of manufactures. The subject is of too much consequence not to insure
jr cjatinuance of their efforts iu every way which shall appear eligible."
Atsd what way more eligible, or so eligible, as that adopted by the first
U5?©gress, of levying duties for revenue, with discriminations at the same
lime for the encouiagement of these important interests.
11
Again : Mr. Jefferson, when President, in his message of 1802, upon
same subject, uses the following language:
"To cultivate peace and maintain commerce and navigation in all their lawful
prises, to foster our fisheries as nurseries of our navigation and for the nurture of assa?,
and to protect the manufactures adapted to our circumstances, to preserve the fail&w sca¬
the nation by an exact discharge of its debts and its contracts, expend the public mssmrp.'
with the same care and economy we would practice with our own, and impose p» »n.v
citizens no unnecessary burthens, to keep in all things within the pale of our crmstofio-
tional powers, and to cherish the Federal Union as the only rock of our safety—ibssf-.,
fellow-citizens, are the landmarks by which we are to guide ourselves in all our prwmaD-
ings. By continuing to make them the rule of our action, we shall endear to owzcsws •—
trymen the true principles of the Constitution, and promote a union of sentiment assCtsS
action equally auspicious to their happiness and safety."
But further still : Mr. Jefferson not only held that it was <£ withira t&a
pale of the constitutional powers" of Congress "to protect manufactory5*
by discriminations in the imposition of duties for revenue, but he held tfcafi
it was constitutional even to lay prohibitions against foreign imports-fev
that purpose. In his message of 1808, he says :
"The suspension of foreign commerce produced by the injustice of the belfigraust
powers, and the contingent losses and sacrifices of our citizens, are subjects of jw&s ®deb-
cern. The situation into which we have thus been forced, has compelled us te>sryftpr
a portion of our industry and capital to internal manufactures and improven&eratSv--—
The extent of this conversion is daily increasing, and little doubt remains that the*as—
tablishments formed and forming will, under the auspices of cheaper material and sub¬
sistence, the freedom of labor from taxation with us, and protecting duties and pn&i-
bitions, become permanent.'"
The same opinion seems to have been generally eniertained in the fee
Congress, whew the first Tariff bill was under consideration, for motions wk®
made to put prohibitory duties upon several articles, thz constitutionality ss&
which, from the debates, seems never to have been questioned at that daty.
But I need not multiply these authorities, as I could do, to an alnasssi?:
endless extent. Self-preservation, sir, is the first law of nature, andnptpJsKf-
to nations no less than individuals. It was to guard and protect the rjgHst3-
and interests of the people that the constitution was formed, and in leofcsagf
to these objects as well as others, is what I understand consists the gretJt
objection to the act of 1842.
The main object of that act, as I have said before, was to raise t« veneris
to support the Government; but, in levying the requisite amount, the Iso¬
mers of the law looked also to the great interests of our own country,.ass£'
arranged the duties so as that the wants of the Treasury might be supp&i#J:
and, at the same time, by proper discriminations, fair and adequate pm-
tection be afforded to the industry and productive labor of our own eitiaesfflf,-
The gentleman from South Carolina, (Mr. Rhf.tt,) said that the objf ts
of the Constitution was to establish what he is pleased to term Free Fra>sFrx
or, at least, that this was the object of the Convention at Annapolis, fams
which originated the Convention that formed the Constitution ; and I was-
not a little surprised at the assertion. It shows, however, to what extremal
party impulses will sometimes drive men. But no less surprised was 3 a®
this great error as to the objects of the Convention that formed the Consti—
tution, than I was to hear him characterize the Constitution itself as nothiagr
but an "abstraction." The gentleman, in his opening remarks, in vols® s£
us to guard and preserve that instrument. Sir, I trust that such art
cation will never be made in vain withirt these walls. I have a deep-sassK
abiding reverence for the Constitution—no less than the gentlemen himself ~
but I would inform him that I look upon it as something more real, sab"
12
stanlial, and practical than a bare "abstraction"—an elementary or theoret¬
ical proposition. It is the Constitution that forms our Government—that
3ri«ds together twenty-six separate and independent States-—that secures
'-liberty at home and protection abroad—and gives us a character unsurpass¬
ed by any people amongst the nations of the earth ! And is it nothing but
an abstraction that does all this? As well might you call the deep foun¬
dations of this Capitol an abstraction—or these stately pillars that support
this towering dome—or that all-pervading law of nature by which the ma¬
terial world is held together, nothing but an abstraction. "What, sir; was
Magna Charta nothing but an abstraction ? Was the establishment ot the
right of Trial by Jury nothing but an abstraction?—the Habeas Corpus
Act?—the Declaration of Independence?—the old Articles of Confedera¬
tion ? Were these all abstractions ? And is our Government, and laws, and
'legislation, and liheity itself, nothing but an abstraction ? If so, then Berke¬
ley was right—the world is less than a phantom—and life itself, with all
lis hopes and sorrows, aspirations and disappointments, is nothing but a
-mental delusion ! But.sir, I do not belong to that school of moralists, phi¬
losophers, or politicians. 1 believe in the real existence of things, and 1
fiold that the Constitution of the United States is, as it was designed to be,
-eminently practical in its nature. It is, indeed, "the broad sheet anchor
-af our safety"—something firm, strong, and, I trust, enduring.
But let us examine the opinion of the gentleman touching the objects of
jts formation. So far from its being the object of the Convention at Anna¬
polis to establish the principle of Free Trade, or to open our ports to the
free introduction of merchandise from other countries, unless I am much
mistaken, it will be found that the main object of that body was to protect
t£ke interests of the people of the adjoining States by regulations of com-
tfaerce restrictive in their character against similar regulations of other coun-
o o ...
Cries. I refer again to Mr. Madison, whose authority upon this point must
ever be unquestionable. (See Niles's Register, vol. 43, Sup. p. 35.) In
:-speaking of the causes that gave rise to the Convention, he says :
During the delays and discouragements experienced in the attempt to invest Coil"
■gtess with the necessary powers, the State of Virginia made various trials of what
'CMXibi be done by her individual laws. She ventured on duties and imposts as a source
-of revenue. Resolutions were passed, at one time, to encourage and protect her own
/ffistvigation and ship-building; and in consequence of complaints and petitions front
■ Norfolk, Alexandria, and other places, against the monopolizing navigation laws of
'Great Britain, particularly in the trade between the United States and the British U'esr
Indies, she deliberated with a purpose controlled only by the inefficacy of separate mea-
•sares, on the experiment of forcing a reciprocity by prohibitory regulations of her own.
i^See Jour. House Del. 1785.)
""The effect of her separate attempts to raise revenue by duties on imports soon ap¬
peared in representations from her merchants that the commerce of the State was ban-
>ished by them into other channels, especially of Maryland, where imports were less
■'--bsssfthened than in Virginia.—(See Jour. Hcuse Del. 17S6.)
-"Such a tendency of separate regulations was, indeed, too manifest to escape antici-
-qrition. Amongst the projects prompted by the want of a Federal authority over com¬
merce, was that of a covenant, first proposed on the part of Maryland, for a uniformity
uf regulations between the two States, and Commissioners were appointed for that pur-
qasse. It was soon perceived, however, that the concurrence of Pennsylvania was as
aacessary to Maryland, as of Maryland to Virginia, and the concurrence of Pennsylvania
-Jtrsi accordingly invited ; but Pennsylvania could no more concur without New York,
'ikta Maryland without Pennsylvania, nor New York without the concurrence of Bos-
cr®®, &c. These projects were superseded for the moment by that of the Convention at
Annapolis in 1786, and forever by the Convention at Philadelphia in 1787, and the
■"Constitution which was the fruit of it."
w
13
I have, also, the authority of Mr. Baldwin, a member in the First Con¬
gress from Georgia, and one of the framers of the Constitution, who, in the
discussion upon the first Tariff bill, said :
" The commercial restrictions Great Britain placed upon our commerce in pursuing
her selfish policy, gave rise to an unavailing clamor, and excited the feeble attempt
which several of the State Legislatures made to counteract the detestable regulations
of a commercial enemy ; but this proving altogether ineffectual to ward off the effects
of the blow or revenge their cause, the Convention at Annapolis was formed for the
express purpose of counteracting them on general principles. This Convention found
the completion of the business impossible to be effected in their hands. It terminated,
as is well known, in calling the Convention that formed the present Constitution, which
has perfected a happy revolution in politics and commerce.
"The general expectation of the country is, that there shall be a discrimination, that
those nations who have not yet explained the terms on which an intercourse shall be
carried on, or who have, by establishing regulations bearing hard upon such intercourse,
may know our ability and disposition to withhold or bestow advantages, according as
we find a principle of reciprocity prevail. Thinking a discrimination necessary, and
knowing the voice of the people calls for it, we shall not answer the end for wh.ch we
ncame here by neglecting or refusing to make it."
From which it clearly appears what was the object of the Convention at
Annapolis, and what was one of the main objects of the Convention that
formed the Constitution. But will gentlemen say that they prefer to take
the Constitution as it is, and to judge of its powers as well as its objects for
themselves, without consulting or relying upon the opinions of others?—
Well, sir, we say the same, too. We are willing to take the Constitution:
as it is; and we say that its character, objects, and powers are clear upon
its face. But gentlemen say it contains no such powers, and discloses no
such objects, as we say are quite apparent and explicit. A disagreement,
therefore, necessarily arises as to its true meaning and intendment, and we
refer to these authorities only for the purpose of fortifying ourselves in our
position, and to show most clearly and unquestionably that our understand¬
ing and construction ol it is right, or, at least, that we agree in understand¬
ing and construction with those who made it. It is for this reason we ap¬
peal to this weight of authority to sustain a construction which, in the lan¬
guage of General Jackson, "has been confirmed as well by the opinions of
President Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, as by the uniform
practice of Congress, and the general understanding of the people," until a
period comparatively recent in our history. Why, sir, what would you
think of a man who should rise up and propose to teach the true doctrines
of the Christian religion, and commence by denying the authority of the
Great Author himself, and declaring that his chosen apostles knew nothing
of iis character or design? Would not such an one be turned out of your
pulpits, and be refused an entrance into your sanctuaries, and pronounced,
as he justly should be, an imposter and a blasphemer?
And what shall we think of the politician who at this day rises up and
professes to teach the true principles of our Government, and to give a true
construction and exposition of the Constitution, and commences by disa¬
greeing with its authors and repudiating their authority, and even charging
them with a violation of its most sacred provisions. I know not to what
school of politics such men may properly be said to belong, but one thing
is certain they do not belong to that school or part^to which the founders
of the Government were attached.
Upon the subject of commercial intercourse, Mr. Chairman, I have said
the doctrine of self defence and self preservation applies, and it is true.
This is the first, the great, universal, and all-controlling law of nature. In,
14
individuals it is founded upon instincts and rides over all restraints—in-
communities and nations its impulses are equally strong', and its sanctions
110 less obligatory—and in our regulations of trade with foreign countries
it is not only constitutional, but wise, patriotic, and right for us to look to
our own interests. And in no belter way can this be done than in a proper
and judicious discrimination in the levying of the necessary revenue for the
support of the Government—by arranging the duties so as to countervail
as far as possible the injurious policy of other countries, and placing them
also upon such articles as our own people, mechanics, artizans, craftsmen,
and manufacturers can make, in preference to those which they cannot; and
laying such necessaries of life as cannot be raised or produced in this
country, either entirely free or with the smallestjduty. By this policy a*
triple purpose is answered. In the first place, means are provided for the
support of'the Government, which must be supplied in some way or other.
Secondly. Encouragement is given to the industry of our own people in
all its branches, by stimulating them to make at home rather than to buy
abroad. And thirdly. By this arrangement (lie burthens of Government
as far as the duty is paid by the consumer falls where it ought to, on those
who prefer to patronize the labor, skill, industry and products of other
countries rather than those of their own.
It is the interest of every man to make as much as possible for sale, and
to buy as little as possible from others. This is the secret of prosperity and
the road to wealth. The same is also true of States and nations. He that
buys a great deal and sells but little is sure to break, and any nation that
pursues a similar policy is sure to meet with a similar fate. It is the duty
of a wise Government, therefore, by all proper regulations, to foster and
cherish the enterprize and industry of its own people, by inducing and
stimulating them to make and produce their own supplies within them¬
selves, as far as practicable, rather than to be dependent for them upon
others. Why, sir, what caused the great embarrassment and distress in
our country in 1840-'4l-'42, and the years immediately preceding?
Various opinions have been given as to iis origin, and doubtless it was
owing to more causes than one. But one, and probably not the least of
fhose that contributed to it, was our foreign indebtedness. The home com¬
petition in the production of our necessary supplies had been measuteably
broken down. The foreign importers had the market to themselves. They
sold to us at exorbitant profits. We bought more than we had commodi¬
ties to pay for in exchange. A debt was incurred, »r the balance of trade
was against us. To ^neet this, exports of specie were necessary. This
curtailed and contracted our currency, already deranged and depreciated
from other causes. And the result was the most gloomy period of pecu¬
niary distress, embarrassment, ruin, and bankiuptcy that has ever occurred
in time of peace in the history of our country. That was indeed a "crisis,"
and occurred when the duties were lowest. And what is the state of things
now? As a nation, as well as individually, we make more and buy less.
Industry in all its branches is encouraged—labor is rewarded. The
balance of trade is in our favor. Upwards of twenty millions of specie
were imported the last year to pay for the surplus we sent abroad. This
specie sustains the basis of an increasing circulation, and we behold the
approaching return of "better times" throughout the country.
Nor, sir, is this principle of encouraging our own labor and industry, of
which I speak, intended for any " pet interests" or any " particular sec-
15
tion." It is intended for the whole country and all its parts, and is as appli¬
cable to one section as another. It is as broad and general and generous
as the atmosphere that encircles our common union. If such " great pro¬
fits" are to be derived from the "system" as some suppose, there is nothing
that secures th»se profits to one section more than to another, or to any one
man or set of men more than another, of equal number, skill, industry,
•enterprise and energy. It opens a field for business in which all who
choose may enter, the more the better. And the only bounties it bestows
are invitations to industrial application and productive employment. There
is no State in the Union, and hardly any section of the world of equal ex¬
tent that abounds with more resources of wealth than that from which I
come, and there is none perhaps more completely paralyzed by its depen¬
dence upon others for necessary supplies. Instead of growing their own
grain and raising their own stock, and making more at home and buying
less abroad, for years past the whole energies of her people have been di-
lected to the culture of one staple, which has hardly yielded the cost of pro¬
duction, while they have been to a great extent dependent upon others, not
only for the provisions and bread stuffs consumed, but even for the most
common and ordinary comforts of life. Such policy is ruinous in its
tendency, whether pursued at the South or North, East or West. Atten¬
tion should be turned more to the production of supplies at home. The cli¬
mate and soil of that State are suited to the growth of almost all the great
staples of the country, Cotton, rice, tobacco, wheat, and sugar, can all be
profitably produced within her borders. And her facilities for manufac¬
turing, as to climate, health, water-power, &c., are unsurpassed by any
other State; while her mineral treasures are inexhaustable. All she
wants for a development of these resources is a division of labor and capital
and a stimulus to enterprize.
But Mr. Chairman, I have not time to say more upon this subject. I
think I have shown that the act of 1S42, as a revenue measure, will not do
more than yield enough to support the Government and pay its debt, and
that the general principle of discrimination upon which it is founded is nei¬
ther unconstitutional, injurious, or oppressive.
I might ask the indulgence of the committee while I examine the de¬
tails and the provisions of the present bill, and show its glaring incon¬
sistences with the principles professed by those who advocate its adoption.
I wish I had the time to do so, for I think I should be able to show that, how¬
ever "odious" the act of 1842 maybe considered by some, that the one
now proposed is " more odious" still, and that however proper some modi¬
fications in the existing law might be, yet that the proposed bill does not
offer to make them—but that it is a bundle of incongruities and contradic¬
tions founded neither upon the principles offree trade, or a proper discrimi¬
nation, but a sort of sui generis, a something, which, upon the whole, as a
gentleman said of the report, might be worshipped without idolatry, as its like
is not to be found "in the Heaven above, or in the earth below, or in the wa¬
ters under the earth." But I have not time for this examination. I wish
to notice as briefly as possible (for I see the time to which I am limited has
nearly expired) some other matters which have been brought into this de¬
bate, and particularly the expenditures of the Government. Amongst, other
grave accusations laid to the charge of the Whig Congress is the violation
of promises. It has been said that they were pledged to reform the Go¬
vernment and reduce the expenditures, and instead of doing this they have
16
increased them. And that even after all the clamor that was raised against
the extravagance of the Presidential Mansion during Mr. "Van Buren's term
of office, an appropriation of six thousand dollars was made at the com¬
mencement of the Whig administration to re-furnish that house. This
was in effect the assertion of the gentleman from Ohio, (Mr. Duncan,)
tlie other day in his tirade against the measures of the Whigs—and he even
went so far as to assert that the aggregate amount of the expenditures of
Mr. Van Buren's administration, ordinary and extraordinary, was but
$110,997,471, and the ordinary expenditures of the tico first years of this
reform and retrenchment administration have been but $10,316,189 less
than the entire four years of Mr. Van Buren's administration.
Now, sir, I wish the gentleman would inform me upon what authority he
-makes this statement? He said he was "responsible" for what he said, and
I suppose he meant by that, that he was ready to respond to and answer
any questions in relation to it. I wholly deny, sir, that the Whig Congress
made the appropriation of six thousand dollars for re-furnishing the Presi¬
dent's House, and if they did 1 want to see the act. I defy its preduction,
I have before me all the acts passed during the two years of that adminis¬
tration, and none such is to be found amongst them. It was the out going
Van Buren Congress that made the appropriation before the 4th of
March 1841, and from what motive I leave the country to judge—for there
was no necessity for it, and, as I have been informed, it has never been
used. «
But as to the aggregate of the expenditures of the four years of Mr. Van
Buren's administration. The gentleman says he relies upon Executive
Doc. No. 31 of the Whig.Congress. Well, sir, that does not purport to give
the aggregate of the "extraordinary" as well as ordinary expenses for the
time stated. It does not contain the amounts paid on account of the trust
funds, and in redemption of the treasury notes which were issued during
that administration, and the amounts paid on account of which two items
swelled in one year (1839.) to upwards of $12,000,000; nor does it purport to
include those amounts. I cite the gentleman and the House to Doc. No.
244, page 52 of the 27th Congress, which I hold in my hand, and which is
a continuation of the same subject embraced in Doc. 31, to which he
alludes. (See appendix D.) The gentleman relies for his aggregate upon
the first column when he should have looked into the fourth, when he
would have found the " aggregate expenditures as per public accounts to
be" as follows—
Instead of $110,997,471, and averaging $35,665,486 36 per annum.
And now, sir, how does the statement stand as to the expenditures of the
Whigs. The gentleman from Ohio, said he referred to House Doc.
No. 62, " prepared by a whig officer of the House," " and that it was ail
covered with figures, and every figure counted tens, hundreds, thousands,
tens of thousands, hundred of thousands, millions, and tens of millions,
such as no man could number," and that the total aggregate for the two
For 1837
$37,365,037 15
39,455,438 35
37,614,936 15
28,226.533 SI
1838
1839
1840
Amounting in all to
$142,661,945 46
17
years of their administration including the expenses of three sessions, was
the enormous amount of .... $58,719,867 00
Well, of this amount $3,2S9,534 89, was made for
arrearages existing prior to the 4th March, 1841,
as appears in House Doc. 185 of last Congress,
which deducted from - 58,719,867 00
3,289,534 89
Leaves ------ $55,430,332 11
And it is well known that the fiscal year was changed during the last
Congress, making the year to commence on the 1st of July, instead of the
1st of January, for greater convenience in keeping the public accounts, and
that the appropriations by the Whig Congress extended to the close of the
fiscal year ending the 30th June, 1844, being made for two years and a
half, as all know who are acquainted with the facts, and as is expressly
stated in the document to which I last referred. Then, sir, how will the
extravagance of these appropriations compare on an average per annum with
the expenditures during the adminisiralion of Mr. Van Buren. The average
amount per annum of $55,430,332 11, for two years and a half, is $22,-
172,132 84.
The average per annum of Mr. Van Buren's term, " ordinary and extra¬
ordinary" we have seen, was - - - $35,665,486 36
The average per annum of the appropriations made
by the Whig administration - - - 22,172,132 84
Being a retrenchment per annum of $13,493,353 52
No inconsiderable amount, I should suppose; and if this immense saving
be a violation of their promises for " retrenchment and reform," then they
were guilty of the charge. But some gentlemen have said that according to
the report of the Secretary of the Treasury, the expenditures for 1841 were
$31,797,530 03, and those for 1S42 were $32,936,876 53. That is all
true, but these expenditures were not predicated upon appropriations made
by the Whig Congress. That report sh-ws the whole amount paid from
the Treasury during those years, a large portion of which was to redeem
treasury notes issued before; and to meet outstanding appropriations made be¬
fore the 4th of March, 1841. For instance, by the same report it will be
seen that, in 1S$1, $5,600,689 74 were paid out on account of the public
debt, redemption of treasury notes, &c ; for the creation of which the
Whig administration was by no means responsible, besides what was paid
out the same year to meet appropriations made before 4th March, 1841.
And in the year 1842, from the same report, it will be seen that the sum of
$8,575,539 94 were paid in the same way. The "Whigs of course should
only be held respoiisible for their own appropriations, and I take them as
stated by the gentleman from Ohio himself. When the Whigs came into
power on the 4th March, 1841, they found the liabilities against the Trea¬
sury to be (See appendix E.) - - - $35,527,325 20
And nothing to meet them but - 862,055 81
Leaving a clear balance of ... $34,665,269 39
Of course this had to be paid, as well as the necessary expenses to carry
on the Government while in their own hands, and the means had to be pro¬
vided to do it. The net revenue received from imposts during the year
18
&841, was not much over half enough to meet the annually accruing wants
without looking to past liabilities. The means had to be borrowed until the
revenue could be increased by additional duties, and these large amounts
paid out of the Treasury in the years 1S41 and 1842 and 1843, have been
paid out of the means supplied by the Whigs, and to a considerable extent
in discharge of pre-existing liabilities. The extravagance of an administra¬
tion is to be judged by its own appropriations, and not the amounts that
may be paid out of the Treasury during its term to meet the appropriations
of others. But the gentleman from Ohio not only charged the Whig Con¬
gress with a violation of their pledges, so far as the reduction of expenditures
was concerned, but said the Whigs as a party had no principles, at least for
the " public eye that their object is to mislead and t« deceive the people
by processions, songs, banners, and all sons of flummery. Now, sir, to pro¬
fess no principles is quite as honest I take it, and quite as little likely to
" deceive," as to profess different and contradictory principles at different
times and different places. And I would ask the gentleman what are the
principles of his own party? "Democracy" seems to be a very different
thing in different parts of the country. In his speech, to which I refer, he
gave us the " cut of a coon," in which were exhibited what he termed Whig
piinciples, amongst which were "a National Bank," the " Assumption ef
State debts," and a "High Protective Tariff."' Here, sir, is his cut, and I
suppose this was intended for a Southern section. For in a copy of the same
speech published for the latitude of Pennsylvania, which I have before me,
I see the same " cut," except that "High Protective Tariff" is left out, and
" Ant i masonry" inserted. Here it is sir. It seems that "Democracy" is
•quite a different thing in different places. A high protective tariff is rather
too Democratic itself to be denounced as a Whig principle in Pennsylvania.
Not so, sir, with the Whigs. Their principles are the same everywhere, and
the same they have been from the beginning of the Government, and it is
not true that they are " concealed.''' They are proclaimed by their every
press, and are seen floating on their banners, triumphing in victory, from
Maine to Louisiana.
We are in favor of a sound National Currency of uniform value through¬
out the country. Yea, as the gentleman said, as was proclaimed on one
of their banners in 1840, "the currency of Washington."
We are in favor of a Tariff for Revenue, with discrimination, giving fair
and adequate protection to American industry.
We are in favor of a distribution of the proceeds of the sales of the Public
Lands amongst the several States, to which they rightfully belong.
And we are in favor of a modification of the Executive Veto, so that the
will of the nation may not be controlled by the will of one man.
These are our principles, and whether the gentleman understands them
-or not, it seems that the people understand them—for they are triumphant
in all quarters. What means this late tumult and confusion in your camp,
Mr. Chairman? What has produced such alarm and such a panie in your
ranks? It is the voice of the people speaking at the polls. Virginia, the
last hope of your party, has just been heard from, and the " Old Dominion"
has proclaimed herself to be Whig. These signs are as significant, as the
" hand writing upon the wall." Nor was the consternation produced at the
feast of Bellshazzar much greater. Your leaders are dismayed—your rank
and file are put to flight—and even the venerable editor of the Enquirer, who
was never known to surrender before, and who was pledged to "sink or swim"
19
with Mr. Van Buren, has at last struck his flag in acknowledgment of defeat.
The gentleman from that Stale who usually sils just before me, (Gen. Drom-
goole,) is the only one who seems to be firm and imperturbed, amidst the
excitement of others, and the general discomfiture which seem to be so uni¬
versally felt by his associates.
My friend from Westmoreland, (Mr. Newton,) was right after all in hislet-
ter, which has been the occasion of his getting so many " rubs" on this floor.
There is nothing like meeting questions and issues openly and boldly.
This is what ihe people are ready for, and what they want. They look at
all subjects practically, and have little disposition lo shape their principles to-
suit the whim of abstractionists. This was the course he recommended.
A more time-serving policy, as it was thought by him, was adopted in that
State in 1S40. Defeat, then, was the result. But now, after his counsel
was taken, when there was no evasion of any of the great issues, but all
were openly and fairly met, the cause has been triumphant.
Who can say that the people of Virginia were " deceived.'''1 at the late
election, or that they did not understand the issues? Or that the people of
Tennessee, and Georgia, and Maryland, and Connecticut, in their late elec¬
tions, did not understand the issues before them—or that they were "de¬
ceived" when they went to the polls? Gentlemen need not lay that "flat¬
tering unction to their souls." The people of this country are not such
dupes, as they are sometimes represented to be. They understand these
questions perfectly well. They understood them in 1840, and they under¬
stand them now. And they also understand the " humbuggery" of this
bill equally well. They see it is the last effort to sustain a desperate and a
sinking cause, and they are ready and eager to pronounce the same condem¬
nation upon it that they have already done upon all its kindred measures.
20
APPENDIX.—A.
Statement of the Debt of the United States, December 1, 1843.
1. Of the (old) funded debt, being unclaimed principal and
interest returned from the late loan offices - - - $208,009 34
2. Outstanding certificates and interest to December 31,
1T98, of the (old) unfunded debt, payable on presenta¬
tion - - 24,214 29
3. Treasury notes issued during the late war, payable on
presentation -------- 4,317 44
4. Certificates of the Mississippi stock, payable on presenta¬
tion - 4,320 09
5. Debts of the corporate cities of the District of Columbia,
assumed by the United States, viz :
Of the city of Washington
Alexandria
Georgetown
6. Loans, viz :
Under the act of Jlily 21, 1.841, re¬
deemable January 1, 1845 -
Under the act of April 15, 1842, re¬
deemable January 1, 1863 -
Under the act of March 3, 1843, re¬
deemable July 1, 1S53
7. Outstanding Treasury notes :
Of the several issues prior to August
31. 1843 - - - - ' - *3,917,725 92
Of notes issued and paid out under
act of March 3, 1S43 - - - 247,500 00
4,165,225 92
$26,743,049 99
*Thh sum includes §98,300 in the hands of accounting officers.
Treasury Department,
Register's Office, December 1, 1843.
T. L. SMITH, Register.
$900,000 00
210,000 00
210,000 00
5,672,976 8S
8,343,886 03
7,000,000 00
1,320,000 00
"27th Congress, 3d Sess. [Doc. No. 185.] Ho. of Reps.
Statement of the amount of means used to defray the expenses of the Government, over and above the
ordinary revenues of the Government from customs and the public lands, for the four years preceding
the 4tli day of March, 1841.
From 4th March, 1837, to 3d March, 1838.
Sources of Revenue. Amount.
New internal revenue - - $5,485 31
New direct tax - - - 1,687 70
Patent fund - 29,901 08
Cents coined at the mint - - 8,530 00
Fines, penalties, and forfeitures - 243 56
Sale of lot and buildings formerly
occupied by the mint of the U. S. 2,120 00
Sale of a house and lot at Newbury-
port .... 1,916 48
Sale of a shed formerly occupied in
21
Appendix A.—Continued.
making standards of weightB and
measures -
Interest on public deposites
First instalment of principal and in¬
terest, due in September, 1837,
from the Bank of the U. States -
Debts due by banks ts the U. S. -
Treasury notes issued under the act
of 12th October, 1837
Repayments, considered as receipts
96 73
200,G29 67
1,364,965 41
7,294 04
6,691,314 06
13,677 81
$3,317,861 90
From Mi March, 1833, to 3d March, 1839.
New internal revenue
Surplus of annual emoluments of
officers of the customs
Patent fund -
Cents coined at the mint
Fines, penalties, and forfeitures
Persons unknown, stated to be due
to the United States
Sources unknown ...
Moneys refunded which had been
fraudulently obtained from the
Treasury underact of 15th May,
1828, for revolutionary claims «•
Moneys refunded which had been
fraudulently obtained from the
Treasury by representatives of
James Claverus, deceased, on ac¬
count of half pay as an officer -
Overpayment in entering lands at
Demopolis, Alabama
Documents sold -
Moneys deposited with Baring, Bro¬
thers, & Company, London
Interest on public deposites
Dividends on stock in Louisville
and Portland Canal Company -
Second instalment of principal and
interest, due in September, 1838,
from the Bank of the 11. States
Third instalment of principal and
interest, due in September, 1839,
from the Bank of the U. States -
Debts due by banks to the U. States
Treasury notes issued under acts of
12th October, 1837, and 21st May,
1838 -
Repayments, considered as receipts
$2,467 27
2,305 73
40,490 45
10,551 37
1,366 14
31 00
13 06
306 19
244 66
53 37
18 00
28 67
128,816 35
$55,138 00
2,237,230 84
2,254,871 38
108,752 46
9,028,495 95
16,230 55
13,937,411 46
From ith March, 1839, to 3d March, 1840.
New internal revenue
New direct tax -
Surplus emoluments of officers of
the customs
Patent fund -
Fines, penalties, and forfeitures
Persons unknown, stated to be due
to the United Slates
Moneys refunded, which had been
fraudulently obtained from the
Treasury under the act of 15th
May, 1828, for revolutionary claims
Moneys refunded which had been
fraudulently obtained from the
Treasury under act of 7th June,
1,553 32
755 22
2,968 92
39,061 95
2,976 18
140 00
127 79
1832, for revolutionary pensions 422 85
Moneys received for coins recovered
from the ruins of the Treasury
building .... 593 70
Moneys received under act of 23d
January, 1815, providing for the
indemnification of certain claim¬
ants of public lands in Miss. Ter. 546 40
Moneys received under a judgment
ibr 120 bags of coffee confiscated 1,827 30
Dividends on stock in Louisville and
Portland Canal Company - 40,628 00
Interest on public deposites - 14,765 39
Interest on bonds due from certain
banks .... 10,790 09
Debts due by banks to the U. States 37,283 03
Moneys heretofore paid into the
Treasury to the credit of the late
Treasurer, in sundry banks, and
remaining uncovered by warrant,
in consequence of the parties en¬
titled to credit being unknown -
Treasury notes issued under the act
of 2d March, 1839
Repayments, considered as receipts
81,479 46
3,857,276 21
8,977 18
4,103,172 99
From ith March, 1840, to 3d March, 1841.
New internal revenue
Surplus emoluments of officers of
the customs -
Patent fund -
Fines, penalties, and forfeitures
Persons unknown, stated to be due
to the United States
Moneys refunded which had been
fraudulently obtained under act
ot 7tli June, 1832, for revolution¬
ary pensions -
Moneys received from foreign coins
originally purchased with the
funds of the customs
Moneys overpaid for examining land
offices -
Moneys received for vacant land in
the county of Washington, D. C.
Proceeds of sale of lions presented
by the Emperor of Morocco to the
President of the LInited States -
Proceeds of sale of horses, under
resolution of Congress
Interest on debts due from banks to
the United States - - -
Interest on bonds due from banks to
the United States - - -
Debts due from banks to the U. S.
Moneys received for deposites made
in sundry banks, not heretofore
covered by warrant on the late
Treasurer of the United States,
(John Campbell) -
Fourth instalment of principal and
interest, due in Septembei, 1810,
from the Bank of the U. States -
Treasury notes issued under the act
of March 31, 1840
Repayments, considered as receipts
2,049 41
5,073 09
38,405 39
5,316 76
102 00
100 00
50 96
1 20
142 60
291 47
993 28
50,032 23
24,084 39
7,070 78
84,521 63
1,774,513 80
7,374,339 91
64,850 31
9,431,939 21
22
Appendix C.
.3 list of prices at Jhtgusta, Geoi-gia, on some, of the most important articles of consumption, before anot
after the passage of the Tariff act of 1842, compiled from the prices in the month, of September, in
each year.
Articles.
1840.
1841.
1842.
1343.
Cents.
Cents.
Cents.
Cents.
Iron, Swedes and Russia, per lb
6
6
5 to 5i
5
Nails, cut, 4d. to 40d., per lb
7 to 8
7 to 8
5i to 7
4} to 6|
Salt, Liverpool, ground, per bush
02)
50 to 02i
55 to 60
45 to 50
Sugar, St. Croix, per lb
10 to 12i
10 to 12i
8 to 11
8 to 11
Porlo Rico, "
8 to 11
8 to 11
7 to 9
7 to 10
N. Orleans "
7 to 10
8 to 10
6 to 9
7 to 9
Loaf & lump "
14 to 20
14 to 20
14 to 20
13 to 15
Molasses, VV. I., per gal
30 to 40
28 to 32
23 to 28
25 to 30
Cotton Bagging, (hemp,) per yd
20 to 28
20 to 28
10 to 22
16 to 20
Twine, English, per lb
30 tp 37
30 to 37
25 to 33
25 to 33
Com. J brown Shirting, per yd
7
5i
5
Bed Ticking, per vd
20
19
18
16
Prints, Calicoes, &e , per yd
8 to 28
8 to 28
6 to 23
5 to 20
Cotton Drills, per yd
13i
101
1.-2
11
9
Osnaburgs, per yd
12)
10
9
8
Satinets, pervd
60 to 100
50 to 100
35 to 90
30 to 90
particular quality, per yd
90
95
90
87i
Kentucky Jeans, per yard
50 to 100
40 to 85
23 to 75
25 to 75.
.3 list of the prices of twenty-three different articles of Iron at New York, with the fall per4 cent, from
the year 1840 to the year 1844 ; by u-hicli it will be seen that there has been a fall of prices, notwith¬
standing the increase of duty.
Jan.
July
Jan
July
Jan.
July
Jan.
July JanJfall
184U
1840
1841
1841
1842
1842
1843
1843
1844
p c-
Iron Anvils, per lb
9.i
9;
9)
8?
8.)
8)
8.)
8)
8)
10
Bars, common English rolled, per ton...
....
$76i
66;
71)
63;
52)
51)
53?
53)
53?
25
Bars, refined English rolled, per ton
93'
881
87.1
81?
76;
67)
67)
67.)
67J)
28
Bars, American refined, per ton
90
87)
85
80
77)
62)
65
67)
67)
25
Bars, Swedes hammered, per ton
....
91)
811
86'
81)
81?
77)
77.)
72)
72)
20
Blooms, American, per ton
60
55
52)
50
50
44
47)
47)
52)
11
Hoops, from \ to 3 inches wide, per ton.
... .
141)
130
113
113
113
100,'
10S)
102)
105
25
Nails, wrought, per lb.
ID.
ID.
111
lli
10)
9
9
9
9
17
Nails, cut, per lb.
51
5i
5)
5)
5)
3?
3?
4
4'
19
Nail rods, slit, per ton
Si '5
111)
111;
108;
106)
95
95
95
95
17
Pigs, per ton
35)
33
321
31?
31
24
25
26
27)
22
Brazier's rods of 3 16 to 8-16 of an inch, pert..
131
121
107
107
107
82)
82)
87)
87)
33
Sheets, average thickness, per lb
.ds.
5i
5?
5)
5?
5
4)
5
4)
4?
13
Scythes, per dozen
$13
13
12)
19)
12)
9
9
9
9
30
Shovels, per dozen
10
10
9)
9
9
7)
7)
7)
7)
27
Rolled for bands, from = x i to 4 x j per ton..
122
113)
99)
99)
99)
77)
77)
82)
82)
32
Spikes, per lb
8
6 i
6)
6)
6
6
6
6
25
Tacks, 2| to 16 oz. to the M
....
7)
7i
7)
7)
7)
5
4)
4)
41
Tacks, exceeding IGoz. to the M
15
15
15
15
15
12
10
10
10
33
Brads, from i to 2 inches, per M
13
13
13
13
13
8
7
7
7
46
Wire, not exceeding No. 14, perib
8
7?
73
7?
7?
6i
6)
6)
17
Wire, exceeding No. 14, per lb
181
IB)
IB)
18)
17?
12)
12
12
12
36
Axes, heavy
$18
18
17?
17
15?
15
13)
13
13
27
Coffee-mills, per dozen
—
545
—
525
—
450
~
450
23
Appendix C.—Continued.
Prices of sundry articles of Glassware, at Boston and New York, at the periods mentioned below.
Articles.
Prices,
Dec. '41.
Prices,
Aug. '42.
Prices,
Oct. '42.
Prices,
Dec. '42
Prices,
Aug.,'43.
Prices,
Dec. '43.
Pint 8 flute tumblers, per doz
$2
25
2
00
2 00
2
00
1
80
1 58
Gill 6 do.
do.
do.
1
12
1
00
1 00
1
00
75
58
Pillar 1 pint
do.
do
1
25
1
25
1 12
1
12
90
81
Taper bar
do.
do
1
35
1
35
1 12
1
12
1
00
95
9 flute
do.
do
1
35
1
35
1 35
1
35
1
12
1 00
Pillar gill
do.
do. ......
80
68
63
68
51
50
j pint 8 flute
do.
do
1
20
1
12
1 12
1
00
90
68
j pint 6 flute
do.
do
2
00
1
80
1 80
1
80
1
68
1 35
1 pint 8 flute
do.
do
2
00
1
80
1 80
1
80
1
70
1 40
Tulip salt
do
o
25
2
00
2 00
2
uo
1
80
1 35
Square salt
do
90
90
90
90
90
63
7 inch dish
do
2
25
2
00
2 00
2
00
1
80
1 68
Gothic salt
do
1
68
68
58
58
58
45
6 flute salt
do
1
00
1
00
90
90
68
53
Dish salt
do
52
52
50
50
45
38
Lamp
do
1
80
1
80
1 80
1
80
1
70
1 35
4 oz. tumbler
do.
40
40
40
38
36
36
6 oz. tumbler
do
60
60
58
58
52
52
8 oz. flint tumbler
do
1
20
1
12
1 12
90
90
81
Night lamp
do
1
58
1
50
1 35
1
35
1
20
1 12
Peg lamp
do
1
00
1
00
90
90
80
72
Square sugar
do
6
75
6
75
C 00
6
00
4
50
3 60
The average reduction in the price of the above articles, from December, 1841, to Decem¬
ber, 1843, is 28 per cent. Glass is an article which is subjected to a very high duty, and yet
the prices have declined under that duty. Is the duty here paid by the consumer?
Prices of Cotton Goods and Leather at Boston, before and after the passage of the late Tariff.
Articles.
Aug.
1841.
Jan.
1842.
Aug.
1842.
Oct.
1842.
Jan.
1843.
Aug.
1843.
Jan.
1844.
Fall per
cent.
cts.
cts.
cts.
cts.
cts.
cts.
cts.
Shirtings, 27 inch, per yard
5 i
5J
5!
51
8
Shirting, 30 inch, per yard
65
64
6|
5 i
53
61
3
Sheeting, 37 inch, per yard
ii
71
7J
Tls
65
73
4
Sheeting, 40 inch, per yard
9j
9
8
8
8
65
9°
9
Sheetings, 36 to 38 inch, per yard....
7!
6J
65
63
6J
6
Drillings, 30 inch, per yard
9?
8|
sl
7i
7i
7i
8 J
13
Jeans, 30 inch, per yard
14
12
101
10i
10i
93
91
32
Leather, Philadelphia city, per lb....
31
31
27
27
25i
25 2
24
22
Baltimore, per lb
29|
291
27
27
26"
25 j
23i
20
New York, red, per lb
23
23
18|
m
18
18
17
26
Boston, red, per lb
23
23
19i
19i
19
19
18
20
Eastern dry hides, per lb....
21
21
17 j
i n
16
17
16
23
Average per cent.
~
~
—
-
15i
There are no articles of manufacture which go more into the consumption of the poor and
laboring classes than cotton goods and leather; and it will be seen that the increased duty im¬
posed upon these articles have not increased the price. On the contrary, the prices have de-
-clined, and that, too, when the price of labor has increased.
24
Appendix O.—Continued.
Comparative prices of colored Cotton Domestic Goods in the New York market for a series of years.
Year.
4-4 Checks.
Striped and
plaid Ging¬
hams.
Printed Ca¬
licoes.
Year.
4-4 Checks.
Striped and
plaid Ging¬
hams.
Printed Ca¬
licoes.
Apr. 1818
32 cents
26 cents
Apr. 1832
11 cents
9 cents
12 cents
1819
30
25
1833
11
8
11
1820
24
16
1834
11
n
101
1821
22
17
1835
11
9
101
1822
20
17
1836
11
10
10t
1823
20
16 j
1837
11
10
l()i
1824
15
12
1838
9
8
10
1825
18
15!
1839
9
8
10
1826
14
14
20 cents
1840
8
7
10
1827
14
12
17
1841
8
7
10
1828
14
U
16
1842
8
7
10
1829
14
1(1
14
1843'
7
7
8
1830
12
9
13
1844
8
8
9
1831
12
11
12i
Prices of Molasses at Boston and .Ye w York, from 1795 to 1843, inclusive.
Year.
Price.
Duly.
Years.
Price.
Duty.
Years.
Price.
1
Duty.
Years.
Price.
Duty.
per gal
per gal.
1820
per gal.
1
per gal
1795
60 c.
3 c.
1808
50 c.
4 c.
34 c.
5 c.
1832
27 c.
10 c.
1796
62
3
1809
52
4
1821
28
5 ,
1833
32
5
1797
68
4
1810
48
4
1822
32
5
1834
31
4.4
1798
56
4
1811
54
4
1823
28
5 1
1835
38
4.4
1799
50
4
1812
52
4
1824
27
5
1836
38
4
1800
48
4
1813
75
8
1825
28
5 1
1837
35
4
1801
56
4
1814
85
8
1826
28
5
1838
37
3.6
1802
36
4
1815
75
8
1827
33
5
1839
34
3.6
1803
42
4
1816
57
5
1828
30
5
1840
2G
3
1804
51
4
1817
53
5
1829
30
10
1841
25
3
1805
40
4
1818
54
5
1830
25
10
1842
18
3
1806
38
4
1819
50
5
1831
27
10
1843
23
4
1807
41
4
Let any person examine the prices of this article, in connexion with the rate of duty, and he
will be unable to perceive that the duties have had any effect upon the price. In 1813, 1814,
and 1815, the prices were unusually high, and during those years the duty was about tHe aver¬
age rate. But the rise of prices was not produced by the increased duty, but by the effect of
the war, which prevented importations. It will also be seen that the Tariff of 1828 increased
the duty front five cents to ten, and still the prices declined under that increased duty.
Appendix B.
Comparative rates of duties on some of the most important articles, under the acts of 1816, 1824, 1828,
1832, and 1842.
Names of Articles.
Iron, in bars, made wholly or in part by roll¬
ing per ton
Iron, in bars, not manufactured, &c. .per ton
in pigs per ton
in sheets ]
for hoops
cables or chains .,.
Duties by the several acts.
1816.
1824.
1828.
1832.
1842.
$30 00
$30 00
$37 00
$30 00
$25 00
9 00
18 00
22 40
18 00
17 00
-
10 00
12 50
10 00
9 00
2 50
per cwt.
3 c. p. lb.
31c. p.lb
3 c. p. lb.
2^e. p.lb
do.
do.
do.
do.
do.
20 per c.
3 c. p. lb.
3 c.p. lb
3 c. p.lb.
2tc. p.lb
25
B—-Continued.
Names of Articles.
Nails, cut per lb.
wrought per lb.
Salt . per bush.
Cotton bagging (hemp)
Sugar,brown. per lb.
white clayed per lb.
loaf per lb.
lump and other refined per lb.
candy per lb.
Molasses per gal.
Broadcloths, and other manufactures of wool
not otherwise specified
Blankets, 58 by 38 inches
all other kinds.
Flannels, backings, and baizes
Carpeting, Brussels, &c
Venetian
Hearth rugs
Manufactures of cotton
Flax, unmanufactured
Hemp, and manufactures of, not specified...
Oilcloths, &c
Sadlery, of all descriptions.
Oil, olive per gal.
castor ••••••••.per gal.
linseed and rapeseed per gal.
of vitriol ....per gal.
Red and white lead per lb.
Sugar of lead
Saltpetre, refined per lb.
Cheese .per lb-
Chocolate per lb.
Tallow candles per lb.
Butter
Bacon
Beef and pork.
Wheat flour
Wheat
Oats and potatoes •••
Window glass, not over 8x10, per 109 sq. ft.
over 8 x 10 and notover 10 x 12
over 10 x 12, per 100 sq. feet
Glass bottles, to one quart .per gross
over one quart......per gross
Fish, dried or smoked ...per quintal
salmon per bbl.
mackarel and herring per bbl.
Shoes and slippers, silk per pair
leather .per pair
prunella per pair
Boots and bootees per pair
Paper, folio and quarto post
Foolscap, &.c
Vinegar
Cigars per 1000
SnufiF...•••• .per lb.
Coffee ■•••..•••••••••••.••••.•••• .per lb.
Teas, imported from China—Imperial, Gun¬
powder, and Gomee..............per lb.
3 p. p. lb.
do.
20 c.
20 per c.
3 c.
4 c.
12 c.
10 c.
12 c.
5 c.
15 |
Duties by the several acts.
1816. 1824. 1828. 1832. 1842.
per c
do.
per c,
_ per c
25 per c
25 per c.
25 per c,
15 per c,
20 per c.
15 per c,
20 per c.
25 c.
15 c.
15 c.
7's c.
3 c.
15 per c
7J c.
9 c.
3 c.
3 c.
15 per c,
15 per c
15 per c
15 per c,
15 per c.
15 per c,
$2 50
2 75
2 75
1 44
20 per c,
$1 00
2
1
00
50
30 c.
25 c.
25 c.
$1 50
30 per c
30 per c.
15 per c
#2 50
12 c.
5 c.
50 c.
5 c. p lb.
do.
20 c.
3;C. sq.y.
3 c.
4 c.
12 c.
10 c.
12 c.
5 c.
25 per c.
do.
25 per c.
50 per c.
25 per c.
33 j per c.
25 per c.
15 per c.
25 per c.
30 per c.
25 per c.
25 c.
40 c.
25 c.
3 c.
4 c.
15 per c.
3 c.
9 c.
4 c.
5 c.
5 c.
3 c.
2 c.
50c.p.bu.
25 c.
10 c.
$3 00
3 50
$4 to 5
2 00
2 50
1 00
2 00
1 50
30 c.
25 c.
25 c.
§1 50
20 c.
17 c.
8 c.
$2 50
12 c.
5 c.
50 c.
5 c. p. lb.
do.
20 c.
5 c.
3 c.
4 c.
12 c.
10 c.
12 c.
10 c.
45 per c
35 per c.
25 per c.
14c. sq.y.
70c. sq.y-
40c. sq.y
45 per c.
25 per c.
855 p. ton
25 per c.
25c. sq.y.
25 per c.-
25 c.
40 c.
25 c.
3 c.
5 c.
5 c.
3 c.
9 c.
4 c.
5 c.
5 c.
3 c.
2 c.
50c.p bu.
25 c.
10 c.
§3 00
3 59
J4 to 5
82 00
2 50
1 00
2 00
1 50
30 c.
25 c.
25 c.
§1 50
20 c.
17 c.
8 c.
$2 50
12 c.
5 c.
50 c.
5 c. p. lb.
do.
10 c.
3ic.
2j c.
31 c.
12 c.
10 c.
12 c.
5 c.
50 per c.
5 per c.
15 per c
16c. sq.y
63c. sq.y
35c. sq.y
50 per c
25p.c. on
min.of30c
free
25 per c
12jC.sq.y
10 per c.
25 c.
40 c.
25 c.
3 c.
5 c.
5 c.
3 c.
9 c.
4 c.
5 c.
5 c.
3 c.
2 c.
50c.p.bu.
25 c.
10 c.
$3 00
3 50
4 00
2 00
2 25
1 00
2 00
1 50
30 c.
25 c.
25 c.
§1 50
20 c.
17 c.
8 c.
#2 50
12 c.
free
free
3 c. p. lb.
4 c. p. lb.
8 c.
4 c.
2j c.
21 c.
6 c.
6 c.
4 c.
4 c.
40 per c.
« 15 pc.
(72by58
25 per c.
14c. sq.y.
50o. sq.y.
30c. sq.y.
40 per c.
30 p.c. on
min.of20c
820 p. ton
20 per c.
I2£c.sq.y
20 per c.
20 c.
40 c.
25 c.
1 c.
4 c.
4 c.
2 c.
9 c.
4 c.
4 c.
5 c.
3 c.
2 c.
70c.p.bu.
25 c.
10 c. '
§2 00
3 50
6 00
3 00
4 00
1 00
2 00
1 50
25 c.
30 c.
25 c.
81 25
17 c.
15 c.
40c5pC'lb.
12 c.
free
free
26
Appendix D.
26th Congress, [SENATE.] t~ 4,50 1
Is/ Session. •*
A.
Statement of expenditures of the United States, from the year 1824 to the
year 1839, inclusive ; agreeably to a resolution of the Senate of the 24Ik
of April, 1840.
Years.
1824
1825
1826
1827
1828
1829
1830
1831
1832
1833
1834
1835
1836
1837
1S38
1839
Aggregate amount of all ex¬
penditures, or payments
of every kind, from tlie
Treasury.
$ 31.898,538 47
23,585,804 72
24,103,398 46
22,656,764 04
25,459,479 52'
25.044,358 40
24,585,281 55
30,038,446 12
34,356.698 06
24,257,208 49
24,601,982 44
17.573,141 56
30,868.164 04
37,265,037 15
39,455,438 35
37,129,396 80
Aggregate amount indepen
dent of the payments on
account of the public debt
whether funded or un¬
funded.
$ 15,330,144 71
11.490.459 94
13,062,316 27
12,653,095 65
13,296,041 45
12.660.460 62
13,229,533 33
13,864,067 90
16,516,388 77
22,713,755 11
18,425,417 25
17,514,950 28
30,868,164 04
37,243,214 24
33,849,718 08
25,982,797 75
Aggregate amount for perma¬
nent and ordinary purposes,
excluding payments on ac¬
count of objects either ex¬
traordinary or temporary."
$ 7,107,892 05
6,537,671 27
7,058,872 12
7,427,175 78
7,788,394 S6
7,503,204 46
7,624,827 56
7,679,412 66
8,562,650 42
8,827.095 77
9,667,797 97
9,157,490 32
11,688,987 18
13,09S,321 83
13,837,594 44
13,325,800 18
*" Such as the public debt, trust funds, indemnities, claims of States for war debts,or 3 per
cents on lands sold ; occasional donations in money to objects in the District of Columbia, or
otherwise; survey of the n.ast; taking the census; duties refunded; exploring expedition!
and materials collected for tl e gradual improvement of the navy, (including improvements a'
navy yards ;) durable public buildings of all kinds; bridges and fortifications; all roads, canals,
breakwaters, and imprpvt n.enls in livers and harbors ; arming militia and forts ; all pensions,
except those to invalids ; i d the purchases of title to lands from Indians, (Indian department;)
the removal of Indians and the wars; with such other payments as may have been made in
those years for property k-1, or injuries committed during hostilities." None of these years or
columns include any thing on account of the Post Office Department.
Note.—The expewlitm 3 cf 1S39 are subject to variation on the settlement of the Treasu¬
rer's accounts for that year ; v.hich have not yet reached this office.
Treasury Department,
Register's Office, May 4, 1S40.
T. L. SMITH, Register-
B.
Statement of payments on account of objects either extraordinary or temporary, including the public debt, from 1824
to 1839.
1824.
1825.
1826.
1827.
Public debt ........
Trust funds ........
Indemnities ........
Claims of States for war debts ------
Three per cent, on lands sold ------
Two per cent, on account of Cumberland road . - - -
Occasional donations in money to objects in District of Columbia
Survey of the coast
Taking the census .......
Duties refunded --------
Exploring expedition .......
Materials collected for the gradual improvement of the navy (including
improvements at navy-yards) - - - ...
Durable public buildings of all kinds -
Bridges and fortifications -------
Roads, canals, breakwaters, and improvements in rivers and harbors
(except Cumberland road) ......
Arming militia and forts -------
All pensions, except those of invalids -
Purchase of titles to lands from Indians (Indian Department) -
Removal of Indians, and the wars -
Such other payments as may have been made for property lost or inju¬
ries committed during any hostilities, and other miscellaneous items
of an extraordinary or temporary character -
$10,568,393 76
$12,095,344 78
$11,041,082 19
$10,003,668 39
4,891,368 56
5,510 27
47,714 53
17,000 00
4,375 19
423,342 46
180,309 67
429,972 04
56,995 99
171,155 43
1,267,600 41
429,987 90
296,260 21
93,234 51
185,090 67
57,221 89
35,850 00
1,972 39
712,665 63
190,809 42
762,711 24
334,353 02
172,348 09
1,508,810 57
724,106 44
173,614 80
4,297 55
9,967 88
152,107 84
37,208 75
125,469 00
1,229 43
1,615,731 41
177,467 63
756,447 55
488,740 02
196,828 64
1,305,194 82
743,447 83
389,235 80
2,202 50
401,288 45
118,177 60
27,982 37
189,230 00
4,078 43
1,274,786 52
408,233 32
633,835 81
075,268 14
262,810 59
805,571 30
708,447 35
42,177 53
71,829 96
8,222,252 66
4,952,788 67
6,003,444 15
5,225,919 87
B—Continued.
1828.
1829.
1830.
1831.
Public debt ..... ...
$12,163,438 07
$12,383,867 78
$11,355,748 42
$16,174,378 2-2
Trust funds ........
Indemnities i
Claims of States for war debts ------
Three per cent, on lands sold ------
Two per cent, on account of Cumberland road -
Occasional donations in money to objects in District of Columbia
Survey of coast --------
Taking the census .......
Duties refunded --------
Exploring expedition - - •
Materials collected for the gradual improvement of the navy (including
improvements at navy-yards) ------
Durable public buildings of all kinds - - - - -
Bridges and fortifications -------
Roads, canals, breakwaters, and improvements in rivers and harbors
(except Cumberland road) ------
Arming militia and forts -------
All pensions, except those of invalids -
Purchase of titles to lands from Indians (Indian department)
Removal of Indians, and the wars .....
Such other payments as may have been made for property lost or inju¬
ries committed during any hostilities, and other miscellaneous items
of an extraordinary or temporary character ....
46,217 14
791,029 40
7,906 76
29,029 82
193,108 36
1,154 87
801,020 02
302,343 74
637,558 43
375,906 59
362,189 69
1,137,905 43
633,973 71
71,110 53
117,192 10
132,599 41
28,168 78
2,929 25
14,207 87
207,437 64
34 07
543,996 97
278,6-25 94
824,279 51
1,088,852 97
356,421 98
1,057,175 08
534,301 74
26,997 54
61,227 41
3,472 24
16,115 09
30,503 90
226,831 82
42,000 00
590,178 10
249,721 22
902,660 86
962,408 49
317,210 22
1,322,079 16
557,574 23
56,213 05
372,537 39
3,463 00
281 76
421,896 42
42,964 16
172,406 85
328,781 14
811,466 44
266,872 95
764,712 33
808,913 31
255,052 22
1,235.101 37
736,592 76
191,263 11
144,887 42
5,507,646 59
5,157,556 16
5,604,705 77
6,184,655 24
B—Continued.
1839.
1833.
1834.
1835.
Public debt --------
Trust funds
Indemnities
Claims of States for war debts
Three per cent, on lands sold ------
Two per cent, on account of Cumberland road -
Occasional donations in money to objects in District of Columbia
Survey of the coast -------
Taking the census - - - - - - -
Duties refunded --------
Exploring expedition .......
Materials collected for the gradual improvement of the navy (deluding
improvements at navy yards) ------
Durable public buildings of all kinds «
Bridges and fortifications -------
Roads, canals, breakwaters, and improvements in rivers and harbors
(except the Cumberland road) ------
Arming militia and forts -------
All pensions, except those of invalids -
Purchase of titles of lands from Indians (Indian department)
Removal of Indians, and the wars -
Such other payments as may have been made for property lost or inju¬
ries committed during any hostilities, and other miscellaneous items
of an extraordinary or temporary character -
$17,840,309 29
$1,543,543 38
$6,176,565 19
$58,191 28
168,692 29
2,254 08
780,657 63
133,039 74
363,684 37
32,000 00
14,927 67
32,447 86
868,552 47
235,293 97
583,199 94
824,655 62
289,565 83
1,237,704 73
1,056,277 09
757,222 83
573,562 23
24,965 45
679,617 80
289,576 59
96,201 97
517,187 39
313,000 00
19,531 47
300 00
701,760 70
789,290 72
641,306 65
888,284 99
1,216,344 71
345,500 23
4,485,383 20
4,390,450 28
1,272,759 57
215,197 62
163,739 03
15,024 15
157,274 91
108,848 00
624,045 03
117,728 95
30,051 32
111,835 32
512,325 04
660,104 71
590,271 35
804,606 96
270,400 43
3,289,821 02
842,557 25
294,988 70
163,997 11
508,436 93
31,578 06
50,098 58
949,144 22
159,675 01
34,686 89
4,778 04
789,904 37
776,251 27
336,373 29
831,257 16
282,147 96
1,867,035 78
1,497,867 67
142,371 34
95,853 3D
7,953,738 35
13,886,659 34
8,757,619 28
8,357,459 96
c*
B—Continued.
Ox
©
Public debt
Trust funds ........
Indemnities - - - - - - . -
Claims of States for war debts ------
Tbree per cent, on lands sold ------
Two per cent, on account of Cumberland road -
Occasional donations in money to objects in District of Columbia
Survey of the coast .......
Taking of the census .......
Duties refunded --------
Exploring expedition .......
Materials collected for the gradual improvement of the navy (including
improvements at navy yards) ------
Durable public buildings of all kinds -
Bridges and fortifications -------
Roads, canaD, breakwaters, and improvements in rivers and harbors
(except Cumberland road) ......
Arming militia and forts -------
All pensions, except those of invalids -
Purchase of titles to lands from Indians (Indian department)
Removal of Indians, and the wars -
Such other payments as may have been made for property lost or inju¬
ries committed during any hostilities, and other miscellaneous items of
an extraordinary or temporary oharacter -
1836.
#1,191,232 94
225,555 57
55,994 85
963,993 94
368,356 90
131,244 62
36,393 59
1,149 96
202,706 08
813,833 14
868,134 97
858,543 21
958,341 44
488,561 47
2,559,899 39
3,009,040 72
5,945,613 09
470,580 98
19,179,176 86
1837.
$21,822 91
1,285,968 74
4,369,065 32
70,852 32
460,542 00
406,734 60
235,240 75
97,900 00
333,740 00
97,293 92
860,116 34
1,086,029 52
966,665 33
1,493,310 42
587,118 44
2,471,986 07
2,484,185 20
6,524,211 73
313,931 71
24,144,892 41
1838.
$5,605,720 27
1,329,744 80
975,577 09
107,707 79
26,834 96
351,977 62
177,617 15
88,937 30
454,586 69
* 161,413 91
608,541 09
1,186,551 08
543,544 47
1,191,802 84
450,121 11
1,937,068 10
4,603,518 72
5,414,192 75
402,326 17
20,012,123 64
1839.
$11,146,599 05
240,694 18
717,552 27
4,875 50
63,670 00
198,520 00
126,374 77
91,995 78
12,000 00
179,304 30
* 97,968 36
714,857 74
1,248,044 97
735,570 87
1,000,491 59
474,906 35
3,033,761 28
1,708,123 12
1,775,914 13
232,369 36
12,656,997 57
CO
©
* Obtained from the Fourth Auditor's Office.
Treasury Department, Register's Office, May 4, 1840.
T. L. SMITH, Register.
31
Appendix D.—Continued.
27th Congress, Doc. No. 244. Ho. of Reps.
2d Session.
[ PAGE 52. ]
Statement correcting the column headed 11expenditure " in House Docu¬
ment No. 31, Is; session 27th Congress,pages 25 and 26.
Years.
Annual expenditure,
Doc. 31, 1st sess.
27th Congress.
Payments on account
of public debt.
Trust funds, Stc.
Aggregate expend¬
itures, as per pub¬
lic accounts.
1829
1830
1831
1832
1833
1834
1835
1836
1837
1838
1839
1840
$12,651,457 22
13,229,533 33
13,863,786 14
16,514,134 69
22,050,312 31
18,420,467 12
17,006,513 15
29,655,244 46
31,588,180 18
31,544,396 19
25,443,716 94
23,327,772 29
$12,383,867 78
11,355,748 22
16,174,378 22
17,840,309 29
1,543,543 38
6,176,565 19
58,191 23
21,822 91
5,605,720 27
11,117,987 42
4,086,613 70
$9,033 40
281 76
2,254 08
663,442 80
4,950 13
508,437 13
1,212,919 58
5,655,034 06
2,305,321 89
1,053,231 79
812,147 82
$25,044,358 40
24,585,281 55
30,038,446 12
34,356,698 06
24,257,298 49
24,601,982 44
17,573,141 56
30,868,164 04
37,365,037 15
39,455,438 35
37,614,936 15
28,226,533 81
Aggregate
255,295,514 02
86,364,747 66
12,227,054 44
353,887,316 12
Average -
21,274,626 17
-
-
29,490,609 75
1st column, aggregate of 8 years, 1833 to 1840, inclusive ... $199,030,602 64
Annual average 24,879,575 33
4th column, aggregate of 8 years, 1833 to 1840, inclusive - $239,862,531 99
Annual average ....... 29,982,816 50
When the above table was made out in 1841, the copyist made a small error in two of the
years, which has been corrected; and the expenditures of 1840 could not at that time be as¬
certained correcUy. They now agree with the public accounts.
»
32
Appendix E.
27 th Congress, ])oc. No. 281. ho- of Reps.
2d Session.
LIABILITIES OF THE TREASURY, MARCH 4, 1841.
August 10, 1842.
Read, and laid upon the table.
Treasury Department,
Register's Office, August 8, 1842.
Sir : I have the honor to transmit a statement of the amount for which
ithe Treasury was liable on the 4th March, 1841, prepared in compliance
with a lesolution of the House of Representatives of the Gth instant.
I have the honor to be, sir, your obedient servant,
T. L. SMITH.
Hon. John White,
Speaker of the House of Representatives.
Statement of the amount for which the Treasury was liable on the 4th
March, 1S41, agreeably to a resolution of the House of Representatives
of the bth August, 1842. •
Specific appropriations of all kinds undrawn on the 4th
March, 1S41 $27,134,721 30
Indefinite appropriations drawn between the 4th March
and 31st December, 1841 ... - 1,771,269 46
Treasury notes outstanding on the 4th March, 1841 - 6,621,334 44
35,527,326 20
From which deduct the cash balance in the Treasury
on the 4th March, 1841, exclusive of deposites with
the States, and the unavailable funds due by default¬
ing banks, as ascertained from the bo>..ks of the Trea¬
surer of the United States ... - 862,055 81
Total .... $34,665,269 39
The above balance [$862,055 81] in the Treasury does not include the
sum of $300,000 trust funds.
T. L. SMITH, Register
Treasury Department,
Register's Office, August 8, 1842.
SPEECH
OF
MR. WM. C. RIVES, OF VIRGINIA,
ON MR. McDUFFIE'S PROPOSITION
TO REPEAL THE TARIFF ACT OF 1842.
♦
DELIVERED IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, MONDAY, MAY 27, 1S4A
WASHINGTON.
J. AND G. S. GIDEON, PRINTERS.
1844.
SPEECH
Mr. RIVES said he had hitherto abstained from taking any part in this debate, because
he preferred being a listener to the able and instructive arguments of other gentlemen,
rather than to obtrude, with an anxiety disproportioned to its importance, any thing he
might have to say, on the attention of the Senate. And he begged the Senate to believe
that he did not now rise to enter into any formal or systematic discussion of the subject
which had so long occupied its attention. A large majority of the Senate, he had no-
doubt, had long since come to the conclusion that the bill of the honorable Senator from
South Carolina, (Mr. McDuffie,) is, within the true meaning of the Constitution, a
" bill for raising revenue," and that it cannot, therefore, properly originate in this branch
of the Legislature, But, as by general acquiescence and consent, it has been entertained
as a theme for discussing a great question of national policy, deeply affecting the interests
and feelings of every portion of the Union, he desired, before the vote of the Senate was
taken upon it, to state, as briefly as he could, the views he entertained on some of the
questions which have been drawn into discussion.
In doing so, said Mr. R., I shall pass by all topics of a secondary character, and ad¬
dress myself at once to those leading and general principles which must control, with
decisive force, the policy of the Government in regard to the great interests of national
industry, as they are affected by systems of public revenue. A primary and essential
element in the solution of this vexed question of national policy is involved in the pre¬
liminary enquiry, what is the best mode, upon principles purely financial, of raising the
necessary revenue for the support of Government? I had supposed that this was a ques¬
tion hardly open to any serious difference of opinion. The suggestions we have seen
from time to time, in the discussions of the press and elsewhere, in favor of a recurrence to
a system of direct taxation, I had regarded as the harmless vagaries of individual specu¬
lative opinion. But, when we hear gentlemen of the authority and experience in ques¬
tions of finance, of the Senator from New Hampshire, (Mr. Woodbury,) and of the en¬
lightened views of the Senator from South Carolina, (Mr. McDuffie,) gravely declaring
their opinions as practical legislators and statesmen, in favor of substituting, to a certain
extent and under certain qualifications, a resort to direct taxes and excises for the present
easy and almost imperceptible mode of supplying the public Treasury, the subject chal¬
lenges investigation and enquiry at the threshold. The Senator from New Hampshire says,,
if the requisite amount of revenue is not yielded by imposts within a given limit, to wit, 2ft
or 25 per cent., which he denominates, (rather arbitrarily I must be permitted to say,) the
revenue standard, then we should have recourse, as was done in 1794 and 1798, to di¬
rect taxes and excises for the residue of what is wanted for the support of the Govern¬
ment, rather than to exceed that limit. And the Senator from South Carolina, complain¬
ing that the weight of taxation is borne, in too great a proportion by foreign imports,
contends that it would be more equitable and just to divide the burden between foreign
and domestic manufactures, subjecting the latter to an excise duty equivalent to the im¬
post duty levied upon the former.
[Here the two Senators explained.3
Mr. Rives resumed. If the gentlemen will refer to their printed speeches, they will
find that I have, in no degree, overstated their respective propositions, by which, 1 must
confess, I was not a little startled, when they were first announced on the floor. I had
supposed that, if any thing bad been conclusively settled by the most approved writers
on finance and political economy, as well as by the experience of all modern govern¬
ments, especially our own, it was this—that the least onerous and the jeast objection-
4
able of all the modes of providing for the support of Government, and the exigencies of
the public service, is by taxes on consumption ; and that of taxes on consumption, those
most consistent with the genius and policy of free States, are taxes on foreign imports.
The considerations which recommend them are almost too obvious tojustify a repetition
of them to the Senate. In the first place, they are voluntary. No man pays them who
is not both willing and able to pay them, or, in other words, who does not choose to
purchase the articles on which they are levied. In this respect, they are favorably dis¬
tinguished from direct taxes, or taxes on possessions, (as the latter are sometimes de¬
nominated,) from which there is no escape, " being destiny unshunnable as death."
These taxes on the consumption of foreign goods are, moreover, for the most part, the
most equal kind of impositions, being generally paid according to the wealth and ability
of the contributors. The consumption, or, speaking in a more general and proper sense,
the expense of individuals, is, ordinarily, in proportion to iheir means of consumption or
abi ity to purchase ; and the amount of the tax paid by each individual in this mode
being exactly regulated by his consumption or expense, the tax apportions itself, very
fairly in the main, to the wealth and ability of the tax payers. If any person finds him¬
self burdened with a larger portion of the public contributions, through this channel,
than he can well afford to pay, he has only to retrench his expenses, and he diminishes,
at the same moment and by the same act, the amount of tax he pays. A motive is thus
furnished to economy, the habit of which is so essential to the accumulation of capital
and the steady progress of national wealth. These taxes are, also, the least burden¬
some, because, instead of being paid in advance, and all at once, as other taxes are, theyr
are paid by piece-meal only, as the articles on which they are levied are required for
actual use and consumption ; and being then merged in and confounded with the price of
the article, they are hardly felt as a public burden at all.
There are political considerations of no less importance which recommend them.
The machinery and process of their collection are infinitely more simple, and attended
with far less of vexation and expense, than those which belong to other systems of
revenue. There is no harrassing domiciliary visitation, no annoying inquisitorial ex¬
aminations into every man's private affairs, to reach the objects of them. At a few
points upon the seaboard, through the agency of a small number of custom-houses, you
collect a revenue of twenty, or twenty-five, or thirty millions of dollars, with the utmost
ease and convenience, instead of overspreading the land with a cloud of tax-gatherers, like
the locusts of Egypt, eating out the substance of the people—the usual and unavoidable
attendant of every system of internal taxation. The excessive multiplication of offices, and
the consequent extension of Executive patronage, the bane of public liberty, and the canker
of the Treasury, are thus avoided ; and, in the same proportion, the expenses of collection
are diminished. The first report of Mr. Gallatin as Secretary of the Treasury, made in
1801, showsthat the expense of collecting the various internal taxes, which existed under
the preceding administration, was equivalent to 20 per cent., while that of collecting the
customs was but 4 per cent. There is a further consideration of great importance, under
our particular political system, in favor of supplying the Federal Treasury by external
duties. It is the General Government only which is endowed with the power of raising
revenue from the foreign commerce of the country. The States are thrown exclusively
on the resources of internal taxation for their support. We should never, therefore, cre¬
ate a surcharge on those resources, by encroaching on the domain of State taxation, but
in cases of inevitable necessity.
The honorable Senator from New Hampshire, (Mr. Woodbury.) was unfortunate, I
thought, Mr. President, in referring us to the financial examples of 1791 and 1798, for
imitation. Those, I had supposed, were examples for avoidance, not for imitation. Are
the monitory lessons of the past lost so soon in oblivion. Has the honorable Senator forgot
the whiskey insurrection—a popular rebellion produced by the odium of an excise tax—a
sentiment so deep and strong that not even the reverence for the character and person of
General Washington, then at the head of the Government, could prevent it from breakingout
into open resistance to the authority and execution of the law? Has the honorable Sen-
5
ator forgotten the odium produced by the direct tax of Mr. Adams in 1798, which, foi
the paltry sum of two millions of dollars, covered the land with a host of revenue officers
assessors, inspectors, supervisors, commissioners, and collectors? lias he forgotten the
moral resistance awakened in the minds of the people by the carriage lax, the stamj.
tax, and the other fiscal expedients of that discredited era of internal taxation—measure;
which, we have the authority of the most enlightened contemporary observers for say
ing, contributed even more than the alien and sedition laws, to overwhelm that ill-fate<
administration with popular disgrace ?
I had supposed there were examples in our political and financial history which th<
honorable Senator from New Hampshire, distinguished discip'e as he is of the Democratic
school, would have preferred looking back to for instruction. I had supposed he woulc
have preferred deriving his lessons from the great "Civil Revolution of 1801," as i
has been called, when the first and leading act of Mr. Jefferson was to recommend ai
immediate repeal of all the internal taxes of the preceding administration. The repea
was accordingly made by one of the earliest acts of the new Congress; and in his secouc
inaugural address, Mr. Jefferson, in reviewing the results of the first term of his ad
ministration, dwells on nothing with so much c ngratulation to the country, as well a:
pride and complacency in regard to the merits of his own conduct, as the change he hac
assisted to introduce in the financial policy of the Government, by a total discontinuance
of the system of internal taxes. What he says on the subject is so full of just and in
structive observation, that I may be excused for reading it to the Senate, which 1 am the
more tempted to do, as the remarks of the Senator from New Hampshire show that i
may be neither an useless nor unseasonable reminiscence. <
"At home, fellow citizens," says Mr. Jefferson, " you best know whether iwe have
done well or ill. The suppression of unnecessary offices, of useless establishment
and expenses, enabled us to discontinue our internal taxes. These, covering oiifilam
with officers, and opening our doors to their intrusions, had already begun thatproCes;
of domiciliary vexation which, once entered, is scarcely to be restrained from neaehwp
successively every article of property and produce. If among these taxes some mino
■ones fell, which had not been inconvenient, it was because their amount would not havi
paid the officer who collected them, and because, if they had any merit, the State au
thorities might adopt them, instead of others less approved. The remaining revenui
on the consumption of foreign articles is paid chiefly by those who can afford to ad<
foreign luxuries to domestic comforts. Being collected on our seaboard and frontie
only, and incorporated with the transactions of our mercantile citizens, it may be th<
pleasure and the pride of an American to ask, what farmer, what mechanic, what labore
ever sees a tax-gatherer of the United States ?"
The honorable Senator from New Hampshire fell into a chronological mistake in re
ferring to the year 1812 for another example of direct taxes and excise, which deserve;
the more to be noticed because the continued adherence to the system of external du
ties, under the very exigent and embarrassing circumstances of that period, furnishe:
the strongest possible testimony of the opinion held by the able and enlightened mei
then employed in the administration of the Government, of the preference due to im
posts, over every other mode of supplying the public necessities. The war with Eng
land was declared in June, 1812 ; and although it brought with it necessarily a demam
for a large increase of revenue, while its effect would, in all probability, be to curtai
very much the foreign commerce, which, for the last ten years, had been the onh
source of supply to the Treasury of any moment, still the Government did not at tha
time, as the Senator from New Hampshire supposes, resort to direct taxes and excises
'On the contrary, Mr. Gallatin, who was then at the head of the Treasury Department
recommended an increase of 100 per cent, in the pre-existing rates of duties on foreigi
imports, rather than have recourse to direct taxes or excises ; and this recommendatioi
was carried into effect by an act of Congress, passed in July, 1812, raising the impost
100 per cent. No excise or direct tax was imposed till late in the summer of 1813
more than twelve months after the declaration of wai, and when the continuance of thi
6
/
■war had cut off so much of the foreign commerce of the country that it became literally
impossible to derive the requisite revenue from that source.
Mr. Gallatin, from the very commencement in 18O0--'7, of those foreign difficulties
which terminated in the war of 1812, and in contemplation of actual war even, steadily s
inculcated, through a series of able reports, the policy of increasing—of doubling, if
necessary—'the duties on importation—a source of revenue which, to use his own lan¬
guage, " experience had shown to be the most productive, the easiest to collect, and
the least burdensome to the great mass of the people,"* rather than resort to any other
mode of taxation. This was the system, adopted and pursued till the almost total fail¬
ure of the customs, from the effects of the war on the foreign commerce of the coun¬
try, rendered a resort to internal taxes absolutely indispensable. At the earliest mo¬
ment after the close of the war, which the exigencies of the Treasury (greatly aug¬
mented by the vast accumulation of debt during the war) would admit, all these taxes
were repealed ; and the first and most urgent recommendation of Mr. Dallas, in his
Annual Report of 1815, was the immediate repeal, especially, of that description of tax
on the domestic manufactures of the country which the honorable Senator from South
Carolina (Mr. McDuffie) seems to favor, but which Mr. Dallas regarded as particular¬
ly mischievous, in its tendency to obstruct and retard the progress of national industry.
Since the repeal of those war taxes, the Government has returned to, and persevered,
for more than a quarter of a century, in the policy of Jefferson and Gallatin ; and the
great weight which I freely admit to be due to the financial opinions of the Senator from
NewHampshire, will hardly induce the country to return to the obsolete and exploded
precedents of 1794 and 1798.
T-he voice of experience and the judgment of the country upon this subject are strik¬
ingly embodied in a statement which I hold in my hand, and which I have taken from a
document .laid before us a year or two ago—an account of the receipts and expenditures
of the Government for the year 1840. In that document there is a statement exhibiting
the receipts cyf the Government from all the regular and permanent sources of revenue
(exclusive of loans, bank dividends, &c., and miscellaneous items,) from the 4th of
March, 1789, to the 31st of December, 1840. The aggregate of these receipts, during
this period of fifty-two years, is $892,340,733, of which the enormous amount of $746,-
923,302 was derived from customs alone, while $12,744,73 only came from direct taxes,
and $22,265,242 from internal duties or excise—the residue being made up from the pro¬
ceeds of the public lands, and surplus of postage. The duties on foreign imports, then, stand
out in bold relief, as the great established source of the national revenue, which the expe¬
rience of the country for more than half a century has deliberately sanctioned and
adopted, and all other forms of taxation are but occasional expedients or extraordinary
resources, for rare and special emergencies which may, at long intervals, call forth all
the energies of the nation, but always ceasing whenever the emergency ceases.
It may, therefore, be considered as settled, by the united voice of reason, experience,
and the highest authority, theoretical and practical, that there is no mode of providing
for the support of the Federal Government, and the public expenditure of the nation,
liable to so little objection, and attended with so few disadvantages, in a strictlyfinancial
view, as the system of duties on foreign imports. There is more or less of encourage¬
ment to the domestic industry of the country necessarily involved in such a system of
revenue. But here we are met by a novel doctrine, which claims to be one of binding
constitutional restriction. It is said, that although a benefit may and does result, inci¬
dentally, or rather accidentally, to the interests of domestic industry from the imposi¬
tion of duties on foreign commerce, you have no right to impose these duties with a
view to that benefit, but they must be regulated and adjusted with a strict and exclusive
reference to the interests of the revenue alone. To state the proposition according to
the most approved formula of the political school which has adopted it—in the imposi¬
tion of duties* you may discriminate for the sake of revenue, but you cannot discrimL-
* Mr. Gallatin's Annual Report on the Finances, in November, 1807.
7
nate for the benefit of the labor and the capital, which are the only sources of both
public and private revenue.
1 will venture to assert, that so inexorable and Rhadamanthian a rule was never prac¬
tised upon by any Government under the sun—not even in the sheerest and most naked
exercise of the taxing power. It would convert the office of raising revenue for the
support of Government into a summary act of confiscation, and reduce the skill of the
financier (which Burke and others have exalted into the dignity of the highest political
science) to the mere arts of a fiscal extortioner. All the writers on political economy
and finance lay down rules of preference and selection in the imposition of taxes,
having reference to their effects on industrial interests, on public morals, and the general
ease and convenience of the people, as well as to their productiveness of revenue. In
every civilized Government, the authority which imposes taxes to supply the exigen¬
cies of the public service, seeks to impose them in the manner which may prove the
most beneficial, or the least injurious to the general interests of society. Hence in
many countries taxes are laid by preference, which, while they yield the requisite reve¬
nue, discourage vice, or check extravagance and luxury. In every country in which
industry and the arts have made any progress, many foreign articles which are made
use of, as raw materials or otherwise, in established branches of domestic manufactures,
are either exempted from duty, or subjected to lighter duties, with a view solely to pro¬
mote production in those particular trades, and a consequent increase of national wealth,
But I will not enter further into this view of the doctrine, which has been recently set
up as a new standard of political faith. There is a radical error in it under the particu¬
lar provisions of our Constitution, which it is more important to notice. It wholly
overlooks, or rather annihilates, a vital and fundamental power of the Constitution—the
power to " regulate commerce with foreign nations." If there be any proposition,
connected with the history and meaning of the Constitution, which rests upon more; in¬
controvertible proofs than another, it is that the power to regulate commerce with foreign,
nations directly and necessarily includes the power to protect domestic industry by-
burthens and restrictions imposed upon foreign productions. It is a very narrow and
inadequate conception of the scope and operation of an impost duty which sees in it
nothing but a fiscal resource. It is at the same time, and equally, a regulation of com¬
merce. If gentlemen will look baek to the proceedings on that fundamental act of our
legislation—the act of 1789, for laying duties on foreign imports—they will see that Mr.
Madison, in introducing the bill, expressly stated that it presented two points for consi¬
deration—the first respected the regulation of commerce—the second related to revenue.
One of the most familiar and ordinary means or instruments of regulating commerce is
the imposition of duties ; and one of the most ordinary and familiar exertions of the
power to regulate commerce with foreign nations, is to impose duties on foreign pro¬
ductions in order to encourage and promote rival branches of industry at home.
The commercial legislation of all countries, which have attained any degree of im¬
portance in the eyes of the world, abounds with examples of this use of the power.
In England particularly, from whose political and Commercial vocabulary the phrase
was transplanted into our constitutional and popular language, this had been its well
known use and application for centuries. It was rendered doubly familiar, in this sense,
to the mind of every man in America, from its having entered so largely into our colo¬
nial controversies with the mother country. The distinction upon which we stood, as
every person who has the slightest knowledge of the history of his country well
■knows, was this—that Great Britain had no right to tax the trade of the colonies, with¬
out their consent, for revenue, but as the parent and presiding power, she had the ad¬
mitted right to do so for the regulation of cortimerce—that is, to impose duties on the
productions of foreign countries coming to thd colonies, with a view to restrain and
discourage their introduction, and thereby secure the market of the colonies to her own
manufactures. This was the conceded and well understood extent and operation of the
power to regulate commerce in all our ante-revolutionary history.
In that period of our history which followed the close of the revolution, and immedi-
8
ately preceded the formation of the Constitution—a period which, from the inadequacy
of tlie Articles of Confederation to provide for the new wants of an independent national
existence, was filled with every variety of embarrassment, suffering, and distress, and
"which has been aptly compared to the journey of the Israelites through the wilderness—
the power to regulate commerce, with its vitally important objects and uses, again be¬
came a paramount and absorbing subject of public solicitude and discussion. In conse¬
quence of the want of any such power on the part of the federal authority, and the vari¬
ous and conflicting regulations of the several States nullifying and defeating each other,
the condition of the country, in all the great interests of the national industry, had
become one of the most melancholy and ruinous depression. Our ports being thrown
open to the admission of foreign merchandise, with hardly any restriction, while our
own produce and trade were either prohibited or subjected to burdensome and oppres¬
sive restrictions in oilier countries, the consequence was the total prostration of the
energies of American industry and enterprise in all their departments, under this unequal
state of things. The useful branches of manufactures which had sprung into existence
during the war of the revolution, and had been gradually extending themselves, were
overwhelmed by the inundation of foreign goods which was thus let in upon the coun¬
try ; agriculture was shut out from the markets it had been accustomed to find abroad
for its surplus productions, and our navigation was driven from the ocean, and threatened
with destruction, by the unfriendly discriminations and exclusive regulations of other
maritime powers. The result of this state of things was a vast and constantly increasing
accumulation of foreign debt, without the means of paying it, weighing like an incubus
upon the national spirits and resources, and paralyzing every limb of the national enter-
prisej It was to remedy these appalling evils, and expressly and emphatically to protect
all of these great interests of .American industry, that the country called loudly for the
investiture of the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations in the authorities
of the Union, by which alone it could be efficiently exercised.
It was by the salutary agency of this power, in the hands of the federal authority,
that all these beneficent and important results were to be accomplished. Protection of
domestic interests was the end, the motive, the vital essence of the power over foreign
commerce delegated by the new Constitution to Congress. But surely, Mr. President,
it would be a labor of presumptuous supererogation in me to detain the Senate with the
discussion of a question which has received so conclusive an elucidation from the hands
of the Father of the Constitution himself. I need hardly say, sir, that I refer to the'
letters of Mr. Madison, addressed to a citizen of Virginia in 18'28, in which he has
shown by the most luminous development, and with a weight of authority which at¬
taches to no other name on questions of constitutional construction, that this very power
of regulating commerce with foreign nations embraces fully, and was meant to embrace,
the encouragement and protection of the domestic industry of the country by impost
duties adapted to the object, whenever the wisdom of Congress should deem the exer¬
cise of the power expedient and proper. On that demonstration the general intelligence
of the country has reposed, and may well repose, with undoubting confidence.
It may not be amiss, however, Mr. President, to advert for a few moments to the prac¬
tical construction of their powers on this subject, established by the first Congress which
assembled under the Constitution. That Congress consisted of some of the first minds
of America, and in a very large number, of the same individuals who had been members,
either of the Federal Convention which framed the Constitution, or of the several State
conventions which had ratified it. If any body of men, therefore, could be presumed to
be qualified, above all others, to know the true meaning and spirit of the Constitution
which they had so large a personal agency in framing, and which they Were now called
on to put into practical operation, it was the collection of able and experienced statesmen
who composed the Congress of '89. And here, sir, I may be permitted to remark that
contemporaneous construction is, in my judgment, the safest guide to the meaning and
intention of political institutions, as it has always been held to be in the interpretation of
laws on which the rights, and interests, and responsibilities of individuals in civil life
9
depend. In either case, the object is to arrive at the real intention of those who made
the law, or founded and agreed to the Constitution; and surely this can be better learned
from the parties who were engaged in the transaction, or their associates or contempo¬
raries, than from scholiasts and commentators who, by new and ingenious interpreta¬
tions, bring to light some recondite and hitherto undiscovered and unavowed policy or
design.
In this view, the proceedings of the Congress of '89 are of the highest importance.
The act passed by them laying duties on foreign imports was, as we all know, de¬
clared upon its own face to be "for the encouragement and protection of manufactures,"
as well as for obtaining revenue for the support of the Government and the discharge of
the public debt. But the Senator from New Hampshire (Mr. Atherton) who addressed
the Senate yesterday, contended that the duties in the act of '89 were laid with a view to re¬
venue alone, and ingeniously argued, that if the act was declared to be also "for the encou¬
ragement and protection of manufactures," it was only because the enlightened framers of it
thought mere revenue duties sufficient for protection. But this supposititious explanation
of the character of the act is contradicted by the whole course of the debate which took
place upon it. The principle of protection, as a substantive element in the bill, was
avowed or admitted by every member who took part in the debate. When a long list of
articles for specific duties was offered to be added to those embraced in the original pro¬
position of Mr. Madison—articles which were finally incorporated in the bill—he ac¬
cepted them, expressly declaring that some of the proposed duties may be " productive
of revenue," and some may " protect our domestic manufactures,'''' thus distinguishing
them into separate classes, as having revenue or protection respectively for their object,
though combined in the same bill. On the following day, Mr. Glymer, of Pennsylvania,
adverting to the character of the act, said he " did not object to this mode of encourag¬
ing manufactures and obtaining revenue by combining the two objects in one bill.
He was satisfied there was a political necessity for the one and the other, and it Would
not be amiss to do it in this way."
If the honorable Senator will look a little further into the detail of the legislative pro¬
ceedings on that occasion, he will find various articles brought forward day after day on
the express ground of meriting encouragement by means of protecting duties. The
House of Representatives was engaged for weeks, in committee of the whole, in an
emulous selection of objects connected with the agriculture or manufactures of the coun¬
try, which wej-e supposed to have the strongest claims to legislative protection. One
of the most singular results disclosed by this review—and I beg leave to call the atten¬
tion of my honorable friend from South Carolina (Mr. McDcffie) to it, that he may
correct me if I have fallen into error—is, that that very interest of the cotton culture,
which of late years has been most violently arrayed against the principle of protection,
in all probability took its origin, as a stable and regular branch of national industry, in
the protective and beneficent provisions of the act of '89.
I find, on looking into the debates on that occasion, that, the duty on hemp being
under consideration, Mr. Burke, a member from South Carolina, warmly advocated it,
believing that the lands of South Carolina and Georgia were well adapted to its growth.
He stated that the staple products of that part of the Union (meaning doubtless rice and
indigo) were hardly worth cultivating, on account of their fall in price ; that the planters
were therefore disposed to pursue some other; that hemp, he thought, might be
attempted by them with advantage ; and he added, " cotton is likewise in contempla¬
tion among them, and if good seed could be procured, he hoped it might succeed.'"
This was on the 16th of April, '89. The bill was returned from the Senate on the 12th
of June, with an amendment imposing three cents per pound on cotton, which was con¬
curred in by the House, and at that rate the duty on cotton has ever since stood, through
all the successive mutations of the tariff in other respects, from 1789 to the present time.
Now, sir, it happens, by a very remarkable coincidence, that this very year, 1789
is noted in the history of the cotton trade, as the era of the first introduction of the sea-
island cotton into the United States, and of the permanent establishment of the cotton
10
culture generally, as a systematic branch of American agriculture in the southern States
of the Union. The circumstances attending the first essay in the culture of the sea-island
cotton in the United States, as given by the historians of a trade which has produced so
great a revolution in the industry and commerce of the world, are so curious in this
particular connexion, that they deserve to be mentioned. It appears that a West India
planter, who had removed to Georgia for the purpose of engaging in the culture of cotton,,
received from a friend in Jamaica, in the spring of 178G, several sacks of the Rernarn-
buco cotton seed. No use, however, was made of these seeds until 1789, when a suc¬
cessful experiment was made with them, to which is traced the first introduction of the
culture of the sea-island cotton into the United States ; and from the same epoch is dated
the introduction, to any considerable extent, of the cultivation of the upland cotton, and the
permanent establishment of the cotton plant as a staple production of the United States.*"
This coincidence between the first establishment of' the cotton culture as a branch of
national industry, and the protective duty of '89, may, after all, it is true, be a fortuitous
association; but it certainly is no violent presumption to suppose that the countenance
and encouragement thus extended by the legislature to an infant enterprise, in its first
feeble efforts to maintain itself, gave a confidence and security to all engaged'in it, which
contributed greatly to its successful and firm establishment.
(Mr. McDuffie here said that it was a low duty, not averaging, at that time, more
than ten per cent, of the price of the article, and was imposed for revenue.)
The protective duties then imposed, said Mr. Rives, were all moderate, as the Sena¬
tor frdrtt South Carolina has himself shown, it being deemed expedient, as will be seen,
by refhrbnce to the debates, to begin with moderate duties, and to increase them after¬
wards,'bV degrees, as should be found necessary.* Whatever proportion the duty of 3
eents-jibr pound on cotton may have borne to the price of the article at that time, we
know'tlmt, for years past, it has been equivalent to from thirty to fifty per cent, ad valo¬
rem. ' That it was high enough at first to operate as a material protection to tne planter
is, 1 think, clearlv proved by the earnest recommendation of General Hamilton, in his
repdrt on manufactures in 1791, to repeal it, as highly injurious to the interests of the
cotton manufacturer. The Senator from South Carolina will see, if he will turn to that
report, that General Hamilton considered the duty high enough to be, in the language
of the report, " a very serious impediment to the progress of the cotton manufactories."
The cotton then produced in the southern States was considered of an inferior quality to
that imported from abroad; and the Secretary of the Treasury, deeming it to be of great
importance to the success of the infant cotton manufactures, just starting into existence,
that thev should have " the full benefit of the best materials on the cheapest terms," ear¬
nestly urged the repeal of the duty, as '•indispensable " for that object. All this, sure¬
ly, implies such an enhancement of price from the operation of the duty, or such a dim¬
inution of the supply of the foreign article under its effects, as to be a virtual protection
to the American planter, at the expense of the manufacturer. At the same time, he pro¬
posed, as a substitute for the duty on imported cotton, a bounty on the domestic cotton;
thus recognising, by the nature of the substitute, the protective character of the duty he
proposed to repeal! Notwithstanding the urgent recommendation of General Hamilton,
the duty was not repealed, nor has it been repealed or reduced, down to the present day.
Can it be supposed, if there was no other interest involved but that of the trifling revenue
it yielded, it could have withstood such a recommendation, coming from so high and so
influential an official source?
But, sir, to return from what seemed to me a curious episode, at least, in the history
of this question, and into which I have been drawn at greater length than I intended—
Nothing is more incontrovertible than the numerous and prominent protective features
in the act of 1789. Let any gentleman look into the instructive debates which took
place on that occasion, and he will see at once how largely the consideration of protec¬
tion entered into the very foundation of that act. A series of duties on various produc-
*See White's History of the Cotton Manufacture, cited in Hunt's Merchants' Magazine for March, 1841. Art. 1, "The-
American Cotton Trade.
11
tions of agriculture or manufactures—distilled spirits, beer, ale, porter, cheese, soap,
candles, boots, shoes, and other manufactures of leather, steel, nails, spikes, hemp, cor¬
dage, manufactured tobacco and snuff, coal, glass, paper, &e., &c., was proposed and
carried, expressly and avowedly with a view to the protection and encouragement of the
domestic industry of the country. Revenue and protection went hand in hand through
the provisions of the act, as substantive but associated objects, in the minds of the en¬
lightened legislature of that day. The foundations of our national policy were laid on
the union of these two elements, by the wise men who had had the chief agency in the
formation of the Constitution, and who were first called to the practical administration
of its powers.
All this took place during the first session of the first Congress which assembled un¬
der the Constitution. The principle, then settled, met with1 a yet more emphatic con¬
firmation, by the unanimous voice of the representatives of the people, at the succeed¬
ing session of the same Congress ; which, as it has not hitherto been noticed, so far as
I know, I may be excused for bringing to the recollection of the Senate. The first
speech, (as it -was called,) of General Washington to Congress was made in January,
1790, at the second session of that body. In the course of the speech, he congratulated
Congress that " the measures of the last session had proved satisfactory to their con¬
stituents," recommended to them " the advancement of agriculture, commerce, and man¬
ufactures by all proper means," and declared with emphatic earnestness that " tire safety
and interest of a free people require' that they should promote such manufactories as tend
to render them independent of other nations for essential, particularly military, supplies."
To this speech the House of Representatives returned an address, (as the usqge then
was,) in which they say—" We concur with you in the sentiment that agriculture, com¬
merce, and manufactures are entitled to legislative protection,*" and though the dppight oi
the address, as reported, underwent several amendments in the House, none was pro¬
posed to this important passage, and the address containing it was, as the journal states,
unanimously agreed to by the House. The principle of protection, carried into practi¬
cal details in the act of '89, at the first session of the first Congress which met under
the Constitution, was thus solemnly and unanimously ratified by the same enlightened
body at its second session, with the concurrence of the Father of his country, who had
himself presided over the deliberations of the Convention which framed the Constitution.
I was very much surprised, Mr. President, to hear the Senator from Alabama, who
addressed the Senate a few days ago, (Mr, Bagby,) say that none of the earlier Presi¬
dents had given their sanction to the principle of protection. We have just seen what
Washington did. Mr. Jefferson, in the high public stations which he filled at different
times, has, perhaps, done as much as any other American statesman to recommend and
enforce this principle. In his report, as Secretary of State, in February, 1791, on the
Fisheries, he urged, with an ability and comprehensive and national spirit which did him
the highest honor, the propriety and expediency of increasing the duties on foreign fish,
for the protection and encouragement of our hardy and enterprising eastern fishermen.
He anticipated many of the arguments which have since become the leading topics in
favor of protection; and among them, the policy of " compensating, as far as practicable,
the loss of markets abroad, by the creation of markets at home." This report, it must
be borne in mind, preceded the celebrated report of General Hamilton on manufactures
near a twelve-month; and I will here remark, that it was not the principle of protection,
but some of the means by which that distinguished statesman proposed to carry it
into effect, to wit, bounties, premiums, and the discretionary disposal of large funds by
a board of public officers, together with some very broad principles of constitutional
construction, which rendered the able and masterly report of General Hamilton obnox¬
ious at the time to the republican sentiment of the country. In place of these direct
stimulants, Mr. Jefferson proposed the indirect but, probably, not less efficient encour¬
agement, of duties on rival foreign productions. This policy he brought forward, still
more systematically and elaborately than he had done in his report on the Fisheries, in a
report made by him, as Secretary of State, in December, 1793, on the state of our for-
12
eign commerce, in which he recommended, that when a nation imposes high duties on
our productions, or prohibits them altogether, we should do the same by theirs; and,
unlike the modern school of a cosmopolite political economy, which insists that all
discriminations in the imposition of duties should be made against the productions of
our own industry, he recommended such a gradation of duties " as should first burden
or exclude those productions which they, (foreign nations,) bring here, in competition
with our own of the same kind."'''
[Mr. Bacby here said, that he had referred to the messages to Congress of our early
Presidents, and particularly to those of Mr. Jefferson, in which he recommended such
aid to be given to agriculture, manufactures, &c., as was " within the limits of the con¬
stitutional powers" of Congress; so that nothing is gained, unless it be shown that he
entertained the opinion that Congress has the constitutional power to lay duties for
protection.]
Mr. Rives resumed : The honorable Senator read from the first message of Mr. Jef¬
ferson to Congress, in which the qualification cited by him is contained, and by which
Mr. Jefferson probably meant to exclude such modes of encouragement as had been
suggested by Gen. Hamilton, and which he considered unconstitutional. But that he
de ;med duties for protection clearly constitutional, is proved by his having strongly
recommended them in both of the above mentioned reports, made by htm as Secretary
of State, and still more explicitly by the language and recommendations of his subse¬
quent messages. In his very next message to Congress, (in 1802,) he recommended
the "-protection of the manufactures adapted to our circumstances," as one of the
great land-marks of a sound national policy. In 1806, when the flourishing state of
our foreign commerce had caused the impost duties to yield a large surplus beyond the
existing demands of the Government, he preferred all the dangers and embarrassments
of that surplus, rather than by reducing the duties, to " give that advantage," to use his
own language, " to foreign, over domestic manufacturesand in 1808, when the ag¬
gressions upon our neutral commerce by the belligerent powers of Europe, had, in a
great degree, driven it from the ocean, and caused a large portion of the capital and in¬
dustry of our citizens to be applied to manufactures, he expressly recommended " pro¬
tecting duties," and even " prohibitions" as among the proper means of giving secu¬
rity and permanency to this new direction of the national industry. This was the lan¬
guage of his last message as President to Congress, and crowns with a most emphatic
testimony, and by recommendations of unusual energy, his long and steady advocacy of
the interests of domestic industry.
The opinions and public acts of Mr. Madison, through his long and eminent career
of public service, were not less strongly marked by a zealous and unwavering support
of the same national doctrines. In 1789, he heartily concurred, as we have seen, in
the wise and beneficent system of policy established by the first Congress under the
Constitution, of which it is no disparagement of the just claims of his many able and
patriotic associates to say, that he was the guiding and ruling spirit. In 1794, he was
the mover and powerful champion of the celebrated commercial propositions, intended
to carry into effect the principles and recommendations of Mr. Jefferson's Report of
December, 1793. In every one of his messages to Congress, during the eight vears of
his presidency, with the exception only of the three years of the war with England,
when the question was of course temporarily suspended, he urgently recommended the
manufacturing industry of the country to the " protecting and fostering" care of the
legislature. In one of his messages before the war, he said, almost in the words of
Washington, " The national interest requires that with respect to such articles at least
as belong to our defence and our primary wants, we should not be left in unnecessary
dependence upon foreign supplies." In his very first message after the close of the
war, recurring to the importance, in a national view, of sustaining the manufactures
which had sprung into existence, and attained an unparalleled maturity throughout the
United States, during the period of the European wars, he says, in language of emphatic
earnestness, •' This source of national independence and wealth, I anxiously recommend
13
to the prompt and constant guardianship of Congress." And in his succeeding message
of December, 1815, in bringing the subject again to the consideration of Congress, he
enforced it with so lucid a statement of the just principles of a sound and practical com¬
mercial legislation, and by so calm and persuasive an exhibition of great national inter¬
ests, that the pregnant paragraph he devotes to it will, in all future time, be looked back
to as comprehending, in the fewest words, the most satisfactory exposition and defence
of the true system of American policy.*
The Senator from New Hampshire, who spoke yesterday, (Mr. Atherton,) read an
isolated extract from a speech of Mr. Madison in 1789, to show that he advocated the
modern doctrine of unlimited free trade. But the honorable Senator should have read
other portions of the same speech, and then he would have been better qualified to judge
of the creed of Mr. Madison from a view of the whole context. He would have seen,
that while Mr. Madison admitted that capital and labor are, in general, most usefully
employed when left to the guidance of private interest, without legislative interference,
(as, indeed, who does not admit the general principle,) yet that, in the policy of nations,
there are many just and necessary practical exceptions, which he proceeds distinctly tc
set forth and enforce in the subsequent and most important part of his speech. Among
these exceptions, he particularly insists upon the duty of the Government to sustain ex¬
isting establishments, which ought not to be allowed to perish for the want of timely
protection, and which it would be cruel to abandon, and leave the industry employed ir
them to seek new channels; for he adds, " it is not possible for the hand of man tc
shift from one employment to another, without being injured by the change." Again
he says, in the same speech, that while there are some manufactures which can advance
towards perfection without any adventitious aid, there are others, which demand the
" fostering hand" of the Government, and that the prudent and wise selection pf p^opei
objects for this fostering aid, is the legitimate province of a sound legislative discretion
Let the whole doctrine of this speech of Mr. Madison be compared with the recontmen
dations of his messages as President, and particularly with the broad and comprehen
sive survey of the subject contained in his leading message of 1815, and it will, he seer
what a beautiful and enlightened consistency linked together the acts and opinions o
this great American statesman, at these two widely separated periods of his long anc
illustrious career.
The principles of a sound discriminative commercial policy which I have thus showr
to have been coeval with the Constitution itself, and to have been cherished and main¬
tained by all our great republican statesmen of an era the most fruitful in lessons of po¬
litical wisdom, are, at the same time, sanctioned by the authority of the most celebratec
writers on the science of political economy—even of those whose names are often
* The portion of the message of 1815, referred to above, is in the following words, which, whether a:
a text of instruction, or a well defined outline of a system of public policy, cannot be too often or toe
carefully studied.
" In adjusting the duties on imports to the object of revenue, the influence of the tariff on manufac-
tures, will necessarily present itself for consideration. However wise the theory may be, which leave:
to the sagacity and interest of individuals the application of their industry and resources, there are it
this, as in other cases, exceptions to the general rule. Besides the condition which the theory itself im
plies, of a reciprocal adoption by other nations, experiences teaches that so many circumstances mus
concur in introducing and maturing manufacturing establishments, especially of the more complicatec
kinds, that a country may remain long without them, although sufficiently advanced, and in some re
spects, even peculiarly fitted for carrying them on with success. Under circumstances giving a power
ful impulse to manufacturing industry, it has made among us a progress, and exhibited an efficiency
which justify the belief, that with a protection not more than is due to the enterprising citizens whosi
interests are now at stake, it will become, at an early day, not only safe against occasional competition:
from abroad, but a source of domestic wealth, and even of external commerce. In selecting the branche:
more especially entitled to the public patronage, preference is obviously claimed by such as will relievi
the United States from a dependence on foreign supplies, ever subject to casual failures, for articles ne
cessary tor the public defence, or connected with the primary wants of individuals. It will be an addi
tional recommendation of particular manufactures, where the materials for them are extensively drawi
from agriculture, and consequently impart and insure to that great fund of national prosperity and inde
pendence, an encouragement which cannot fail to be rewarded."
14
invoked in support of the doctrines of unlimited free trade. Adam Smith is the oracle
most frequently appealed to by the disciples of the modern school of free trade. And
yet Adam Smith was far from espousing the doctrines of free trade in the unqualified
sense in which they are now put forward by its advocates. He says expressly that it
would be as absurd to expect to see a system of unlimited free trade adopted in Great
Britain, as to expect that an Oceana or Utopia should ever be established in it.
In his great work on the Wealth of Nations, he has himself laid down limitations of
the highest importance, and of great practical extent, upon the general freedom of trade.
In the first place, he maintains distinctly that where certain branches of industry or man¬
ufactures are essential to the defence and security of the country, it is proper and wise,
in all such cases, to lay burthens upon foreign, for the encouragement of domestic indus¬
try ; and upon that principle he vindicates and upholds the policy of the navigation act
of Great Britain, which he pronounces to be " the wisest, perhaps, of all her commer¬
cial regulations," while he shows it, at the same time, to be directly at war with the
fundamental canons of the free trade school. Again, he says that where foreign nations
restrain by high duties or prohibitions the importaion of our productions into their coun¬
tries, it is a sound as well a just policy to impose like duties and restraints upon the
introduction of the produce of their industry into ours, if there be reasonable ground to
believe that the effect of such imposition may be to lead ultimately to a relaxation of the
foreign restrictions or prohibitions of which we complain. Mr. Jefferson seems to have
had this principle of Smith in his mind when, in his celebrated commercial report of
1793, he says : " Free commerce and navigation are not to be given in exchange for re¬
strictions and vexations ; nor are they likely to produce a relaxation of them.''''
A third and most important limitation laid down by Adam Smith upon the general
freedom of trade is founded on the paternal regard which every just and wise government
is bound to show to existing interests. lie lays it down, therefore, distinctly, that where
large amounts of capital or a considerable portion of the population of a country have
been employed in particular branches of industry, under the encouragement of former
legislation, humanity as well as justice enjoins great " reserve and circumspection" in
any modification of the laws under whose protection these interests have grown up.
How wide-reaching as well as important this great principle of conservative legislation
is in its application to the question now before us, I shall have occasion to show in the
further progress of my remarks.
Another very important, and, in its practical consequences, most fruitful exception to
the general principle of free trade, though not formally stated by Adam Smith among
the several limitations upon that doctrine which he enumerates, results directly from ex¬
plicit admissions and statements made by him. The argument he urges in favor of the
general policy of a liberal and unrestrained commercial intercourse with foreign coun¬
tries, is founded upon the hypothesis that the articles we get from them will come
cheaper to us than we can make them ourselves. In such cases, he contends that the
general effect of commercial restrictions with a view to promote domestic production is,
to divert industry from a more to a less advantageous employment, and to diminish the
exchangable value of the annual produce of the country. But he adds this important
qualification and admission :
" By means of such regulations, indeed, a particular manufacture may sometimes be acquired sooner
than it could have been otherwise, and after a certain time may be made at home as cheap or cheaper
than in the foreign country."—Wealth of Nations, B. IV", Chap. 2.
Here, then, is an explicit declaration by the great oracle of the free trade school, con¬
trary to what is so constantly asserted by them, (as to the necessary and invariable effect
of protective duties to raise the price of the protected article,) that particular branches of
industry may sometimes be introduced ivith advantage into a country by means of pro¬
tective duties, sooner than they otherwise would be; and that, after a time, their produce
may be afforded cheaper at home than in the foreign country. Wherever such is the
case, the very foundation, on which the argument against protection is built, fails. This
15
pregnant admission of the author of the Wealth of Nations, then, constitutes another
and most important head of exception to the generality of the free trade principle.
That there are cases in which a great reduction of price eventually takes place after the
firm establishment of a manufacture, which, but for some legislative encouragement,
might have remained for a long time, if not altogether, unattempted, the experience of
every country seems to prove. A country may, in the possession of the raw material,
or other superior natural advantages, have a peculiar aptitude for a particular manufac¬
ture, and yet from the backwardness of capital to embark on new and untried enter-
prizes, or for the want of previously-acquired skill, individuals will not engage in it
without the confidence and security derived from public protection; but when it has
been once introduced and established under the auspices of that protection, and its
practicability and advantages demonstrated, a large number of persons will be eager to
invest their capital and industry in it, and the domestic competition thus produced,
leading to improved processes, and to increased dexterity and skill, ultimately cheapens
the article. This effect, however, must be understood as predicated only of such
branches ofindustiy as a country, in its natural advantages or otherwise, possesses a
decided aptitude for.
The remark just quoted of Adam Smith refers to the ultimate effect which may be
produced upon the price of particular articles by the operation of protective duties.
Much has been said in the course of this debate, Mr. President, as to the more imme¬
diate effect of such duties upon prices. It has been contended by some that these duties
are in effect paid by the producer, and do not enter into the price of the article. On the
other hand, the honorable Senator front South Carolina contends that they invariably
enhance the price of the article by the amount of the duty imposed, and are therefore
paid by the consumer. A little investigation will, I think, show that there is no invari¬
able rule on the subject, but that the duty is paid bt the producer or the consumer, or
divided between the two, (as often happens,) according to the circumstances of each
particular case. The proposition that the duty is invariably paid by the consumer, in a
corresponding increase of the price of the article, evidently rests upon the assumption of
two principles, neither of which is universally true. The first of these principles is, that
the price of an article always corresponds with the cost of production, or is barely suffi¬
cient to repay the actual outlay (including ordinary profit) incurred in its fabrication and
preparation for market. If this were so, then it is clear that the producer could not pay
the duty, for its payment would force him to quit his business. But it is not true that the
price of an article always corresponds with the cost of production. On the contrary, the
cost of production is, as Adam Smith says, only '• the central point to which the market
price of commodities is continually gravitating." But various circumstances conspire, in
many commodities, as he satisfactorily shows, to keep up the market price for a long
time, (even for centuries, in some particular commodities,) much above the cost of pro¬
duction. In all such cases, the producer may afford to pay the duty, (if it should be
necessary to do so in order to effect a ready sale of his goods,) without being forced to
quit his business.
The other principle assumed in the proposition, that the consumer always pays the
duty, is that there is an uniform level of profits in the various employments of capital
and industry, and therefore if the duty imposed upon a particular commodity were paid
by the producer or dealer in the article, it would reduce his profits below the general
level, and he would transfer his capital to some other employment, yielding him the
general rate of profit.* But, in point of fact, there is no such uniform level of profits
in the different employments of capital. There is, as Adam Smith says, a constant
tendency to equality, (rather than an actual equality,) in the aggregate advantages and
disadvantages of the various employments of stock and labor in the same country.
But that there exist, in every country, very different rates of pecuniary profit, in differ-
* This is the reasoning of Ricardo: but it is ably controverted by Say, both in his Traite and his:
Cours d'economie politique, particularly the latter.
16
ent trades and occupations, without occasioning any transference of capital or labor
from one to another, is a familiar fact, about which there can be no controversy. The
honorable Senator from South Carolina (Mr. McDuFFiii) himself, has stated the various
rates of profit in different occupations in this country, as ranging from 5 percent., which
he considers the average rate of profit in farming and planting industry, to 12, 20, 35
and even 40 per cent., which he mentions as different gradations of manufacturing pro¬
fit. The rates of profit, then, differing so widely in point of fact, in different depart¬
ments of industry, notwithstanding the general tendency to approximation, the duties
Upon particular articles in the more profitable branches of trade, may often be paid,
"wholly or in part, by the producer or the dealer in those branches, without occasioning
any sensible transference of capital from one employment to another.
, Whether the duty, then, falls upon the consumer or the producer, or partly upon one
and partly upon the other, will depend, in each individual case, upon the previous ele¬
vation of the price of the article and the relative profitableness of the particular branch
of industry or manufacture, combined with the actual proportion between demand and
supply in the market at the time. Thrre is so practical and common sense a view of
• this whole subject, in a work of high authority, to which we never resort for instruction
in vain, that 1 am tempted to read it to the Senate, the more especially as my honorable
friend from New Hampshire (Mr. Woodbury) found it convenient, in quoting from the
same paper, to stop in the middle of a sentence, where I will now take up and continue
the quotation. The honorable Senator read a part of a paragraph from the 35th No. of
the Federalist, in which the writer, speaking of the evil effects of exorbitant duties, re¬
presents them as tending to produce smuggling, to render other classes tributary to
manufactures, to force industry out of its natural channels, and finally, he adds, " and, in
the last place, they oppress the merchant"—Here, in the verv middle of the sentence,
the honorable Senator came to a full stop, adding &c. &c. But the writer proceeds—
they oppress the merchant, " who is often obliged to pay them himself, without any re¬
tribution from the consumer. When the demand is equal to the quantity of goods at
market, the consumer generally pays the duty; but when the markets happen to be
overstocked, a great proportion falls upon the merchant, and sometimes not only ex¬
hausts his profits, but breaks in upon his capital. 1 am apt to think that a division of
the duty between the seller and the buyer more often happens than is commonly im¬
agined. It is not always possible to raise the price of a commodity, in exact proportion
to every additional imposition laid upon it. The merchant, especially in a country ot
small commercial capital, is often under a necessity of keeping prices down, in order
to a more expeditious sale." What the writer here says of the merchant, is applicable
rather to the producer, the real and original seller of the commodity, and serves at least
to show that the burthen of the duty does not exclusively fall upon the consumer, as is
now contended.
While it is thus established by the authority of the ablest theoretical writers on poli¬
tical economy, as well as by the wisdom of legislators and the practice of nations, that
in many cases, duties may and ought to be imposed with a view to the encouragement
and protection of domestic industry as well as revenue, a sound policy undoubtedly de¬
mands a sober moderation in the imposition of these duties. In this, as in other eases,
involving the wise direction of human policy and conduct, there is a middle line to be
observed, on either side of which is error, and to go beyond, or fall short of it, is equally
attended with evil consequences and injustice;—
" Est modus in rebus; sunt certi denique fines,
Quos ultra citraque nequit consistere rectum."
There may be an ultraism of restriction, as well as a citra-ism, (if I may be allowed
to coin a word from my quotation,) of free-trade. The aim of a wise policy should be
to avoid either extreme, and to adjust the duties on foreign imports so as not to give a
monopoly either to the domestic producer, or to the importer. And here I will remark,
Mr. President, that a practical monopoly may result from the extravagance of free trade.
17
as well as from the violence of prohibition, for if we expose the nascent efforts of the
industry and genius of our own countrymen to be overwhelmed in an unequal struggle
with the establishments of the old world, we thereby give, as effectually, a monopoly
to the foreign manufacturer, as by the prohibitory system it would be given to the do¬
mestic producer. A sound pojicy forbids both. Duties upon importation should be so
regulated as not to exclude the foreign commodity, but to admit it on terms which will
place the domestic producer and the importer on a footing of fair and equal competition.
Competition is the true interest of the manufacturer, as well as the consumer. It is the
nurse of skill and excellence—the spur to industry, economy and improvement—giving
steadiness of prices, and furnishing the best security against revulsions, which some¬
times overwhelm in utter ruin the pampered trades which rely too much on legislative
protection. A judicious and rational system of protection seeks to assist, not to force,
nature. Where a country possesses aptitudes and facilities for particular branches of
industry, essential to the national prosperity or independence, such a system draws
them forth and sustains them by suitable encouragements, but never bolsters up by the
mere force of legislation—by premiums, bounties, or other artificial stimulants—un¬
dertakings for which nature has given 110 adequate capacity or advantage.
Much error and prejudice, in my opinion, Mr. President, have arisen among the spec¬
ulative minds of our country, from confounding the rational and discriminative commer¬
cial policy which I have endeavored to describe, with the antiquated barbarism and ab¬
surdities of the so-called mercantile system, against which the writings of Adam Smith
and the political philosophers of his school, have been so ably and so successfully di¬
rected. But no two things, in my humble judgment, can be more distinct. The ge¬
nius of the mercantile system was artificial regulation, arbitrary restraints, prohibi¬
tion, monopoly, in all the pursuits of industry and commerce. It had its great imper¬
sonation in the celebrated minister of Louis XIV, Colbert, whom Adam Smith graphi¬
cally describes as a laborious and plodding man of business," who had been accus¬
tomed to regulate, with the most exact order, the various administrative bureaus under
his direction, and who " endeavored to regulate the industry and commerce of a great
country upon the same model as the departments of a public office." Carrying this
spirit of artificial regulation and restraint into the commercial relations of France, he
virtually prohibited by his tariff of 1667, many of the most important foreign manufac¬
tures which France had been in the habit of importing. In retaliation of this policy,
England, a few years after, formally and absolutely prohibited the importation of
French goods, and at a later period, in the reign of William III, renewed the prohibi¬
tion, and declared, by act of parliament, the trade with France to be a nuisance. Fi¬
nally, when this formal prohibition was withdrawn, a scale of duties was substituted
equivalent to prohibition—75 per cent, being the lowest rate of duty to which the
greatest part of French goods were subjected. Here was an exemplification, on both
sides, of that mercantile system, against which the reasonings of Adam Smith were so
powerfully directed. If gentlemen will take the trouble to recur to his remarks on the
principles of that system, which it was the chief object of his labors to expose and
overthrow, thev will find he constantly describes it as having for its object a " mono¬
poly" of the home market, and for its means " prohibition" of rival foreign commod¬
ities.
This system survived, in many of its arbitrary and vexatious restrictions, down to a
comparatively recent period in England. Some curious and instructive evidences of
it are mentioned by Mr. Huskisson. In his speech on commercial reform, in 1825, he
says, " within my own time, regulating acts, dealing with every minute process of the
woollen manufacture, have been repealed by the score f and in his great speech on the
state of the country, in 1830, he says, " six or seven hundred statutes, passed for im¬
proving the commerce and industry of the country, by a system of protection, prohibi¬
tion, restriction, and interference, have been repealed." It was this antiquated, and
now exploded system, against which the writings of political philosophers, and the ef¬
forts of enlightened legislators have been directed, and justly and properly directed, dur-
18
ing the past arid present century. Mr. Huskisson, the great commercial reformer of
England, and often held up as the champion of free trade, was not the opponent of pro¬
tection. It was prohibition he opposed, and to a great extent, overthrew. In intro¬
ducing the changes which he proposed and carried in the tariff of England, in 1825,
lie expressly declared that the alterations he proposed were in duties which he consid¬
ered prohibitory; and he asked support for his propositions, only (to use his own
words,) " so far as they shall be found not inconsistent with the protection of our own
industry;" and subsequently, in 1830, he energetically repudiated the cognomen of
free trade, as " unmeaning and absurd" in its application to the system of measures
which he had brought forward and triumphantly carried through. Moderate, judicious,
discriminating protection, in connexion with revenue, and as contra-distinguished from
prohibition, is that safe and practical line of policy, to which the public opinion of this
country is now rallying with an extraordinary and auspicious unanimity. There have
been periods in our history when there have been strong tendencies manifested, even to
a prohibitory policy. The legislation of 1828 is now, by general consent, considered
as marking an era of that sort. But that day is past; and the honorable Senator from
New York, (Mr. Wright,) who addressed the Senate some days ago, might, therefore,
have spared himself the trouble of the able and elaborate argument he delivered against
prohibition. Who proposes or advocates prohibition now? Certainly not mj honor¬
able friend from Massachusetts, (Mr. Bates,) nor my other honorable friend, the Sen¬
ator from Vermont, (Mr. Phelps,) among the most zealous champions of the tariff of
1842, but who have explicitly declared that they ask no more protection to the agri¬
cultural and manufacturing industry of their constituents than will be yielded by such a
revenue tariff, with fair and proper discriminations, as may be necessary for the wise-
and economical administration and support of the Government. The same sentiment
has had the sanction and concurrence of other honorable Senators from the same quar¬
ter of the Union, who have borne prominent and distinguished parts in this debate.
This brings me, Mr. President, to some observations on the act of 1842; and first,
to feorrect a very extraordinary misconception as to the origin of that act. It has been
very generally treated by its adversaries, in the discussions which have recently taken
place, as a measure originating in the policy of protection. But such is not the fact.
The public and well-known history of the measure, proves that its object was revenue,
though, doubtless, in the adjustment of its details, regard was paid to the interests of
domestic industry. For years, the current expenditures of the Government had beers
permitted to exceed its current revenue; and when the accumulation of former sur-
plusses with which the last administration commenced its career, was exhausted, and
the current revenue fell habitually short of the current expenditure, instead of resorting
to direct and proper means of supplying the deficiency, that administration preferred
relying upon the hollow and delusive expedient of treasury notes. They thus passed
the Government into the hands of their successors with a large accumulation of debt,
and with an established deficiency in the current resources of the treasury to meet the
current demands upon it. During the last year of that administration (1840) the cur¬
rent nett revenue of the Government was between thirteen and fourteen millions of dol¬
lars, while its current expenditure was between twenty-two and twenty-three millions.
To fill up so wide a gap between the income and expenses of the Government, as well
as to provide for the payment of the public debt, those who succeeded to the management
of public affairs, deemed it incumbent upon them, in the high and honorable discharge
of their duty to the country, to raise additional revenue, by a fair and open resort to the
necessary means of doing it. For this purpose, a law was passed, as Senators well re¬
collect, during the called session of 1841, laying duties upon various articles of foreign
import, which had been previously free. The revenue, however, even with the aid of
that act, still continuing entirely inadequate to meet the demands upon the Government
for its current service and the discharge of the public debt together, it became absolutely
necessary to lay further duties for the support of the Government. In this necessity,
the act of 1842 had its origin ; and if gentlemen will take the trouble to recollect a little
19
the contemporary history of the measure, and especially to look at the able and lucid
speech of the honorable gentleman, then chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means
of the other House, (Mr. Fillmore,) whose duty it was to introduce and explain the
act, they will see that its open, avowed, patent and manifest object was revenue, ur¬
gently called for to sustain the faith of the nation, and to meet the wants of the public
service. Whatever may be the incidental operation of the act upon certain interests of
domestic industry, and however its details may have been adjusted with a view to that
operation, it is still undoubtedly true that the primary and leading object of the law was
revenue.
While such was the object of the act, my apprehension at the time, from the high
rate of some of the duties, was that its practical effect would be to discourage importa¬
tions to such a degree as to reduce, instead of augmenting, the revenue. This opinion
was founded upon well authenticated data, derived from the financial experience of Eu¬
ropean Governments, in which it had been often seen that an increase of duties, by di¬
minishing consumption, lessened instead of increasing revenue. The result, however,
has shown that the experience of Europe cannot be safely relied on as furnishing con¬
clusions applicable to the financial condition and resources of America. The means of
consumption possessed by the industrious classes, who constitute the great mass of
consumers every where, being far more limited, from the stinted reward of labor, in Eu¬
rope than in this country, any increase of duty, which occasions a sensible enhancement
of price, necessarily diminishes consumption there, and is consequently often followed
by a diminution, instead of an increase, of revenue. But, in the United States, the more
liberal reward of labor and general prosperity of the industrious classes, giving a much
greater ability to consume, an increase of duty, even when attended with a corresponding
increase of price, seems to have but little etfect, comparatively, upon actual consumption
here. Whatever be the true solution of the phenomenon, it must be admitted that the
operation of the act of 1842, upon the foreign commerce and revenue of the countryn(so
far,) has not conformed to the conclusions which seemed fairly deducible from ,the
financial experience of Europe. The foreign commerce of the country, notwithstand¬
ing the temporary derangement manifested for the first six months after the passage of
the law, and which is satisfactorily accounted for by the uncertainty which had pre¬
vailed in regard to the final action of Congress upon the subject, is now in a more vigor¬
ous and flourishing state than it has been for years ; and the revenue from customs, in¬
stead of falling off, has increased from 13 to 17 millions in the first year of the opera¬
tion of the act, and during the present year, according to statements communicated by
the Treasury Department, will reach tb 20 or perhaps 25 millions.
I have now before me a comparative statement of the foreign commerce and revenue
receipts of the port of Boston for the first quarter of 1843, and the corresponding quar¬
ter of 1844, which exhibits, in so striking a point of view, the progressive operation of
the act of 1842, in both of these respects, that I cannot forbear to give the results of it to
the Senate. During the first quarter of 1843, when the effect of the act of 1842 had
hardly begun to be felt, the number of ships from foreign ports arrived at Boston, was
138. During the first quarter of the present year, the number of foreign arrivals there
was 222, being an increase, in a single quarter, of 84. During the first quarter of 1843,
the revenue received from customs at Boston was $589,740 ; the like revenue received
there during the first quarter of the present year was $1,310,000, exhibiting an increase of
revenue, for a single quarter, of $720,259. Fromanother statement 1 have in my posses¬
sion, it appears that the revenue from customs, received at the port of New York alone,
during the first quarter of the present year, was $5,731,546, exceeding the estimates in
the annual Treasury report of the gross receipts from all the custom-houses in the
Union during the first quarter of the year. So signal and decisive have been the actual
results thus far of the operation of the act of 1842 upon the commerce and revenue of
the country, contrasted with the apparently well-founded conclusions derived from the
experience of other countries, under the influence of which my vote was recorded against
its passage. It is the remark of a celebrated and profound philosophical writer,*
* Hume.
20
that " it frequently happens, in political institutions, that the consequences of things are
diametrically opposite to what we should expect on the first appearance." In nothing
is this so much the case, and reasonings a priori as little to be relied on, or so liable to be
contradicted by results, as in the complex problems of trade and finance; and I have
lived much too long, Mr. President, not to be sensible of the fallability of human judg¬
ment, and to be prepared, at all limes, to surrender opinions to the demonstrations of ex¬
perience.
While such has been the operation of the act of 1842 upon the revenue and foreign com¬
merce of the nation, its effects upon other connected interests have been alike propitious
and remarkable. The credit of the Government, the entire prostration of which, before
the passage of the law, had been a source of deep humiliation to every American citi¬
zen, has suddenly sprung up, as if touched by the wand of the enchanter, and is again
the object of universal confidence at home and abroad. Private and individual credit
have risen with it; and the slumbering spirit of American enterprise has once more
waked up, as a giant from his sleep. Amid the general activity and animation in all the
pursuits of the national industry, no interest is oppressed by the operation of the law ;
for the very existence of the controversy, which has been maintained with equal zeal
and confidence on both sides, in regard to prices, proves that there cannot have been
any material change in that respect, one way or the other. If some articles have risen
in price, others have fallen ; and in the general result, the interests of the great body of
consumers remain unaffected.
In this state of things, and when it is admitted, on all hands, that all the revenue
which the tariff' established by the act of 1812 is capable of yielding, is absolutely ne¬
cessary, at present, either for the current service of the Government, or for the discharge
of the public engagements, shall we wantonly interpose and arrest it in the full tide of its
success, simply because it does not conform to the theories of some gentlemen in regard
to the true standard of revenue duties, or that we may afford them the gratification of a
party triumph in the overthrow of a law against which they have sworn a solemn vow
of vengeance upon the altar of their party allegiance? For one, I cannot consent to do it.
The great public interests involved are vastly too important to be made the sport of
speculative theories or of legislative caprice. If we look alone to the interests, more im¬
mediately concerned, which have grown up to their present magnitude under the foster¬
ing influence of that system of laws of which the act of 1842 forms a part, we should
survey the ground carefully when we propose a fundamental alteration in their provisions.
The amount of capital invested in the various branches of manufacturing industry in the
United States, including mining and the mechanic arts, does not, at this moment, proba¬
bly, fall short of four hundred millions of dollars ; and the number of persons connected
with these pursuits, if we add to the operatives themselves their families and their de¬
pendants, has been computed to amount to about four millions of the free population of
America. Where so large an amount of the national capital is involved, and the liveli¬
hood of so numerous and interesting a portion of the population of the country may be
compromised, it surely becomes us, as guardians of the national weal, looking to the
interest of every part as redounding to, and indissolubly connected with, the strength
and prosperity of the whole, to proceed with caution by the clear lights of experience,
and not to surrender ourselves blindly to preconceived and untested theories. In a
voyage where the venture is so great, we should heave the lead every step of our pro¬
gress. Let experience decide the nature and extent of changes in the law, as changes
shall from time to time be shown to be necessary and expedient, and then we may have
the reasonable hope of correcting existing evils, without the danger of introducing new
and still greater ones.
There are those, I fear, Mr. President, who, in the heats engendered in our political
controversies, have come to regard this great branch of the national industry and wealth
with aversion rather than favor. But a little reflection will satisfy them that manufac¬
tures, with the extraordinary improvements of art introduced by the inventive genius of
the age, form a chief and most important element in the strength and power of modern
States. The effects of labor-saving machinery in this department of human industry,
21
in facilitating, cheapening, and augmenting production, have, within the last half century*
made an almost magical addition to the riches and financial resources of the nations
most largely engaged in manufactures. What but the wonderful development of this
new source of wealth and power in England, during that eventful period, enabled her to
sustain, not only without exhaustion, but with undiminished prosperity, especially in
her great agricultural interest, the extraordinary financial efforts called for in her mighty
struggle with the colossal power of Europe, consolidated and directed by the ascendant
genius and energy of Napoleon? One of the most enlightened of her statistical writers,
in a very instructive work published a few years since, says, in reference to this subject—
" It is to the spinning jenny and the steam engine that we must look as the true mov¬
ing powers of our fleets and armies, and as the chief support, also, of a long continued
agricultural prosperity."*
We have a striking illustration of the creative powers of the same species of industry*
in adding to the mass of national wealth, in the history of our own country since 1820.
In that year, according to the census returns, the gross annual amount of manufactures
produced in the United States was $36,115,000. In 1840, their nett annual amount,,
(after deducting one-third of the gross amount on account of the value of raw materials,)
was $239,836,224; thus exhibiting an increase of more than six hundred per cent, in
twenty years, without making any allowance for the difference between gross and nett
value. An able and learned writer of my own State, (Professor Tucker,) who has laid
the whole country, and especially its legislators and public men, under deep obligation
by his recent valuable work on its statistical history, has deduced, from a comparison
of the data furnished by our census returns, the decennial rate of increase of the national
wealth in each of the great branches of national industry in the United States. He
shows the average decennial increase of wealth in those various branches, for the last
fifty years, to have been about fifty per cent., while the increase in manufactures for
each term of ten years, since 1820, has been at the extraordinary rate of two hundred,
and eighty-four per cent., according to the data which he considers safest for a com¬
parative estimate. There is one criterion, susceptible of precise ascertainment, which
seems fully to sustain this 'estimate, surprising as it is in its results. I refer to the ex¬
ports of domestic manufactures, which in 1820 were $2,342,000; in 1840, $12,868,840;
and in 1841, $13,523,071; being an increase of more than sixfold in twenty-one years*
while no other class of domestic exports has even doubled in the same period.
Every person, Mr. President, must perceive, at once, the immense benefits resulting
from this rapid growth of the manufacturing wealth and industry of the country to all
the other great branches of American enterprise—to our commerce, to our navigation,
to our agriculture. We have just seen, sir, how strikingly it has already fulfilled the
anticipation expressed by Air. Madison in his memorable message of December, 1815,
that it would " become, at an early day, not only a source of domestic wealth, but of
external commerce.'" Its contributions to the foreign commerce of the country will
become daily greater and greater, as the rapid improvement in the skill of our artizans,
and the superiority of their fabrics, become more and more known. But it is in furnish¬
ing exchanges for the vast interior commerce of our own country, through the multiplied
channels of intercourse along our lakes, our rivers, our canals, our railroads and our sea-
coast, that its great importance to the commercial and navigating interests of the country"
is chiefly seen and felt. I have been so much struck with a statement on this subject,
contained in a recent public letter of an able and distinguished gentleman, (Mr. Nathan
Appleton of Boston,) with whom I have had the honor of being associated in the pub¬
lic service here, and whose high personal character and accurate practical information
are known to all, that I take the liberty to read it to the Senate. " The trade," says
Mr. Appleton, "between Boston and New Orleans, employs a greater amount of ton¬
nage than that between New York and Liverpool ever did. Upwards of fifty square
rigged vessels of the larger class, have arrived at this port during the sixty days of Feb¬
ruary and March—one half of their cargoes, at least, consisting of the produce of the
'Porter's progress of the nation, vol. I, p. 188.
22
valley of the Ohio. This trade is the result of the protective system. How could we
take their beef, pork, flour, lard and wool, if they did not take our calicoes, cottons,
cabinet wares, shoes and other notions?"
Let us glance, for a moment, at the advantages flowing from this great development
of the manufacturing industry of the country to the most important of our interests—
the nursing mother of all the rest—our agriculture, It is manufactures, Mr. President,
which create the chief demand for the produce of agriculture, either as subsistence for
those employed in them, or as raw materials for the fabrics wrought by them. Hence
it has grown into an axiom of political economy, that " flourishing manufactures and
commerce are indispensable to a flourishing agriculture;" and I cannot agree, Mr.
President, with the honorable Senator from South Carolina, (Mr. McDuffie,) that
Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds are our natural markets for the consumption of
our produce, or the supply of our wants. On the contrary, the great oracle so often in¬
voked by those who belong to the same school of economical science and policy as the
honorable Senator, expressly declares that " every country is necessarily the best and
most extensive market for the greater part of the productions of its own industry."*
If this be true of countries in general, how emphatically true is it of a country of such
vast extent, and of such diversified productions and forms of industry, as the United
States. It is only necessary to recollect that cotton i6 not the only, or indeed the chief
agricultural production of the United States, to be convinced that American agriculture
must ever find the most important market for the mass of its productions at home, and
in the diversified employments of our own citizens. In saying this, 1 am far from in¬
tending to depreciate the great importance of foreign commerce, whether in its moral
apd political influences, or in its positive results. On the contrary, I heartily assent to
all that the honorable Senator so eloquently said in regard to it; and I wish to see it
expand and flourish, as I believe it is destined to do, hand in hand with that great inte¬
rior commerce which must ever remain by far the greater interest, both in the inappre¬
ciable extent of its numberless operations, (which the imagination can hardly embrace,
and which no power of figures can estimate in a country like ours,) and in the surpass¬
ing importance of its benefits to the nation.
It is deeply to be regretted that in the administrative organization of the Government,
no provision has yet been made for collecting such data as might enable us to form some
approximative idea of the vast extent and importance of our interior trade. I hope it
will not be long before this defect shall be supplied. In the absence of any official re¬
turns, my attention has been drawn to such estimates as have been framed, for separate
portions of the Union, by individual industry and intelligence. Among these. I find a
table annexed to a report recently submitted to the House of Representatives from its
Committee on Manufactures, containing an estimate of the agricultural products of other
States, annually consumed for subsistence or manufacture, in the State of Massachusetts.
These products consist of cotton, flour, Indian corn, beef, pork, bacon, hides, leather,
tobacco, and numerous other articles of agricultural produce, the growth of other States
of the Union, annually imported into Massachusetts, and amounting, in the aggregate,
to $40,741,150. This estimate, for a single State, may serve as a sample, to give us
some idea of the extent to which the agricultural Suites of the West and the South find
a market for their various productions in the manufacturing States of the East and the
North. But of the intimate connexion and mutual dependence which bind together all
the great branches of national industry—agriculture, manufactures, commerce and na¬
vigation—no proofs in detail can be needed. You cannot wound one, without inflict¬
ing an injury on the rest; and any sudden innovation in the laws to which the manu¬
facturing industry of the country owes its present prosperity, would give a sympathetic
shock to every ether interest and pursuit, while, at the same time, it would derange the
finances, and endanger the credit of the Government.
Having thus stated the considerations which determine my judgment against any dis¬
turbance, at present, of the act of 1842, I might here close my remarks. But having
* Adam Smith. Wealth of Nations, B. r. chap. ii.
23
observed with deep regret, the marked antagonism in which two of the most distin¬
guished States of this confederacy, South Carolina and Massachusetts, have been con¬
stantly placed towards each other, and the sharp words of recrimination and complaint
exchanged between them during the progress of this debate, in regard to interests pecu¬
liarly cherished by each, I have supposed it might not be without its use, in moderating
the violence of these collisions, to recal the solemn compact entered into directly and
particularly by these twa States, in the adjustment of those parts of the Constitution
under which the interests alluded to have respectively grown up. I know, Mr. Presi-
sident, the dangers which attend the office of mediator, in family quarrels; but the piece
of constitutional history to which I refer, is in itself so curious and instructive, and in¬
culcates, through the remembrance of the past, so just a lesson of mutual forbearance
and moderation, that I trust to be excused for entering into some development of it.
By the first draft of the Constitution, as it came from the hands of the committee of
detail, in the convention, Congress was invested with the general power to "regulate-
commerce with foreign nations and among the several States." Out of the generality
of this grant, however, certain exceptions were made and restrictions imposed, by two
subsequent sections of the instrument. By the first of these sections (4th sec. art. 7)
it was declared that " no tax or duty shall be laid on articles exported from any State;
nor on the migration or importation of such persons as the several States shall think
proper to admit ; nor shall such migration or importation be prohibited.,' Thid se¬
cured to such of the States as desired it, the unlimited privilege of importing slaves, fr'ee
from any control of Congress. By the other section referred to, (6th sec. art. 7,) it wah
provided that " no navigation act shall be passed without the assent of two-thirds of thfr
members present in each house." This put it out of the power of a mere majority bf
the two Houses of Congress to pass navigation laws, in which the eastern and northerft
States were particularly interested. In this state of things, Luther Martin, of Marylahd,
moved to amend the first of the above-mentioned sections, " so as to allow a prohibition?
or tax on the importation of slaves." This motion aroused an earnest opposition an'<f
resistance on the part of the delegates of South Carolina and Georgia, who declared that
their States would not come into the Union with a prohibition or restriction in the Con¬
stitution on the privilege of importing slaves. A warm debate arose on the subject,
which terminated in a commitment of this section to a committee of one member from
each State; and on the suggestion of Mr. Gouverneur Morris, tne other section, requir¬
ing a two-thirds vote for the passage of a navigation act, was also committed to the same
committee. He is reported, in Mr. Madison's Debates of the Convention, to have said,
very significantly, in submitting his suggestion to refer the two sections to the same
committee : " These things may form a bargain between the northern and southern
States."
Herfe, then, we have the germ of the bargain which was afterwards formally con-
eluded. The committee to which the two sections were committed, reported to strike
out the first of the sections as it originally stood, and to insert " that the migration or
importation of such persons as the several States, now existing, shall think proper to
admit, shall not be prohibited, prior to the year 1800, but a tax or duty may be imposed
on such migration or importation at a rate not exceeding the average of the duties laid
on importsand they recommended, at the same time, that the other section, restrain¬
ing the passage of navigation laws except by a vote of two-thirds of both Houses, be
stricken out. When the report of the committee was taken up for consideration, Gen.
Pincknev, of South Carolina, moved to strike out the words " the year 1800," as the
year limiting the importation of slaves, and to insert " the year 1808." Mr. Gorham,
of Massachusetts, seconded the motion. It was opposed by Mr. Madison, who de¬
clared that the term of twenty years from the adoption of the Constitution, thus asked,
for the privilege of importing slaves, would produce all the mischiefs of an unlimited
liberty to import them. The motion was, nevertheless, carried in the affirmative, the-
three New England States, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Connecticut voting
with South Carolina, Georgia, North Carolina and Maryland, for it, and the three^
24
middle States, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware voting with Virginia, against
it. Thus was consummated the first part of the bargain which secured to the extreme
southern States, (for Virginia and Maryland had long since prohibited the importation
by their own laws,) the privilege of importing slaves for the term of twenty years.
It then remained to confirm the other part of the bargain, which was to enure to the
benefit of the eastern States. When that part of the report recommending the striking
out the section which required the vote of two-thirds of both Houses of Congress to
pass a navigation law, was taken up, Mr. Charles Pinckney, one of the delegates of
South Carolina, moved to postpone it in favor of the following proposition submitted by
him—" that 110 act of the legislature for the purpose of regulating the commerce of the
United States with foreign powers or among the several States, shall be passed with¬
out the assent of two-thirds of the members of each House," All the other delegates
of South Carolina, Gen. Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, Mr. J110. Ilutledge and Mr.
Pierce Butler, earnestly opposed this motion; declaring, at the same time, that " it was
the true interest of the southern States to have no regulation of commerce by Congress
and placing their vote expressly 011 the ground of concession to the eastern States, " in
consideration of their liberal conduct towards the views of South Carolina" in regard-
to the importation of slaves. The motion to postpone the report of the committee in
favor of Mr. Charles Pinckney's proposition, or in other.words, the principle for which
the southern States had hitherto contended, of subjecting the exercise of the power to
regulate commerce by Congress to the restriction of a two-thirds vote, was then rejected;
South Carolina voting with Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut and the
three middle States, against it, and Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina and Georgia,
voting for it. After this decision upon the motion of Mr. Pinckney, which was regarded
as the test question, the report of the committee recommending the striking out the sec¬
tion in relation to the passage of navigation laws by a two-thirds vote, was agreed to
without division; and the bargain, as it was called by Mr. Gouverneur Morris, between
the extreme northern and the extreme southern States, was finally concluded on both
sides, under the lead of South Carolina on the one hand, and of Massachusetts on the
other.
Such is the rise, progress, and termination of one of the most remarkable transactions
in the history of the formation of the Constitution. Massachusetts, with her new En¬
gland sisters, deliberately yielded to South Carolina and Georgia the privilege of import¬
ing slaves for twenty years; and South Carolina, in consideration of the boon, yielded
to Massachusetts and New England, against the consent of all the other southern States,
the unfettered power of regulating commerce by a mere majority vote in Congress ; a
power to which all the protective tariffs, which are now so bitterly complained of and
denounced by my honorable friend from South Carolina, (Mr. McDuffie,) as "legisla¬
tive plunder," owe their constitutional origin. The bargain, founded upon mutual
equivalents thus given and received, was, as we have seen, solemnly made and ratified;
and the high contracting parties are now called on, by every obligation of good faith and
loyalty, to abide by and fulfil it—Massachusetts, on her part, to refrain from any inter¬
ference with an institution of the southern States which she threw the doors of the Con¬
stitution wide open for the admission and extension of; and South Carolina, on hers,
to acquiesce in the exercise by a majority of Congress of a power which she gave up
without restriction, against the will and opinions of all the other States of the south.
The good understanding thus brought about in the convention between Sou h Carolina
and Massachusetts, not only controlled the arrangement of the particular questions I have
referred to, but, unless a very interesting paper, which has been long known to me, is
mistaken in its information, produced a general unison of views between them, which
led to other very important alterations in the Constitution as it then stood. The paper
to which 1 allude is a memorandum by Mr. Jefferson of a conversation between himself
and Mr. George Mason, one of the delegates of Virginia in the Federal Convention,
made at the time of the conversation, which took place only two or three years after the
adoption of the Constitution. As the name and character of George Mason may not be
25
familiar to some of the members of the Senate, I beg leave to tell them who and what he
was. He was one of the most remarkable men of an age which abounded in great men
and superior spirits. Mr. Jefferson has said of him—"he was a man of the iirst order of
wisdom among those who acted on the theatre of the Revolution." He was firmly re¬
publican in his feelings and principles, and particularly jealous of Executive power. He
was warmly attached to the rights and sovereignty of the States, and constantly sensitive
in regard to the interests of what he called the "stapje States." These opinions carried
his mind strongly in favor of every practicable limitation on the power and influence of
the Executive Department, and in favor also of some constitutional security against the
abuse of the powers of Congress, in cases where the interests of the " staple States "
were supposed to be particularly concerned. The original draught of the Constitution, as
it was prepared by the committee of detail, having undergone some important alterations
in these respects, in its progress through the Federal Convention, he finally refused his
signature to the Constitution, as a member of that body, and subsequently exerted all
his influence in the Convention of Virginia to prevent its ratification there.
In the conversation with Mr. Jefferson, recorded in the memorandum to which I have
referred, George Mason stated that •' the Constitution, as agreed to till a fortnight before
the convention rose, was such an one as he would have set his hand and heart to." It
contained the principle of ineligibility of the President after a first term, disqualification
of Senators and Representatives to be appointed to office during the term for which they
were elected, and the requisition of a two-thirds vote in the passage of navigation laws.
In this stage, it was proposed to give to Congress the power to prohibit or restrain the
importation of slaves. The memorandum, speaking in the person of George Mason,
then proceeds : " This disturbed the two southernmost States, who knew that Congress
would immediately suppress the importation of slaves. Those two States, therefore,
struck up a bargain with the three New England States, if they would join to admit
slaves for some years, the two southernmost States would join in changing the clause
which required two-thirds of the legislature in any vote. It was done. These articles
were changed accordingly and " under the coalition " thus brought about, the memo¬
randum, still speaking in the person of George Mason, continues, " the great principles
of the Constitution were changed in the last days of the convention."
The account here given of the bargain or arrangement between the three New Eng¬
land States, and the two southernmost States, in regard to the importation of slaves, and
the power of regulating commerce, is fully sustained by the narrative I have already pre¬
sented, from Mr. Madison's Debates of the Convention, of the particulars of that trans¬
action. How far the same understanding, or " coalition," as it is styled in the memo¬
randum to which I have referred, may have had its influence on other parts of the Con¬
stitution, I am not prepared to say. Certain it is, that the principles particularly re¬
ferred to by Mr. Mason, and to which he attached so high an importance, were all
changed, and excluded from the Constitution, within the last two or three weeks of the
sitting of the convention ; the ineligibility of the President after a first term, and the
disqualification of members of Congress to be appointed to office during the periods for
which they were elected, as well as the constitutional restriction upon the exercise of
the power of Congress to regulate commerce.
In recalling these important and instructive proceedings, connected with our early
constitutional history, I have had no purpose to cast reproach any where. My wish
has been, rather, by holding up to the two distinguished States, who have been so un¬
happily arrayed against each other in the course of this long debate, the example of the
good understanding and "mutual deference and concession," which prevailed between
them in laying the foundations of the Constitution—to bring back, with the recollections
of the past, some portion of the fraternal spirit of their fathers. Virginia was strongly
opposed, as we have seen from her votes in the convention, to both branches of the com¬
promise which then took place—to extending the period for the importation of slaves, as
well as to the removal of the restriction upon the exercise of the power to regulate com¬
merce. Upon this last point, she had the steady support of your own State, Mr. Pre-
26
sident, (Mr. Mangdm, of North Carolina, was in the chair.) North Carolina and Vir¬
ginia both attached so much importance to this principle, that, when they accepted the
Constitution, they each did so with an express recommendation of an amendment, de¬
claring that " no law regulating commerce shall be passed without the consent of two-
thirds of the members present in both Houses." But their views were not adopted;
and they now, in a spirit of loyal submission to the constitutional compact as it was
established, cheerfully acquiesce in the exercise of the powers actually given to Con¬
gress. No less can be expected, certainly, in all their federal relations and duties, of
States, whose potential voices, as we have seen, made the Constitution what it is.
My own judgment, I will say frankly, Mr. President, has always been satisfied by
the reasons which were given in the convention for not imposing the inconvenient and
embarrassing restriction of a two-thirds vote on the exercise of the power to regulate
commerce by Congress. Mr. Charles Pinckney, who submitted the proposition,
enumerated some four or five distinct geographical interests in the United States, and ar¬
gued that these different interests would be a source of oppressive regulations, if no
check to a bare majority should be provided. But the instinctive sagacity and vigorous
common sense of Roger Sherman, answered with conclusive force, that this very di¬
versity of interests was, of itself, the best security against abuse, by rendering injurious
combinations impracticable, where so many divergent interests were to be united in a
scheme of injustice. Mr. Madison, giving a practical development to the same idea, re¬
ferred to the difference of interests among the northern and middle States themselves, to
the interior agricultural interest even in those which were most commercial, and finally
to the accession of new States in the West, which would be mainly agricultural, as fur¬
nishing, (in connexion with the checks and controls existing in the structure and organi¬
zation of the Government itself,) every reasonable security against the abuse 01 the power
by a majority of the two Houses of Congress.
Thb practical security, resulting from these diversified interests, is one of the most
important features in our extended federal system. If there were but two great opposing
interests, danger might be apprehended from their collision. But this is not the case.
There is, even in the Northern States, the navigating interest, aud the interest of the
fisheries, as well as the great agricultural interest diffused every where, to balance the
interest of the manufacturing class. And, between the old geographical divisions of the
North %nd the South, there is now the great mediating power of the West, to which
Mr. Madison so fondly looked, to preserve the peace and maintain the equilibrium of
our system. I have been always struck, Mr. President, with a sagacious remark of
Voltaire, during his residence in England, on the effects produced by the number and
diversity of religious denominations there. " If one religion only were allowed in
England," he says, " the Government would possibly become arbitrary; if there were
but two, the people would cut each others' throats ; but, as there are such a multitude,
they all live happy and in peace." Does not the number of diversified interests, spread
through our great republican confederacy, afford a similar security for the mutual ob¬
servance of moderation and justice, and for the peace and harmony of our political sys¬
tem ?
That diversity of interests, in which the honorable Senator from South Carolina, (Mr.
McDuffie,) sees the certain source of oppression and injustice in the operations of our
common Government, the profound philosophy of Edmund Burke, considered the high¬
est security of general freedom. " These opposed and conflicting interests," he said,
" interpose a salutary check to all precipitate resolutions," making " deliberation a mat¬
ter, not of choice, but of necessity ;" and " all change a subject of compromise which
naturally begets moderation," and they "render the headlong exertions of arbitrary power,
in the few or the many, forever impracticable." To sum up the whole in his magnifi¬
cent language, " it is this combination and opposition of interests, this action and coun¬
teraction of parts, which, in the natural and political world, from the reciprocal struggle
of discordant powers, draws forth the harmony of the universe." Or, as the great
27
philosophical poet of England has expressed it in lines which embody the spirit and
genius, as they reflect with the truth of nature, the image of our American Union,
i
'Tis jarring interests, of themselves create,
The according music of a well mixed state;
Such is the world's gieat harmony that springs,
From order, Union, full consent of things.
I have, then, Mr. President, no fear for the duration or the practical blessings of our
political Union, if it shall be left to the natural operation of its constituent elements,
however diversified or heterogeneous those elements may be. The father of his country,
in a passage of his farewell address, which has been already referred to in this debate,
and which, to my mind, never fails to bring with it the sacredness and solemnity of in¬
spiration, has shown how mutually dependent and indispensably necessary to each other
are the various parts of the confederacy. The very diversities in their geographical po¬
sition and industrious pursuits, are but additional bonds of union, making them mutual
customers for the supply of each other's wants, instead of jealous and interfering rivals.
When we look, too, upon the maps of the country, tied together as are its most distant
parts by so many arteries of internal communication, natural and artificial, it is impos¬
sible to resist the conviction that Providence intended it, in all its extent, to be the habi¬
tation of one great and united people. It grates, therefore, most painfully upon the ear,
to hear suggestions from any quarter, whether hypothetical or minatory, that such an
Union, founded in nature, cemented by common interests, and consecrated by sympa¬
thies and recollections of the loftiest character, can, in any event, be abandoned, to give
place to some spurious and unnatural scheme of separate confederacies. One consola¬
tion, however, never fails to result from all these suggestions—that every scheme brought
forward encounters, in nature itself, some invincible obstacle to its practical accomplish¬
ment.
Let us take, for example, the hypothetical dismemberment of the Union into three sep¬
arate confederacies, brought forward, in the way of argument, or warning by the Senator
from South Carolina, (Mr. McDuffie.) He presented us, I think, a manufacturing confed¬
eracy, to consist of the eastern and middle States; a farming confederacy, of the western
and northwestern States; and a planting confederacy, of the southern and southwestern
States. The first observation which occurs upon this arrangement is, that the honorable
Senator puts the southwestern States, lying upon the lower parts of the Mississippi, into
the same confederacy with the southern Atlantic States, and separates them from the
western and northwestern States lying upon the upper parts of that great river and on
the Ohio. But nature evidently puts her veto upon such an arrangement. The western
and northwestern States can never consent that the mouth of the Mississippi, the great
outlet for their productions, shall be under the control of a foreign and independent com¬
munity, levying tribute upon their commerce, and having it in their power greatly to
embarrass, if not wholly to interrupt it. History, too, adds her testimony that such a
state of things would never be submitted to, for it informs us that, while the discussions
were pending with Spain respecting the navigation of the Mississippi, under General
Washington's administration, the people of Kentucky, dissatisfied at the delays of the
negotiation, openly threatened to withdraw from the Union, and to assert by force their
right to the free navigation of that river, if it was not speedily obtained by treaty. It
must, then, be considered as an established law of nature, that all the States lying on the
waters of the Mississippi must and will be parts of one and the same sovereignty; and
it may be added, in the language of the valedictory address of Washington, that the only
efficient security they can have for the permanent enjoyment of its outlet to the ocean,
free from foreign obstruction or control, is in " the weight, influence, and maritime
strength of the Atlantic side of the Union, directed by an indissoluble community of in¬
terest as one nation." The honorable Senator from South Carolina, then, must strike
the southwestern States from his projet of a separate southern confederacy.
Let us now look to the other extremity of this supposed confederacy, on its northern
frontier. Where is Virginia to go ? The honorable Senator, I presume, proposes to
include her in his planting confederacy. But can Virginia ever be separated from Mary¬
land, lying as they do on the shores of the same Chesapeake, and using in common the
waters of that great estuary? Nature forbids that they should ever be disjoined; and
the very necessities of their position forced them into a partial union, by means of the
compact they entered into for regulating their common jurisdiction and navigation upon
the waters of the Chesapeake and Potomac, previous to the formation of the general
union of the States. The partial union established by that compact may be considered,
indeed, as the germ of the Federal Union, which was soon afterwards formed ; and nei¬
ther Maryland, nor Virginia, I am persuaded, will ever consent to be separated from that
great confederacy, of which they may be said, in some sort, to have laid the foundation,
by the example and effect of their partial union. Maryland, as my honorable friend
before me, (Mr. Pearce, Senator of Maryland,) well knows, was a rib taken out of the
side of Virginia, and " they twain are one flesh." So, I trust, they will ever remain. If
we trace the natural dependencies which connect other States with one another, we shall
find that Pennsylvania is tied to Maryland by the Susquehanna, as New Jersey is to
Pennsylvania, on the one side, by the Delaware, and to New York, on the other, by
similar and even more necessary connexions. New York and Pennsylvania are insep-
erably connected, by the strongest ties, both of nature and of interest, with the western
States on the lakes and the Ohio; and when we come to look to Virginia, on that side,
she is in one-half of her territory, a western State by her geographical position, and whe¬
ther we regard physical or moral ties, she can never be separated from her own offspring,
Kentucky and the noble States of the northwest, who are at the same time her proudest
jewels. I think, then, it is demonstrable, Mr. President, that the central States of this
Union, on both sides of the Alleghanies, including the great valley of the Mississippi,
are tied together by natural bonds which neither the folly nor the wickedness of man can
ever dissolve; and if any separation were ever to take place, it could only occur at the
extremities, where the centrifugal tendencies which may be occasionally manifested will
always, in the end, be controlled by the instincts of an American nationality, as well
as by a sober calculation of consequences
But let us suppose, for a moment, that the honorable Senator's speculation of a
southern and southwestern confederacy, which, in the zeal of his eloquence and the ex¬
citement of his imagination, he has painted as an elysium on earth, did not encounter
invincible obstacles in nature, and were, in truth, capable of being reduced into practice,
what would be the situation of its different parts in regard to that free trade, which is to
pour such uncounted blessings into its lap. By free trade, the honorable Senator,
doubtless, means free trade in cotton and the returns for it in British manufactures ; and
even that trade would not be perfectly free, for some duties must be levied to defray the
expenses of this new confederacy. But what sort of free trade would Virginia and
North Carolina, as members of the new confederacy, enjoy for their tobacco and their
flour. The former staple is subjected to duties in England averaging from one to two
thousand per cent., and the latter is virtually excluded by her corn laws. What sruaranty
can the honorable Senator offer that these oppressive duties and restrictions will be abol¬
ished? It is also evident that the Senator from South Carolina has looked only to the
trade of the new confederacy through its Atlantic border. IIow will it be along that
extended inland frontier, which will separate the supposed southern and southwestern
confederacy from the bordering confederacies on the north and the west? There we now
have the most active and unlimited free trade, under the sure guarantees of our constitu¬
tional union. But when the supposed separation into distinct and independent confed¬
eracies shall take place, this unbounded and most fruitful free trade we now enjoy with
the other States—exempt from the slightest restriction or burden of any sort—must give
place to jealous and probably retaliatory and hostile tariffs on both sides. Has the
honorable Senator taken this into the account of the blessings of the new confederacy?
Has he counted the cost of the army of patroles and custom-house officers along the
extended inland frontier to which I have referred, (open at every point to illicit trade.)
which would become absolutely necessary to secure the execution of the revenue laws
29
on both sides of the line ? Has he thought of the constant danger of border collisions
which would attend this state of things, and of the consequent wars and large and bur¬
densome military establishments which would probably grow out of it, extinguishing,
by the necessary provision for their expense, the last remnant of free trade?
But laying these things, grave and momentous as they are, out of view for the pre¬
sent, by what sort of tenure, I ask the honorable Senator, would the new confederacy
enjoy that free trade in cotton and its returns from the workshops of Manchester, Leeds
and Birmingham, which seems to have entered mainly into his consideration. Has he
not seen what the British Government has recently done to discourage the productions
of slave labor, by laying a heavy discriminating duty on slave-grown sugar? How long
will it be before the same policy may lead them to lay heavy discriminating duties on
slave-grown cotton; and what would become, then, of the whole fabric of free trade
which the Senator has so laboriously constructed for the supposed southern and south¬
western planting confederacy ? Is the absolute and invaluable free trade between the
twenty-six powerful and flourishing communities which compose this Union, and held
by the immutable tenure of the Constitution, to be exchanged for such a delusive free
trade as I have shown would be the heritage of the new confederacy—a free trade preter¬
mitting entirely some of the most important staples of the country, which would still re¬
main subject to the burthen of the heaviest rate of duties abroad—held, in its only sub¬
stantial branch, at the will and caprice of a rival foreign Government—and in all its vast,
inland operations, oppressed, if not destroyed, by the jealous and retaliatory regulations
of border confederacies ? The vast importance of the interior free trade, established
and secured by our present happy Union, cannot be too highly appreciated. The hon¬
orable Senator from South Carolina will see that his favorite authority (Adam Smith)
considers the '■•freedom of interior commerce,'''' even within the narrow limits of that
island, " as one of the principal causes of the prosperity of Great Britain."* How in¬
finitely greater must be its fruitful results in such an empire as this, embracing in its
wide extent almost every variety of soil, climate and industry known to man. It is, in
truth, the chief and most operative cause of that wonderful and unparalleled develop¬
ment of wealth and industry, which the progress of our country has already exhibited
to the admiration of the world.
What a magnificent vision of free trade, Mr. President, is destined to be realized,
even in the short period of the life of man, by the vast interior commerce of this country,
if we remain, as we will and must remain, an united people. It requires " no angel to
lift the curtain from the rising glories of our country," nor does it demand " all the san¬
guine credulity of youth, and all the fervid glow of enthusiasm" to make us believe in
our destinies. They rest upon the established and well ascertained laws of our progress,
and are vouched by the sober and unerring rules of political arithmetic. There are those
now living who will see this noble country of ours peopled by one hundred millions
of happy and industrious inhabitants, speaking the same language, professing the same
religion, citizens of twenty-six and more independent republican communities, which
protect them in their lives, liberties and property, and yet all under the guardianship of
a common government, which secures to them the privilege of a free and unrestricted
circulation and exchange of all the productions of their industry and skill, without the
slightest let or impediment, from one to another of the States that compose this great
confederacy of Republics, embracing within their limits, every variety of industrious
pursuits and natural advantages that can form the basis of a rich, flourishing and in¬
exhaustible commerce. Such a spectacle was never before exhibited in the history of
man. And yet there are those now living who will see it, if we are true to ourselves,
lo the memory of our fathers, and to the just hopes of our posterity.
Wealth of Nations, Book V, chap. 2.
TSIF. TARIFF,
A TII A C T F O R T II E TIMES,
BY A CITIZEN OF VIRGINIA.
Prepared by order of Hon. Willis G reex, Chairman of flic Executive Committee of the Whig
Members of Congress.
Wc propose to present a brief examination of the Tariff. In doing so, we shall address our¬
selves to the judgment, and not to the passions. We shall deal in facts, not theories. The people
want facts, but they must have them in a convenient form. They have no time to hunt them out
from the voluminous documents placed in their hands. They wish them arranged in such shape
as they can carry about with them for examination at their leisure, during moments of cessation
from laborr This want it is our desire to supply. Wc therefore present plain statements, in plain
language, and all we ask for them is a candid consideration. The facts upon which our arguments
are based have been collected from the most authentic sources; and wc challenge the strictest scru¬
tiny into their correctness. We seek to mislead no one, and we are decidedly of the opinion, al¬
though it may appear an old-fashioned idea to some, that in politics, as well as the other concerns
of life, it is the best policy to be honest.
One of the cardinal measures of the W hig party is, a Tarifffor revenue to support the Govern¬
ment, with discriminations far the protection of American industry and enterprise against the
fatal consequences of competition with the pauper labor of Europe. In advocating this measure,
the Whigs are influenced by a firm and deliberate conviction of its constitutionality, necessity, and
expediency. Wc shall therefore treat the subject under these general heads.
I. CoNSTITl'TIO v ir.ITY OF a TaBIFF.
The want of a protective system was one of the chief causes that led to the adoption of the Con¬
stitution. Under the Confederacy, the restrictions placed by Great Britain upon our commerce
excited feeble attempts on the part of the State Legislatures, in the absence of Federal authority over
the subject, to counteract the obnoxious regulations of their commercial enemy. These efforts
proving ineffectual, from the want of concerted action, the well-known Convention at Annapolis
was convened, for the. express purpose of counteracting them on general principles. This Conven¬
tion found it impossible to effect the desired end, from want of proper authority on the part of its
. members to act; it therefore adjourned, after having invited a general Convention to meet at Phil¬
adelphia. This latter Convention met at the appointed time, and the result of their deliberations
was the Constitution of the United States. To substantiate this historical statement, the authority
of Mr. Madison is invoked. Speaking of the causes that gave rise to the Convention, he uses the
following language. (See Niles's Register, vol 43, Sup., p. 35 :)
"During the delays and discouragements experienced in the attempt to invest Congress with the
' necessary powers, the State of Virginia made various trials of what could be done by her individ-
* ual laws. She ventured on duties und imposts as a source of revenue. Resolutions were passed,
' at one time, to encourage and protect her own navigation and ship-building; and in consequence
' of complaints and petitions from Norfolk, Alexandria, and other places, against the monopolizing
*■ navigation laws of Great Britain, particularly in the trade, between the United States and the
4 British West Indies, she deliberated, with a purpose controlled only by the inellicacy of separate
* measures, on the experiment oi forcing a reciprocity by prohibitory regulations of her own."
(See Jour. House Del., 1785.)
" Such a tendency of separate regulations was, indeed, too manifest to escape anticipation,
' Amongst the projects prompted by the want of a Federal authority over commerce, was that of a
' covenant, first proposed on the part of Maryland, for a uniformity of regulations between the two
' States, and commissioners were appointed for that purpose. It was soon perceived, however, that
' the concurrence of Pennsylvania was as necessary to Maryland as of Maryland to Virginia, and
' the concurrence of Pennsylvania was accordingly invited; but Pennsylvania could no more concur
« without New York than Maryland without Pennsylvania, nor New York without the concurrence
' of Boston, &c. These projects were superseded for the moment by that of the Convention nt
Annapolis, in 178G, and forever by the Convention at Philadelphia, in 1787, and the Constitu-
* tion which was the fruit of it."
2
It will be seen from this, that one of the chief objects for which the Convention assembled was
to grant to the General Government ample powers to regulate foreign commerce, to raise revenue,
and to establish a protective system. These powers are contained in the following words of the
Constitution : " Congress shall have 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 ,■
to regulate commerce with foreign nations."
To carry into effect the objects for which these powers were granted, the first general act of the
first Congress, drafted by Mr. Madison, was in the following words: "Whereas it is necessary
for the support of Government, for the discharge of the debts of the United States, and for the en¬
couragement and protection of manufactures, that duties be laid on goods, wares, and mer¬
chandise imported : Be it enacted," &c. During the debate upon this bill, the principle of pro¬
tection was distinctly recognised by every member who spoke. Mr. Madison, in accepting a long
list of articles for specific duties, in addition to those included in the first draft of the bill, ex¬
pressly declared that some of the duties might be "productive of revenue," while others would
"protect domestic manufactures." Mr. Clymer, of Pennsylvania, in relation to the character of
the bill, remarked, "that he did not object to this mode of encouraging manufactures and obtain¬
ing revenue by combining the two objects in one bill." Mr. Baldwin, of Georgia, said, "think¬
ing discrimination necessary, and knowing the voice of the people calls for it, we wilt not answer
the end for which we come here by neglecting or refusing to make it."
Mr. Madison, in his letter to Mr. Cabell, written in the year 1S28, looking back to the debate
on the Tariff in the first Congress, uses the following language: "That the encouragement of
4 manufactures was an object of the power to regulate trade, is proved by the use made of the
' power for that purpose in the first session of the first Congress under the Constitution, when
' among the members present were so many who had been members of the Federal Convention
' that framed the Constitution, and of the S8tate Conventions that ratified it; each of these classes
• consisting also of members who had opposed and who had espoused the Constitution in its actual
' form. It does not appear, from the jirintedproceedings of Congress on that occasion, that the
' power was denied by any of them. And it may be remarked that members from Virginia, as
4 well of the anti-Federal as the Federal party, (the names then distinguishing those who had op-
' posed and those who had approved the Constitution, did not hesitate to propose duties, and to
' suggest even prohibitions in favor of several articles of her productions. By one, (Mr. Bland,) a
' duty was proposed on mineral coal, in favor of the Virginia coal pits; by another, (Mr. Moore,) a
• duty on hemp was proposed, to encourage the growth of that article ; and by a third, a prohibition
' even of foreign beef was suggested, as a measure of sound policy."
The act passed unanimously, and was signed by General Washington on the fourth of July, 1789
General Washington's opinions.
Besides his approval of the first Tariff act, there arc other evidences of General Washington's
advocacy of that measure. In his first message to Congress, at the second session, in January,
1790, he congratulated that hody " that the measures of the last session (of which the Tariff act
was the chief) had proved satisfactory to their constituents," recommended to them " the advance¬
ment of agriculture, commerce, and manufactures, by all proper means," and declared emphat¬
ically " that the safety and interest of a free people require that they should promote such man¬
ufactures as tend to render them independent of other nations for essentiafc, particularly military
supplies." To this message, the House of Representatives unanimously returned an address, (as
was then usual,) in which they say, " wc c»ncur with, you in the sentiment, that agriculture,
commerce, and manufactures, are entitled to legislative protection." In his last message to
Congress, in 1796, General Washington uses the following language: " Congress have repeatedly.
and not without success, directed their attention to the encouragement of manufactures. The
subject is of too much consequence not to ensure a continuance of their efforts in everyway which
shall appear eligible."
Mr. Jefferson's opinions.
In his report on the fisheries in 1791, Mr. Jefferson urged upon Congress the "propriety and
expediency" of increasing the duties on foreign fish, and advanced as an argument in favor of pro¬
tection "the policy of compensating, as far as practicable, the loss of markets abroad by the crea¬
tion of markets at home." He urged the same policy again in 1793, in a report iipon the same
subject, in the following language :
" Free commerce and navigation are not to be given in exchange for restrictions and vexations.
• It behooves us to protect our citizens, their commerce and navigation, by counter prohibitions, du-
' ties, and regulations."
In another place he lays down the following rule, which even goes beyond the Whig doctrine at
the present time, and advocates, in certain cases, prohibitory duties :
" When a nation imposes high duties on our productions, it may be proper for us to do the same
4 thing .by them—first burdening or excluding those productions wliich they bring here in compe-
3
' tition with our own of the same kind—imposing on those duties lighter at first, but heavier and
' heavier afterwards, as other channels of supply open."
As President, in his message of 1802, he again advocates the doctrine of protection, in the fol"
lowing language :
" To cultivate peace and maintain commerce and navigation in all their lawful enterprises, to
. foster our fisheries as nurseries of our navigation, and for the nurture of man, and to protect the
. manufactures adapted to our circumstances, to preserve the faith of the nation by an exact discharge
. of its debts and its contracts, expend the public money with the same care and economy we would
. practise with our own, and impose on our citizens no unnecessary burdens, to keep in all things
. within the pate of our constitutional powers, and to cherish the Federal Union as the only rock of
. our safety—these, fellow-citizens, are the landmarks by which we are to guide ourselves in all our
. proceedings. By continuing to make them the rule of our action, we shall endear to our coun-
. trymen the true principles of the Constitution, and promote a union of sentiment and of action
« equally auspicious to their happiness and safety."
Again, in his message of 1808, he repeats his recommendation of prohibitory duties, as may be
seen from the following :
f "The suspension of foreign commerce produced by the injustice of the belligerent Powers, and
' the contingent losses and sacrifices of our citizens, are subjects of just concern. The situation into
' which we have thus been forced has compelled us to apply a portion of our industry and capital
' to internal manufactures and improvements. The extent of this conversion is daily increasing,
' and little doubt remains that the establishments formed and forming will, under the auspices of
' cheaper material and subsistence, the freedom of labor from taxation with us, and protecting du-
' ties and prohibitions, become permanent."
In 1816, in a letter addressed to Mr. Benjamin Austin, he makes the following declaration :
"To be independent for the comforts of life, we must fabricate them ourselves. We must
• now place the manufacturer by the side of the agriculturist. The grand question now is, shall
' wc make our own comforts, or go without them at the will of a foreign nation I He, therefore,
• who is against domestic manufactures, must be for reducing us either to a dependence on that for-
• eign nation, or to be clothed in skins. I am not one of these. Experience has taught me that
• manufactures are now as necessary to our independence as to our comfort ; and if those tvho quote
• me as of a different opinion will keep pace with me in purchasing nothing foreign, where an
' equivalent of domestic fabric can be obtained, without any regard to difference of price, it will not
' be our fault if wc do not have a supply at home equal to the demand, and wrest that weapon of
• distress from the hand that has so long wantonly violated it."
Mr. Madison's opinions.
Throughout his long career, Mr. Madison was an unwavering supporter of the protective policy.
In 1789, he was the able champion of the first tariff act. In 1794, he moved the celebrated com¬
mercial resolutions, in accordance with Mr. Jefferson's report of 1783. In every one of his mes¬
sages, except during the war, he recommended to Congress " to protect and foster' the manufactur¬
ing interest of the country. Before the war, he said: "The national interest requires that, with
respect to such articles at least as belong to our defence and our primary wants, wc should not be
left in unnecessary dependence upon foreign supplies." After the war, he said, in relation to the
manufactures that hail sprung up in .the United States, "there is no subject that can enter with
greater force and merit into the deliberations of Congress, than a consideration of the means to pre¬
serve and promote the manufactures which have sprung into existence and attained an unparalleled
maturity throughout the United States, during the period of the European wars. This source of
national independence and wealth 1 anxiously recommend, therefore, to the prompt and constant
guardianship of Congress."
In relation to the modem doctrine of a tarifl'for revenue, without discrimination, he uses the fol¬
lowing emphatic language :
" If revenue be the sole object of a legitimate impost, and the encouragement of domestic articles
' be not within the power of regulating trade, it would follow that no monopolizing or unequal regu-
' lations of foreign nations could be counteracted; that neither the staple articles of subsistence, nor
' the essential implements for the public safety, could, under any circumstances, be ensured or fos-
' tered at home by regulations of commerce, the usual and most convenient mode of providing for
' both."—(Sec Supplement to Nile;'s Register, vol. 43, p. 33.)
But his message of December, 1815, contains his strongest declarations in favor of the protective
system. In speaking of the rising manufactures of the time, he declares that protection is due to
those enterprising citizens whose interests are staked in them, and predicts that the manufacturing in¬
dustry exhibited " would become, at an early day, a source of domestic wealth, and even of ev¬
er nal commerce."
-
Mr. Monroe'* opinion.".
In his message of December 19, 1819, Mr. Monroe uses the following language :
" Uniformity in the demand and price of an article is highly desirable to the domestic manufac-
* turer. It is deemed of grout importance to give encouragement to our domestic manufactures."
General Jackson's opinions.
In a letter addressed by General Jackson to Doctor Coleman, of North Carolina, occur the fol¬
lowing passages in relation to a protective tariff:
Extract of a letter front Andrew Jackson, to Dr. L. H. Coleman, of Warrington, North Carolina.
Washington- City, April 26, 1824.
" Heaven smiled upon and gave us liberty and independence. That same Providence has blessed
us with the means of national independence and national defence. If we omit or refuse to use the
gifts which He has extended to us, we deserve not the continuation of his blessing. He has filled
our mountains and our plains with minerals—with lead, iron, and copper—and given us a climate
and soil for the growing of hemp ar.d wool. These being the great materials of our national de¬
fence, they ought to have extended to them ader/uafe and fair protection ; that our manufacturers
and laborers may be placed in a fair competition with those of Europe, and that we may have with¬
in our country a supply of those leading and important articles so essential in war.
" I will ask, what is the real situation of the agriculturist ' Where has the American farmer a
market for his sdrplus produce ' Except for cotton, he has neither a foreign nor a home market.
Does not this clearly prove, when there is no market either at home or abroad, that there is too much
labor employed in agriculture ' Common sense at once points out the remedy. Take from agri¬
culture in the United States six hundred thousand men, women, and children, and you will at once
give a market for more breadstuff's than all Europe now furnishes us. In short, sir, wc have
been too long subject to the policy of British merchants. It is time we should become a little more
Americanized, and instead of feeding paupers and laborers of England, feed our own; or else in a
short time, by continuing our present policy, we shall be rendered paupers ourselves. It is there¬
fore my opinion that a careful and judicious tariff is much wanted to pay our national debt, and to
afford us the means of that defence within ourselves on which the safety of our country and liberty
depends; and last, though not least, give, a proper distribution to our labor, which must prove ben¬
eficial to the happiness, independence, and wealth of the community.
" I am, sir, vcrv respectfully, your most obedient servant,
"ANDREW JACKSON."
These arc the arguments adduced by the Whigs, to prove the constitutionality of a protective
tariff They prove, from history, that the chief object in framing the Constitution was to empower
Congress to pass such an act—they turn to the plain and palpable language of the Constitution it¬
self—they exhibit the act unanimously passed by the first Congress, many of the members of which
were also members of the Convention that framed the Constitution—tliev produce the recorded
opinions of Washington, "the Father of his Country," Madison, "the Father of the Constitution,"
Jefferson, "the Father of the Democratic party," together with those of Monroe anil Jackson, who
administered the Government under the Constitution, and offer them as unquestionable authority to
prove the correctness of the doctrine they maintain. The Whigs deem this enough to satisfy any
reasonable man.
II. Necessity or a Tauiif.
The Whigs believe a Tariff necessary as a revenue measure.—It is a well-settled principle—set¬
tled by the best writers on finance and political economy, and by the experience of all modern Gov¬
ernments—that the least objectionable mode* of raising revenue for the support of Government is
by duties upon foreign imports. But the great difficulty is as to the mode of levying these duties.
The Whig party, with Henry Clay at its head, advocate a Tariff which will provide sufficient
revenue tor the wants of Government, and, at the same time, by its discriminations, afford pro¬
tection to the labor and industry of the country. This they claim to be such a measure as was sup¬
ported bv Washington, Jefferson, and Madison. But the so-called "Democratic" party, with
./. K. Polk, their new leader, are in favor of a tariff for revenue simply—if in favor of a tariff at
all—and opposed to any discrimination whatever for the protection of American industry. Ac¬
cording to their doctrine, you may discriminate for the benefit of revenue, but not for the benefit
of labor and capital, upon which all revenue depend: in the imposition of duties, a benefit may
result In the great domestic interests by accident: but if it should result by intention, the act be¬
comes at once "unconstitutional," "it is a tuxupon consumption," and "a tax upon one portion
if the Ui'on far the benefit of the other." Such are the absurd conclusions to which this new
fcngled " Democratic" notion leads.
But we arc glad to lmd that these miserable abstractions do not find favor with a large portion
even of the so called Democratic partv. It is to be hoped that, when the party purposes for which
they were brought into existence have been fulfilled, they will no longer be entertained by any re¬
flecting man in the country. Since the operation of the protective principle in the tariff of IS42
has reduced prices throughout the length and breadth of the land, the people arc beginning to per¬
ceive that a tariff for revenue simply is a tax upon consumption, inasmuch as it wants that ele¬
ment—protection—which, by producing competition, brings down the prices of all articles to the
lowest point at which they can be manufactured.
But a tariff for revenue simplv, objectionable as it is, is yet preferable to direct taxation, for the
following reasons : 1st. Because under it all taxes are voluntary—if a man does not wish to pay
them, he has only to decline purchasing the articles upon which they are levied. 2d. They arc more
equal, being regulated by the consumption or expense of each individual—thus bearing upon the
rich and poor according to their abilities to pay. 3d. They are less onerous, because they
are not paid all at once, but as each article is purchased, and, being confounded with the price of
the article, are not perceived. 4th. They are cheaper. Mr. Gallatin, as Secretary of theTreasury,
in 1801, declared the expense of direct taxation to be 20 per cent., while the expense of collecting
the customs was only 4 per cent.
The Whigs, without an exception in their ranks, are opposed to raising revenue to support the
Government by direct taxation. They consider it an odious system, which, in the language of
Mr. Jefferson, "would cover the land with officers, open every door to their intrusion, audsubject
every citizen to domiciliary vexations, which, once commenced, can scarcely be restrained from
reaching successively every article of property and produce." And yet it cannot be denied that
there are many of the modern " Democrats" in favor of a system of direct taxation. Mr. Woodbury
wishes to impose 20 per cent, duties, and, if they do not raise a sufficient revenue, to collect the
residue by direct taxes. Mr. McDuffie wishes to subject domestic manufactures to an excise duty
equivalent to the impost laid on foreign manufactures. Messrs. Pickens and Rhett of South Car¬
olina, R. D. Davis of New York, Daniel of North Carolina, Burke of New Hampshire, Slidell
of Louisiana, and Johnson of Tennessee, all modem "Democrats," have at different times de¬
clared themselves in favor of a system of direct taxation. The Whigs utterly repudiate this sys¬
tem; in 1842 they enacted the present Tariff, which they then foretold would produce ample reve¬
nue for the support of the Government. Has not this prediction been verified ' We appeal to facts.
, When Mr. Van Buren went out of office, he left to his successors, as appears from the following
authentic statement, a debt of nearly thirty-five millions of dollars.
Statement of the amount for which the Treasury was liable onthe 4 th of March, 1841, agreeably
to a resolution of the House of Representatives on the Cith August, 1842.
Specific appropriations of all kinds undrawn onthe 4th of March, 1S41 - $27,134,721 30
Indefinite appropriations drawn between the 4th March and 31st December, 1841 1,771,289 40
Treasury notes outstanding on the 4tb March, 1841 - 6,021,334 44
35,527,325 20
From which deduct the cash balance in the Treasury on the 4th of March, 1841,
exclusive of deposites with the States, and the unavailable funds due by
defaulting banks, as ascertained from the books of the Treasurer of the
United States - -- -- -- - 862,055 81
Total ------- 34,665,269 39
The above balance [$862,055 81] in the Treasury does not include the sum of $300,000 trust
hinds. T. L. SMITH, Register.
Treasury Department,
Register's Office, August 8, 1842.
The Whig Congress had to make provision to pay this debt of $34,605,269, as well as the cur¬
rent expenses of the Government while it was in their charge. The revenue from customs for the
year 1841 was scarcely half enough to meet the ordinary wants of the Treasury. B v the terms of
the Compromise Act of 1833, five millions fell off that year, and five millions more were to fall off
in- 1842.
Men less firm than the Whigs of the 27th Congress would have been overwhelmed by these dif¬
ficulties. True to their character, they determined to meet the emergency with boldness and decis¬
ion. They proceeded at once to fund $12,000,000 of the Van Buren debt; to provide for the rest
with the reissue of Treasury notes already authorized by law, to raise the duties ox imports,
and wait for more prosperous times, which they foretold would quickly come to pass. The Whig
Tariff went into operation on the 31st August, 1842. From a statement submitted to Congress by
6
the Register of the Treasury on the 1st Deeemt>er, 1 S t 3, v, e learn that, at that time, the debt of the
Van Burcn administration had been reduced to $26,742,949! Here are the items :
1. Debts existing before 1841, viz: Old funded debt, old unfunded debt, Treasury
notes of the last war, certificates of Mississippi stock, debts assumed for the
corporate cities of the District of Columbia, amounting in all to - - $1,560,861 16
2. Loans under these several acts, passed since 4th March, 1841, amounting to - 21,016,862 91
3. Treasury notes outstanding 4th March, 1841 . _ _ . 4,165,225 92
Total 20,742^949 99
Thus it will be seen that the Tariff of 1842, within one year after its passage, paid off $7,922,320
of " Democratic" debt, in addition to the current expenses, ordinary and extraordinary, of the pres¬
ent administration.
The prospect for the present year is still more flattering. The Hon. George Evans, the able
chairman of the Committee on Finance in the Senate, stated in his seat, on the last day of the late
session, that the expenditures of the Government up to July, (the present month,) would be less
than $21,000,000, and the receipts more than $27,000,000. He reminded the Senate that this
was the first year since 1837 that the revenue had exceeded the expenditures, and declared his be¬
lief that there would be a surplus in the Treasury on the 1st January, 1845, of $10,000,000! The
receipts from customs at New York indicate that the calculations of Mr. Evans will rather fall within
than go beyond the truth.
During the first half of the current year, the receipts into the Treasury, at New York, from cus¬
toms, contrasted with those of the corresponding months of last year, were as follows :
1843. 1844.
January ----- $548,056 39 $1,876,614 68
February ----- 492,215 39 2,169,110 10
March - - - - - 967,148 48 1,698,527 72
April ----- 1,033,263 71 1,890,626 68
Mav ----- 950,843 43 1,868,674 56
June ..--- 654,743 74 1,918,044 15 .
Total - - - - 4,646,271 14 11,421,597 89
Increase over 1843, $6,775,326, at one port, in six months! The receipts for the month of July
were $1,914,339. During the week ending the 31st ultimo, the receipts amounted to $600,000—
a larger amount than was ever received in one week before. Should the whole year do as well,
it is estimated that the revenue from customs alone will this year reach Fonrr millions of dol¬
lars! This will not only pay the annual expenses of the Government, but go very far to liquidate
the balance of the " Democratic" debt bequeathed to the Wliig Congress of 1842. Thus have the
predictions of the Whigs been fullv realized.
The whigs consider a Tariff necessary to reovlate foreign trade.
The great bulk of the trade of this country is domestic. We learn from the census of 1840, that
the value of the annual products of the United States is $2,000,000,000, f two thousand millions
of dollars! J while the annual exports amount to only $100,000,000, f one hundred millions of
dollars.' J The domestic trade is the true fountain of national wealth. It flows through regular
channels, yields uniform and abundant rewards, requires no complicated legislative machinery to
regulate it, and is not often subject to disorder from causes originating in itself. But the foreign
trade, constituting only one-twentieth of the entire amount, is the prolific cause of embarrassment
and difficulty. A reference to a few elementary principles will explain these difficulties. Every¬
man, be he merchant, mechanic, farmer, or laborer, will acknow ledge that, if he buys more than he
sells, he will surely get into trouble. His credit may sustain him for a while, but in the end he
will certainly fail. As with individuals, so it is with nations. A nation that buys more of the
products of other nations than it can pay for with its surplus products will eventually be involved
in commercial distress. The balance of trade will be against it, and, to pay this balance, specie
must be shipped. If the currency is a mixed one, this departure of specie will cause the banks to
suspend. With bank suspensions come scarcity of money, commercial distress, and the evils of a
depreciated paper circulation.
By applying these principles to our past history, we have a true solution of all our difficulties.
Since the establisliment of the Government, the balance of trade, from excessive imports, has been
uniformly against us. Hence, our situation has always been one of embarrassment. We appeal
to facts.
From official documents, presented to the 26th Congress, we learn that, for the period from
1783 to 1789, the balance of trade against the United States, in the excess of imports over exports,
was near fifty millions of dollars!—that for the period from 1790 to 1807, it was a fraction less
than two hundred and thirty mil/ionsof dollars!—for the period from 1807 to 1815, it was ninety-
7
two millions of dollars!—for the period from 1815 to 1838, it was more than four hundred and
fifteen millions of dollars!—for the period from 1838 to 1840, it was more than one hundred mil¬
lions of dollars!—making an aggregate of nearly nine hundred millions of dollars for the period of
fifty seven years! It must be borne in mind that, to pay this immense indebtedness, specie or pro¬
duce were required, and that every dollar of specie taken from the country was so much life-blood
taken from the veins of the currency. What immense recuperative energies our country must pos¬
sess, to undergo such tremendous shocks, and yet not be overwhelmed! These facts explain the
true cause of the memorable panics during the years from 1783 to 1789, from 1815 to 1817, from
1819 to 1823, from 1837 to 1841.
No where is this matter better understood than in Great Britain; and it will be seen, from the fol¬
lowing authentic statistical statement, that she carefully avoids such disastrous results; while, for the
jreriod of eight years, from 1831 to 1839, the balance against the United States was $235,278,605,
for the three years, 183S, 1839, and 1840, alone, the balance of trade in favor of Great Britain
was $2-37,227,414!
The Whigs believe that the tariff will regulate this foreign trade, and check the exportation of
specie. They again appeal to facts. What is the condition of the country since the passage of the
tariff of 1842' The nation has sprung up as a young giant from his slumber; excessive importa¬
tions have ceased; domestic trade has revived, and the balance of trade has turned in our favor.
All is life, health, activity. But the effect of the tariff upon the shipment of specie is particularly
worthy of notice. During the year ending the 1st September, 1843, it brought back $20,623,232
to sustain the circulating medium of the country. Continue the tariff, and, of necessity, the cur¬
rency will be restored to a ftealthy condition, and we shall again have stability in the value of labor
and property, without which, the general prosperity and national wealth must inevitafbly be pros¬
trated.
The Whigs considfr a Tariff necessary to protect American labor.
By the census of 1840, the amount of capital invested in American manufactures is stated at
$267,726,579. Since the tariff of 1842, the amount has increased, and may be fairly estimated,
at the present time, at three hundred millions of dollars ! To understand the importance of this
interest, it will be necessary to enumerate some of the items.
The paper manufacture, with its six hundred mills, employs a capital of $16,000,000. The
cotton manufacture, with a capital of $25,000,000, consumes three hundred thousand bales, and
turns out one hundred and fifty millions of yards, valued at $16,000,000. The wool growers,
owning twenty millions of sheep, valued at $40,000,000, produce annually fifty millions of pounds
of wool. The leather and shoe business employs one hundred thousand persons, whose productions
are valued at $50,000,000. The iron interest yields $25,000,000, employing 51,405 laborers,
with $18,762,990 of yearly wages. The sugar interest produces annually seventy millions of
pounds. The salt manufacture has a capital of $6,000,000. The mining interest and the me¬
chanic arts complete the grand sum total. All of these great interests give employment to an aggie-
gate of four millions of persons, including families, which is one-fifth of the entire population of
the United States.
The effect of the tariff in protecting these great and important interests is so well understood,
that it would seem an insult to the intelligence of the people to explain it. There may be some,
however, who have not examined the subject. We will therefore make a few remarks in elucida¬
tion of this important matter.
Great Britain, with a population of twenty-four millions, employs in her manufactories five hun¬
dred thousand operatives, who, by the aid of machinery, exert the power and perform the work of
one hundred millions of men, laboring with their own unaided efforts ! This power is considered
sufficient to supply manufactures to the whole world. But the condition of the operatives is that of
the veriest slaves on the face of the earth. They labor 16 hours a day for 8 or 10 cents, and at
night lie on a bed of straw or a dirt floor. There are many causes to produce this state of things
Labor is superabundant, from a redundant population—rent is high, from the heavy taxes on reai
estate—bread is dear, from the corn laws, which enable the producer to monopolize the iparkct, and
thus command his own prices. Thus the laborer is not a party to the arrangement of the vvages
he is to receive. He is forced to take what he can get. In this country the state of things is dif¬
ferent. There is no surplus labor ; hence there is competition for every laborer's services. The
country is thinly populated ; vast tracts of pure virgin soil still invite to tillage ; rents are low; bread
is cheap ; employment can be obtained any where ; the laborer is a free man, protected by a free
Government, possessing the right of suffrage, and looking forward to the time when he may him¬
self participate in the enactment of those laws under which he enjoys so many privileges.
It is easy, then, to perceive that Great Britain, with her abundant capital and cheap labor, is en¬
abled, in the absence of restrictions, to drive our manufacturers out of their own markets. JIow
successfully she has accomplished it, the history of the past tells with an eloquent voice. By the
excellence and seeming cheapness of her fabrics, she has induced us to purchase, during the short
period of our national existence, at least nine hundred millions of dollars more than we could pay
for without entailing upon ourselves misery, embarrassment, and ruin. We have done this, too,
although our country possesses, within itself, all those resources, in an inexhaustible degree, which
-are necessary to supply every want of man in a natural or social state.
8
The question, then, is, shall England be permitted to bring the products ol'her pauper labor in¬
to competition with the free labor of the United States ' Did she permit our products to enter her
ports free of duly, the aspect of the case would be altered. But free trade has no existence in Eng¬
land. It is by means of her protective tariffj in many of its features prohibitory, that she supports
her present unwieldy grandeur ; and without it she would soon topple to her fall. \\ hat do her
own statesmen say of free trade? It was but the other day that the Duke of Wellington remarked
in the House of Lords :
"That when free trade was talked of as existing in England, it was absurdity. There is not
' and there can be no such thing as free trade in this country. We proceed on the system of pro-
' tccting our own manufactures and our own produce—the produce of our labor and our soil—of
'protecting them for exportation, and protecting them for home consumption ; and in this universal
'system of protection, it is absurd to talk of free trade."
Acting upon these principles of universal protection, the English Government have imposed the
following duties on American products : on salted beef, GO per cent. ; on bacon, 109 per cent. ;
cm butter, 70 per cent. ; on Indian corn, 32 per cent. ; on rosin, 76 per cent. ; on sperm oil, 33
per cent. ; on sperm candles, 33 per cent. ; on tobacco unmanufactured, 1,000 per cent. ; on to¬
bacco manufactured, 1,200 per cent. ; on salted pork, 33 per cent. ; on soap, 200 per cent. ; on
spirits from grain, 500 per cent. ; on spirits from molasses, 1,600 per cent. ! The average duty
on these articles is 355 per cent. ; the average duty upon the great agricultural staples, under the
tariff of 1842, is only 50 per cent. ! The average of our exports ol tobacco to Europe for 1839
and 1840 was §9,225,000 for each year ; and the average duties imposed for each year by Euro¬
pean Governments was §32,463,000, or 350 per cent. ! The duties collected in Europe on Amer¬
ican tobacco amount to nearly $35,000,000 annually, being much more than enough to support
our Government under an economical administration.
In view of qll these facts, the Whigs maintain that free trade means nothing but equal trade
or, in other words, that if one nation taxes our products, we must levy an equal tax upon its pro¬
ducts. As the English and other nations, therefore, have placed heavy restrictions upon American
products introduced into their markets, they think we are bound by self-respect and self-preservation
to lay such a tariff upon their products as will make the trade equal between us.
The Whigs maintain that thf. Tariff is beneficial to the agriculturists.
The following duties are laid by the Whig tariff of 1842 upon agricultural staples introduced
from abroad into this country ; on cotton, 3 cents per pound ; on wool, 30 per cent, and 3 cents
per lb. ; on beef, 2 cents per lb. ; on pork, 2 cents per lb.; on bacon, 3 cents per lb. ; on lard, 3
cents per lb. ; on cheese, 9 cents per lb. ; on butter, 5 cents per lb. ; on potatoes, 9 cents per
bushel; on flour, 122J cents per barrel; on wheat, 25 cents per bushel; on oats, 10 cents per
bushel; on hemp, $40 per ton. The average ad valorem duty upon these thirteen great staples is
50 per cent-, which is a positive substantive protection to that amount. And let it be remembered,
that this is a higher average protection than is given to American manufactures.
But the protection of manufactures is the protection of agriculture. Each one of the four mil¬
lions of persons engaged in manufactures consumes, upon a fair estimate, not less then 124 cents
of agricultural products a day. They raise nothing themselves, but purchase every thing they con¬
sume in the way of prime necessity. By this means alone a home market is found for nearly one
hundred and eighty-three millions of dollars of agricultural productions annually. Add to this
the capital invested in lands to supply the raw material, which has been estimated at three thousand
millions of dollars—the capital invested in mines and in the mechanic arts—and we can readily per¬
ceive, the magnitude of the benefits of a protective tariff' to the agricultural interests of the country-
But this subject is of such importance as to demand a more thorough examination. We propose,
therefore, to show that protection is beneficial to agriculturists in three different ways—
1. By creating a home market for the surplus products of agricultural labor.
2. By creating a market for the raw materials used in manufactures.
3. By excluding European produce from American markets.
1. By creating a home market for the surplus products of agricultural labor.—From the cen¬
sus of 1840, we learn that the aggregate annual value of the agricultural products of the United
States is as follows :
Articles.
Value.
Wheat, corn, oats, and other grains
Beef, swine, and other live stock
Potatoes, hops, hay, &c.
Butter, cheese, and products of the orchard
Garden produce -
Forest products -
$342,418,649
338,644,448
102,627,613
77,873,394
2,596,196
12,943,507
17,500,000
Wool, estimated at -
Aggregate annual produce -
844,503,807
9
It is estimated that one-half of this amount is consumed by those who produce It. A market,
then, is needed for more than four h undred miUions of surplus agricultural productions.
To prove that this market is not to be found in Europe, we present the following table, which
exhibits the aggregate amount of agricultural produce purchased of the United States by all the rest
oj the world, for the years specified :
Year.
1
Barrels of flour.
1
Barrels of beef.
Barrels of pork.
Value.
1814
.
■ 1 1
193,274
20,297
4,040
1815
-
862,739
13,130
9,073
1816
-
729,053
33,239
19,280
1832
-
- { 864,919
55,507
88,626
$11,691,732
1833
-
955,768
64,322
105,870
13,723,246
1834
-
835,352
16,181
82,691
11,337,080
1835
-
779,396
38,028
61,827
11,838,085
1836
-
505,400
50,226
22,550
10,282,359
1837
-
318,919
28,076
24,583
9,349,532
1838
-
418,161
23,491
31,356
9,245,607
1S39
-
922,151
16,189
41,301
13,851,919
1840
-
1,897,501
19,681
66,231
18,771,075
1841
-
_
_
_
16,737,462
1842
"
1
-
16,472,424
From this table it will be seen that Ike whole world has never yet purchased, in one year,
as much as nineteen millions of American agricultural produce. Nor is there any reason to ex¬
pect that a greater amount will be sold hereafter. A reduction of duties cannot produce that result;
for the above table covers the periods 1816 and 1842, when the duties, under our tariff, were at
their lowest. But the fact is, the amount sold does not depend upon low duties ; it depends upon
the demand in the foreign markets, and upon the duties our productions have to pay to reach them.
Great Britain, for instance, wants a certain amount of agricultural produce to supply the deficiency
of her crops, and she will buy no more. If we supply her demand, we must pay 60 per cent, on
the wheat we send to her market, 80 per cent, on the beef, and 68 per cent, on the pork. Now,
in the first place, we cannot afford to pay these heavy duties ; and, in the second, even were we to
make that sacrifice, she would not then buy of us, because she can get the same products at a
cheaper rate from other countries, where, wages being lower, prices are also lower.
It is very evident, then, that an adequate market for our surplus productions is not to be found
abroad. With an annual surplus of more than four hundred millions, we have never yet sold to
the whole world as much as nineteen millions. Where, then, are we to find a market for this sur¬
plus ' A protective tariff will eivE it to us. Already, under the influence of protection,
four millions of persons have engaged in and are dependent on manufactures. These four millions,
as we have seen, consume, at a very low estimate, nearly one hundred and eighty-three millions of
agricultural productions annually. This is nearly ten times as much as the rest of the world has
ever purchased of us during any one year ! Here, then, we have presented to us the very best of
markets—a home market—our own people selling to our own people, unshackled by duties, un¬
trammelled by foreign legislation. Continue the tariff and, as manufactures flourish and increase,
this most admirable of all markets will be widened and expanded, until the entire amount of our
surplus agricultural productions will be consumed at home.
But repeal the tariff, take away protection, and what will be the effect ? The $300,600,000 of
capital now invested in manufactures will be withdrawn, to seek investment in agriculture, and will
yield, at a moderate calculation, $250,000,000 of produce annually. The 800,000 operatives now
engaged in manufactures will be forced to the cultivation of the earth for a maintenance. Each one
of them will produce $410 annually of agricultural staples. What, under this state of tilings, will
be the amount of agricultural productions annually ' The following statement will show :
Present aggregate production ------ $844,503,807
800,000 persons, at $400 each ------ 320,000,000
Produce of capital now invested in manufactures - 250,000,000
1,414,503,807
The annual products will be more than fourteen hundr d millions of dollars ! Of this, one-half
will be consumed by those who raise it. This will leave a surplus of more than seven hundred
millions of dollars for market. But where is the market to be found for it ' The market once af¬
forded by the manufacturers has been destroyed. That class have become sellers, and are no longer
buyers. Do you look to the foreign market ? We have already seen that the whole world has
never yet purchased of us as much as nineteen millions in one year ; will it now purchase more
than seven hundred millions ' If, then, no market is to be found for this immense amount of over-
10
production—for such it unquestionably would be—what will be the result' It would become perfectly
worthless, valueless, a dead loss, falling on the hands of the farmers, and eventually ruining them. Any
one at all familiar with the fall in price consequent upon an over-supply will confirm this assertion.
2. By creating a market for the. raw material used in manu factures.—A large amount of raw
materia; is annually required by the manufacturing establishments of the United States. This ma¬
terial is raised by the farmers of the country, and if protection is withheld from the manufacturers
must cease to be produced, because the demand for it must cease. The articles of wool, hemp, and
silk, alone, are raised in the United States to the following amount :
Wool, 50,000,00(1 lbs , at 05 cents $17,500,000
Hemp and flax --------- 11.400,000
Silk, 400,000 lbs., at $5 2,000,000
Aggregate - 30,900,000
We sec, then, that, under the present system, a home market exists for nearly thirty-one millions
annually of raw wool, hemp, and silk, alone. Withdraw protection, admit the wool, hemp, and
silk, raised by tire pauper labor of Europe, into our markets, and the American articles must at once
give way to the European ; the demand for the raw material must cease, the supply fall off, and
the American farmers eventually lose thirty-one millions of dollars annually.
But the entire amount of raw material consumed in the United States is, according to the census
of 1840, $161,000,000. By adopting the same mode of reasoning, it may be easily seen that the
withdrawal of protection will cause an actual loss to the farmers of the country of that very large
and important sum. Let it be remembered, then, that the farming interest will suffer immensely
by the repeal of the Tariff of 1842.
There is every probability that the great Southern staple, cotton, will soon require the protection
of 3 cents per pound, which, according to the free trade men, is now unnecessarily extended to it,
but which they have invariably demanded for it. It is useless to conceal the fact that Great Britain
is striving to supply herself from other sources than the United States. Already she has received
large supplies from her own dominions in India, from Egypt, South America, and Texas. During
the year 1841, 273,6:37 bales of India cotton were imported into England ; and it has been esti¬
mated that this amount was increased to 600,000 bales in 1842. A distinguished writer estimates
that in a very short time 200,000 negroes will be removed to Texas. Each of these, from the su¬
periority of the soil in Texas, will raise three thousand pounds of cotton. This will bring into
the market an enormous amount of Texas cotton, of the finest staple in the world. Is it not, then,
sound policy to build up our manufactures by extending to them protection, and thus provide a
market at home for ttie Southern staple, when it shall no longer be able to maintain its ascendency
in the markets abroad ? Nor is the amount of raw cotton already consumed by our manufactories
an item to be overlooked. In 1825 their consumption was 100,000 bales; in 1842 it was increased,
under moderate protection, to 300,000 bales—a ratio of increase three-fold greater than the in¬
crease of British cotton manufactures during the same period.
These are important considerations, and demand the attention of every- Southern man.
3. By excluding European produce from American markets.
No one will deny, that when agricultural products can be produced cheaper in Europe than in
the United States, the foreign producer will be able to undersell the American farmer. Now,
wheat is an important staple, in which our farmers are largely interested The following statement
will show that the fanners along tire shores of the Baltic and Black seas, in consequence of lower
rates of wages, can produce cheaper wheat than our own farmers:
1829.
1830.
1833.
1835.
1838.
Cents.
Cents.
Cents.
Cents.
Cents.
Dantzic ------
86J
82
72 *
55^
664
Hamburg -
87
63
60
45
56
Odessa - . -
60
56
57
56
New York ......
138
114
120 !
136
165
From this it will be perceived, that while for the years specified the price of wheat at New-
York ranged from $1 20 the bushel, the lowest, to $1 65, the highest, the price at Dantzic, Ham¬
burg, and Odessa, the great wheat marts of Europe, ranged from 45 cents to 87 cents the bushel.
What, then, but the duty of 25 cents per bushel on wheat prevents the fo eign producer from en¬
tering the American market, and underselling our own farmers' Nor has this always been sufficient;
for, at several periods, foreign wheat has been introduced into this country, paying the duty of 25
cents, the freight, and charges, and yet underselling the product of our own farmer.
In 1835, the wheat imported was - 238,769 bushels-
In 1836, do do - 583,898 do.
In 1837, do do - 3,921,259 do.
In 1838, do do .... 894,537 do,
11
But these were periods ot' comparative scarcity at home and great abundance abroad. The duty
of '25 cents is adjudged sufficient, as a permanent protection, for a series of years. It cannot be de¬
nied that it has protected our farmers heretofore, and will protect them hereafter, unless repealed,
which is inevitable, should the miscalled "Democratic" party succeed in getting into power. So
much for wheat.
There can be no doubt that the duty of 9 cents per bushel, or 36 per cent ad valorem, on pota¬
toes, prevents the introduction of that article in immense quantities from abroad, and encourages the
American producer. In 1841, 46,448 bushels of potatoes were imported into Boston alone; and,
but for the duty, our markets would unquestionably be overstocked with potatoes of foreign growth.
The protection of 46 per cent to wool, by the tariff of 1842, has reduced the amount of imported
wool, and thus encouraged the American growth. This will be seen from the following statement:
Under the low duties of 1840, the amount of common wool imported was 594,748 pounds, worth
$171,067; in 1843, with the duty of 40 per cent., the importation fell off to $210,570 pounds,
worth $66,387.
These are some of the, great benefits which the American farmer derives from protection. We
have no room for further details; but the influence of protection upon other agricultural staples is sim¬
ilar, and of equal extent. From this exhibition of facts, every farmer will see how important the
tariff of 1842 is to his interests. When he once sees his true interest, of course he will strive to
protect it by resisting the repeal of the tariff. There is only one way to do this: it is by voting
against the leader of the party which is pledged to its repeal; in other words, by voting against
James K. Polkl
The Whigs .uatxtain that, uxurn the tarih, prices are reduced, while wages are
increased.
It is very commonly urged by the enemies of a protective tariff, that it enhances the price of ar¬
ticles of consumption, thus imposing a tax on the consumer ; or, as it has been sometimes ex¬
pressed, that ttie price of an article is increased by the amount of the duty laid upon it. To prove
the fallacy of these positions, we might take up article after article, on which the system of pro¬
tection has operated, and show that the price has almost invariably fallen since the tariff of 1842
went into operation. But we have no room, in the narrow compass allotted to us, to entertain this
interesting subject so much in detail. We will therefore submit a certain number of facts—per¬
haps not a tithe of those at our command—which, we have no doubt, will he sufficient to satisfy
every reasonable man. Facts are stubborn things, and cannot lie, if faithfully presented. Theories
are light and airy creations, more frequently without substance than with it. It is very plausible
indeed to argue the increase of the price of an article by the amount of the duty laid upon it.
Nothing could seem more natural, from a casual examination of the subject. But what is the fact'
Examine the following statement of duty and price, taken from a Boston price current :
Duty. Price.
Cheese - - - - 9 cents per lb. 5 cents per lb.
Lead - - - -3 cents per lb 3^ cents per lb.
Nails .... 3 cents per lb. 4l2 cents per lb.
Common shirting - - 6 cents per yard 6 cents per yard.
Sheeting - - - - 6 cents per yard from 4 to 7 cents per yard.
Here, th ai, we see that cheese sells at Boston for 5 cents per lb., while the duty on it is 9 cents
per lb. ; an J so with the rest of the articles. Now, if the theory was correct, a pound of cheese
at Boston ought to cost 14 cents. Behold, how easily a theory is refuted by a fact!
We think the effect of duty, in reducing price, may be made very evident. Take, for example,
the article cheese. The price of this article depends upon the demand and supply. If the sup¬
ply from abroad is abundant, when a duty of 9 cents per lb. is laid upon it, of course, importa¬
tion will be checked, and the supply fall off. Now, if the demand continue the same, with this
diminished supply, the price of cheese must inevitably rise. But here a new element enters info
the calculation. As soon as the foreign supply is checked, our own citizens, with an article of
equal quality manufactured at home, come into market to fill up its place. Thus the supply is con¬
tinued, and the price remains the same. In a very short time a competition springs up as to who
shall sell the best article at the lowest price. Immediately the price of the article will fall, and con¬
tinue to fall until it is sold at the lowest price at which it can be made. This is the mode in which
duty affects price,- and it should be remembered, that when the supply comes from home, the money
paid for it remains at home, and every day adds to the wealth of the nation.
Now, let us return to the general argument, that prices are enhanced by a protective tariff.
Upon this subject we have two kinds of evidence—prices current, carefully prepared by intelligent
merchants in different parts of the United States, and statements submitted by "Democratic" tariff
advocates at the late session of Congress. We will commence with the latter first. We present,
then, the following from Mr. Brodhead, a "Democratic" member of Congress from Pennsylvania.
Extract from a speech of Mr. Brodhead on the Tariff, April 27, 1844.
"Iam prepared to show that the price of coal and iron is now less than it was before the pas¬
sage of the act of 1842, which increased the duty from $1 26 to $1 75 per ton on coal, and on
iron in about the same proportion."
12
" Now, sir, hero are the prices at which it (coal) sold before and after the passage of the act of
1842 in the principal mdrkets :
Year.
Philadelphia.
New York.
Boston.
1841
$5 00
$7 50
$7 00
1842
-
5 00
6 12*
6 25
1843
-
4 25
4 50
6 00
1844
-
4 00
4 25
5 75
" The same thing may be said in regard to iron and other products of domestic manufacture. I
have a table before me, showing the prices of iron from 1794 to the present time, by which it ap¬
pears that Pennsylvania iron was never as cheap as it is now. These statements show that, in re¬
gard to any production of industry, when the supply of the raw material is ample, the ingenuity,
industry, and enterprise of our people, will, by the effects of domestic competition, bring down the
price to the consumer to the lowest point at which human labor can effect the object without loss ;
and that very shortly after the dread of foreign interference is taken away. The iron men of this
country have always had to contend with a heavy and sometimes ruinous competition, caused by
the large amount of the poor English article brought into our markets. So, too, with our mechanics.
Our people engaged in the coal trade cannot compete with the English and Welsh coal, if the duty-
is reduced nearly one-half, as is proposed by the present bill, and will be obliged to resign our
markets to foreigners ; and then the price will go up to eight or ten dollars per ton again."
This is sufficient for the coal interest. In regard to the great iron interest, Mr. Bidlach, another
" Democratic" member from Pennsylvania, submitted the following statement, with the accompany¬
ing remarks :
Extract from a speech of Mr. Bidlach on the Tariff.
"The inexhaustible stores of iron and coal spread throughout the vast expanse of this wide
Republic will always prevent any danger of combinations among the domestic producers to demand
unfair prices from the community. The present tariff" may have lessened importations, and thereby
given a more extensive home market to our producers, and thus operated to their advantage ; but
that it has not enhanced the prices, will appear from the following extracts from the commercial
list of Mr. Childs.
" Turn to August, 1841 and 1842, and February, 1844, and give us the prices of iron at the
said dates, respectively. I have it, sir, and answer as follows :
English bar iron
American bar iron
American bar iron, rolled
English bar iron
American bar iron
American bar iron, rolled
English bar iron
American bar iron
American bar iron, rolled
August 21, 1841—before the Tariff.
August 6, 1842.
February 10, 1844—since the Tariff.
$75 00 to $82 50 per ton.
72 50 to 77 50 "
75 00 to 82
$65 00 to
72 50 to
80 00 to
50
67 50
75 00
$60 00 to
70 00 to
65 00 to
85 00
65 00
75 00
70 00
"The two former dates show the prices of iron prior to the commencement of the present tariff) and
the latter date shows the price now, while the tariff is in full operation. The result is, that iron
is cheaper now than it was before the present ' heavy duty' was laid upon it ! "
This is "Democratic" evidence enough for our purposes. It proves, beyond the possibility of a
doubt, that the prices of the important articles, coal and iron, have been reduced, instead of in¬
creased, by the Whig tariff of 1842.
We will now present the testimony of the prices current; and, to prove that the reduction of
prices is not confined to one point of the Union, we will select three cities, Boston, Baltimore,
and Augusta, Georgia, which are widely enough separated to indicate the general decline of prices
since the Whig tariff went into operation.
13
TABLE I.
Prices of cotton goods and leather at Boston, before and after the passage
of the late tariff.
Articles.
Shirtings, 27 inch, per yard
Shirtings, 30 inch, per yard
Sheetings, 37 inch, per yard
Sheetings, 40 inch, per yard
Sheetings, 36 to 38 inch, per yard -
Drillings, 30 inch, per yard
Jeans, 30 inch, per yard
Leather, Philadelphia city, per pound
Leather, Baltimore, per pound
Leather, New York, red, per pound
I-eather, Boston, red, per pound
Leather, Eastern dry hides, per pound
Average per cent. -
Aug. Jan.
Aug.
Oct.
Jan.
Aug.
Jan.
Fall
1841
1842
1842
1842
1843
1843
1844
p.ct.
cts.
cts.
cts.
cts.
cts.
cts.
cts.
..
H
5j
54
64
44
54
54
8
-
6f
64
64
54
5-1
64
3
-
n
n
7 J
74
74
64
'§
4
-
9 i
9
8
8
8
64
9
a
-
74
74
74
H
64
64
64
6
-
94
H
84
74
74
74
84
13
-
14
12
104
104
104
n
94
32
-
31
31
27
27
254
254
24
22
-
294
294
27
27
26
254
234
20
-
23
23
184
184
18
18
17
26
-
23
23
194
194
19
19
18
20
-
21
21
174
174
16
17
16
23
-
—
—
~
—
—
154
TABLE II.
Relative value of sundry articles, made up from actual sales at Balti¬
more, in 1841, when the tariff ranged the lowest, and in 1S44, under
the present rates of duties.
Domestic goods.
January I, 1841.
January 1, 1844.
Cotton osnaburgs, per yard -»*---
8 to 10 cts.
64 to 74 cts.
3-4 brown shirtings, per yard -
6| to 84 "
44 to 64 "
4-4 brown shirtings, per yard ~
84 to 11 "
64 to 84 "
6-4 brown sheetings, per yard -
11 to 144 "
84 to 104 "
The prices of bleached goods have changed in the same ratio. Domestic prints, (staple styles,)
124 to 18 cents—84 to 1cents ; domestic cloths and cassimeres and satinets reduced not less
than 33 j per cent.
The effect of the tariff on calicoes or prints is probably as great as on any other article. During
the year 1840, large quantities of British prints were imported, that cost from 22 to 28 cents per
yard : in 1843, prints of as good quality were produced in this country as low as 15 cetts per
yard, which entirely excluded British prints from our markets.
Articles.
In 1841.
In 1843.
Cast hollow ware, per pound
4 cents.
3 a 3A
cts.
Flat iron, per pound
-
-
7 cents.
5J a 6j
<<
Anvils, per pound -
-
-
12J a 16$ cts.
9 a 14
Vices, per pound -
-
-
15 a£ 0 "
10 a 14
«
Scythe blades, per dozen
-
-
16
14
(S
Weeding and hilling hoes, per dozen
-
-
3 a 8 "
H a 6A
a.
Nails, Richmond made
-
5 a 5i "
31 a C
««
Carpenter's knob locks average full 33 j per cent, less in 1843, stock locks full 20 per cent. less,
table knives and forks and pocket knives 33( less, spades and shovels 20 per cent, less, trace
chains 5 per cent, less., cross cut and mill saws 12J per cent. less.
14
TABLE III.
v? list of prices at dlugusta, Georgia, on some of the most important arti¬
cles of consumption, before and after the passage of the tariff act of
1842, compiled from the prices in the month of September, in each year.
Articles.
Iron, Swedes and Russia, per pound -
Nails, cut, id. to 40</., per pound
Salt, Liverpool, ground, per bushel
Sugar, St. Croix, per pound -
Porto Rico, per pound -
New Orleans, per pound
Loaf and lump, per pound
Molasses, West India, per gallon
Cotton bagging, (hemp,) per yard
Twine, English, per pound
Common 3-4 brown shirting, per yard -
Bed ticking, per yard -
Prints, calicoes, &c., per yard -
Cotton drills, per yard
Osnaburgs, per yard -
Satinets, per yard -
particular quality, per yard -
Kentucky jeans, per yard
1841.
1842.
1843.
.
Cents.
Cents.
Cents.
6
5 to 54
5
8
7 to 8
54 to 7
■H to 64
50 to 624
55 to 60
45 to 50
12}
10 to 124
8 to 11
8 to 11
1 1
8 to 11
7 to 9
7 to 10
10
8 to 10
6 to 9
7 to 9
20
14 to 20
14 to 20
13 to 15
40
28 to 32
23 to 28
25 to 30
28
20 to 28
16 to 22
16 to 20
37
30 to 37
25 to 33
25 to 33
7
54
5
19
18
16
28
8 to 28
6 to 23
5 to 20
124
11
9
10
8
100
50 to 100
55 to 90
30 to 90
95
90
874
100
40 to 85
23 to 75
25 to 75
1840,
Cents
6
7
to
624
10
to
8
to
7
to
14
to
30
to
20
to
30
to
74
20
8
to
134
12 4
60
to
90
50
to
tThe correctness of these tabular statements cannot be questioned. They have been carefully
prepared from actual sales at the places indicated. At the late session of Congress, they were ex¬
hibited to the House in the debate upon the tariff, and no one was found with hardihood enough
to question their entire accuracy and truth. It will be perceived, then, that there has been a a
gradual but certain reduction of the prices of all those articles that enter into the general consump¬
tion of the people of the United States. And this result is to be attributed to perfectly natural
causes. Protection secures to the manufacturer a healthy market, with regular demands for the
product of his labor. He can therefore run his whole machinery, and work full time. This
enables him to make ready sales, and secure quick returns. Bv means of this activity, competi¬
tion is introduced, which has the tendency to bring down prices to the lowest point at which the
artiele can be manufactured.
But. while the tariff causes a decline of prices,, it produces a rise of wastes. That such is the
fact, every working man in the country can testify. The labor which obtained 50 cents a day
in 1816, now commands from SI 00 to $2 00. The fact is, that, without a tariff to protect it,
the price of labor in the United States must fall to the price of labor in Europe ; for nothing can
be more certain than that those who work for the same market must work for the same price.
Protection stimulates production, and excites on active competition : the laborer has a greater
number of bidders for his services, and thus he is enabled to demand and receive a higher reward
for his toils. The cause is presented, and the effect must invariably follow.
Having thus, we think, satisfactorily demonstrated the constitutionality, necessity, and expe¬
diency of a protective tariff, we shall take leave of the subject with the following extract from the
speech of Mr. Clay, delivered at Raleigh, North Carolina, on the 13th of April, 1844 :
"Let the amount which is requisite for an economical administration of the Government,
' when we are not engaged in war, be raised exclusively on foreign imports ; and, in adjusting a
' tariff for that purpose, let such discriminations be made as will foster and encourage our oian
' domestic industry. All parties ought to be satisfied with a tariff for revenue, and discrimina-
' tion for protection. In thus settling this great and disturbing question in a spirit of mutual con-
4 cession and of amicable compromise, we do but follow the noble examble of our illustrious an-
' cestors in the formation and adoption of our present happy Constitution : it was that benign
4 spirit that presided over all their deliberations, and it has been in the same spirit that all thp
' threatening crises that have arisen during the progress of the administration of the Constitution
4 have been happily quieted and accommodated."
APPENDIX.
THE TARIFF OF 1842—Mb. CLAY AND Mn. POLK.
Wc observe with astonishment that the "Democratic" papers of New fork and Pennsyha^a
are striving to create the impressson that Hesit Clay and J. K. Polk occupy common ground ir
relation to the tariff of 1842. The secret of this is obvious. In those States the tariff is so popu¬
lar with all parties that no man who is hostile to it can ever hope to succeed before the people.
Mr. Clay is well known to be the tried friend of the tariff, and Mr. Polk its avowed enemy; there¬
fore, thousands daily desert Mr. Polk, and go over to Mr. Clay. To arrest this defection, it is
necessary to ynake Mr. Polk an advocate of the tariff! But the trick must fail; tor falsehood i.-.
stamped on its face, and it is alike insulting to common sense, and derogatory to common honesty
We assert that Mr. Clay is the friend and Mr. Polk the enemy of the tariff of 1842, and we will
prove it from their recorded opinions. Here they arc, side by side.
*Mn. CLAY.
Ashland, June 29, 1844.
Dear Sin: I have received your favor, stating
that our political opponents represent me as being
a friend of protection at the North, and for free
trade at the South; and you desire an expression
of my opinion, under my Own hand, for the pur ■
pose of correcting this misrepresentation. I am
afraid that you will find the effort vain to cor¬
rect misrepresentations of me. Those who
choose to understand my opinions can have no
difficulty in. clearly comprehending them. I
have repeatedly expressed them as late as this
spring, and several times in answer to letters
from Pennsylvania. My opinions, such as they
are, have been recently quite as freely expressed
at the South as I ever uttered them at the North.
I have every where Maintained that, in adjust¬
ing a tariff for revenue, discriminations ought
to be made for protection; that the taiiiff
of 1842 has*operated most beneficially;
and that I AM UTTERLY OPPOSED TO
ITS REPEAL. These opinions were an¬
nounced by me at public meetings in Alabama,
Georgia, Charleston in South Carolina, North
Carolina, and in Virginia.
I am, respectfully, your friend and obedient
servant,
HENRY CLAY.
Mr. Fred. J. Cope.
Mr. POLK.
Winchester, May 29, 1843.
To the people of Tennessee.-
The object which I had in proposing to Gov
ernor Jones, at Carrollville, on the 12th of April
last, that we should each write out and publish
our views and opinions on the subject of the tariff,
was, that our respective positions might be dis¬
tinctly known and understood by the people
That my opinions were already fully and distinctly
known, I could not doubt. I had steadily,
during the period I was a representative
in Congress, been opposed to a protective
policy, as my recorded votes and published
speeches prove. Since retired from Congress,
I had held the same opinions. In the present
canvass for Governor, I HAD AVOWED MY
OPPOSITION TO THE TARIFF ACT OF
THE LAST WHIG CONGRESS as being
highly protective in its character, and not designed
by its authors as a revenue measure. I had
avowed my opinion in my public speeches that
the interests of the country, and especially of the
producing and exporting States, REQUIRED
ITS REPEAL, and the restoration of the prin¬
ciples of the compromise act of 1833.
JAMES K. POLK.
This is plain enough. Mr. Clay declares, in unequivocal language, his opposition to the repeal
of the tariff of 1842, and Mr. Polk declares, in language equally unequivocal, that he is in favor
of the repeal of the tariff ot 1842! There is no room for mistake. The matter is as plain as the
sun in an unclouded sky at mid-day. Of course, then, the election of James K. Polk would be
the death knell of the tariff of 1842. Its repeal would be inevitable; Mr. Polk stands pledged to
it. The leaders of his party declare it to be so. Here are the proofs. Mr. Benton said, in a
speech on the tariff on the 25th April: "The question itself is now on trial before the great areo-
pagus of the people, and must have its solution from that tribunal before we meet again. THE
PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION INVOLVES THE FATE OF THE TARIFF; and to that
fate a future Congress will have to conform, be our action now what it may. Now, as in the
year 1832, the fate of the high tariff is staked in the person of its eminent champion—its candidate
for the Presidency of the United States. That champion was defeated then, and his system with,
him; and he may be defeated again."
The defeat of Henry Clay, says Mr. Benton, is the destruction of the tariff.'
fs Mr. Thomas J. Henley, a " Democratic" member of Congress from Indiana, in a speech on the
tariff, delivered on the 13th June, made the following significant declaration:
16
*
"The Democratic party had been taunted with a fear of passing the late tariil bill. I ran tell
4 the gentlemen that the present tariff will be reduced as soon as we urc in full power. We well
' knew that it was no use to pass it in the House now, as we had not the majority in the Senate.
' Give us a majority there, and see if we don't pass the bill! WE WILL DO IT ; FOK SUCH
'IS OUR RESOLUTE DETERMINATION!"
Mr. Elwood Fisher, a prominent " Democratic" leader in Ohio, used the following language,
at a late meeting of his party in Louisville, Kentucky :
"The Whigs accuse us of not being willing to go before the people upon our principles—of being
4 afraid to avow our naked principles, and to discuss thein fairly and openly, unaided by the gun-
4 powder popularity of a Jackson or the secret power of a magician. We have now nominated a
4 man who is neither a hero nor a magician, (a citizen comparatively undistinguished, and beaten
4 twice in his own State, in the Governor's canvass,) but a man OUT AND OUT FOR FREE
4 TRADE, OPENLY AND UNCONDITIONALLY" OPPOSED TO PROTECTION, AS
4 INEXPEDIENT AND UNCONSTITUTIONAL. We nominate a man as the exponent of
4 our principles, we fight on our principles, and we expect to conquer on our principles, without
4 any extraneous aid."
This is the language of the leaders of the Polk party. It is too clear and distinct to be misun¬
derstood. It proclaims to the country, in trumpet tones, that the election of J. K. Poll; will be
followed by the repeal of the beneficent Tariil'of 1842, and the enactment oi a horizontal scale ot
20 per cent, duties, under which American labor and capital must inevitably fade, languish, and
finally expire !
The papers of the Polk party declare the same thing. The Nashville Union, Mr. Polk's organ,
uses the following language :
" We wish it borne in mind, that the oppressive Tariff of 1842 ha$ been condemned by every
4 true Democrat, and bv none more decidedly than by Mr. Van Buren. That its provisions are
4 viewed with ABHORRENCE by Governor Poll: and all his friends, we need not repeat."
The Washington correspondent of the New York Journal of Commerce, a leading free-trade
paper, says :
"He (Mr. Polk) is roa free trade ; he is for Texas,- he is hostile to distribution. It will
4 be easy to make issue with him on all these questions."
The New York Evening Post, the leading "Democratic" paper of the North, makes the follow¬
ing declaration :
"In supporting Mr. Polk, we take the only method of procuring a repeal of the present
4 unjust tariff, though the Whigs declare their determination of maintaining it as it is, with all
4 its oppressions and abominations."
Mr. Thomas Ritchie, of the Richmond Enquirer, boldly accepts the issue; and while he ac¬
knowledges that Mr. Clay is opposed to the repeal of the tariff of 1842, at the same time candidly
declares that Mr. Polk is in favor of the repeal. Read the following :
From the Richmond Enquirer, of July 30.
44 The last letter from If. Clay on the tariff is dated on the 29th June, addressed to Mr. Cope, of
4 Pittsburg, in which he declares: 41 have every where maintained that, in adjusting a tariff for rev-
4 cnue, discriminations ought to be made for protection; that the tauif of 1842 has operated
4 most beneficially, and that i am utterly opposed to its repeal. these opinions
4 were announced by me at public meetings in Alabama, Georgia, Charleston in South Carolina,
4 North Carolina, and in Virginia.' The Coon presses claim to put him at issue with Mr. Polk
4 on this ground, who declares, in a letter to the citizens of Tennessee, of May, 1843, that 41 am
4 opposed to the tariff act of the last Congress.' We admit the issue, and will battle on this
4 ground for Polk against Clay."
The New York Plebeian, another " Democratic" paper, says, in response to the Richmond En¬
quirer :
"The language of Mr. Ritchie is an index of the feeling of the South, which is nearly unani-
4 mous in favor of James K. Polk, Texas, Oregon, and opposed to a Bank and the protective fea-
4 ture of the Tariff."
.And, to crown the whole, the Charleston Mercury, the leading Nullification paper of the South,
and the organ of John C. Calhoun, thus endorses Mr. Polk:
" Mr. Polk's views on the Tariff, the Bank, and the all-absorbing question of Texas, are South-
4 ern to the backbone."
44 Southern to the backbone /" That is, he presents to the country the alternatives, free
trade or nullification, Texas on disunion 1 These are the South Carolina doctrines.
What has been the conduct of Mr. Polk's friends in Congress ? It is true, they did not repeal
'he Whig Tariff of 1842, for the reason assigned by Mr. Henley, but they hurled the fiercest dc-
17
nunciations against it, and manifested their hostility ia every way in which it was possible to do so.'
A few days before the adjournment, Mr. Tappan, a " Democratic'' Senator from Ohio, offered a
resolution declaring " that the duties imposed by existing laws (the Tariff of 1842) on importa*-
tions are unjust, and ought to be reduced." The vote on this resolution stood thus :
Vkas—Messrs. Allen, Atchison, Bagby, Benton, Breese, Fairfield, Fulton, Hannegan, Hay¬
wood, Hugcr, Lewis, McDuffie, Niles, Semple, Sevier, Tappan, Woodbury, Wright—18.
Nays—Messrs. Archer, Barrow, Bates, Bayard, Buchanan, Choate, Clayton, Crittenden,
Dayton, Evans, Francis, Henderson, Huntington, Jarnagin, Mangum, Merrick, Morehead, Miller,
Porter, Rives, Simmons, Sturgeon, Tallmadge, White, Woodbridge—25.
Eighteen "Democrats" in the affirmative, and twenty-two Whigs and two "Democrats" ia
the negative.
Another instance of Polk hostility to the productions of American labor deserves to be mentioned.
Mr. l'ollock, of Pennsylvania, a Whig, offered an amendment to the general appropriation bill,
directing that th articles purchased for the use of Congress should be of American manufacture,
provided they could be obtained of equal equality and price as foreign articles. Twenty-six of
Mr. Polk's friends voted against the amendment. Here arc their names :
Messrs. Arrington, Atkinson, Bower, Bowlin, Aaron V. Brown, Burt, Campbell, Reuben
Chapman, Augustus A. Chapman, Cobb, Daniel, Dromgoole, Duncan, Holmes, Hopkins, Hub-
ard, Hughes, Jameson, Lumpkin, I.ueas, McKay, Matthews, Murphy, Emery D. Potter, David
S. Reid, and Woodward—26.
These facts indicate the course which Mr. Polk and his friends are disposed to pursue towards
the industry and labor of the country. Mr. Polk in favor of protecting American labor / Toe.
thing is absurd. It would be the protection the wolf gives to the lamb. The Lord defend the
American people from such protection !
THE TARIFFS OF 1816, '24, '2S, '32, AND '42.
comparative statement of the most important articles hearing specif c
duties, as imposed by the acts of 1816, 1824, 1828, 1832, and 1S42,
respectively.
Names of articles.
Duties by the several acts of
1816.
iS24.
1828.
1832.
1842.
Flannels, bookings, and baizes
- sq. yd.
25 p. c.
25 p. c.
14
16
14 cts-
Carpeting, Brussels, Ac.
_ t <
25 p. c.
50
70
63
50
Carpeting, Venetian, &c.
<4
25 p. c.
25
40
35
30
Carpeting, floor cloth, patent
_ ((
30 p. c.
30 p. c.
50
43
35
Oil cloth, furniture -
_ 4 4
15 p. e.
30 p. c.
25
12$
10
Cotton bagging
44
20 p. c.
3 i
5
3i
8
4
Vinegar -
per gall.
15 p. c.
8
8
5
Beer in casks
<4
10
15
15
15
15
Beer in bottles
4 4
15
20
20
20
20
Oil, fish, &c.
44
-
-
-
.
15
Oil, olive -
_ 44
25
25
25
25
20
Oil, castor -
44
15
40
40
40
40
Oil, linseed and rapesced
44
15
25
25
25
25
Sugar, brown
- per lb.
3
3
3
21
H
Sugar, white clayed -
44
4
4
4
31
21
Sugar, loaf -
44
12
12
12
12
6
Sugar candy
4 4
12
12
12
12
4
Sugar, lump and other refined
44
10
10
10
10
6
Sugar, sirup -
44
15 p. c.
15 p. c.
15 p. c.
21
5
Chocolate -
44
3
4 .
4
4
4
Cheese «
44
9
9
9
9
9
Tallow candles
4 4
3
5
5
5
4
Lard -
44
15 p. c.
3
3
3
3
Beef and pork
44
15 p. c.
2
2
O
2
Bacon -
44
15 p. c.
3
3
3
3
IS
TARIFFS—Continued.
Nantes of articles.
Butter ....
Saltpetre, retinal
Oi! of vitriol....
Dry ochre -
Ochre in oil -
Red and white lead - - -
Whiting ' -
J.ithaege . - - -
Sugar of lead ...
1 .cad, pig, See. -
Lead pipes -
Lead, old scrap ...
Cordage, tarred -
Cordage, nntarred -
Twine, packthread, &e.
Corks -
Copper rods, bolts, nails, and spikes -
Wire, cap or bonnet -
Wire, iron and steel, not above No. 14
Wire, iron and steel, above No. 14 -
Iron nails -
Iron spikes ■»
Iron cables and drains, and parts
Iron anchors ....
Iron anvils -
Iron, blacksmiths' hammers, &c.
Iron castings, vessels, &c.
Iron, all other castings
Iron, round and braziers' rods, 316 to
10-16 diameter -
Iron, nail or spike rods
Iron, sheet or hoop - - -
Iron, band, &c. -
Iron, in pigs ' - - per
Iron, old scrap -
Iron, bar, rolled . - -
Iron, bar, hammered -
Hemp -
Alum - - - - '
Copperas - - - - '
Wheat flour - - - - '
i^alt .... per bu:
Coal - - - - '
Wheat - - - - '
Oats and potatoes - - - '
Paper, folio and quarto post - - per
Paper, foolscap, &c. -
Paper, printing, copperplate -
Paper, sheathing, &c.
Paper, all other . - -
Books, prior to 1775—other than Eng. per
Books, Greek and Latin, bound - pe
Books, Greek and Latin, unbound
Books, all other, bound
Books, all other, unbound
Apothecaries' vials under 6 oi. per
Apothecaries' vials, 6 to 16 m.
Duties by the several acts of
1816.
1824.
L828.
1832.
1842.
lb..
15 p. c.
5
5
5
5
?4
3
3
3
2
H
l
3
3
3
1
I
1
1
1
H
'i
U
14
14
3
4
5
5
4
1
1
1
1
14
15 p. c.
15 p. c.
5
5
4
15 p. c.
15 p. c.
5
5
4
1
2
3
3
3
20 p. c.
25 p. c.
5
5
4,
15 p. c.
15 p. c.
15 p. c.
2
■ 14
3
4
4
4
1 44
4
5
5
1 5
5
4
5
5
5
6
15 p. c.
12
12
12
30 p. c.
4
4
4
4
4 cts.
30 p. c.
30 p. c.
30 p. c.
12
12
_
_
6
5
5
_
—
10
9
8 to 11
3
5
5
5
3
2
4
4
4
21
20 p.' c.
3
3
3
21
11 p.c.
2
2
2
24
20 p. c.
2
2
2
21
20 p. c.
21
21
24
24
20 p. c.
ii
11
14
14
20 p. c.
i
1
l
1
20 p. c.
3
34
3
24
20 p. c.
3
34
3
21
2$ p.c.
3
34
3
24
20 p. c.
3
34
5.30
2} cts.
wt.
50
621
50
-
45
_
62J
621
50
150
150
185
150
1121
45
90
112
90
85"
150
175
300
200
200
100
200
250
250
150
100
200
200
200
200
15 p. c.
50
50
50
70
hel
20
20
20
10
8
5
6
6
6
*1 75 p t.
15 p. c.
25
25
25
25 cts.
15 p. c.
10
10
10.
10
lb.
30 p. c.
20
20
20
17
30 p. c.
17
17
17
15
30 p. c
10
10
10
104
30 p. c.
3
3
3
3
30 p. c.
15
15
15
15
ol.
_
4
4
4
4
lb.
15
15
15
15
13
13
13
13
30
30
30
30
26
26
26
26
OSS
20 p. e.
^ var'us, fn. $ 1 to }
175
175
20 p. c.
<> $1 75 pr. gr's 5
225
225
19
T A RIFFS—Continued.
Duties by the several acts of
Names of articles.
1816.
1824.
1828.
1832.
1842.
Demijohns, \ gallon to 3 gallons
- per No.
20 p. c.
25
25
25
15 to 20
Glass bottles, to 1 quart
per gross
144
200
200
200
300
Glass bottles, over 1 quart
4 4
20 p. c.
250
250
225
400
Playing cards
per pack
30
30
30
30
25 ~
Window glasg, not over 8 by 10, per 100 sq. ft.
250
300
300
300
200
Window glass, over 8 by 10, and
not
over 10 by 12 - per
100 sq. ft.
275
350
350
350
350
Window glass, over 10 by 12
44
275
4 to 500
4 to 500
400
600
Fish, dried or smoked
per quintal
100
100
100
100
100
Fish, salmon
per bbl.
200
200
200
200
200
Fish, mackerel or herring
44
150
150
150
150
150
Fish, all other
1 4
100
100
100
100
100
Shoes and slippers, silk
per pair
30
30
30
30
25.
Shoes, prunella
44
25
25
25
25
25
Shoes, leather, &c. -
44
25
25
25
25
30
Shoes, children's
4 4
15
15
15
15
15
Boots and bootees
_ (4
150
150
150
150
125
Wool, costing over 8 cents -
per lb. ^
Over 10
Under 10
30 p. c.
15 p. c.
7 50 p. c.
S & 4 cts.
40 p. c.
& 4 cts.
23 p. c.
& 4 cts.
Wool, costing over 7 cents per lb.*
><
-
-
-
-
30 p. c.
& 3 cts.
Wool, costing under 7 cents per lb. - "
-
-
-
-
5 p. c.
Woollen yarn
4 4
25
33j
-
50 p. c.
& 4 cts.
30 p. c.
& 3 cts.
Merino shawls
- per ct.
44
25
r 334 &
45 p. c. A
50
40 cts.
Cloths and cassimeres
25
< 011
various V
50
40
Other woollen manufactures -
< 4
25
C mini
ma. J
50
40
Clothes, ready made -
4 4
30
30
50
50
50
Glass, cut -
- per lb.
20 p. c.
30 p. c.
30 p. c.
30 p. c.
Glass, plain and other
..
_
& 3cts.
& 3 cts.
& 3 cts.
20 p. c.
)>25to42
& 2 cts.
j
* The variations of the duties on wool cannot he expressed in the above table, owing to changes
in the grade. By the Tariff of 1824, all wool costing over ten cents per pound paid 30 per cent,
on its valuation; all costing under ten cents per pound paid 15 per cent. By the Tariff of 1828,
all wool costing over eight cents per pound was taxed four cents per pound and 50 per cent, ad
valorem; which rates, by the Tariff of 1832, were reduced to four cents per pound, and 40 per
rent.; while all wool costing less than eight cents per pound was admitted free. By the present
Tariff all wool pays three cents per pound and 30 per cent, ad valorem, except such as costs,
when cleaned, less than seven cents per pound ; and this is taxed 5 per cent
Extracts from a speech of Mr. Andrew Stewart, of Vennsxjloan'a,, delivered at Union/own, art
the Sth July, 1844.
" Mr. Polk says, in his letter to Mr. Kane, of Philadelphia, dated June 19, 1844, that he is for
a tariff" for revenue, sufficient to defray the-expenses of Government; so is Mr. Calhoun. He
says; ' I have heretofore sanctioned such moderate discriminating duties as would produce the
revenue needed;' he voted for tire tariff" of 1832, (the only tariff" bill he ever voted for in his life,'
except the Compromise bill;) and why did he vote for it' He tells you in his Tennessee speech;
because it reduced the tariff'of 1828; not as much as he wished, but as much as was practicable at
the time.
"Mr- Calhoun is abetter tariff man than Mr. Polk. In 1816, he voted to increase the protec¬
tive duties; Mr. Polk has never voted to increase but always to reduce them. Next, Mr. Polk
20
says, lie sustained Ihe hill reported liy the Committee of Ways and Means, in December, lSHtt,
(Mr. "Verplanek's bill,) making still further reductions of the act of 1828. This favorite bill of Mr.
Polk's reduced every ad valorem duty, after 1855, down to 20, 15, 10, and 5 per cent., except one:
the duty on coach lace was left at 25 per cent., wool and woollens at 15, worsted at 10, and certain
cloths, kerseys, and blankets, 5 per cent. A bill which would have crushed at a blow every manu¬
facturer, laborer, fanner, and mechanic in this country—worse than the compromise bill, when it
had run down in 1842 to 20 per cent, horizontal ; and infinitely worse—not half as good as Mr.
McKay's bill of the last session ; and this is the hill that Mr. Polk boasts of having • assented to,
and which he says made 'discriminations in the imposition of the duties which it proposed.' ^ c-t
it discriminated with a vengeance. On wool and woollens (after 1805) from 20 down to 15, 10,
and 5 per cent!—' small by degrees, and beautifully less.' This is Mr. Polk's brag bill■ This
is what he calls ' fair and just protection to all the great interests of the whole Union.' 'Fair and
just /' and who is riot for ' fair and just >' Who will say that he is for what is unfair and unjust'
Mr. McDuffie says 15 per cent, is ' fair and just.' Mr. Polk says 16 per cent, (the average of
Verplanek's bill) is ' fair and just' protection to all our great interests. Mr. McKay last winter
said that an average of 80 per cent, was ' fair and just.' Every man says, of course, that his own
views are 'fair and jusl.' Mr. Polk's definition of a 'fair and just tarifl' is worse than General
Jackson's 'judicious tariff.'
" But Mr. Polk has fixed and defined his own position. On the 3d of April, 1843, he said: '1
am for repealing the act of 1842, and reducing the duties to the rates at which they were on the
30th of June, 1842,' (20 per cent, ad valorem;) and according to his letter to Mr. Kane he is for
it now. Thus we have Mr. Clay and Mr. Polk both fixed as to the precise amount of duty they
are for on every article in the whole tariff. Take the Whig tariff of 1842, and you have Mr. Clay's
bill; and take the tariff as it stood on the 30th of June, 1842, (20 per cent, horizontal,) and you
have Mr. Polk's bill.
" Now let us sec bow tlioy will operate when brought to bear on the people and their interests. 1
sec a great many mechanics and some manufacturers present. Well, gentlemen, give us your
opinions of Mr. Clay's and Mr. Polk's
: protection :
Shoemakers -
- Clay gives you 60 per cent.,
Polk 20 per cent.
Hatters -
'' 55
<4
20
44
Tailors -
50
( A
20
((
Blacksmiths
45
20
Li
Tanners -
. " 44
20
4.
Tinners -
43
i i
20
<4
ironmasters - -
525 per ton,
S6 33 per ton.
Wool manufacturers
" 40 per
cent.
20 per cent.
Cotton manufacturers' -
140
< 4
20
44
Glass manufacturers
120
20
44
Paper manufacturers
80
20
Carpet weavers
Farmers, on wool
45
* •
20
a
40
(A
20
4 A
on spirits
155
k*
20
4 4
on wheat
40
20
on beef and pork
120
(A
20
i A
on cheese
70
44
20
on coal
" 411
44
20
<(
ind to all others in the same proportion. Thus, those employed in every branch of industry can
now judge for themselves. Flay secures the American market for the American farmers, manu¬
facturers, and mechanics. Polk gives it up to the British, or compels the American to comedown
and xvork as cheap as the paupers of Europe, (from 12 to 20 cents per day.) Clay is for the
American system, Polk for the British. This is the true state of the question, and it cannot be
disguised or evaded. When the British and Americans are contending for the American market,
the question is, which side will you take ? Such being the true state of the question, which should
we prefer for President, James K. Polk, the champion of the ' British System,' or Henry Clav,
the illustrious champion and advocate of the ' American System ?'
" Clay is for the tariff of 1842, Polk for 20 per cent, horizontal. This is settled by their late let¬
ters—Mr. Clay's of the 29th of June to Mr. Cope, and Mr. Polk's of the 19th June to Mr. Kane,
of Philadelphia. Can Pi:.vnsv lyania, unanimous with Clay for the tariff' of 1842, hesitate in
her choice > Politicians and office seekers may—the people, the enlightened, patriotic, unsophis¬
ticated people, never. They will never commit suicide with their eyes open. When the great
principles in issue—the tariff, distribution, and Texas questions—are clearly and rightly under¬
stood by the people, they will go against Mr. Polk and his British 20 per cent, tariff', his anti-dis¬
tribution, and his slavery and Texas annexation policy, by an overwhelming majority. Mark the
prediction—mark it!"
f.
TARIFF DOCTRINE.
Tar- time is approaching when the American people will be called upon to exercise that high
prerogative of freemen, the elective franchise, in the selection of State officers, and also of a Chief
Magistrate of the Republic. Having no political object in view, and seeking nothing but the
general prosperity of the country, you will, I am persuaded, weigh every consideration which can
bear upon the subject, and give your support to those candidates whose known views on ques¬
tions of State policy will best promote the general welfare of the State and nation.
And permit me to say, there is no question of national policy which is more vitally important,
and no one which will enter more fully into the approaching Presidential contest than that of the
regulation of commerce. If we are lured by the syren song of "free trade" to open our ports,
without restriction or charge, to the ships and fabrics of those nations which place restrictions
upon our commerce, and embarrassments upon our trade, we shall throw our own artizans out of
employment, and spread desolation and ruin through the community. On the other hand, if we
adopt a wise system of discriminating duties, we shall check the importation of foreign luxuries,
give employ to our own shipping, support to our own citizens; and, by encouraging industry in
all its forms, we shall cause enterprise and prosperity to reign through the land. Every citizen,
then, who has the good of his fellows or the prosperity of his country at heart, must give support
to those candidates for office who will sustain the protective policy.
THE CHARACTER AND TENDENCY OF THE PRESENT TARIFF.
The present tariff was designed both for revenue and for protection ; it was enacted to meet the
wants of the Government, and at the same time to encourage the labor of the country. The
Whigs of 1842 saw the revenue of the country declining, and they felt called upon to do some¬
thing to sustain its sinking credit. They knew that Mr. Van Buren, during his administration,
had expended annually eight millions of dollars more than the ordinary receipts of the Treasury,
and they were impelled, by every consideration of economy and of patriotism, to make provision
to meet the necessary expenses of the Government. They saw commerce declining—manufac¬
tures prostrate—agriculture deprived of its market, and labor of its reward. The wants of the
Government, and especially the wants of the people, called aloud for relief; their voice was heard,
and a Whig Congress passed a law for the benefit of the people. The protective system is de¬
signed not for the few, but for the many; not for one class, but for every class of our citizens.
The merchant, the navigator, the mechanic, the artisan, the farmer, the day laborer, have each an
interest in this policy, as direct and as immediate as the manufacturer. The protective system
has reference to the industry of the country; and every man who depends upon his own labor
for support has a deep interest in this question. It is true, that the action of the Government
has induced many of our citizens to embark their capital in manufactures, and that more than
$300,000,000 are now invested in that department of industry; and that every Government is
bound to protect interests which its own policy has forced into being. But great as this interest
is, it bears no proportion to the labor of the country. If we estimate only one-fourth of our
population to be laborers, and call their wages only fifty cents per day, this would amount in a
single year to more than twice the sum invested in manufactures. Labor is the great source of
wealth and prosperity ; and that system which stimulates industry, and gives to the laborer the
reward of his toil, is best adapted to the wants of the country. The protective system is purely
democratic in its tendency. It fosters industry, and enables the poor man, who has no capital
but his own labor, no surplus but what is found in his own sinews, to acquire a competency to
support and educate his family. Already has the tariff given a new impulse to the industry of
the country. Business, which had become stagnant, has revived; the busy hum of industry is
now heard in the land, and every department of human enterprise feels the life-giving influence
of the protective system.
THE FRIENDS AND ENEMIES OF THE TARIFF.
But as vital as the protective system is to the interests of the country, there are those among
us who are hostile to it: and though its beneficial effects are rapidly developing themselves, there
are not wanting those who threaten its repeal. The great parties of the day are divided upon this
question. The present tariff is a Whig measure—introduced, sustained, and passed by a Whig
Congress. And though a few Democrats voted for the tariff on its final passage, several of them
had previously spoken and voted against it; and it is well known that they are now sustaining
those for office, who have proclaimed their uncompromising hostility to the whole system.
As the Conventions, to which the subject of selecting candidates for the Presidency is referred,
have not convened, it does not become us to announce the candidates. But we will take Mr.
Clay, who will undoubtedly be one, and another individual, who, whether he be a candidate or
not, may be regarded as the exponent of his party on this subject. Mr. Clay has long been iden¬
tified with the protective policy; and in a letter recently written to Hon. I. A. Merriweather, of
Georgia, he says : " I think the present tariff in the main right, and working much good." Here
we have the opinion of Mr. Clay, which is the opinion of the Whig party. Mr. Van Buren has
Printed at Gideon's office, Ninth street, Washington.
2
expressed his deadly hostility tj the present tariff. In a letter, dated Albany, Feb. 23, 1843, he
says : " 1 have at no time, nor any where, kesit atcd to express my decided disapprobation of the
fariff of the last session, as well in respect to the principles upon which it is founded, as to its
details." Such arc the views of Mr. Van Buren, and the party to which lie belongs.
Fellow-citizens, you must perceive, at once, that there is an essential difference between Mr.
Clay and Mr. Van Buren on this important subject; a difference which is fundamental in its
character. The protective policy is founded on the principle that government is established for
&he good of the people; and that the main object of legislation is to guard the public interest, and
promote the prosperity of the people themselves. But the anti-pretective doctrine is founded on
the opposite principle—that the Government, in imposing duties on imports, should look to its
own wan's alone. The Whig doctrine recognises the principle, that the Government is insti¬
tuted for the good of the people, and should protect their industry, while the doctrine of the self-
styled Democrats is founded on the principle, that Government is instituted for its own sake, and
has no duty which it owes to the people. This is the difference between the two parties; and
what difference can be more fundamental 1 The one party makes the wants of the people the
controlling consideration—the other the wants of the Government. The one makes the Govern¬
ment the agents of the people—the other makes the people the subjects, or rather slaves, of the
Government. The former regards the Government as a means—the latter, an end. That is the
doctrine of genuine republicanism ; this is the essence of despotism.
THEE TRADE.
The opposers of a protective tariff profess to be in favor of free trade. As there is something
pleasing in the idea of free trade, let us see what it involves. In the tir6t place it requires that all
duties whatever should be repealed, and that the public treasury should be supplied by some other
means. And how can the wants of the Government be supplied 1 The proceeds of the sales of
She public lands, which ought in justice to be distributed among the States, could supply but a
small portion of the necessary revenue, if it were paid into the treasury. The doctrine of free
trade, then, necessarily implies direct taxation; and are the people prepared for this 1 It is ad¬
mitted by those conversant with the. subject, that direct taxation would bear more oppressively
upon the people than indirect. In the first place the cost of collection would be greater, as a host
of new officers must be created for that purpose. Let us look at its operation upon the States.
During the administration of Mr. Van Buren the aggregate expenditures, as shown by the Se¬
cretary's repor,t amounted to $ 133,411,853 ; being an average annual expenditure of $33,352,963.
The cost of assessing and collecting is much greater in the case of direct taxes than in the pre¬
sent mode; there would also be a much greater liability to losses than the present system To
realize a sum equal to the above average, you would be compelled to add to that sum $2,650,000,
making, in round numbers, $36,000,000 to be assessed upon the people. By a provision of the
Constitution, all direct taxes must be apportioned among the several States according to federal
numbers. This, with the size of the present House of Representatives, would amount to $161,435
to each Representative. If we were to take the number of Representatives from each State as
the basis of her federal numbers, which would be near enough for our present purpose, the tax
would fall upon the several States as follows, viz:
Maine - $1,130,045 Delaware $161,435 Tennessee $l,775,7S6
Sew Hampshire 645,740 Maryland 908,710 Kentucky 1,614,350
Vermont 645,710 Virginia 2,421,525 Ohio 3,390,135
Massachusetts 1,614,350 North Carolina 1,152,915 Indiana 1,614,350
Rhode Island 322,870 South Carolina 1,130,045 Illinois 1,130,045
Connecticut 645,740 Georgia 1,291,480 Missouri 807,175
New York 5,488,790 Alabama 1,130,015 Arkansas 161,435
New Jersey 807,175 Mi sissippi 615,710 Michigan 484,306
Pennsylvania 3,874,4 40 Louisiana 615,740
Let the tariff of duties be repealed, and the wants of the Government be supplied by a direct
tax upon the people, and the glories of free trade would not only be seen, but felt. The wand
of the magician could hardly reconcile the empire State to tue "annual tax of $5,488,000. Let
Pennsylvania be called upon to contribute $3,874,000, from year to year, and she would crave
the pardoning power of Governor Porter in good earnest. Subject Virginia to the annual pay¬
ment of $2,421,000, and she would feel that free trade was something more than an abstraction.
Before South Carolina had paid her quota ($1,130,000) five years, she would call in nullification
to her aid, and ask for a dissolution of the Union. The fact is, the indebted States could not, at
the present time, meet such exactions. The free trade men of Indiana, and Illinois, and Missis¬
sippi, and Michigan, and Maryland, and some other States, who now complain so bitterly of the
burdens of the tariff, would, under the system of direct taxation, soon learn that they had deceived
themselves by wild theories, and would wish to return to the sober realities of a tried system.
But if men will not learn wisdom, except bv bitter experience, let free trade come, and direct tax¬
ation follow in its train. Let the people suffer, if they must, until they learn that the tried path
ef our patriot fathers is not to be abandoned to promote the interest of foreign importers.
3
A HORIZONTAL TARIFF OF TWENTY PER CENT.
There are many of the Democratic party who advocate the doctrine of free trade, who dare
mot follow it out in direct taxation. They say that they are in favor of a uniform duty of 20 per
cent, on all articles. Now this is as far iemoved from free trade as our present system. In 1841,
the free articles imported into the country amounted to $66,000,000, being about one-half the
imports for that year; and if to these we add the articles paying less than 20 per cent., it would
amount to considerable more than one-half of the imports for that year. Now, according to this
notion of unrestrained commerce, one-half of our imports which have been free, or nearly so, are
to be subjected to a duty of 20 per cent, which is as far from free trade as our present system.
A uniform rate of duty is unreasonable and absurd in its very nature; it overlooks entirely the
character of articles; loses sight of the distinction which should exist between luxuries and ne¬
cessaries ; and disregards altogether the interest of the labor of the country.
The articles which are now admitted free of duty may be classed under two or three general
heads. Drugs and medicines constitute a large class of the free articles. Now, what friend of
humanity would desire to lay an additional burden upon the sick and unfortunate, by imposing a
duty upon the medicine used for their recovery ? Another large class of free articles is made up
of the raw materials used in manufactures. This is designed expressly to encourage manufac¬
tures, or, in other words, to promote the interests of the labor of the country. But the opposers
of our present system would set at naught all these considerations; they would neglect the in¬
terest of labor, by taxing the raw material as heavily as the manufactured article; they would
tax the medicine of sick men, and they would impose a duty upon tea and coffee, which are now
free. These are some of the great blessings which our boasted Democrats would confer upon
the poor and unfortunate—the sick and the dying.
THE POLICY OF OTHER NATIONS.
Free trade is not only impossible in the nature of things, but an attempt to adopt it would
prove ruinous to our great interests. Suppose we should repeal our tariff'of duties, and blot from
our statute book every act which gives a preference to American shipping, would this constitute
free and equal trade? Take our commerce with England for an example ; we open our ports to
her, and receive her commodities free of duty. What treatment do we receive from her in return!
Does she open her ports, and receive our staples duty free 1 No! even in her revised tariff of 1842,
she imposes duties which, if carried out ad valorem, would amount to the following rates, viz:
Rosin - - - 76 per cent.
Bacon - - 109 "
Soap ... 200 "
Spirits from grain - - 500 "
Tobacco, unmanufactured - 1000
Tobacco, manufactured - 1200 "
Spirits from molasses - 1600
Indian, corn, average - 30 per cent.
Flour do - - 30
Sperm oil - - - 33
Sperm candles - - 33
Salted pork - - 33
Salted beef - - 59
Butter - - 70
Here is the free trade which Great Britain extends to us. She imposes 6uch duties as her own
interest requires. Nor is the policy of England at all peculiar in this respect. Within two years,
Russia, France, and the Prussian Commercial Union, have revised their tariffs, and increased
their rate of duties. Even Mexico, a neighboring Republic, has, within the same peiiod, adopted
a new tariff, which is absolutely prohibitory upon all articles which she can grow or manufacture.
Among the prohibited articles are some of our great staples, viz: rice, flour, wheat, raw cotton,
cotton yarn and thread, coarse cottons, hogs' lard, tallow, tobacco, &c.
Now, does this policy of other nations afford us any encouragement to relax our laws, and the
subject of discriminating protective duties 1 Shall we extend favors to other nations, when they
■withhold them from us! I trust that you are not so lost to every feeling of patriotism, as to de¬
sire to see our country made_tributary to the monarchies of the old world. While they pursue
their present policy, and tax our staples from 30 to 1600 percent., 6hall we tamely submit, with¬
out making any effort to counteract the evil tendency of their measures! Fellow-citizens, as
patriots you are not required to love other nations better than your own; and your duty to your¬
selves, nay, your self-respect, would require you to guard your own interests against the legisla¬
tion, as well as against the arms, of any foreign power.
THE REASON WHY WE NEED PROTECTIVE DUTIES.
We have already said, that the great ohject of discriminating duties is to protect the industry
of the country against the pauper labor of the old world. Our laborers ask nothing but a fair
field. On the ground of a just reciprocity, they have nothing to fear; but without protective
duties the odds are fearfully against them. The two great items which go into productions of all
kinds, are capital and labor; and in both of these the foreigner has a manifest advantage over our
citizens. In England, and on the continent, capital is worth only three or four per cent., while
in this country it is worth from six to eight. European labor costs from five to nine shillings per
week, including board, while in this country labor costs nearly that per day. Under these cir¬
cumstances, how can the American manufacturer or mechanic compete with those of Europe!
We want protective duties mainly to counteiact the influence of cheap capital and cheap labor,
4
Give us duties barely sufficient to make up these inequalities, and our farmers and mechanics—
our manufacturers and navigators—or, in one word, our laborers—can contend, successfully, with
those of any other nation.
We, as a people, are peculiarly situated. Our vast unsettled country creates a demand for
capital and labor, which raises them in value far above the European standard. We are sepa¬
rated from the old world by distance, and by the nature of our institutions. The leading charac¬
teristic of our country is, that our laborers are citizens—are freemen.
This tends to elevate the working classes, and to secure t o labor its just reward. View the
condition of our laborer as compared with that of Europe. The European manufacturer, in esti¬
mating the cost at which he can produce a fabric, inquires what is the lowest sum that will barely
feed and clothe the laborer. He sets down nothing like profits to his laborers, but barely allows
them an animal subsistence. But the American manufacturer must inquire, not what will barely
feed the laborer, but what sum will give him .a comfortable support, and leave him fair profits.
In Europe the laborer gets nothing but a miserable subsistence from day to day—in this country
he must share, with his employer, the profits of the business, by the increased rate of his wages.
This difference between the character of American and European labor constitutes the necessity
for protective duties. If our laborers were like the serfs of Russia, or the paupers of England,
compelled to labor for the lowest possible sum which would sustain their corporeal system, we
might compete successfully with foreign manufacturers without protective duties. And do the
enemies of the tariff wish to bring down the labor of this country to the low level of the European
standard 1 This is the direct tendency of their doctrines; and it becomes the working men of
the country, who, by being a vast majority, have at all times the destiny of the nation in their
hands, to inquire whether those can be their friends who would reduce their wages, so as to de¬
prive them of the ability of supporting themselves and families. Laborers, the subject is sub¬
mitted to you, and we are willing to abide your decision.
THE POOR NEED PROTECTION.
It is a great mistake to suppose that the protective system is designed for any particular class
of our citizens. Its advantages extend to all callings and employments, and no one derives
greater benefits from it than the day laborer. By encouraging manufactures, and the mechanic
arts, you create a demand for labor, and so enhance the price. Wages, like every thing else,
depend upon the laws of demand and supply. When manufactures flourish there will be a de¬
mand for labor, and it is then that the poor man receives the greatest reward for his toil; it is
then that his income is the greatest, and his labor brings him the most abundant return. Many
of our hardy laborers have no property but their ability to toil—no capital but their own physical
frame. Now, by protecting our own industry, we enable the poor man to earn a larger sum, and
in this way we, to all practical purposes, increase the amount of his capital, or,kwhich is the
same thing, make his present capital more productive. If the laborer, by the encouragement
given to home industry, is enabled to cam thirty dollars a year more than he could have earned
without this stimulus, we actually, for the time being, confer as great a favor upon him as though
we had deposited $500 for his benefit, and secured the interest to his use. The laboring man,
more than any other, has an interest in protection. The rich capitalist has less interest in this
policy. His tens of thousands would perhaps yield him a greater return if labor was depressed,
and the great staples of agriculture were rendered cheaper; but the honest laborer, who depends
upon the fiuit of his own toil for the support of himself and family, has a direct personal interest
in the price of labor. When business is depressed he is the first to suffer, and when it revives
he receives the largest share of the benefits.
Though Government is bound to sustain all its eitizens, and should, as far as possible, throw
its protecting shield around every interest, yet its first care should be extended to the weak and
defenceless; the poor man, more than any other, needs the fostering care of the Government.
The rich man can, in a great degree, protect himself; but the man who earns his bread front
day to day by the sweat of his brow—he it is who needs encouragement and protection from ait
unequal foieign competition. Now the policy of the Whig party is designed and eminently
calculated to give this protection, and thereby to sustain the poor and laboring classes; but the
policy of the opposite party would build up the rich at the expense of the poor. If I were
to devise a system for the express purpose of making the rich richer, and the poor poorer, I would
adopt the very measures for which the self-styled Democrats contend. In the first place I would
repeal the tariff, that our mechanics might be driven from their workshops, and our farmers be
deprived of their home market; I would then destroy all banks, that the business of the country
might be embarrassed as far as possible ; and then, lest money should be so plenty that the poor
man might occasionally be enabled to obtain a dollar, I would re-establish the sub-treasury system,
by which the small quantity of specie in circulation would be hoarded up in the vaults of the
Government. Let this, the favorite system of Mr. Van Buren, be adopted, and the poor would
be ground to the dust.
THE AGRICULTURISTS NEED PROTECTION.
As agriculture is the great interest on which every other must depend, no system would be
perfect which overlooked the hardy cultivators of the soil, or left their wants unsupplied. And
to the honor of our present system, it may be said, that this great interest—this parent calling is-
5
not neglected. Almost every article raised hy the farmer, is protected by a rate of duty not less
than that enjoyed by the manufacturer. Among the protected articles may be mentioned—beef,
pork, lard, bacon, tallow, hides, hams, butter, cheese, wheat, flour, corn, rye, barley, oats, beans,
peas, potatoes, onions, flax, hemp, wool, cotton, tobacco, and rice, and the vegetables generally.
This list includes almost every article the farmer has for sale, and they are protected by a rate of
duty as high, to say the least, as is imposed upon articles, the product of manufacturers. On the
great staples of agriculture, the duty ranges from 25 to 150 per cent.; and if we should adopt the
anti-tariff doctrine, that the prices were increased to the amount of the duty, the rate would be
much higher. There is another class of articles which enjoy a good protection, which have an
immediate connexion with agriculture, and may be regarded as a bounty offered to the farmer.
Among these are raw silk, pot and pearl ashes, and wood and lumber in all their forms. Besides
this, the farmers are encouraged by the admission, free of duty, of animals for breed, and Plaster
of Paris, used extensively as a manure. The duty on iron, lead, lime, bricks, &c., which has
been complained of as bearing injuriously upon the farming interest, is, on the whole, promotive
of that interest. These articles are used less by the farmers, according to their numbers and
wealth, than by manufacturers and mechanics. The farmer also derives a direct benefit from the
manufacture of these articles. The raw materials are all taken from the soil, and their presence
in the soil enhances its value, and so promotes the great landed interest. The duty on coal tends
to benefit the same interest, by increasing the value of the soil where it is found, and also by rais¬
ing the price of wood, which the farmer has to sell.
Now, under these circumstances, will any one say that the interests of agriculture are not pro¬
moted by the tariff! Let the duty be removed from butter, cheese, potatoes, hemp, or even meat
and grain in some seasons, and the influence would be severely felt. But the great benefit which
the farmer derives from the tariff, relates to the market which it creates. It is to no purpose that
the farmer raises produce beyond his own consumption, unless he can dispose of his surplus.
And who are the consumers of this surplus! To whom does the farmer sell his butter and
cheese, his meat and grain, and whatever else he may have for sale 1 Not to his brother farmers—
they have enough and to spare. His great market is among the manufacturers and mechanics—
the very class of men whose business would be destroyed by a repeal of the tariff. Our country
is essentially agricultural, and the great difficulty the farmer has to contend with is, the want of
a market for his produce. The encouragement given to manufacturers and the mechanic arts,
takes a share of our citizens from agriculture, where they are producers, and converts them into
consumers of agricultural products.
By the late census, it appears that there were about 800,000 men engaged in manufactures.
These, with their families and dependants, amounting to at least 4,000,000, are consumers of
agricultural products. Will the farmers say that such a market is of no consequence to them!
Let the tariff be repealed, and the manufactures of the country be broken down, and the benefits
of the tariff would at once be seen and felt by the farming interest. They would not only lose
their principal market, but these 800,000 manufacturers would be compelled to engage in agricul¬
ture, and become producers themselves. The natural and necessary effect of this would be to
depress agriculture. A greater calamity could not befall the farming interest. Under these cir¬
cumstances, the very bounty of nature would cease to be a blessing; as the farmers would suffer
pinching poverty in the midst of the greatest plenty.
But when manufactures, encouraged by a suitable protection, flourish, there is always demand
for agricultural products, at remunerating prices ; so that the cultivators of the soil receive their
full share of the benefits of protection Manufactures, by increasing population, enhance the
value of the soil, and promote the interest of those who cultivate it. " The price of land depends
materially upon its proximity to a market. Go through the country, and you will see lands of
the same intrinsic value, selling for agricultural purposes, at prices ranging from two dollars to
two hundred dollars per acre, when the main consideration which affects the price is their situa¬
tion with reference to a market. Whenever or wherever a village springs up, from manufactures
•or any other cause, the price of land is increased for miles around. Not only .do the great staples
of agriculture increase in value by the proximitv of a market but a thousand little nameless
artic/es assume a value unknown before. Gardening is introduced—milk is disposed of at grea
profits—the summer and fall fruits, before nearly useless, find a ready market, and even the stones
are converted into bread.
This principle is clearly illustrated in the manufacture of iron. The ore is generally found in
the interior, and at a distance from the seaboard market. The furnaces and bloomeries set up in
the interior, consume a large quantity of provisions which, owing to their distance from a market,
would otherwise be nearly valueless. From every view we can take of the subject, it appears
that the great farming interest of the country, derives as much benefit from the protective system,
as any other whatever, the common laborers only excepted.
THE MANUFACTURERS NEED PROTECTION.
This proposition hardly requires an argument for its support. We have already seen that the
foreign manufacturer has the advantage in the price of capital, and the price of labor; this enables
him to furnish his fabric at a lower price than the domestic manufacturer. Though no uniform
rule can be adopted, as a general thing, taking every species of manufacture, it would not be far
6
from the truth, to say that labor constitutes one-half of the value of manufactured articles in this
country. Take an article which costs our manufacturer $1, fifty cents of this is the cost of the
labor. Now as labor in England and on the continent costs not more than one-third of that sum,
say 1? cents, it is manifest that the article can he produced there for 33 cents less than it can bo
here ; and if we take into view the worth of capital in the two countries, thu foreigner will have
a still greater advantage. But even this advantage of 33 cents on 67, would be equal to an ad
valorem duty of 49 per cent.
But there is another consideration which must not be overlooked. Every person acquainted
with the subject knows, that the commercial world is not exempt from reverses. When a season
of pressure comes over the community, and prices decline, the foreign manufacturer has an advan¬
tage over the domestic. The foreigner can reduce the price of his labor. He says to the opera¬
tives, the market is glutted, prices have gone down, and I must dismiss you at once, or you must
submit to a reduction of wages. Now what will follow in such a case? Why, his laborers must
submit. They are dependent upon their labor for their daily sustenance, miserable as it is. They
cannot leave their present employment and go into agriculture, for that calling is already full, and
wages are as low there as in manufactures. Thus the laborer is induced, or rather compelled, to
submit to a reduction, and so the manufacturer goes on, producing the article at less than its
ordinary cost.
But it is not so with the American manufacturer. When overtaken by the same season of
pressure, and decline of prices, he is compelled to stop his works. His laborers will not submit
to a reduction. The moment it is proposed to reduce their wages, at a rate corresponding with
the reduction which has taken place in Europe, the laborers will leave the mill or the workshop,
and engage in agriculture. The low price of land, and the vast uncultivated regions with which
our country abounds, enable the laborers at any time to obtain a living from the soil. I state
these things, not by way of complaint, but rather as a matter of rejoicing. Our laborers are free
men, and are able to support themselves and families in one calling, if not in another. But while
we rejoice at the independent condition of our laborers, we should not close our eyeS to the effects
of the high price of labor.
We have seen that the foreign manufacturer can continue his works through a season of de¬
pression, because he can reduce the wages of his operatives; but the American manufacturer can¬
not do it—consequently, he must suspend his operations and close his mills. Thus, while our
manufacturers are struck down by a pressure, the foreign manufacturer will go on producing at a
cheap rate, and when the times improve, he will throw his goods into the market, and obtain a
fair profit on the ruin of our manufacturers. This advantage of the foreigner over the domestic
manufacturer, grows out of the character of American laborers. And does any one wish to see
this character destroyed, and the free independent laborers of this country brought down to the
low level of foreign labor 1 Who will have the hardihood to maintain, that the laborers in this
free country—the citizen of this enlightened Republic—ought to be so depressed and degraded,
as to be put entirely within the power of their employers 1 I had rather our manufactures should
perish, and our Lowells and our Pittsburgs become waste places, than that such a calamity
should fall upon the laboring classes. This evil, fellow-citizens, can be averted only by protecting
our own industry.
THE MECHANICS NEED PROTECTION.
In nothing do the opposers of a protective tariff more frequently err, than in supposing that
protection is needed only for the large manufacturing establishments. The fact is, that the large
establishments have less need of protection than those private individuals who manufacture in a
small way. And all our mechanics are to be considered as manufacturers, and stand in need of
protection as much as any other class. The common shoemaker, who supplies the little circle
around him, needs a protective tariff as much as the manufacturer of cotton or wool. Remove
the duty on ready made clothing, and not only your tailors, but your seamstresses—the wives
and daughters and sisters of many an honest laborer—would be thrown out of employ. Abolish
your tariff, and your wheelwrights and carriage makers would find their business essentially im¬
paired ; for, without duties, our rich men would import their carriages from abroad. It is a great
mistake to suppose that the tariff is designed for capitalists, and the large manufacturing estab¬
lishments alone. The poor mechanics of the country—those who possess but small means, and
who are obliged to turn their labor to immediate account—they are the class who need, and who
deserve, protection more than any other class of manufacturers.
We have thus endeavored to show that all classes—the farmers, the manufacturers, the mecha¬
nics, and especially the laborers—have a vital interest in the protective policy. We may in one
word say, that the industry, the labor of the country, requires protection, and that to withhold
it would be doing violence to every interest.
But I am aware that great efforts have been made, by designing men, to create a prejudice
against this system. The farmers have been told that a tax is imposed upon them to build up
the manufacturer in wealth and splendor; but whoever will look at the subject with any degree
of attention, may satisfy himself that tho farmer and mechanic are benefitted as much as the
manufacturer. Nor is it true, as has frequently been said, that manufacturing capital is pecu¬
liarly productive. At one time the manufacturer is enabled to make large dividends, and at ano-
4
7
ther none at all. Take the two great departments of cotton and wool, and I venture to say that
the net proGts on these investments, from the first, have not amounted to 4 per cent, per annum.
THE EFFECT OF THE TARIFF UPON PRICES.
The tariff is frequently objected to on the ground that it increases prices, and operated pecu¬
liarly hard upon the poor man. Whether this objection is well founded, will be seen by tha
following comparison of prices. There is no article of manufactures which goes into the con¬
sumption of the poor man's family so extensively as cotton goods. And what has been the
effect of the tariff upon this fabric 1 Take common cotton sheetings or shirtings for example:
they could not be bought in 1817 or 1818 for less than 30 or 35 cent3 per yard ; and now they
tan be bought for from 5 to 8 cents per yard. Common blue and white calico, which at that
time cost 35 or 40 cents per yard, can now be had for from 8 to 12 cents per yard. And while
this great reduction has taken place in the price of this, and almost every other manufactured
article, the price of labor has not diminished in the least. The poor man can .now earn more
cotton goods in one day than he could then in three; and the female, dependent upon her own
industry, can now, by one week's labor, purchase a dress, which twenty years ago would have
cost her one month's labor.
Now this great change— this reduction in the price of manufactured articles—has been brought
about, in a great degree, by the protective system. Duties, when judiciously laid upon articles
which can be manufactured in this country, do not, as a general thing, increase the price. This
can be shown by the prices of the same articles before and after the passage of tho present tariff.
To illustrate this principle we will take a few articles, and give the prices before and after tbe
present law took effect.
Prices par yard of Cotton goods, before and after the passage of the present tariff law, at
shown by the Price Current at Boston.
Description of goods.
Aug. 1842.
Oct.
1842.
April, 1843
June, 1843.
Aug. 1843.
Cents.
Cents.
Cents.
Cents.
Cents.
27 inch brown shirting
5 and 54
5 and 54
4 and
44
44 and
44
5 and 54
30 " " "
6
®i
6
6J
54
6f
54
H
6 64
33 " " stout "
6#
n
6*
4
44
44
44
5 54
36 to 38 " sheeting
7
n
6*
7
5
6
54
6
64 7
37 inch " "
6i
n
6
6*
64
6
54
6
6 64
37 " " stout "
**
8
7
74
6
7
64
7
7 74
40 11 lt " u
8*
H
8
0
7
74
74
74
74 8
30 " drillings
8
84
7
8
6
7
64
7
7 7|
28 " bleached do.
8
9
8
9
7
74
74
74
74 84
28 " jean
9
.9*
9
94
8
9
8
9
84 94
30 " bleached do.
10
11
10
10i
9
94
9
94
94 10
Here we have the prices of eleven kinds of cotton goods, from August, 1842, to August, 1843,
inclusive. It will be recollected that, in August, 1842, the duty on all articles came down to 20
per cent., and that the present tariff law took effect on the first of September, 1842, and raised the
duty on the above mentioned cotton goods far above 20 per cent. Still it will be seen by tbe
above table, that the prices were lower one month after the tariff than they were one month be¬
fore the passage of the act; and in April, 1843, eight months after the passage of the act, the
prices were from 12 to 25 per cent, less than they were immediately before the tariff act was
passed. It is true that, in August, 1843, the prices had improved a little, yet it will be seen that
even then they were from 5 to 15 per cent, less than they were one year before, when tbe duty
was brought down vastly below what it is under the present tariff. Let any person examine the
above table, and he will see that the increase of duty has not increased the price. We will take
another article, and one of common consumption, and see how the tariff has affected the price.
We will present the price current of leather in August, 1842, when the duty was only 20 per
cent., and in December, 1842, and December, 1843, with the increased duty, by which it will be
seen that the prices have declined, notwithstanding the increase of duty.
Prices of Sole Leather per pound.
Place.
August, 1842.
December, 1842.
December, 1843.
Cents.
Cents.
Cents.
Philadelphia city
26 and 28
24 and 26
23 and 26
Do. county
23 « 25
21 " 23
18 " 20
Baltimore city - - -
26 " 28
24 " 26
23 " 25
do dry hides
19 " 21
17 « 20
18 " 20
New York light
18 " 20
16 " 18
16 " 18
Boston slaughtered
16 " 18
14 « 17
17 " 18
Eastern dry hides
18 " 19
16 « 19
15 " 17
8
From this view of the prices it will be seen that, in August, 1842, before the passage of the
tariff, the average price of sole leather was 21 cents 8 mills. In December following it was 20
cents, and in December, 1843, 19 cents 5 mills, being a reduction of 2 cents 3 mills to the pound.
Salt is another article consumed, more or less, by the whole community ; and what effect the
tariff has had upon its price, the following from the price current, will show:
Cadiz, per hogshead, in August, 1842 - . - $1 87
" " Dec., " - - - - 1 08
Turks Island, per hogshead, in August, 1842 • - - 1 84
" « Dec., " - - - 1 87
Here has been no increase of price by the increase of duties. And we lay it down as a prin¬
ciple, which will hold good in relation to this subject, that the imposition of duties, upon articles
which we can manufacture in this country, will not, in the end, increase their prices. The his¬
tory of the past is full of instances in which prices have actually diminished with an increase of
duty. Give sufficient protection to our own labor, and there is no doubt but that Yankee com¬
petition will bring the article down to the lowest remunerating price.
CONCLUSION.
We have endeavored to show that the protective system is designed to meet the wants of the
Government, and to promote the industry of the people : that the system is not designed for
manufacturers merely, but for the mechanic, the farmer, the day laborer. We know that its effect
has already been seen in the revival of business in every department of human industry. But
though this system is thus important—thus sustaining the best interests of all classes in the State,
yet we find that the Democratic leaders are every where endeavoring to overthrow it. They
have not only pronounced the tariff " unwise in its details, and objectionable in its provisions,"
but they have solemnly resolved, " that the act of the last Congress is unequal and unjust, " and
they have called upon our Senators and Representatives in Congress to disturb that system which
is well adapted to the wants of the Government and the people. On the contrary, the Whigs
are rallying as one man to the support of this great American measure, and are willing to stand
or fall by it. It is for you, fellow-citizens, to decide at the approaching election whether you will
sustain those who war upon your own interests, and upon your country'6 prosperity. I leave the
case with you. Do your duty, and your State will be redeemed. Do your duty, and the bless¬
ings of a grateful country will rest upon you.
MR. JEFFERSON'S VIEWS.
The tariff doctrines are recognised and luminously enforced by Mr. Jefferson in his report
as Secretary of State, in 1793, on the subject of Commercial Regulations. After expressing
his own devotion to Free Trade, where real Free Trade is offered us, he proceeds:
" But should any nation, contrary to our wishes, suppose it may better find its advantage by
continuing its system of prohibitions, duties, and regulations, it behoves us to protect our citi¬
zens, their commerce and navigation, by counter prohibitions, duties, and regulations also.
Free commerce and navigation are not to be given in exchange for restrictions and vexations,
nor are they likely to produce a relaxation of them.
" The following principles, being founded in reciprocity, appear perfectly just, and to offer
no cause of complaint to any nation
"1. Where a nation imposes high duties on our productions, or prohibits them altogether, it
may be proper for us to do the same by theirs ; first, burdening or excluding those productions
which they bring here in competition with our own of the same kind; selecting next such man¬
ufactures as we take from them in greatest quantity, and which, at the same time, we could the
soonest furnish to ourselves, or obtain from other countries ; imposing on them duties, lighter at
first, but heavier and heavier afterwards, as other channels of supply open. Such duties having
the effect of indirect encouragement to domestic manufacturers of the same kind, may induce
the manufacturer to come himself into these States, where cheaper subsistence, equal laws,
aud a vent of his wares, free of duty, may ensure him the highest profits from his skill and in¬
dustry. And here it would be in the power ol the State Governments to co-operate essentially,
by opening the resources of encouragement which are under their control ; extending them,
liberally to artists in those particular branches of manufacture for which their soil, climate,
population, and other circumstances have matured them; and fostering the precious efforts
and progress of household manufacture, by some patronage, suited to the nature of its objects,
guided by the local information they possess, and guarded against abuse by their presence and
attentions. The oppressions on our agriculture in foreign ports would thus be made the occa¬
sion of relieving it from a dependence on the counsels and conduct of others, and of promoting
arts, manufactures, and population at home."—Am. State Papeis, vol. 1, p. 300.
These Views, founded in obvious justice, are as applicable to-day as in '93, and in all future
time as to-day. They form the basis of a true and self-sustaining National policy, and no wise
Statesman will venture to disregard them.
9
THE BRITISH TARIFF.
" The largest portion of our Commerce, both Exports and Imports, is carried on between
this country and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. By confining our inquiry
to that branch of trade, we are enabled to present in contrast the legislation of the most import¬
ant foreign nation, compared with that of the United States. We here beg leave to remark,
that we know of no good reason why so large a share of our trade with foreign countries, more
than one-third of the whole, should be carried on between the United States and Great Britain,
unless it be owing to the wisdom in legislation and skill in administration practised by that na¬
tion, for the protection of their own interests in Agriculture, Commerce, and Manufactures.
" It will not be denied that our country can produce the raw material, and in the present ad¬
vanced state of the arts, our artizans and manufacturers are abundantly capable of supplying the
people of the United States with nearly if not all of the articles now imported from Great Britain.
Operation of the British Tariff.—" To show the operation of the British Tariff on articles
the growth, produce, and manufacture of the United States, we have, with much care and labor,
prepared the following Table A, containing all the essential staple productions of this country
in a list of forty-seven articles, all of which are either among our exports, or could be exported
in large quantities if the same were encouraged by a course of equal trade. Also, the price
•current of each of these articles in the New York market; the rate of duty payable on the same
by the former British Tariff, and by the same lately revised and now in operation in Great
Britain. The Table also shows the discriminating Duty in favor of the British Colonies, where
there is any such discrimination.
" The result of an accurate average of the rates of Duty on these articles by the former British
Tariff is 359 per cent, on the value in this market; and by the new British Tariff now in opera¬
tion the average is 289 per cent. The difference between this average rate of Duty and the
actual rates of Duties collected on our Exports, as shown by Table B, is explained by the fact
that the higher rates of Duties are prohibitory, thus excluding many articles; and Cotton, on
which the Duty is only 7^ per cent., forms nine-tenths of the amount of our Exports to Great
Britain, thus necessarily reducing the average. On thirty-three of these articles, being all on
which a discrimination is made in favor of the British Colonies, the average duty, when import¬
ed from the United States, is 166 per cent., and on the same, when imported from the British
Colonies into Great Britain, 64 per cent., making a difference in favor of the Colonies of 102 in
the rate per cent, on these articles. The high Duties on manufactured articles, shown in the
Table A, marks the protective policy of their Duties—being low on raw materials and articles
they do not produce, and so high as to be prohibitory in favor of their own labor and productions.
Operation of the\American Tariff.—" In contrast with these regulations affecting our Exports
to Great Britain, we have ascertained the average rate of Duty on articles imported into the
United States from Great Britain, according to the present Tariff Act, passed August 30, 1842.
This Act has no sliding scale—no prohibitions—no second column of Duties at lower rates, and
a discrimination of nearly two-thirds in favor of Colonies—no five per cent, addition, &c., &c.,
A careful examination of the rate ot duties payable on the different articles of British Manufac¬
ture forming the bulk of our imports from Great Britain and Ireland, results in an average rate
of Duty of 32 per cent., as is shown by Table C, annexed. This ratio may be somewhat re.
duced by the actual operation of the Tariff on articles paying specific Duties, which are subject
to variations from differences of prices and qualities.
"To show which nation has practised the system of Free Trade, it is only necessary to men¬
tion, that while Great Britain admits no article, except Specie, from the United States free of
duty, we have by our former Tariff regulations received, duty free, many British Manufactures.
In 1840, the amount of articles imported into the United States from Great Britain, free of duty,
exclusive of Specie, was $9,875,496, of which value more than Seven Millions of Dollars were
the manufactures of the United Kingdom. Our total exports to them, the same year, exclusive
of cotton and tobacco, amounted only to $3,875,351, on which the British Government levied a
duty of 44 6-10 per cent. '
The British Tariff so high as to exclude American Products.—" The British Tariff affixes so
high a rate of duty on many articles of American growth and produce as to operate in excluding
them from the list of our exports to Great Britain. The Table marked B shows the total amount
of our ExDorts to Great Britain and Ireland for three vears.with the amount of duties paid
thereon, averaging 50$ per cent, notwithstanding about nine-tenths of the total Exports con¬
sisted of Cotton, which being indispensable to Great Britain for the supply of her extensive
manufactories, and the employment of a large proportion of her population, is admitted at a low
rate of duty. Omit Cotton, and the duty on all other articles was 330 per cent. Under the
prohibitions imposed on American produce, it will be observed that our annual average exports
to Great Britain, exclusive of Cotton and Tobacco, amount only to $3,875,351. It is worthy
of remark, that on the two great staples of Cotton and Tobacco which she receives from the
United States, Great Britain levies an amount of Duties much exceeding the total amount of
Customs collected on all articles imported into the United States from all foreign countries;
and also exceeding the total annual expenditures of our Government. Thus, the receipts into
the United States Treasury from Customsfor the years 1838, 1839, and 1840, were $52,796,227,
while in the same years the British Government collected on Cotton and Tobacco from the
United States, duties to the amount of $73,638,628.
British Duties on ours and on Colonial Products.—"We next call attention to the important
10
discrimination in favor of articles from the British Colonies, the same operating in many cases
to exclude us and secure to the Colonies the supplying of articles ot their produce for the British
market. This, of course, affects the interests of our Agriculturists. The trade between the
Colonies and Great Britain being secured by law to British vessels, and prohibited to Ameri¬
cans, the effect on our Tonnage and Commerce is readily seen.
TABLE A.
Exhibit of the comparative Rates of Duty, levied by old and new British Tariffs, on articles
the growth and produce of the United States.
Articles of export.
Apples per bush.
Apples, dried "
Ashes, pot per 112 lbs.
Ashes, pearl "
Bacon "
Beef. per bbl.
Beans .per bush.
Bark, Quercitron per 112 lbs
Butter. ....I tc
Candles, sperm per lb.
Candles, tallow per 112 lbs.
Candlewick "
Casks, empty per cent.
Cheese per 112 lbs.
Cider per bbl.
Clocks per cent.
Corn, Indian*, .(average) per bush.
Cotton..... per 112 lbs.
Feathers "
Fish, cured (prohbt'd und. old tariff)
Fish, cod per 112 lbs
Flour* (average) per bbl.
Hams (see Bacon.)
Hops per 112 lbs.
Lard "
Lead per ton.
Molasses per 112 lbs.
Oil, linseed per ton.
Oil, fish "
Oil, sperm "
Pork.................per 112 lbs.
Rice, cleaned "
Rosin "
Snuff per lb.
Soap, bar per cwt.
Spirits, from grain per gal.
Spirits, from molasses "
Starch per 112 lbs.
Sugar, brown «
Sugar, loaf <•
Staves, hogshead per 120
Tallow per 112 lbs.
Tar. per bbl.
Tobacco, leaf per lb.
Tobacco, manufactured "
Turpentine per bbl.
Twine, Kentucky per 112 lbs
Vinegar per bbl.
Wheat* ..(average) per bush.
Wool per bl.
N York
Or.o Duty.
New Duty.
Dutyonim-
Rate
market
Kate nn
Rate
Rate on
Rate
ports from
per
price.
quantity.
per cent
quantity.
per cent
ltrit.Prov's
cent-
$ cts.
£ s. d
£ s. d.
£ d.
50
4
192
6
24
2
8
1 00
2
48
2
43
4 62
6
31
6
2?
free.
5 12
6
28
6
2I
free.
6 72
1 8
100
14
50
3 6
12|
5 75
1 4
100
16
67
4
1 00
10
20
10
20
5
10
1 25
8
12j
3
5
1
2
13 44
1
36
1
36
5
9
33
2 6
180
6
36
12 32
3 3 4
123
10
19
10 08
4 8 8
212)
8 8
20
4 4
10
50
25
5 60
10 6
45
10 6
45
2 6
10
1 00
1 15
840
1 15
840
25
20
54
1 6
67
9
33^
h
8 96
2 11
71
2 11
74
4"
1
33 60
2 4
31J
1
14
10
7
3 00
2
16
free.
4 75
17
85
6 7i
331
1 10
9
7 81
8 11
523
4 10
275
6 72
8
28
2
7
6
78 40
2
121
1
6
5
n
2 24
13 9
255"
1 3 9
255
189 00
39 18
100
6
15
1
2t
100 00
26 12
127
6
29
1
}
200 00
26 12
64
15
36
1
i
5 60
12
51
8
34
2
3 00
15
120
6
48
6
4
45
4 9
253
2
107
1
531
08
6
1800
6
isoo
6 72
1 10
321
1 10
107
1
71!
23
1 2 6
2347
1 2 6
2347
9
939
27
1 2 6
2000
1 2 6
2000
9
800
5 60
9 10
814
10
421
5
211
6 72
3 3
225
3 3 *
225
1 4
S5£
12 32
8 8
327
8 8
327
4 50
3
320
7 9
41
7
3|
7 84
3 2
9
3 2
9
3
i
1 50
1 3
20
2|
3
1
2
1
z
03 i
3
2056
3
2056
09
9
2490
9
2400
2 62
13
119
3
27|
22 40
1 11
33
1 11
33
6 00
3 3
252
3 3
252
1 00
3 4
80
1 4
32
6
6
25
1
8
1
8
free.
Number of articles 47)16898
48)13886
Average rato of duty under the old tariff 359 New do. .. .289
* Subject to the Sliding Scale. The Sliding Scale in the British Corn Laws makes the duty on Grain and Flour
variable according to the prices of their Domestic Grain, and is nearly prohibitory to Grain and Flour from the
United States, The duty is always low enough to admit the same from the British Colonies.
11
One hundred and two per ceixt. in favor of British Provinces—The average duty on 33 o!
the above articles, in which, as is seen, there is a discrimination in favor of the British Prov¬
inces, is, when imported from the United States, one hundred-arid sixty-six per cent.—but,
when imported from the British Colonies, the average duty on the same article is sixty-four per
cent, only; making a difference in favor of the latter, and against the United States, of one
hxmdred and two per cent. On the remaining 15 articles, there is no discrimination of duties,
the duty being at a rate prohibitory. All this illustrates the practice and the commerce under
our Reciprocity Treaty with Great Britain.
In addition to the above rates of duties, a further duty of five per cent, ad valorem upon the
amount of the several duties is levied on all articles imported except Spirits, which pay afurther
duty of four pence per gallon.
Timber from the United States prohibited.—With regard to the duties now payable on Timber
and Lumber, they are not included in the above Table, for the reason that any calculation of
the rate per cent, thereon, according to the British Tariff, must be indefinite. The discrimi¬
nating duties on these articles are so much in favor of the British Colonies, and against the
United States, as to be prohibitory to our Timber and American vessels, and to secure the trade
to British vessels from the Colonies to Great Britain. A few articles will suffice to show the
duties payable, and the discrimination in favor of the British Colonies :
" On deals, battens, boards, or other Timber, sawn or split, per load of 50 cubic feet, the duty
is 32s. or $7 68. On the same from the British Provinces, 2s. or 48 cts.
On Timber not being deals, battens, boards, staves, handspikes, oars, lathwood, or other Timber,
sawn, split, or dressed, except hewn, the duty per 50 cubic feet, is 25s or §6 00. From the
British Provinces, Is. or 24 cts.
On Wood, planed or dressed, duty 7\d. or 15 cts. per cubic foot, and a farther duty of 10 per
cent, on the same. From the British Provinces, 5 per cent.
On Oars, the duty per 120 is 150s. or $36 00. On the same from the British
Provinces, 3s. 9d. or 90 cts.
On Handspikes, do. 40s. or $9 60. Do do do Is. or 24 cts.
On Spokes for wheels, per 1000,80s. or $19 20. Do do do 2s. or 48 cts.
On Lathwood, per 216 cubic ft. 40s. or $9 60. Do do do Is. or 24 cts.
On Firewood, do 10s. or $2 40. Do do do free."
The course of this trade is—for British vessels to come into our ports and take a cargo of
American produce and sail, if at the East, for Halifax or New Brunswick ; if at a Southern
port, for a West India Island ; and having touched thu3 at a British Colony, the voyage is then
homeward from such Colony. This secures the carrying trade, and on our grain, timber, &c.,
the benefit of the discriminating duties in favor of the Colonies. In March, 1840, one of this
Committee came up the Savannah river, and he there saw eleven large British vessels lading
with Georgia Timber—no American vessel there!! This course of trade is not allowed to an
American vessel. And yet it is said we have a Treaty of Reciprocity with England.
Three hundred and thirty per cent, duty in England on exports from the United States.
Table B.
Total Export of articles, the growth or produce of the United States, to England, Scotland,
and Ireland, with the Duties paid thereon during the years 1838, 1839, and 1840.
1838 - - Value - $50,481,624 Duties - $23,621,160 - 46 7-10 pr. ct
1839 - - 50,791,981 " - 26,849,477 - 52 8-10 "
1840 " - 54,005,790 « - 28,360,153 - 52 5-10 "
Total « -$155,279,395 « - $78,830,790 av. 50 5-10 "
Of the above, the value of Cotton and Tobacco, and the duties paid thereon, were as follows, viz :
1838
1839
1840
f Cotton
£ Tobacco
( Cotton
( Tobacco
f Cotton
I Tobacco
-
- - Value
- $45,769,687
Duties -
- $2,761 612
-
— _ (c
2,939,706
(C _
- 19,860,898
-
— — < C
- 46,074,579
t £ _
1,942,337
-
_ — <e
3,523,225
Ci _
- 23,288,396
-
_ _ {(
- 41,945,334
t( _
- *3,247,880
-
_ _ ((
3,380,809
«< _
- 22,537,205
Total "
- $143,653,430
(( _
- $73,638,328
Being an average duty on the whole of 50 5-10 per cent. On Cotton and Tobacco, 51J per
cent. All other articles, the growth or produce of the United States, exported to England,
Scotland, and Ireland, during the same three years, amounted to $11,626,055 or $3,875,351 an¬
nually ; on which the British Government levied an average duty of 44 6-10 per cent. Omitting
Cotton in the above table, Great Britain has levied an average duty of 330 per cent, on all other
articles, the growth or produce of the United States.
•Under the act, 3 Vic., chap. 17, (May 15, 1840,) an addition of five per cent on the amount of Duties on all
importations into Great Britain, except bread-stuffs, spirits, and wood, was leviep ; which law remains in force
with the British Tariff of JuJy, 1842.
12
The amount of Duties from Customs in Great Britain in the year 1839, was £22,962,610, or
$B10,220,528, of which $26,849,477, or about one-fourth of the whole Revenue from Customs,
was collected on articles produced in the United States, and exported to England, Scotland,
and Ireland.
Table C.
Statement of the. Rateof Duties payable on the principal articles imported into the United States
from Great Britain and Ireland, according to the present Tariff, passed August, 1842.
Woollens
Worsteds - -
Cottons -
Linens - -
Hemp, manufactures of
Silk, manufactures of -
Cotton Bagging -
Flannels
Baizes —
Carpeting
Lace, Thread - -
Lace, Cotton
Lace, Bobbinet
Paper -
Books - - -
Engravings
Twine - -
Leather, manufactures of
Earthenware
per cent.
(average) 40
(average)
(average)
- do -
- do -
- do -
- do -
- do -
- do -
- do -
- do -
- do -
(average)
30
50
25
20
40
34)
33
40
40
15
20
40
75
25
20
33
35
30
Glass - -
Hardware - -
Iron - - -
Saddlery
Steel - - - ,
Tin -
Brass, manufactures of -
Copper, do -
Plated ware
Gilt do - -
Gold and Silver Jewellery
Do Watches
Do Lace -
Ale and Porter
Drugs - - -
Salt -
Coal -
per cent.
(average) 40
(average)
(average)
(average)
- do -
30
40
30
16)
1
30
30
30
25
20
7)
15
50
20
50
60
)1140 g
— 32
36 articles
Average (nearly)
N. B.—On those articles which pay specific duties, the rate per cent, is calculated on the
average cost of the same articles in Great Britain.
THE TARIFF IN GERMANY.
The following masterly analysis of the great question of Protection vs. Free Trade was made
two or three years since for the meridian of Germany, but its principles and truths will be found
to apply admirably and strikingly to our own country and time. It was called forth by a Report
of Dr. Bowring, a prominent 'Free Trade' member of the British Parliament, on the Commer¬
cial Relations of Great Britain with Germany, intended to induce the Germans as well as the
British to abandon their protective policy, and concur in a free interchange of their respective
productions. The fallacy of its assumptions and the delusiveness of its calculations, so far as
they were intended to show that it is wise in a nation to suffer the destructive paralysis by foreign
rivalry of its home manufactures, in the expectation of supplying itself more advantageously
from abroad, is thus ably shown by the Augsburgh Allgemeine Zeitung, (Universal Gazette,)
which is the leading journal of Germany, if not of Continental Europe :
ON THE GERMAN ZOLL VEREIN, OR COMMERCIAL UNION.
( With references to Dr. Bowring''s Report.)
What a great nation, in the present age, is without an efficient system of commercial policy,
and what it may become by such a system, Germany has learned by self-experience, within these
last twenty years. This country had long been what Franklin once described New Jersey to be,
a tun tapped and drawn off by its neighbors on everv side. England not content with having
ruined the greater part of the German manufacturers, ana with having overwhelmed us with im¬
mense quantities of woollen and cotton goods and colonial produce, repelled from her shores our
corn and timber, and occasionally even our wool. There was a period when the consumption of
English manufactures was in Germany four limes greater than in her much boasted Indian em¬
pire ; and yet the monopolizing islanders would not allow us poor Germans the advantages they
concede to their subject Hindoos, of paying for the manufactures we need in agricultural pro¬
duce. In vain did the Germans debase themselves, until they became hewers of wood and draw¬
ers of water for the proud Britons; they were used worse than a subjugated people. Nations,
like individuals, if they once allow themselves to be ill treated, will soon be despised by every
body, and become the sport even of children. France, not content with laying Germany under
contribution for excessive quantities of wine, oil, silk, and fashionable trinkets, also obstructs the
disposal of our cattle, corn, and linen. Even a small maritime province, formerly German, and
still inhabited and governed by Germans—a province grown rich and powerful through Germany,
13
on which it ever must depend, closed, for half a generation, after the general peace, the best ,
river of Germany, under the pretext of some wretched quibbles, and against the obvious interpreta¬
tion of the said treaties. To crown the mockery, it was at the same time constantly inculcated from
the chairs of a hundred professors, that nations could only be made rich and powerful by univer¬
sal commercial freedom. Thus was it then with us; how is it now 1
Within these ten years Germany has made the advance of a century in welfare and industry,
in the feeling of self-independence, and in national energy. And why 1 That those revenue
barricades, which separated Germans from Germans, should be leveled, was well and good; but
poor would have been the consolation thus afforded to the nation, had her industry still been left
exposed to competition. It was mainly the protection which the system of the Zoll Verein se¬
cured to the manufacturers of articles of general consumption that worked the wonder.
We must frankly acknowledge that Dr. Bowring has irrefutably proved that the Zoll Verein
does not, as has been alleged, impose mere revenue duties—that it is not limited to between 10
and 15 per cent., as Huskisson believed; we say plainly, that in respect of articles of general
consumption, it secures protecting duties of from 20 to 60 per cent. But how have these duties
operated 1 Do the consumers pay from 20 to 60 per cent, more for German manufactures than
they formerly did for foreign, as according to the theory they should 1 Or are the German goods
worse than the foreign 1 By no means; Dr. Bowring himself bears testimony to the fact, that
the German manufactures, which are protected by the high tariff duty, are better, and sold on
more reasonable terms, than the like foreign articles. The internal competition with security
against the distressing effects of foreign competition has worked this miracle, of which the eco¬
nomical [Free Trade] school knows nothing, and nothing wills to know. The proposition which
that school maintains is therefore not true—namely, that a protecting duty enhances to the
amodnt of such duty the price of the home manufacture thereby protected. For a short time,
indeed, it may cause such an increase of price, but in every country that has a proper capacity
for becoming a manufacturing nation, internal competition must, under a system of protection,
speedily bring down the price lower than it stood when free importation prevailed.
Well, then, has our agriculture suffered any detriment from the high tariff 1 Quite the con¬
trary. It has gained—a ten-fold gain, during the last ten years. The demand for agricultural
produce has increased, and the prices have every where risen. It is notorious, too, that in conse¬
quence of the prosperity of our home manufactures, the value of landed property has every
where experienced an increase of from 50 to 100 percent. Daily labor is everywhere better
paid, and on all hands improved means of conveyance are in progress to completion or projected.
Nevertheless, some States of the Union continue to look to the repeal of the English duties on
corn and timber for their salvation, and there are also some wealthy and influential men, who,
distrusting their own experience, still put faith in the cosmopolite creed. On this part of the
question, as well as on the relations of the German Commercial Union, and the tactics of the
English Government, most important disclosures are afforded by Dr. Bowring's report. Let us
try to cast some light on that document.
In the first place, we must notice that point of view in accordance with which the whole re¬
port has been drawn up. Mr. Labouchure, the President of the Board of Trade, sent Dr. Bow¬
ring to Germany for the same purpose that Mr. Poulett Thompson despatched him to France in
1834 ; for, as the French were to be influenced by concessions with respect to wine and brandy,
so was it expected that the Germans would be induced, on account of concessions with respect
to corn and timber, to throw open their market to English manufacturers. There existed, how¬
ever, an important distinction betweeen the two missions; namely, that the concessions which
were to be offered to the French were exposed to little or no opposition, while those which were
to be offered to Germany were first to be fought for and determined by the result of a contest in Eng¬
land. This necessarily rendered the character of the two reports entirely different. The report
on the commercial relations between France and England was exclusively addressed to the French
people. To them, or rather to their theorists and theorizing practicalists, it might be said that
Colbert gained nothing important by his protective measures ; they might be induced to believe
that the Eden treaty was advantageous to France, and that the continental system, and the pre¬
sent prohibitive system, have]proved extremely injurious. In short, the Adam Smith theory might
here be adhered to without any qualification. The success of the protective system might be
thoroughly, and without ceremony, denied.
The subject could not be so easily dealt with in the latter report, for it now became necessary
to address both the English land owners and the German Governments at one and the same
time. To the farmer it was to be said—"You here see a nation which, in consequence of pro¬
tective measures, has already made immense progress in manufactures, and which being in posses¬
sion of all the necessary means, is now advancing with rapid strides to that state of prosperity
which will enable her completely to command her own internal market, and to compete with Eng¬
land in foreign markets; you lords in the upper house, you squires in the lower, this is your infa¬
tuated work—this is what your insane Corn Bill has done, for by it the prices of food, of the
raw material, and of wages have been kept down in Germany; by it the German manufacturers
have gained an advantageous position against the English. Hasten, ye rapacious dotards, to get
14
rid of this Coin Bill ; you will thereby give a two-fold—a three fold discouragement to the Ger¬
man manufacturers; first, because the price of food, of the raw material, and of wages would rise
in Germany and fall in England ; secondly, because the import of German corn and timber into
England will cause the export of English manufactures to Germany ; thirdly, because the German
Commerctal Union has manifested a disposition to lower the tariff on common cotton and woollen
goods, in the same proportion as England may reduce her import duties on corn and timber.
Thus we cannot fail of success in again depressing the German manufactures. But you must
be prompt. Every year the manufacturing interest acquires an increased influence within the
union, and if you delay, the repeal of your corn law will come too late. In a short while
•the scale will be turned ; the German manufacturers will soon create so great a demand for agri¬
cultural produce that Germany will have no corn to spare for foreign countries. What conces¬
sions will you then offer to the German Governments in order to induce them to destroy their
own manufactures, in order to prevent them from spinning their own cotton, and thereby coming
into competition with you to your disadvantage in all foreign markets 7"
It was necessary for the author of the report to press this view on the land-owners in Parlia¬
ment. The forms under which the British Administration conducts affairs, permits no secret
Chancery report. Dr. Bowring's report could not be withheld from the British public, and of
course it could not fail to come through translations or extracts to the knowledge of the Germans.
Every word which might lead Germans to a peiception of their true interests was on this account to
be carefully avoided, while every medicine calculated to operate on the British Parliament requir¬
ed, as a necessary accompaniment, a counteracting dose for the Governments. They must
therefore be told that their protective measures had forced German capital into wrong channels;
that the agricultural interests of Germany were seriously injured by the protecting system; that
the agriculturists must look to foreign markets for the disposal of their produce; that agriculture
is by far the most important branch of industry in Germany, since three-fourths of the population
are cultivators of the soil; that to talk of protection for producers is mere idle prattle; that even
a manufacturing interest itself cannot be firmly established without foreign competition ; that the
aspirations of public opinion in Germany are all for free trade; that knowledge is too well dif¬
fused in Germany, to allow a prejudice in favor of high duties to prevail; that the best informed
men of the country advocate a reduction of the duties on cotton and woollen stuffs, " if the
English lower their duties on corn and limber." In short, this report gives utterance to two en¬
tirely different voices, which contend as two antagonists. Which is the voice of truth—that
speaking to the British Parliament, or that speaking to the German Governments 7 The decision
is not difficult; for what Dr. Bowring says to induce the Parliament to reduce the duties on com
and timber, is supported by statistical facts, calculations, and documentary evidence; whereas
what he says to induce the German Governments to abandon the protective system, consists
entirely of superficial assertions.
Let us now consider in some detail the arguments whereby Dr. Bowring demonstrates to the
British Parliament, that, in case the German protective system should not receive a check in the
way proposed by him, the German market for manufactures will be irrevocably lost to England.
The German people are said by Dr. Bowring to be distinguished for frugality, economy, and
intelligence; they enjoy the advantage of a very general instruction; excellent polytechnic schools
spread technical knowledge over the whole country ; the art of design is more cultivated than in
England ; the great annual increase of the population, of the cattle, and, in particular, of sheep,
proves to what a height agriculture is carried; (of the rise in the value of land, a main point, no
mention is made—and so with regard to the increased price of produce; the wages of labor have
risen 30 per cent, in the manufacturing districts; the country has a superfluity of unemployed
water power, the cheapest of all motive forces. Mining was never before so prosperous an un¬
dertaking as it now is. We may refer, giving round numbers only, to the following instances of
increase from 1832 to 1837:
On imports of raw cotton, from....
Cwt.
to
240,000
On imports of cotton yarn
U
322,000
On exports of woollen goods. . ..
<4
75,000
On imports of sheep's wool
(I
195,000
On exports of ditto
122,000
On imports of woollen cloth ....
<4
18,000
On exports of ditto
(4
69,000
On the number of looms for weaving
cotton in Prussia, from 1825
to 1834
(i
32,000
The linen manufacture has had to contend against the high duties in England, France, and
Italy, and therefore has not increased. On the contrary, the imports of linen yarn exhibit a rise
of from 30,000 cwt. in 1832, to 86,000 cwt. in IS35, supplied chiefly from England, and the
demand is constantly on the increase. The indigo consumed in 1831 amounted to 12,000 cwt.,
and in 1837 to 24,000 cwt., a striking proof of the progress of German manufactures. The
exports of common eartheraware had doubled from 1832 to 1836 ; the imports of the white, or
15
one-colored kind, had fallen from 5,000 cwt. to 2,000 cwt., while the exports of the same kind
had risen from 4,000 cwt to 18,000 cwt. The porcelain imports had diminished from 4,000
cwt. to 1,000 cwt., while the exports had risen from 700 to 4,000 cwt. The produce of the
coal mines increased from 6,000,000 of Prussian tons in 1832, to 9,000,000 in 1836. In 1816
Prussia possessed 8,000,000 sheep; in 1837, 15,000,000. In 1831 Saxony had 14,000 stock¬
ing frames ; in 1836, 20,000. From 1831 to 1837, the number of factories for spinning woollen
yarn, and of spindles, increased more than two-fold. Manufactories of machinery have risen up
every where, and many of them are in a flourishing state. In short, it is admitted that all
branches of industry in Germany have made immense progress in proportion as they have been
protected, particularly woollen and cotton stufis for common wear, the importation of which from
England has entirely ceased. However, Dr. Bowring, referring to an opinion worthy of credit,
says—" In a report which I have been furnished with by a very intelligent practical manufactu¬
rer, as to the comparative position of the British arid the Prussian manufacture, he stales, after
a detailed examination of woollen cloths imported, that the price of the Prussian cloth was deci¬
dedly lower; that some of the colors are inferior to those of our best dyes, while others could
not be excelled, being perfect; the spinning, weaving, and earlier processes of the manufacture,
are quite equal to the British; that in the finishing there is a marked inferiority, there being
much less adaptation to taste and to demand; but that generally the deficiencies are such as
experience would vanquish."
The reporter, however, is completely in error, when he contends that the German manufactur¬
ing interest requires for its own advantage foreign competition in the German market, inasmuch
as when the German manufacturer shall be able to supply his own market, he must come into
competition with the foreign manufacturer for the disposal of his surplus, which competition can
only be maintained by cheap production; but cheap production is irreconcilable with the princi¬
ple of the protective system, since the object of that system is to secure a high price to the man¬
ufacturer. In this argument there are about as many errors and sophisms as words. Dr. Bow-
ring will not deny that the cheapness of production depends on the extent to which manufacture
is carried, and the certainty of a market for it; nor that a manufacturing power already provided
with a market at home will be so much the more able to work cheaply for the foreigner. Proof
of this is to be found in the very tables which he gives on the progress of German industry; for
in the same proportion as the German manufacturers have gained the ascendancy in their own
market, have the exports of their goods increased. Thus, then, the young experience of Ger¬
many, like the-4>ld experience of England, teaches that a high price for manufactured goods is
by no means a necessary consequence of protection. In fine, German industry is still far from
being able to supply the home market. In order to accomplish that object, we have yet to man¬
ufacture the 13,000 cwt. of cotton goods, the 18,000 cwt. of woollen cloth, and the 500,000 cwt.
of cotton yarn and twist, and linen yarn, which we at present import from England. This being
done, we will then increase our imports ot cotton and wool alene by 500,000 cwt , which will
bring us into a more direct commercial intercourse with the countries of the torrid zone, and en¬
able us to pay for the greater part, if not for the whole, of this necessary raw material, with our
own manufactures. v
It is easy to conceive how the English parliament may at last be induced, by representations
such as those contained in this report, to depart from its Corn Law, which has hitherto operated
as a protection against Germany; but to us it is in the highest degree incomprehensible how the
•German union, which has made such immense advances in consequence of its protective mea¬
sures, should be prevailed on by the same report to renounce so advantageous a system. It is
true, Dr. Bowring assures us that the German manufactures are protected at the cost of the
landed interest; but how can we give credit to his assertions when we find that the damand for
agricultural produce, the price of that produce, the wages of labor, rents, and the value of land,
have everywhere increased 1 Dr. Bowring gives a calculation, according to which there are three
agriculturists to one manufacturer in Germany; but at the same time he shows that the number
of the German manufacturers still bears by no means a just proportion to the number of agricul¬
turists. Now, it is not conceivable how an equilibrium can be introduced between those classes,
otherwise than by prolonging the protection against those articles which still are made in Eng¬
land for the German market by men who consume "the English agricultural produce, and reject
the German. Dr. Bowring insists that the German agriculturist can only look for an increased
sale of his produce to foreign countries. However, that a great demand for agricultural products
is created by the prosperity of national manufactures, is a fact which we learn, not only from
the experience of England, but which Dr. Bowring himself impliedly admits, by the fear ex¬
pressed in his report, that if England much longer delays the repeal of her Corn Law, Germany
will neither have corn nor timber to spare for England. The Doctor is perfectly right when he
eays the agricultural is the preponderating interest of Germany, but precisely because it prepon¬
derates it ought to endeavor, by improving the manufacturing interest, to place itself in a fair
balance with that interest—since not upon a superiority over the manufacturing interest, but
apon an equilibrium therewith, the prosperity of agriculture depends.
16
The reporter's observation, that in Germany public opinion favors free trade, must be taken
subject to the correction, that since the establishment of our Zoll Verein we have arrived at a
clearer insight of what is really meant in England by the term " free trade for since that time,
as ho himself says, " the Zoll Verein has brought the sentiment of German nationality out of the
regions of hope and fancy into those of positive and material interests." The reporter is right
in his belief that knowledge is widely spread among the Germans. It is precisely for the reason
that in Germany people hgve ceased to indulge in cosmopolite dreams; they recollect their Faust—
they trust to their own judgment, to their own experience, to their own sound common sense,
rather than to faulty systems in contradiction with all experience—they begin to comprehend
why Burke confidentially warned Adam Smith that countries were not to be governed according
to cosmopolite views, but by knowledge founded on searching investigations of their peculiar
national interests: they distrust counsellors who blow hot and cold with the same breath; they
very well know how to estimate the value as well as the advice of manufacturing competitors;
in a word, whenever there is any question about offers from England, they recollect the well-
known caution, and say—" We distrust the Greeks, even their presents."
On these grounds there is reason to doubt that any really influential Germans could seriously
hold out hopes to the reporter of the abandonment of our protective policy, for the wretched
concession of being enabled to export some corn and timber to England. At any rate, public
opinion in Germany will, doubtless, scruple to class such influential persons among the thinking
part of the population. To be entitled to that attribute in the present day in Germany, it is not
enough to have learned by rote the history, the phraseology, and the arguments of the cosmopo¬
lite school; what i.. required is to know the facilities and the wants of the nation, and, unen¬
cumbered by the system of any school, to consider those can be unfolded, these satisfied. A
thorough ignorance of the faculties and wants of the country is betrayed by persons who are not
aware of the immense efforts that have been required to elevate the industry of a nation to that
station which the German manufacturing interest now occupies, who have not sagacity to antici¬
pate the greatness of its future prosperity, who would so cruelly deceive the confidence which
the German manufacturers have placed in their Governments, and so. deeply wound the enter¬
prising spirit of the nation, who cannot distinguish the important difference between a manufac¬
turing nation of the first rank, and a mere corn and timber exporting country, who are incapable
of perceiving how precarious a foreign corn and timber market is even in ordinary times, how
easily concessions may be revoked, and what convulsions might result from the interruption of
that intercourse by a war or hostile measures; who, in fine, have not yet learned, from the exam¬
ple of other great states, how intimately the existence, the independence, and the power of a
nation are connected with the possession of a manufacturing system of its own, developed in all
its branches.
Published by order of the "Whig Congressional Executive Committee."
Clat Clubs, and others, can be supplied with any quantity of this Tract by applying at
Gideon's Printing Office, Washington.— Price §10 per thousand.
/J.
THE SUB-TREASURY:
a
4
TRACT FOR THE TIMES
PREPARED
BY ORDER OF WILLIS GREEN,
chairman of the executive committee of the whig membeesof comgress.
WASHINGTON:
PRINTED BY JOHN T. TOWERS.
1844.
TO THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES.
The Convention that nominated James K. Polk and George M. Dal¬
las, for the highest offices in the gift of the people, made and published a
declaration of principles, to be taken, we presume, as the rule of their
political faith. Among the most prominent of these principles, is the pro¬
position, " That the separation of the moneys of the Government from
banking institutions is indispensable for the safety of the funds of the
Government and the rights of the people." This, then, is the great issue
to be tried—the Government is to be divorced from all connexion with
banking institutions. The Sub-Treasury plan of Mr. Yan Buren, so
signally rejected in 1S40, is again presented to the country, and the nomi¬
nees of the Locofoco Convention are pledged to iis restoration. It. is in¬
scribed on their banner; and, should Locofocoism triumph in the Presi¬
dential election, this will be the favorite policy of its Executive adminis¬
tration. Eveiy thing else will be abandoned for it. Free Trade, the An¬
nexation of Texas, and the armed occupation of Oregon, will all be for¬
gotten, in the hurry to re-establish this measure, and put it once more in
practical operation. For on it hang all the hopes of the spoilsmen and cor-
ruptionists, who will constitute Mr. Polk's retinue. It is emphatically
their measure ; by it they are to be'clothed and fed from the public Trea¬
sury, and have a field opened to them for peculation and plunder. But
let us give it a brief and candid examination. In the first place,
what does it propose 7
It is intended to change the entire fiscal operations of the Federal Gov¬
ernment, and to establish an order of things never before known and prac¬
tised upon, until the administration of Mr. Van Buren. First, it provides
that all the moneys of the Government shall be placed in the hands of in¬
dividual agents, instead of banks as heretofore, and creates a new class of
officers, with the imposing title of Receivers General, which are to be
found only in the monarchies of Europe. Secondly, it is# designed to col¬
lect and disburse the public revenues of the Government in gold and silver
only, and to proscribe all banks and bank paper so far as federal legislation
can effect ir, and thus, in point of fact, to create two distinctive kinds of
currency—bank paper for the people, and gold and silver for the office¬
holders.
To allay all suspicion, and to soften the jealousy of the people, it is de¬
signated a divorce of Bank andNState, when, in truih, it is a separation of
4
the Government and the People, sacrificing their interests, and placing the
office-holders above ihem. In fine, it is to carry out practically the princi¬
ple asserted by Mr. Van Buren, in one of his messages to Congress that
" the people must take care of themselves and the Government will take
care of itself."
Thirdly, it places the public money entirely within the control of the
President, by conferring on him power over the appointment and removal
of the receivers general, in whose hands it is to be kept. All the money in
their keeping being out of the Treasury, and of course subject to the un¬
limited control of the appointing power, there is a complete union of
the money and military power of the Government. The purse and the
sword of the nation are uniied in the same hands.
These were the chief provisions and direct tendencies of the Inde¬
pendent Sub Treasury plan, adopied in the last year of President Van Bu-
ren's term, and the re-establishment of that identical measure, is the ques¬
tion now submitted to the American people.
the origin of the system.
The Sub-Treasury was originally brought forward in Congress by Gen.
William F. Gordon, a member of the House of Representatives from '
Virginia, in 1834, when it was voted down by the nearly unanimous vote
of General Jackson's political friends. The Journals of Congress fully
attest this fact; but that there may be no mistake about it, we will quote
the proceedings.
By reference to the Journal of the House of Representatives of the 2d
session of the 23d Congress, page 3(55, it will be seen that the following
proceedings were had on the 11th of February, 1S35 :
" The question recurred on the motion made by Mr. Gordon, (on the 10th,) to amend
the said bill, (No. 563,) regulating the deposite of the money of the United States in
certain local banks, viz: strike out all thereof after the enacting words, and insert—
" That from and after the —day of —, in the year , the collectors of the public
revenue, at places where the sums collected shall not exceed the sum of — dollars per
annum, shall be the agents of the Treasurer to keep and disburse the same, and be sub¬
ject to such rules and regulations, and give such bond and security as he shall pre¬
scribe, for the faithful execution of their office, and shall receive, in addition to the
compensation now allowed by law, — per centum on the sums di-bursed, so that it does
not exceed the sum of — dollars per annum.
" .Sec. 2. And be it further enacted, That at all places where the amount of pub¬
lic revenue collected shall exceed the sum of — dollars per annum, there shall be ap¬
pointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, receivers
of the public revenue, to be agents of the Treasurer, who shall give such bond and
security to keep and disburse the public revenue, and be subject to such rules and re¬
gulations as the Treasurer shall prescribe, and shall receive for their services — per cent¬
um per annum on the sums disbursed, provided it does not exceed the sum of —dollars
per annum.
" Sec. 3 And he it further enacted, That from and after the — day of —, the whole
revenue of the United States derived from customs, lands, and other sources, shall be
paid in the current coin of the United States.
" And, on the question, ' Shall the bill be so amended ?' it was decided in the nega¬
tive: Yeas 33, nays 161."
Among those who voted in the negative was James K. Polk, the chair¬
man of the Commitlee of Ways and Means.
To prevent misunderstanding, it is proper to state that General Gordon
introduced his plan in the form of a bill on the 20th of June, 1834 ; but
no direct vote was had on it, until offered as an amendment to Mr. Polk's bill,
which established what is commonly called the " Pet Bank System."
K
5
the sub-treasury as it really is.
" Old documents ate dangerous things," is a favorite expression with
Mr. James K. Polk, and in this he is precisely of our opinion. For it is
from these " dangerous things" that we wish the people to learn what the
Sub-Treasury really is, front old documents, the offspring of those who
are now its leading supporters. The Journal of the House of Represen¬
tatives, to which we have already referred, shows that James K. Polk voted
against the proposition of General Gordon. But he did more than this.
He made a speech against it, which is to be found in the Congressional
debates, vol. 11, page 1278-'9. He then said :
" Whilst I am up, it may be well to notice some other propositions of amendment,
which the House have been notified will be made to this bill, especially as I may not
have anothej opportunity to address the House. A gentleman from Virginia [Mr.
Gordon] has signified his intention to move the amendment to this bill which he pre¬
sented and had printed by order of the House some days ago That amendment pro¬
vides that the ' collectors of the public revenue,' when the amounts collected are
small, ' shall be the agents of the Treasurer, to keep and disburse the same and that
they shall receive an annual compensation. It provides, further, that, at places where
the amount collected shall be large, 'receivers' shall be appointed, 'to be agents of the
Treasurer, to keep and disburse the public moneys,' and that they shall be paid an an¬
nual compensation for their services.
" A corporation may be. safer than any individual agent, however responsible he
may be, because it consists of an association of individuals who have thrown together
their aggregated wealth, and who are bound in their corporate character, to the extent
of their whole capital stock, for the deposite. In addition to this, the Secretary of the
Treasury may require as heavy collateral security, in addition to their capital paid in,
from such a corpoiation, as he could from an individual collector or receiver, which
makes the Government deposites safer in the hands of a bank, than it could be with an
individual.
" As, then, between the responsibility of a public receiver and bank corporations, as
banks do exist, and are likely to exist, understate authority, the latter, upon the ground
of safety to the public, are to be preferred.
" It may happen in the fluctuation of the amount of revenue and expenditures, that
there will be at some times a considerable surplus in the Treasury; which, though it
may be temporary, if it be withdrawn from circulation, and placed in the strong box of
a receiver, the amount of circulation will be injuriously disturbed, by hoarding the de¬
posite, by which the value of every article of merchandise and property would be affected.
So that, inasmuch as we cannot anticipate or estimate what the exact amount of rev¬
enue or expenditure may be from year to year, there may occur an excess of revenue
in the Treasury, not immediately called for to be disbursed, which it would be very
inconvenient to abstract from trade and circulation. Whilst the deposite is in a bank,
the bank may use it, keeping itself at the same time ready to pay when demanded,
and it is not withdrawn from the general circulation, as so much money hoarded and
withdrawn from the use of the community.
" If in the hands of receivers, they must either hoard it, by keeping it locked up in a
strong box, or use it at their own risk in private speculation or trade ; or they must,
for their own security, aud on their own responsibility, place it at last on deposite in
banks for safe-keeping, until they are called on by the Government for it.
" This temporary use of the money on deposite in a bank constitutes the only com¬
pensation which the bank receives for the risk of keeping it, and the services it per¬
forms. If receivers be employed, they can perform no other service than to keep the
money, arid must be paid a compensation from the Treasury."
And what were his objections to the system ? Let us group them toge¬
ther. First, that banks are to be preferred to individual agents, as de¬
positories of the Government, because of their greater safety. Secondly,
because by hoarding the public money in the strong box of a receiver, the
currency would be so disturbed and disordered, as to reduce the value
6
of property, and injuriously affect the prices of labor and produce.
Thirdly, that to employ individual agents to keep and disburse the
public funds is more expensive than to have it done through the agen¬
cy of banks, because lhe6e new officers must be salaried, and the lat¬
ter require no compensation.
Mr. Calhoun, who led the Southern "chivalry" to a coalition with
Mr. Van Buret), in suppoit of the measure in 1837, spoke as follows, in
the Senate, in 1834 :
" But there is, in my opinion, a strong, if not an insuperable, objection against re¬
sorting to this measure, resulting from the fact that an exclusive receipt of specie in
the Treasury would, to give it efficacy, and to prevent extensive speculation and fraud,
require an entire disconnexion on the part of the Government with the hanking sys¬
tem, in all its forms, and a resort to the strong box, as the means of preserving and
guarding its funds—a means, if practicable at all in the present stale or things, liable
to the objection of being far less safe, economical, and efficient than the present."
The Washington Globe, too, was filled with indignation, and pro¬
mulgated the views of the party in 1834 as follows :
" It is well known that the President himself is opposed to this project, and that his
friends in Washington, whether of the Cabinet or not, heartily concur with him in the
course of policy it is expedient to pursue."
And again : " If General Jackson had suggested such a system (the Sub-Treasury)
what peals of patriotic indignation would have burst from eloquent Senators against
the usurper and tyrant who desired to get the millions of the Tteasury into the very
hands of his partisans and palasites."
And again: "It is as palpable as the sun, that the effect of the scheme (Sub-Trea¬
sury) would be to bring the public treasure much nearer the actual custody and con¬
trol of the Executive than it is now, and expose it to be plundered by a hundred hands
where one cannot now reach it."
And again: " We verily believe that the present system (State Banks) of deposites,
for the public money, guarded by law as it will be, is as good for safety, aod the least
liable to abuse by the Executive, of any which the wit of man can conceive."
And again: "It (the Sub-Treasury) is disorganizing and revolutionary, subversive
of the fundamental principles of our Government and its entire practice from 1789
down to this day."
And the Richmond Enq.uir.er, the file leader of Locofocoism in Vir¬
ginia, said of the measure in 1837, when it was first proclaimed as the
financial policy of Mr. Van Buren's administration :
" We have objected to the Sub-Treasury scheme, (so called,) that, in the first place,
it will enlarge the Executive power, already too great for a Republic; 2dly, that it
contributes to endanger the security of the public funds; and 3dly, that it is calculated
to produce two currrencies—a baser one for the people, and a better one for the Gov¬
ernment. The more we reflect upon the matter, the more we read the speeches of
the orators on both sides, the more firmly are we satisfied of the strength of these
objections.
" It is certainly subject to very strong objections, not the least of which is the very
great increase of patronage to which it must give rise, and a patronage of the most
daDgerous influence, as being so immediately connected with the public money."
And again : " But I can see no advantage, and, on the contrary, a fruitful source of
mischief, in making Government officers the keepers of the cash. Place about them
what guards you may, in the shape of commissioners, inspectors, or whatever else,
peculation will be etulless. There is no security in it, and it will involve heavy and
unnecessary expense. The chief and overruling objection, however, is the endless
source of patronage to which it would give rise. Make the machinery as simple as
you may, and open to view, wherever money is, temptation will creep in, and corrup¬
tion in every form follows at its heels."
And yet Mr. Polk and Mr. Calhoun and the Globe and the Enquirer
solemnly declare in 1844, that the rights of the people are not to be pre¬
served, unless by the adoption of the Sub-Treasur)\
7
its safety.
There can be no question that the Government should adopt such
a system of finance as will combine the greatest safety with the least
expense, and at the same time furnish to the people, within the sphere of
its constitutional powers, a sound and wholesome currency. It certainly
should not act upon the declaration of Mr. Van Buren, that " all commu¬
nities are apt to look to Government for t®o much." We have already
shown by the testimony of its own friends, that the Sub-Treasury disre¬
gards these essential features. However, that there may be no mistake on
this point we will draw still further from their opinions. They were
officially given, and are, therefore, entitled to more weight than under
ordinary circumstances. Mr. Woodbury, in a special report to Congress^
as Secretary of the Treasury, in December, 1834, used this language:
" It is gratifying to reflect, however, that the credit given by the Government, whe¬
ther to bank paper or bank agents, has been accompanied by smaller losses, in the
experience under the system of State banks, in this country, at their worst periods,
and under their severest calamities, than any other kind of credit the Government has
ever given in relation to its pecuniary transactions." ******
" Thus the truth on this much misunderstood subject appears to be, not only that one
failure of a selected bank did not occur within the period while no United States Bank
was in operation, but that of those which afterward stopped payment within three
or four years, chiefly from the causes before mentioned, and a part of which causes
produced eight or ten fold as many failures in England, under the full control and
influence of a National Bank there as well as here, four of the number have since dis¬
charged all their liabilities, and the residue of the liabilities of all the others as depo-
site banks, in the manner before estimated, is less than $35,000. This is not the tithe
of the sura which has frequently been lost to the Treasury by the failure of individ¬
ual merchants to discharge only their obligations for imports ; not equal to the sum fre¬
quently lost by (he failure of many disbursing agents connected with the different de¬
partments of the Government, and under larger bonds for security." *****
" If we include the whole present dues of the Government from discredited banks
at all times, and all kinds, whether as deposites or not, and embrace even connterfeit
bills, and every other species of unavailing funds in the Treasury, they will not exceed
what is due from two such firms. Of almost ose hundred banks, not deposito¬
ries, which, during all our wars and commercial embarrassments, have heretofore
failed, in any part of the Union, in debt to the Government, on their bills or otherwise,
it will be seen [by the table annexed to the report] that the whole of them, except
seventeen, have adjusted every thing which they owed ; and that the balance due from
them, without interest, is less than $82,000."
Again he said that " individual agents?' would be found " less con¬
venient, safe, and economical."
So far, so good; but there is still stronger proof that it is less safe,
and that greater losses have occurred by individual agents than "by the
use of Banks as Government depositories. The employment of indi¬
vidual agents has, as the Globe remarked in 1834, exposed the public
Treasury to be plundered by an hundred hands, where one could not
otherwise reach it. To see the truth of this, let us take a bird's eye view
of what has already been done, in the line of
defalcations.
We have before us the report of the select committee, chosen by the
-House of Representatives, to inquire into the defalcation of Samuel Swart-
wout and others. From it we take the following list of defaulters, with
the amount they have stolen set opposite their names :
Mamuel Swartwout, New York - $1,225,705 09
William M. Price, do - 75,000 00
A. S. Thurston, Key West, Flo. -■ 2,822 14
George W. Owen, Mobile, Ala. - 11,173 48
Israel P. Canby, Crawfordville, la. 39,013 31
Abner McCarty, Indianapolis, la. - 1,338 92
B. F. Edwards, Edwardsville, 111. 2,338 92
W. L. 1). Ewing, Vaudalia, 111. - 2,315 76
John Ilays, Jackson, Mississippi - 1,386 16
B.S.Chambers, Little Kock, Ark. 1,146 28
David L. Tod, Opelousas, La. - 27,230 57
B.R.Rogers, do. do. - 6,624 37
Maurice Cannon, New Orleans - 1,259 28
A. W. McDaniel, Washington, Miss. 6,000 00,
John H. Owen, St. Stephen, Ala.- 30,611 97
George B. Crutcher, Choctaw, Miss. 6,061 40
George B. Cameron, do. do. 39,059 64
S. W. Dickens, do. do. 11,831 91
Do. do. do. 898 53
Wiley P. Harris, Columbus, Miss. - 109,178 08
William Taylor, Cahawba, Alabama $23,116 18
U. G. Mitchell, do. do. - 54,626 55
J. W. Stephenson, Galena, Illinois - 43,294 04
Littlebury Hawkins, Helena, Ark. - 100,000 00
S. W. Beall, Green Bay - - 10,620 19
Joseph Friend, Ouaeluta, Louisiana - 2,541 91
William H. Allen, St. Augstine - 1,997 50
Gordon 1>. Boyd, Columbus, Miss. - 50,937 29,
R. 11. Sterling, Chocchuma, Miss. - 10,733 70
ParisChilders,Greenburg, Louisiana, 12,449 76
William Linn, Vandalia, Illinois - 55,962 06
Sam'l T. Scott, Jackson, Mississippi 12,550 47
John T. Pollock, Crawfordville, Ind. 14,891 98
John L. Daniel, Opelousas, Louisiana 7,280 63
Morgan Neville, Cincinnati, Ohio -0 13,781 19
M. J. Allen, Tallahassee, Florida - 26,621 57
Robert T. lirown, Springfield, Mo. - 3,600 50
2,061,887 74
This plundering of the public Treasury was in full blast during the lat¬
ter part of General Jackson's, and the first part of Mr. Yan Buren's imacu-
late administration. Moreover, under the Sub-Treasury system as the law
of the land, with all its bolts and bars, and pains and penalties, the collec¬
tor at New York, Jesse Hoyt, pocketed some $400,000, for a part of
which the Government has obtained judgment against him. And yet it
is this scheme of plunder and peculation, of robbery and official delin¬
quency, that the people are to be favored with, by James K. Polk and his
Locofoco adherents.
We turn now from the objections which these men have urged against
it to the arguments they have brought forward in favor of its establishment.
Prominent among these was the fact that it was the only system used by
foreign governments.
Even so ; these ultra republicans, these modern Democrats, who have a
perfect horror of foreign influence, and despise all foreign institutions, told
the people that their Government ought to have au Independent, or Sub-
Treasury, because, forsooth, it was the policy of Europe. Hear what Mr.
Van Buren said, in his message to Congress of December, 1839 :
" From the results of inquiries made by the Secretary of the Treasury in regard to
the practice among them, I am enabled to state that in twenty-two out of twenty-
•seven foreign Governments, from which undoubted information has been obtained,
the public moneys are kept in charge of public officers."
That was Martin Van Buren's strong argument. Now see what others
said from their high places in the Government. Mr. Thomas H. Benton,
in his speech on the Sub-Treasury bill, in the Senate, January 16, 1840,
Said:
«' Holland is the country for our statesmen to study; but if she is too distant,
lei them cross over to the Island of Cuba, and there see a population of less than
one million, and near one-half of them slaves, carrying on an immense commerce,
building a commercial city second only to New York in the new world, paying twenty-
one millions of dollars annually in direct and indirect contributions to the Government;
paying high for wages, produce, and property ; and doing the whole upon gold alone
and the commercial bill of exchange! 1 say, and repeat, upon gold alone, and this
9
bill of exchange; for a bank note of any kind, and a piece of silver, except of twenty-
five cents and under, for change, is not to be seen on this Island.
" To our Southern States—to the whole cotton, rice, and tobacco-growing region
now so grievously afflicted with the curses of the paper system—to all this region I
would say, study the financial history of Holland, France, and Cuba Follow their
example! Emulate their solid currency! Imitate them! and, in a few years, you
will not only be lifted from the misery, degradation, demoralization, and ruin of a de¬
preciated currency, but you will have a superabundance of real money—gold enough
for all your own uses, and to lend to all America besides. You will become the specie
warehouse of the commercial world ; to which all nations will resort to borrow gold,
and which will return to you the instant they borrow it. Your hundred millions of
exportable productions, and augmenting every year, will quickly produce this magic
change, if, emerging from the Serborian bog of paper money in which you are now
sunk, you plant yourselves on the solid rock of gold and silver. To the other States I
would say do the like; and the like results, to a less extent, will be your reward and
your blessing. At least, imital« France, and eschew all paper below one hundred
dollars. But this is their own affair. As they now stand, it belongs to them to afflict
or bless themselves. To the Federal Government it belongs, as the preservation of
the sacred fire to the Roman vestals—to this Government to preserve the sacred cur¬
rency of the Constitution. To this Government it belongs to do this; and to a long
series of measures pursued for this purpose, for the last ten years the establishment ot
the Independent Treasury now comes in as the crowning act to seal and consummate
the whole."—See Appendix, Congressional Globe of 1810, page 123.
Mr. Robert J. Walker spoke as follows ill the Senate, January 20.
1840:
" I am against the whole paper system, and believe that an expansion of a paper
currency, whatever form it may assume, except for distant exchanges, is greatly
injurious to the prosperity of the country, and this, whether such a currency be
nominally1 convertible, or inconvertible, depreciated, or at a par. A depreciation
augments the injury, but it is great even before the paper becomes irredeemable.
The result is this, that during the expansion there is a great nominal rise in the
price of property, real and personal, excepting exports, and in the wages of labor,
and nothing can be raised or produced in this country for sale abroad, except at an
expense so enormous as almost to annihilate all profits. Let us but contrast the
condition of the Island of Cuba, upon our very borders, with that of our own coun¬
try. In Cuba the currency is entirely metallic; her population only about nine hun¬
dred thousand, one-third ot whom, as has been truly slated, are slaves; and yet,
with a prosperity almost unexampled, with agriculture and commerce flourishing,
and annual import and export of forty-three millions of dollars, whilst distress and em¬
barrassment here are almost universal, even in those States possessing the richest soils
aad staples, with natural advantages much greater than Cuba, and with the great addi¬
tional advantage of a free Government. Why, then, this difference ? It is the con¬
trast between the result of the metallic and paper currency. In Cuba, they have no
periodical revulsions, and, from their currency, the expense of raising their products
is so small that the profit is great even at limited prices, and they can export at a profit
throughout the world.—See Appendix, Congressional Globe o/T840, page 124.
And Mr. John C. Calhoun, who spoke on the same day, followed in-,
the footsteps of Mr. Walker. He said :
" If we must use credit, I would infinitely rather use our own than that of the
banks. But as to the currency, I concur in almost every sentiment which has been ut¬
tered by the Senator from Mississippi, (Mr. Walker.) He could not do better
than contrast our State with that of Cuba. Cuba is now in a flourishing con¬
dition, while the State of Mississippi is in a state of extreme distress. That Sen¬
ator cannot push the specie currency further than I, if the country were out of debt.
I wish simply, if there must be a temporary credit, that the Government should use
its own credit."
Here, then, we are told that we must imitate the example of foreign
Governments, and pattern after them. And where are we pointed to by
these Sub-Treasury men ? To Austria and Russia, to Spain and Cuba,
10
to Prussia and China, ay, (o despotic and kingly Governments ad over
Europe, to nooks and corners hardly discoverable on the face of the Globe.
Another argument urged by the friends of the measure, when it was be¬
fore Congress, in 1839, was that it will
reduce the wages op labor.
It is useless to deny the fact, such was the argument in its favor. It
was to reduce the wages of labor, and enable the American manufacturer
to compete with the manufacturers of Europe, without the assistance of a
protective tariff. Here is the language of Mr. James Buchanan, taken
from his speech in the Senate on the Sub-Treasury bill, January 22, 1840.
It is to be found on pages 135 and 136 of the Appendix to the Congres¬
sional Globe, and is, of course, authentic. He says:
" Let me now recur to the proposition with which I commenced ; and 1 repeat that I do
not pretend to mathematical accuracy in the illustration which I shall present. The
United States carry on a trade with Germany and France; the former a hard-money
country, and the latter approaching it so nearly as to have no bank notes in circulation
under the denomination ot five hundred francs, or nearly one hundred dollars. On the
contrary, the United States is emphatically a paper money country, having eight hun¬
dred banks of issue—all of them emitting notes of a denomination as low as five dol¬
lars, and most of them one, two, and three dollar notes. For every dollar of gold and
silver in the vaults of these banks, they issue three, four, five, and some of them as
high as ten, and even fifteen, dollars of paper. This produces a vast but ever chang¬
ing expansion of the currency ; and a consequent increase of the prices of articles,
the value of which is not regulated by the foreign demand, above the prices of simi¬
lar articles in Germany and France. At particular stages of our expansions, we
might with justice apply the principle which I have stated to our trade with these
countries, and assert that, from the great redundancy of our currency, articles are man¬
ufactured in France and Germany for one-half of their actual cost in this country. Let
me present an example. In Germany, where the currency is purely metallic, and the
cost of every thing is reduced to a hard money standard, a piece of broadcloth can be
manufactured for fifty dollars—the manufacture of which, in our country, from the
expansion of our paper currency, would cost one hundred dollars. What is the con¬
sequence ? The foreign French ot German manufacturer imports this cloth into our
country, and sells it for a hundred dollars. Does not every person perceive that the
redundancy of our currency is equal to a premium of one hundred per cent, in favor
of the foreign manufacturer ? No tariff of protection, unless it amounted to prohibi¬
tion, could counteract this advantage in lavor of foreign manufactures. I would to
Heaven that I could arouse the attention of every manufacturer of the nation to this impor¬
tant subject.
" The foreign manufacturer will not receive our bank notes in payment. He will take
nothing home except gold and silver, or bills of exchange, which are equivalent. He
does not expend this money here, where he would be compelled to support his family, and
to purchase his labor and materials at the same rate of prices which he receives for
his manufactures. On the contrary, he goes home, purchases his labor, his wool, and
all other articles which enter into his manufacture, at half their cost in this country,
and again returns to inundate us with foreign woolens, and to ruin our domestic man¬
ufactures. 1 might cite many other examples; but this, I trust, will be sufficient to
draw public attention to the subject. This depreciation of our currency is, therefore,
equivalent to a direct protection granted to the foreign over the domestic manufacturer.
It is impossible that our manufacturers should be able to sustain such an unequal com¬
petition.
" Sir, I solemnly believe that if we could but reduce this inflated paper bubble to any
thing like reasonable dimensions, Neic England would become the most prosperous
manufacturing country that the sun ever shone upon. Why cannot we manufacture
gopds, and especially cotton goods, which will go into successful competition with
British manufactures in foreign markets ? Have we not the necessary capital ? Have
we not the industry ? Have we not the machinery ? And, above all, are not our
skill, energy, and enterprise proverbial throughout the world ? Land is also cheaper
here than in any other country on the face of the earth. We possess every advantage
11
which Providence can bestow upon us for the manufacture of cotton ; but they are all
counteracted by the folly of man. The raw material costs us less than it does the
English, because this is an article the price of which depends upon foreign markets,
and is not regulated by our own inflated currency. We, therefore, save the freight of
the cotton across the Atlantic, and that of the manufactured article on its return here.
What is the reason that, with all these advantages, and with the protective duties
which our laws afford to the domestic manufacturer of cotton, we cannot obtain ex¬
clusive possession of the home market, and successfully contend for the markets of the
werld ? It is simply because we manufacture at the nominal prices of our own inflated
currency, and are compelled to sell at the real prices of other nations. Reduce our
nominal to the real standard of prices throughout the world, and you cover our country
with blessings and benefits, i wish to Heaven I could speak in a voice loud enough
to be heard throughout New England; because, if the attention of the manufacturers
could once be directed to the subject, their own intelligence and native sagacity would
teach them how injuriously they are affected by our bloated banking and credit system,
and would enable them to apply the proper corrective."
Now, what is the plain English of all this? What does Mr. Buchanan
mean by reducing our nominal to the real standard of prices throughout
the world; and how is he to cover New England with blessings? The
great secret, the grand discovery, is to reduce the wages of labor, to take
away from the poor man the hard earned recompense of his daily and
nightly toil. That is to be the panacea for all our ills, and the manufac¬
turer is straightway reminded that he will then need no protection.
And Mr. Benjamin Tappan, another Locofoco Senator, took the same
ground at home among his constituents, as is fully proved by the follow¬
ing depositions:
Personally appeared before the undersigned, James Wallace, who deposes and says :
That, a short time previous to the last October election, he had a conversation with
Benjamin Tappan, Esq., one of the Senators in the Congress of the United States
from the State of Ohio, during which conversation Mr. Tappan remarked : "You man¬
ufacturers, Wallace, stand very much in your own light, that you do not go with us
for the hard money system; and you would go with us if you did not look through
other people's spectacles." This deponent inquired how the manufacturers were to
be benefitted by the adoption of that system ? Mr. Tappan replied, that " wages were
entirely too high in this country, and that there was no reason why labor should not
be as cheap in this country as in Europe. It is the Banks (continued Mr. Tappan)
that keep up the price of labor and the price of produce; if you can put dowQ the
banks, labor will be reduced to eleven pence a day, wheat at sixteen cents a
bushel, and every thing else in proportion. The Sub-Treasury will produce this
result; it will put down the banks, aud reduce the price of labor and the produce of
the country. It will be the best tariff the manufacturers can have; and, instead of
being compelled to ask your Government for protection, it will enable the American
manufacturer to compete with the English manufacturer even in his own market."
JAMES WALLACE.
State op Ohio, Jefferson county, ss:
Personally appeared before the undersigned, a notary public, within and for the
county of Jefferson, James Wallace, who, being duly sworn, deposes and says, that
the foregoing statement, by him subscribed, is true in substance and in fact.
Witness my hand and official seal at Steubenville, this 20th day of July, A. D. 1840.
[l. s.] J. COLLIER, Notary Public.
At the same time and place came James Little, who, being duly sworn, says: That,
some time previous to the last election, the deponent had a conversation with Benja¬
min Tappan, Esq., in which Mr. Tappan observed, that it was the banks that kept up
the price of labor, and if we could put down the banks, and bring every thing to the
pecie standard, instead of foreign goods being brought to this country, we could
take our goods to Europe and undersell them.
53 JAMES LITTLE.
Sworn and subscribed before me, this 20th July, 1840.
J. COLLIER, Notary Public.
12
At the same time and place came, also, Adam Wise, who, being duly sworn, says r
That some time since he had a conversation with Benjamin Tappan, Esq, in
which Mr. T. remarked, that the banks were a great injury to the mechanics ; that
they (the banks) kept up the price of produce, and that every dollar which banks re¬
ceived for interest on loans was just so much taken out of the pocket of the laboring
men. Mr. Tappan also said, the banks ought to be put down, and then we should
have nothing but a specie cuirency, and it would be much better for the mechanic if
it were so. ADAM WISE.
Sworn and subscribed before me this 20th July, 1840.
J. COLLIER, Notary Public.
But let us look at these foreign Governments and their rates of wages,
which are so strongly recommended for our adoption. And what are the
wages of the poor man throughout monarchical Europe? A mere pit¬
tance, barely sufficient to sustain nature, and yet it is boldly avowed by
American Senators, that the wages of our honest mechanics and laborers,
should be reduced to the European standard. Here is a table ol the wages
of labor in different parts of Europe :
Country and dis
Description of laborers.
Yearly wa¬
Daily wa¬
© © "5
^ S £
trict.
ges.
ges.
£ *
France.
Calais
Ploughmen
$5 to $8
Shepherds -
13
-
With
Laborers -
-
15 cents.
Boulogne [
Ploughmen
7
-
With
Laborers -
-
10
Without -
Havre -
Farm servants generally -
8 to 12
-
With
Brest -
Farm servants generally -
2 to 6
-
With
Nantes -
Laborers -
-
17
Without -
Charente
Farm servants generally -
3 to 8
-
With
Bordeaux
Laborers -
-
24 to 30
Without -
Bayonne
Laborers -
-
18 to 12
Without -
Marseilles
Shepherds -
10 to 12
-
With
Corsica
Laborers -
_
9 to 14
With
Laborers -
_
22
Without -
Germany.
Dantzic
Farm servants
3 to 4
-
With
Laborers -
_
9 to 14
Without -
Mecklenberg (
Farm servants
5
-
With
Holstein
Laborers -
-
14
Without -
Farm servants
4 to 5
-
With
Laborers -
_
14
Without -
Netherlands.
South Holland -
Farm servants
10 to 12
-
With
Laborers -
_
12 to 32
Without -
West Flanders
Farm servants
5
With -
Italy.
Trieste ;
Laborers -
_
24 i
Without -
Laborers -
—
12
With
lstria -
Laborers -
_
16 to 20
Without -
Laborers -
_
8 to 10
With -
Lombardy
Laborers -
_
8 to 16
With
Genoa
Farm servants
4 to 5
_
With
Laborers -
_
10 to 16
With
Laborers -
-
_
Without -
Tuscany
Farm servants
2
_
With
Laborers -
~
12
Without -
13
And in France, yearly wages for an able bodied man, a good ploughman, ranges
from 4S to 250 shillings, and day laborers get in that country from to 15 pence per
day ; and whenever they get as much as 5 pence, they have to find themselves. In Ger¬
many, wages are still lower, and by the year between 52 and 100 shillings, and day
laborers receive from to 7 pence per day, and find themselves in food. In South
Holland, farm hands get by the year from 200 to 250 shillings, and day laborers from
3 to 4 pence per day, and are found. We ask the reader to examine the following
statistics of labor, &c., in the kingdom of Bavaria, belonging to the German Confedera¬
tion. It will be perceived that the wages of labor in Bavaria are quite as high as in
other parts of F.urope, to which Mr. Van Buren referred the two Houses of Congress
as examples of the blessings which flow from a hard money sub-Treasury system :
Kingdom of Bavaria, Germany.—Wages of common laborers.—Men from 16 to 24
dollars, women from 8 to 20 dollars, per annum, and found, except clothing. Their
food consists generally of bread and vegetables; meat is given only on holidays.
Wages of day laborers.—Men from 8 to 12 cents per day; women 8 cents. In the har¬
vest season, men receive from 18 to 20 cents per day; women from 12 to 18 cents. The
day laborers find themselves.
Wages of mechanics.—Carpenters, 25 cents a day; bricklayers, 20 to 25 cents, and
find themselves.
These are the rates of wages, the real standard of prices throughout
the world, with which Mr. Buchanan and his party have fallen so deeply in
love. This is the reward which the Sub-Treasury is to extend to honest
industry, the blessing- with which the Locofocos would cover the land.
Mechanics and working men, are you prepared for such a state of things?
We ask you, one and all—you who earn your bread by the sweat of your
brow—you who toil from sunrise to sunset, are you willing to accept of
this boon? Will you work for twenty-four cents a day, without board and
without dwelling, as in Trieste, or for ten cents a day with board and with
dwelling as in Istria? Do you prefer these prices, with vegetable diet
and no meat, with wretched hovels for your dwellings? Can you prefer
these to such wages as enables you to live in comfort, and to educate
your children ? These are questions that affect your interests and the
welfare of your children, and it is your time and your duty to consider them.
Read this table, mechanics and working men ! Artisans and laborers, re¬
flect on it! Preserve it, and decide, at the ballot box, whether you are
willing to work for such prices. If you are—if you would reduce your¬
selves to beggary and want—if you would deprive your wives and children
of the necessaries and comforts of life, and bring them to a state of depen¬
dency and servitude, then go for the Sub-Treasury—go for James K. Polk.
If, on the contrary, you prefer things to remain as they are, or, what is much
more desirable, to see them improved, be ye uncompromising in your hos¬
tility to the man and the measure. You rebuked the Locofocos and crush¬
ed the Sub-Treasury in 1S40. Show them, now, that your anger has not
slept, nor your arm been shortened.
NOTES!
Extracts from the resolutions of the Locofoco National Convention, taken
from the Dollar Globe of June 8, 1S44, page 22.
" Resolved, therefore, That, entertaining these views, the Democratic parly of this
Union, through their delegates assembled in general convention of the States, coming
together in a spirit of concord, of devotion to the doctrines and faith of a free repre¬
sentative Government, and appealing to their fellow-citizens for the rectitude of their
14
intentions, renew and reassert before the American people the declaration of princi¬
ples avowed by them, when, on a former occasion, in general convention, they pre¬
sented their candidates for the popular suffrages :
" 8. THAT THE SEPARATION OF THE MONEYS OF THE GOVERN¬
MENT FROM BANKING INSTITUTIONS IS INDISPENSABLE FOR THE
SAFETY OF THE FUNDS OF THE GOVERNMENT AND THE RIGHTS OF
THE PEOPLE."
james k. polk in favor of re-estabishing the sub treasury.
When Mr. Polk was canvassing for the office of Governor of Tennessee,
in the summer of 1843, certain members of his party of Memphis addressed
him a long string of questions, to which he replied at length. One of the
questions was—" Are you in favor of the Sub-Treasury system
passed by Congress in 1840, and repealed in 1841."
To which Mr. Polk replied :
" I ANSWER THAT I AM. I fully submit to you, gentlemen, whether such a
Treasury or plan of fiscal agency (as proposed by Mr. Clay's bank bill) is one which
you can approve, or which you prefer to the Independent Tkeasury system, under
which the Government kept control of its own money by placing it in a Treasury in
fact, and not in theory only, under the care and control of responsible agents,
selected by the people according to the Constitution and laws."
How responsible these agents are, and how safe the money is under their
care and control. Mr. Polk showed in his speed) against the Sub-Treasury
bill of General Gordon in 1834; and the list of defaulters we have given
furnishes cumulative evidence on this point.
APPENDIX.
As the. Locofocos have falsely asserted, that the Treasury was only liable
for about $>5,U0(),(.)U0 when the Whigs came into power, we give the debt
and liabilities of the Government, on the 4th of March, 1841, from docu¬
ment No. 281 of the House of Representatives, 2d session of the 27th Con¬
gress. Here is the statement of the Register of the Treasury, in full:
Treasury Department, Register's Office, August 8, 1842.
Sir : I have the honor to transmit a statement of the amount for which the Trea¬
sury was liable on the 4th March, 1841, prepared in compliance with a resolution of
the House of Representatives of the (1th instant.
1 have the honor lo be, sir, your obedient servant,
T. L. SMITH.
Hon. John \Y hite.
Speaker of the House of Representatives.
Statement of the amount for which the Treasury was liable on the 4th March, 1341,
agreeably to a resolution of the House of Representatives of the 6th August, 1842.
Specific appropriations of all kinds undrawn on the 4th March, 1841 - $27,134,721 SO
Indefinite appropriations drawn between the 4th March and 31st De¬
cember, 1841 - - - - - - . 1,771,269 46
15
Treasury notes outstanding on the 4th March, 1841 -
From which deduct the cash balance in the Treasury on the 4th
March, 1841, exclusive of deposites with the States, and the una¬
vailable funds due by defaulting banks, as ascertained from the
books of the Treasurer ot the United States
6,621,334 44
35,527,325 20
862,055 81
Total -
- 34,665,269 30
The above balance ($862,055 81) in the Treasury does not include the sum of
$300,000 trust funds.
T. L. SMITH, Register.
Treasury Department,
Register's Office, August 8, 1842.
EXPENDITURES OF THE GOVERNMENT.
As the election of James K. Polk will be the restoration, in fact, of Mr.
Van Buren's administration, with all its extravagancies and corruptions, we
append for the information of the people a statement of the expenditures of
the Government from 1824 to 1840, inclusive. It is taken from document
No. 550 of the Senate, 1st session, 2Gth Congress:
Statement of expenditures of the United States, from the year 1824 to the
year 1839, inclusive ; agreeably to a resolution of the Senate of the 24th
of April, 1840.
Years.
1824
1825
1826
1827
1828
1829
1830
1831
1832
1833
1834
1835
1836
1S37
1833
1839
Aggregate amount of all ex¬
penditures, or payments
of every kind, from the
Treasury.
$ 31,898,538 47
23,585,804 72
24,103,398 46
22,656,764 04
25,459,479 52
25,044,358 40
24,585,281 55
30,038,446 12
34,356,698 06
24,257,298 49
24,601,982 44
17.573,141 56
30,868,164 04
37,265,037 15
39,455,438 35
37,129,396 80
Aggregate amount indepen
dent of the payments on
account of the public debt
whether funded or un¬
funded.
$ 15,330,144 71
11,4*10,459 94
13.062,316 27
12,653,095 65
13,296,041 45
12,660,460 62
13,229,533 33
13,864,067 90
16,516,3S8 77
22,713,755 11
18,425,417 25
17,514,950 28
30,868,164 04
37,243,214 24
33,849,7IS OS
25,9S2,797 75
Aggregate amount for perma¬
nent and ordinary purposes,
excluding payments on ac¬
count of objects either ex¬
traordinary or temporary.
$7,107,892 05
6,537,671 27
7,058,872 12
7,427,175 78
7,788,394 86
7,503,204 46
7,624,827 56
7,679,412 66
8.562,650 42
S,827,095 77
9,667,797 97
9,157,490 32
11,688,987 18
13,098,321 83
13,837.594 44
13,325,800 18
Note.—The expenditures of 1839 are subject to variation on the settlement of the Treasu¬
rer's accounts for that year; which have not yet reached this office.
Treasury Department, Register's OJfce, May 4, 1840.
T. L. "SMITH, Register.
16
The expenditures in 1840, as given in document H. R. No. 244, 2d sea-
scssion, 27th Congress, are as follows:
Annual expenditures 1st session, 27th Congress - - -$23,327,772 29
Payments on account of public debt ----- 4,086,613 70
Trust funds - - 812,147 82
Aggregate expenditures for the year ----- 28,226,533 81
It ihiis appears that the average annual expenditures of the Locofoco
dynasty for four yeats, from JS37 to 1840 inclusive, for all purposes, were
$35,544,101 52! and the expenditures for the same period, exclusive of
the public debt, trust funds, &c., averaged annually $27,928,630 97 ! and
the expenditures during four years, 1S37 to 1840, or to 4th March, 1841,
over and above receipts from ordinary sources of revenue were :
Available balance in the Treasury, January 1, 1837, (vide table C,
Ho. Doc. No. 7, 1st session,'28tli ('nngre.ss) ... - $16,087,287 88
From which deduct balance in the Treasury, 4th March, 1811 - 572 719 46
$15,514,560 42
Received from debts and other funds which existed prior to 1837 - 8,514,560 42
Treasury notes outstanding March 4, 1841 ------ 6,103,519 28
Total 30,194,777,23
OPINIONS OF THE TARIFF AND FREE TRADE CANDIDATES FOR THE
PRESIDENCY.
MARK THE DIFFERENCE!
MR. CLAY.
Ashland, June 29, 1844.
Dear Sir : I have received your favor,
stating that our political opponents repre¬
sent me as being a friend of protection at
the North, and for free trade at the South ;
and you desire an expression of my opin¬
ion, under my own hand, for the purpose
of correcting this misrepresentation. I
am afraid that you will find the effiftt
vain to correct misrepresentations of me.
Those who choose to understand my opin¬
ions ean have no difficulty in clearly com¬
prehending them. I have repeatedly ex¬
pressed them as late as this spring, and
several times in answer to letters from
Pennsylvania. My opinions, such as they
are, have been recently quite as freely ex¬
pressed at the South as I ever uttered them
at the North. 1 hate, every where main¬
tained, that in adjusting a Tariff for reve¬
nue, discriminations ought to he made for
Protection; that the Tariff of 1842
has operated most beneficially, and
that I AM UTTERLY OPPOSED TO
ITS REPEAL. These opinions were an¬
nounced by me at public meetings in Ala¬
bama, Georgia, Charleston in South Caro¬
lina, North Carolina, and in Virginia.
I am, respectfully, your friend and obe¬
dient servant,
H. CLAY.
Mr. Frederick J. Cope.
, MR. POLK.
Winchester, May 29, 1843.
To the People of Tennessee:
The object which I had in proposing to
Governor Jones, at Carrullville, on the 12th.
of April last, that we should each write
out and publish our views and opinions on
the subject of the Tariff, was, that our
respective positions might he distinctly
known and understood by the People. That
my o| inions were already fully and dis¬
tinctly known, 1 could not doubt. I had
steadily, dc ring the period I was a
Representative in Conoress, been op¬
posed to a Protective Policy, as my
recorded votes and pvri.ishf.d speeches
prove. Since I retired from CoDgress I
had held the same opinions. In the pre¬
sent canvass for Governor I HAD AVOW¬
ED MY OPPOSITION TO THE TA¬
RIFF ACT OF THE LAST WHIG
CONGRESS, as being highly protective
in its character, and not designed by its
authors as a revenue measure. I had
avowed my opinion in ray public speeches
that the interests of the country, and es¬
pecially of the producing and exporting
States," REQURED IIS REPEAL, and
the restoration of the principles of the
Compromise Act of 1833.
JAAIES K. POLK.
11
SPEECH
of
MR. A. H. H. STUART, OF VIRGINIA,
ox the
BILL TO INCORPORATE THE SUBSCRIBERS
to the
FISCAL BANK OF THE UNITED STATES.
Delivered in the House of Representatives, Au^usl 2,1S41.
The motion of Mr. McCleelax, of New York, to strike out the enacting clause of the bill " to in¬
corporate the subscribers to the Fiscal Bank of the United States," being under consideration, and
Mr. Saunders, of North Carolina, having closed his remarks—
Mr. STUART, of Virginia, obtained the floor, and spoke in substance as fol¬
lows :
Mr. Chairman : I am gratified that I have been able to obtain the floor at this
early stage of the debate; not because 1 am vain enough to believe that I can
throw any new lights upon the subject now under consideration, but because I wish
to place some of the reasons which have influenced my mind distinctly before the
country. I come from a State which is generally supposed to have been uniformly-
opposed to a Bank of the United States in any form, and my vote in favor of the
bill before the committee will differ from that of a large majority of my colleagues.
These circumstances seem to impose upon me some kind of obligation to show to
the people of Virginia, that, if 1 stand in an attitude of opposition to their settled
opinions, I have some plausible grounds at least of justification ; and if my course
is erroneous, it is sanctioned by the example of" the fathers of the Constitution."
With regard to my immediate constituents, I feel no difficulty, for I have every
reason to believe that their opinions on this interesting subject harmonize entirely
with my own. Let the matter be as it may in regard to other gentlemen and
other portions of the country, I claim confidently to represent, upon this subject
especially, the sentiments of the great central and republican district by which I
was sent here. In that district, the issues of " bank or no bank," and " distribu¬
tion or no distribution," were distinctly raised and fully discussed. 1 was opposed
by a gentleman (Mr. James McDowell) of distinguished abilities and of unexcep¬
tionable character. His reputation as an orator, a scholar, and a statesman, was
familiar to the political and literary circles of the Union. His name bad been as¬
sociated with the most honorable offices in the gift of the " Old Dominion," and I
do not hesitate to say, that if he had been successful in obtaining a seat on this
floor, he would have been one of the brightest ornaments of this enlightened assem¬
bly. The election turned upon those issues; and, under all the disadvantages aris¬
ing from the disparity of age, of qualification, and of reputation, I was elected by
a triumphant majority. Such, sir, was the verdict of the people, and I stand here
prepared to render judgment upon it.
It has been said here, Mr. Chairman, in the course of this debate, as it has
been said through the country for the last half century, that the first Bank of the
United States was a monstrous conception of Federalism, and that the bank oC
2
1816, and the measure now under consideration, are the offspring of the same polit¬
ical heresy. This declaration, if it were allowed to go uncontradicted, would be
well calculated to do mischief by exciting popular prejudices in the country, and
particularly in the Southern States, which have always claimed to be the peculiar
exponents ol the Republican faith. But, sir, I do not mean that it shall go out to
the country uncontradicted ; so far from it, upon the responsibilities of my position
as a member of this House, I deny that either the bank of 1791 or of 1816 was
incorporated by the Federal part}'. Nay, sir, I go still further ; 1 pledge myself to
prove, from the official records of the country, that the bank of 1791 was chartered
before the formation of the Federal and Republican parties, and that the bank of
1816 was emphatically a Republican measure, recommended and sanctioned by a
Republican President, and passed by a Republican Congress, in opposition to the
most strenuous efforts of the Federal parly to defeat it. Yes, sir, to be more dis¬
tinct, 1 mean to say that the bank of 1816 was just as emphatically a measure of
the Republican party of that day, as the sub-Treasury scheme was a measure of
Mr. Van Buren's administration.
In order to present my views on this subject clearly and distinctly to the House,.
I propose to trace, very briefly, the history of the bank question from its origin to
the present time. On this point I have been anticipated to some extent by the
very distinguished gentleman from Pennsylvania, (Mr. Sergeant,) who has pre¬
ceded me; but I will follow in his footsteps, and add some matters of detail to what
he has already placed in so clear a point of view.
The first project for a bank, having any features of nationality about it, was
submitted by Robert Morris, of Pennsylvania, as earlv as the 17th of May, 17S1,
to the Congress assembled under the articles of confederation. Those articles, it
is well known, conferred much less power on the federative Government, and con¬
stituted a much less intimate union between the States which were parties to them,
than now exists under our Constitution. This is apparent on the face of the Con¬
stitution itself; for it is there declared that one object in adopting the Constitution
was " to form a more perfect union" among the States. Yet that Congress, acting
under such restricted powers, did not feel any hesitation in considering and adopt¬
ing the plan for the establishment of a bank under the name of the Bank of North
America, which was essentially a national bank. The ordinance was passed on
the 31st of December, 1781, and, among other recitals contained in the preamble,
it will be found that it affirms that " the exigencies of the United States render it
indispensably necessary that such an act be immediately passed." See Journal
1781, pp. 705-6.
The test vote upon this subject was taken on the 26th of May, 1781. [See
Journal 1781, p. 625.] At that time eleven States were represented in Congress,
and of those eleven, nine (viz : New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New
Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia) voted for
the bank. Massachusetts voted against it, and Pennsylvania was divided. Or if
we look to the individual votes of the members, we will find that Congress con¬
sisted of twenty-four members, of whom twenty voted for the bank, and four
against it. Thus the bank was established, and it is a well-authenticated fact, that
the facilities and accommodations furnished by that bank to the Government during
the war contributed most materially to the successful termination of our revolu¬
tionary struggle-
Having now disposed oi the Bank of North America, 1 will pass to the consider¬
ation of the history ol the bank ot 1791, and to the circumstances which led to its
recommendation and adoption.
Our present Constitution went into operation on the 4th of March, 1789. The
country had recently passed through that tremendous struggle which had happily
resulted in the achievement of our national independence. The finances ot the
sountrywere ir; the most embarrassed condition ; public and private credit were
alike prostrated ; lite exchanges were deranged ; the currency was so degraded
3
as to be worth only one-hundredth part of its nominal value, or a cent in the dol¬
lar; industry was paralyzed in all its departments, and discontent and distress
overspread the whole country. Under those circumstances, one of the first sub¬
jects which engaged the attention of Congress was the restoration of a sound cur¬
rency. With this view, as early as the 9th of August, 1790, Congress adopted a
resolution instructing the Secretary of the Treasury to report to that body at its
next session " such further provisions as might, in his opinion, be necessary to
establish the public credit." In fulfilment of the duty thus imposed on him by
Congress, the Secretary, Alexander Hamilton, on the 14th of December, 1790,
made a report to Congress, recommending the establishment of a Bank of the
United States. This report was immediately read and committed to a Committee
of the Whole. On the 23d of December, the same report was communicated to
the Senate of the United Slates, where it was committed to a special committee,
who were instructed to take the subject into consideration, and report upon it.
On the 3d of January, 1791, a bill was reported to the Senate, which was under
consideration from time to time until the 20th of January, when it was passed.
We have no means of knowing what were the views taken of the subject by Sen¬
ators, as we have no record of their debates; nor do we know how the vote stood
upon the final passage of the bill, as it appears from the journal that the ayes and
noes were not taken upon the question. There were, however, several test votes
taken upon various important amendments upon which their votes were recorded.
The most important of these was the motion to limit the charter to ten insead of
twenty years. On this motion, the vote stood—ayes 6, noes 16 ; or, in other words,
16 were favorable to the bank, and 6 adverse to it.—[Journal 1790-'91.]
This bill was immediately sent to the House, where it passed without opposition
to its third reading. At this stage of its progress, it was bitterly assailed upon the
grounds of unconstitutionality and inexpediency, and defended with equal earnest¬
ness by its friends. The debates on both sides are characterized by great ability
and research. On the 8th of February, 1791, the question upon the passage of the
bill was taken, and the vote stood—ayes 39, noes 20. Thus it will be seen, that in
the Senate the votes were near three to one in favor of the bill, and in the House of
Representatives they were near two to one.
But gentlemen have told us that this was a Federal measure, carried by Federal
votes. Now, sir, it is a fact, well known to all who are at all conversant with the
history of the formation of parties in our country, that the lines between the Federal
and Republican parties, as subsequently understood, were not drawn until near the
close of General Washington's administration. But 1 am willing to meet gentle¬
men on their own ground, and to suppose, for the sake of the argument, that the
party lines were distinctly marked at the date of the passage of the bank bill. Let
us then look at the ayes and noes on the passage of the bill, and class then) politi¬
cally , and what is the result ! I affirm, on the authority of Nathaniel Macon, that
of those who voted in favor of the bank, eleven were Republicans in the great strug¬
gles of party which subsequently occurred ; and of those who voted against the
bank, six were Federalists. This fact was stated, upon the authority of Mr. Macon,
by Mr. McKee, of Kentucky, in his speech delivered in the House of Repre¬
sentatives on the 24th of January, 1811, and reported in Clarke's History of the
Bank of the United Slates, p. 298. Had gentlemen taken the trouble to look at the
record of this vote, they surely would never have hazarded the assertion that the bank
of 1791 was carried by a party vote! Was Nicholas Oilman a Federalist! Was
Elbridge Gerry, the Republican Vice President of the United Slates, a Federalist!
Were Peter Mublenburg, James Schureman, and Roger Sherman, Federalists ! No,
sir, no ! Every man who knows any thing of the history of the country knows that
these men were all stanch Republicans. And yet their names are all to be found
recorded in favor of the bank of 1791. These facts show conclusively that the
bank of 1791 was nut decided upon party principles, or by a party vote.
On the 14th of February, 1793, the bill was submitted to President Washington,
4
for his signature. The question being one of novelty and importance, the President,
witli that prudence which always characterized his conduct both in war and in
peace, called upon his cabinet for their advice. That cabinet consisted of Thomas
Jefferson, Secretary of State; Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury;
General Knox, Secretary of War; and Edmund Randolph, Attorney General. The
question was most ably and elaborately examined, and the cabinet was equally divid¬
ed; Mr. Hamilton and General Knox being in favor of the bill, and Mr. Jefferson and
Mr. Randolph against it. All the members of the cabinet, except General Knox,
gave formal opinions on the question in writing; which opinions cover the whole
ground on both sides, and may be read with great profit at the present day. There
is one passage in the opinion of Mr. Jefferson, which contains a sentiment so hon¬
orable to him, and so truly republican in its character, that 1 cannot forbear from
bringing it to the consideration of the House, and commending it to the attention
of members. It is the last paragraph in the " Opinion," and is in these words:
" It must be added, however, that unless the President's mind, on a view of every
thing which is urged for and against this bill, is tolerably clear that it is unautho¬
rized by the Constitution, if the pro and con hang so even as to balance his judg¬
ment, a just respect for the wisdom of the Legislature would naturally decide the
balance in favor of their opinion. It is chiefly for cases where they are clearly
misled by error, ambition, or interest, that the Constitution hits placed a check in
the negative of the President." Sir, this sentiment ought to be printed in letters of
gold, and hung up at the portals of the executive mansion.
General Washington gave to this subject his most anxious consideration. He
held up the bill to the last moment that he was allowed by the Constitution to
retain it, and he tasked all the faculties of his great and comprehensive mind to the
utmost, to come to a correct conclusion ; and be finally gave to the bill the sanction
of liis name.
The gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Saunders) says that this decision by
the Congress and the President ought not to be regarded as authoritative, because
it was made in the infancy of the Republic. Here, Mr. Chairman, 1 again join
issue with the gentleman. I maintain that there are circumstances which give to
this decision of the Government a sanctity which belongs to no othei adjudication.
What are these circumstances? In the first place, it was made very recently after
the Constitution was formed, and at a period when the views and meaning of its
framers were necessarily much better understood than they are now.
Secondly, it was made, to a considerable extent, by the same persons who had
framed the Constitution itself, and who, of course, are to be presumed to have un¬
derstood its provisions better than any one else. And here, sir, let us resort to the
official records, and see precisely how this matter stands. If gentlemen will con¬
sult the journals, they will find that there were in the Senate of the United States,
in the year 1791, eight members who had been members of the Convention which
formed the Constitution. To avoid all misapprehension, I will give their names,
and if any gentleman desires to make the examination for himself, he can do so by
referring to the Journal of the Senate 1791, page 234. The names are : John
Langdon, New Hampshire ; AVilliam S. Johnson, Connecticut; Rttfus King, New
York; Robert Morris, Pennsylvania; Richard Bassett, Delaware; George Reid,
Delaware; Pierce Butler, South Carolina; and William Few, Georgia. Of these,
the six first named voted in favor of the bank, and the two last named against it.
In the House of Representatives, there were also eight members who had been
members of the Federal Convention. They were: George Clymer, Pennsylvania;
Thomas Fitzsimoris, Pennsylvania; Nicholas Gilman, New Hampshire ; Roger
Sherman, Connecticut; Abraham Baldwin, Georgia; Daniel Carroll, Maryland ;
James Madison, Virginia ; and Hugh Williamson, North Carolina. The four first
nam u! voted for the bank, and the four last named against it.
It tints appears, that of the sixteen members ol the Convention which formed the
Constitution of tho United States, who were in the Congress of 1791, ten voted for
the bunk, and six against it.
5
We also know, officially, that George Washington, the President of the Con¬
vention, and Alexander Hamilton, one of its most distinguished members, were
in favor of the Bank of the United States; and we know, too, that James Madison,
in 1815, relinquished his objections to the constitutionality of a bank ; so that if
we classify the members of the Convention whose opinions on this important sub¬
ject have been officially declared, we will find they stand thirteen in favor of it to
five against it, or nearly in the ratio of three to one ! Here 1 leave this point,
with this single inquiry, which I throw out for the consideration of those who are
to follow me in this debate, Who can be more competent to give a just exposition of
the meaning of the Constitution than those who framed it?
The third consideration, which seems to me to give peculiar authority to the de¬
cision of the first Congress, is, that it was made without reference to the influences
of partj'. The subject was taken up and considered as a financial and business
measure, and it was discussed, as all great measures should be discussed in our le¬
gislative halls, with calmness and dignity and mutual forbearance ; and it was de¬
cided, as T have already shown by a reference to the journal, without any regard
to those party influences which sometimes sway the judgment of the most virtuous
men.
The last circumstance, to which I will barely advert, as giving a peculiar au¬
thority to the decision of 1791, is the character of the first President—the Father
of his Country. I do not propose, Mr. Chairman, to pronounce a studied eulogy
on the character of Washington. Nothing that I could say could add another ray
to the halo of glory which surrounds his name. Nor will I stop to combat the
views of those who charge that in his administration of the Government he de¬
parted from the true principles of the Constitution. Let others think what they
may, I have no hesitation in announcing it as my opinion that George Washington
was not only the purest and best, but also the wisest man that this country ever
saw ! A benign Providence seems to have created him for the special purpose of
achieving the independence of his country, and of establishing its liberties upon
sure and permanent foundations. This man, then, fresh from the Convention
which framed the Constitution, over whose deliberations he had been chosen to pre¬
side, was called on to decide this great constitutional question. His sound, discrim¬
inating, and, I may almost add, infallible judgment, was enlightened by the able
arguments of Hamilton on the one side, and Randolph and Jefferson on the other;
and, after the most anxious and mature deliberation, he gave his sanction to the bill1.
If all these considerations do not give authority and sanctity to that judgment, what
circumstances can give validity to the decisions of a human tribunal ?
Thus, sir, the bank of 1791 was established, and during the whole period of its
existence its validity was never questioned in our judicial tribunals. And very
soon the effects which resulted from its creation vindicated the wisdom of its pro¬
jectors and supporters; for, in the language of the celebrated report of Mr.
McDuffie, in 1830, " public and private credit were raised from a prostrate to a
very elevated condition, and the finances of the nation were placed on the most
solid foundation."
I will now hasten on to other incidents connected with the history of the bank.
Shortly after Louisiana had been purchased bv Mr. Jefferson, Congress deemed it
expedient to establish a branch of the Bank of the United States at New Orleans,
and, with that view, a law was passed authorizing the bank to establish branches
"in any part of the territories or dependencies of the United States." To this bill
Mr. Jefferson, on the 23d of March, 1804, gave his sanction. See Laws of the
United Stales 1804, chap. 32.
It is well known that Mr. Jefferson was one of the earliest and most able oppo¬
nents of the bank, and his great name is always invoked as authority by the ene¬
mies of the institution; but I submit it to this House and to the country to decide
whether, when Mr. Jefferson signed this bill, he did not relinquish his constitutional
scruples. How is it possible that an opponent of the constitutional power to create
6
a bank could lend his aid to the extension of the powers and faculties of such an
institution ? Whore is the' distinction between conferring unconstitutional powers
upon an institution at the time of its inception, and extending the sphere within
which those powers shall he exercised, or granting new powers to such an institu¬
tion already in existence? For myself, 1 must confess my inability to perceive it,
and I leave the point for political casuists to decide.
But there is another law to which 1 will invite the attention of the House, as
being calculated to throw some light upon the opinions of IMr. Jefferson. In 1807,
it was found that the existing laws to punish frauds and forgeries on the bank were
defective ; and to remedy that evil an additional act was passed on the 24th of Feb¬
ruary, 1807, and approved by JVlr. Jefferson, then President of the United States,
" to punish frauds committed on the bank." This act will be found in Story's
edition of the Laws of the United States, vol. 2, page 1048. A very superficial
examination of this law will show that Mr. Jefferson could not have sanctioned it
without abandoning his constitutional scruples. In the first place, it recognises the
bank as having a corporate existence, for it provides " for the punishment of
frauds"—against whom ?—the people ? No ! The stockholders ? No ! But against
the corporation—the bank ! Now, it is perfectly clear that if the law creating the
bank was unconstitutional, the bank could have no corporate existence, and there¬
fore no " fraud" could be committed upon it. In other words, the law would have
been nugatory and inoperative ! We are bound, therefore, to suppose that Mr.
Jefferson did recognise the legal existence of the bank, and thai recognition neces¬
sarily implies the power of Congress to pass the law which gave it existence !
But there is yet another link in the chain of official documentary evidence to
prove that Mr. Jefferson substantially abandoned his constitutional objections to a
Bank of the United States. On the 2d of March, 1809, Mr. Albert Gallatin, Mr.
Jefferson's Secretary of the Treasury, and the man who has been significantly
called the " mainmast of his administration," whilst the relation of President and
Secretary still subsisted between them, submitted an able report to Congress,
recommending the recharter of the Bank of the United States. I do not pretend to
affirm that this recommendation was made with the assent of Mr. Jefferson; but I
leave it for the country to decide whether it is probable, considering the confi¬
dential relations which existed between Mr. Gallatin and the President, that he
would have concealed the fact from Mr. Jefferson, that he intended to submit such
a report ? I ask, whether it is to be presumed that any Secretary would have ven¬
tured to propose a measure of such vital interest, without the sanction of the Presi¬
dent ? I think not ; and if Mr. Gallatin were to feel himself at liberty to speak,
I feel well assured that he would say that Mr. Jefferson was fully apprized of his
intention to submit the report of 2d March, 1809, and that it met his approbation !
So much, Mr. Chairman, for the history of the bank of 1791. I will now pro¬
ceed to review some of the leading incidents connected with the abortive efforts
to procure a recharter of that bank, and with the struggles which resulted in the
charter of 1816.
The charter ol the bank was limited to 1811. In 1810 an atttempt was made
to renew it, which was not finally acted on.
On the 4th of January, 1811, a bill to renew the charter was reported to the
House of Representatives by Mr. Burwell. After this bill had undergone a dis¬
cussion, extending through seventeen days, Mr. Newton, of Virginia, on the 21st
of January, 1811, moved to postpone the bill indefinitely.—[See Journal 1811, p.
495.] Mr. Newton premised this motion by saying, " I am for laying the legis¬
lative axe at the root of the evil. I am for immediately deciding this question, and
turning to some other business; and, for this purpose, I move that the further con¬
sideration of the bill be indefinitely postponed."—[See Doc. Hist. U. S. B., page
196.] This proposition elicited another very able discussion, and, on the 24th of
January, 1811, the vote was taken by ayes and noes—[See Journal 1811, page
500]—and the result was—ayes 65, noes 64. So the motion was carried. There is
i
one fact in regard lo this vote to which I will call the attention of the House, and
which I beg leave to commend to the particular consideration of mv colleague from
the Buckingham district, (Mr. Hubard.) It is, that John Randolph, of Roanoke,
the gentleman's illustrious predecessor, voted against Mr. Newton's motion to "lay
the axe to the root," by destroying the bank!
The subject of the renewal of the charter was introduced into the Senate, also,
at the same session ; and, after full discussion, the proposition to strike out the
enacting clause was carried by the casting vote of the Vice President of the United
States, the Senate being equally divided, 17 to 17 ; and this division, I will add,
was without regard to party; for we find Brent, of Virginia, and William H. Craw¬
ford, in the negative, whilst Giles and Clay, and other distinguished Republicans,
were in the affirmative.
Thus it will be seen that this measure was lost by a majoiity of one in the
House of Representatives, and by the casting vote of the Vice President in the
Senate ! And yet this is the decision upon which the gentleman from North Car¬
olina (Mr. Saunders) relies as overruling the decision of the large majorities in the
Congress of 1791, and the solemn judgment of President Washington ! For my
part, Mr. Chairman, I regard this decision as having none of the authority of a
constitutional precedent; for, independently of the leanness of the majorities, there
are other circumstances which show that the question was decided, not upon con¬
stitutional grounds, but upon mere considerations of expediency. This is manifest
from the fact that we see gentlemen of opposite political opinions voting together;
as, for example, Mr. William H. Crawford, of Georgia, and Timothy Pickering, of
Massachusetts. But there are other views which show why the bank was not re-
chartcred—seven-tenths of the whole stock of the institution was owned by British
subjects; and as we were, in 1811, on the eve of a war with Great Britain, every
consideration of sound policy would seem to require that such a bank should not
be rechartered under such circumstances.
Here, Mr. Speaker, let me pause for a moment, to advert to a singular incident
in the political history of my beloved native Slate, which tends more strongly than
any circumstance within my knowledge to prove the strength of her devotion to
what are here termed " Virginia abstractions." In 1811, the Legislature of Vir¬
ginia instructed her Senators, Mr. Giles and Mr. Brent, to oppose the renewal of
the charter of the Bank of the United States. Mr. Giles made a speech in the
Senate in response to the instructions, in which he denied the right of the Legisla¬
ture to instruct, but nevertheless he yielded practical obedience to the legislative
mandate by voting against the bank. Mr. Brent, on the other hand, promptly ad¬
mitted the right to give the instruction, but practically disobeyed it by voting for
the bank ! And, strange to say, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Giles, who denied the " ab¬
straction," and yet voted in obedience to the legislative will, lost caste as a politi¬
cian ; whilst his colleague, Mr. Brent, who admitted the " abstraction," and prac¬
tically disregarded it, retained his popularity, without the smallest diminution.
These facts I have from many sources, and amongst others from my venerable col¬
league (Mr. Taliaferro) on my right.
In the year 1814, the subject of incorporating a Bank of the United States was
again renewed. On the 2d of April, 1814, Mr. Grundy, of Tennessee, moved
the following resolution :
"Resolved, That a committee be appointed to inquire into the expediency of establishing a na¬
tional bank."—[See Journal 1814, p. 380.]
This was near the close of the session, however, and no action grew out of it.
On the 19th of September, 1814, a special session of Congress commenced, and
on the 14th of October, John YV. Eppes, the chairman of the Committee of Ways
and Means, addressed a letter to Alexander Dallas, the Secretary of the Treasury,
asking him to suggest measures for the revival and maintenance of the public cred¬
it. And here, Mr. Chairman, permit me to pause for a moment, to note the coin-
8
cidence between the course taken by Congress in 1814 and in 1790. In both ca¬
ses the Secretary of the Treasury was called on to suggest measures to establish the
public credit. The language is almost the same in both cases. In 1790, Hamil¬
ton is called upon to report measures lot "establishing the public creditand in
1814, Dallas is requested to suggest "such additional provisions as may be neces¬
sary to revive and maintain unimpaired the public credit." It would seem, from
the similarity of the means used, that the Congress of 1814 was aiming, indirectly,
at the same end which was attained by the inquiry of 1790, viz: the recommenda¬
tion of a Bank of the United States. Whether such was the intention or not, it is
very certain that such was the result ; for, on the 17th of the same month, Mr.
Dallas responded to the inquiry by recommending the establishment of a national
bank. After full consideration of this communication of Mr. Dallas, the committee
reported a resolution in these words :
"Resolved, That it is expedient to establish a national bank, with branches in the several
States."—[See Journal 1814, p. 504.]
Upon this resolution some proceedings were had, which I commend to the atten¬
tion of those gentlemen who are opposed to the branching power of the Bank of the
United States. Mr. Stanford moved to strike out the latter branch of the resolu¬
tion—" with branches in the several States." Upon this question the ayes and noes
were taken, and the vote stood—ayes 14, noes 138 ; and among the noes were P.
P. Barbour, of Virginia ; J. C. Calhoun, of South Carolina; J. W. Eppes, of Vir¬
ginia ; J. Forsyth, of Georgia ; C. J. Ingersoll, of Pennsylvania ; J. G. Jackson, of
Virginia ; William R. King, now of Alabama ; W. Lowndes, of South Carolina ; and
Alfred Cuthbert, of Georgia ; and a host of other distinguished Republicans.—[See
Journal 1814, p. 584-5.]
The amendment having been defeated, the question recurred on the adoption of
the original resolution. And here 1 take leave to say, that this is the only occasion
within my knowledge on which the abstract question of bank or no bank has been
submitted to Congress, unembarrassed by any matter of detail in the particular
measure proposed. It presents the naked question, to be decided without reference
to any extraneous circumstances ; and hence the decision possesses more interest
and more authority as a precedent than any other decision within my knowledge.
Now, sir, how do you suppose the vole stood ? If you will consult the Journal of
1814, pages 505-6, you will find that upon this abstract proposition the vote stood—
ayes 93, noes 54, or nearly two to one in favor of it. And if you will look at the
ayes and noes, you will find recorded in the affirmative the names of John C. Cal¬
houn, the distinguished Senator from South Carolina, who but the other day told the
Senate he was always opposed to a bank " in the abstract;" Mr. Cuthbert, now a
Senator from Georgia; Mr. Forsyth, late Secretary of State; Mr. C. J. Ingersoll,
the distinguished gentleman from Pennsylvania, whose democracy no man will pre¬
tend to question ; Mr. S. D. Ingham, of Pennsylvania ; Mr. William R. King, now
a Senator from Alabama ; Mr. Lowndes, of South Carolina, and many other dis¬
tinguished Republicans, as well as those of Mr. Gaston, Mr. Webster, and other dis¬
tinguished Federalists.
Without going further into details, it is sufficient to say that a bill was introduced
and passed in the Senate by a vote of 17 to 14, and which was rejected in the
House by the casting vote of the Speaker.—[See Journal 1815, pp. 638-9.] A
few days afterwards this vote was reconsidered by a vote of 107 to 54, most of
the Republicans voting for it.—[See Journal 181.5, pp. 641-2.] The bill was then
recommitted to a select committee, who shortly afterwards reported it with amend¬
ments, reducing the capital from fifty to thirty millions of dollars, and it was passed
by a vote of 129 to 31, most of the leading Republicans again voting for it.—[See
Journal 1815, pp. 652-3.]
This bill was sent to Mr. Madison for his signature, and on the 30ih of January,
1815, he returned it with his objections, or, in other words, he vetoed the bill. But.
9
sir, did he rest his objections on constitutional grounds'? Let his message answer
lor him. In that memorable document, Mr. Madison used these strong expressions:.
" Waiving the question of the constitutional authority of the Legislature to estab¬
lish an incorporated bank as being precluded in my judgment by repeated recogni¬
tions, under varied circumstances, of the validity of such an institution, in acts
of the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial branches of the Government, accom¬
panied by indications in different modes of the concurrent will of the nation, the
proposed bank does not appear to be calculated to answer the purposes of reviving
the public credit, of providing a national medium of circulation, and of aiding the
Treasury, by facilitating the indispensable anticipations of the revenue, and by af¬
fording to the public more durable loans." Here, Mr. Chairman, it will be seen
that Mr. Madison distinctly abandons his constitutional objections, and, treating that
question as settled, he rests his veto on the defects in the provisions of the bill itself.
When the bill was thus returned by Mr. Madison, with his objections, an attempt
was made to pass it through the Senate, in opposition to the veto, by a vote of two-
thirds, but it failed—ayes 15, noes 19. On this proposition, Mr. Giles, the Repub¬
lican Senator of Virginia, voted ay, or, in other words, for the passage of the bill.
[See Doc. Hist. Bank U. S., p. 596.]
This bill having failed, Mr. James Barbour, a distinguished Republican Senator
from Virginia, immediately introduced another bill, conforming to the views of the
President; but this bill was not pressed, as is believed, in consequence of the news
that a treaty of peace with Great Britain had been concluded.
On the 5th of December, 1815, Mr. Madison, in his annual message to Congress,
called their attention to the subject of a uniform currency, and mentioned a Bank of
the United States as one of the agents which would aid in furnishing it. This rec¬
ommendation was seconded by a very able report from Mr. Alexander Dallas, then
Secretary of the Treasury, in which he showed the indispensable necessity of such
an institution. The recommendations were promptly responded to by Congress.
That part of the President's message which referred to the currency was referred,
on the following day, 6th December, to a special committee, consisting of Mr. Cal-
hoon, of South Carolina ; Mr. Macon, of North Carolina ; Mr. Pleasants, of Virginia ;
Mr. Hopkinson,of Pennsylvania; Mr. Robertson, of Louisiana; Mr. H. St. G. Tucker,
of Virginia; and Mr. Pickering, of Massachusetts.—[See Journal 1815, p. 26.]
On the 8th of January, 1816, Mr. Calhoun reported the bill to establish a Bank
of the United States.—[See Journal 1816, p. 136.] After a very protracted de¬
bate, the question was at length taken on the passage of the bill in the House of
Representatives, when it passed by a vote of 80 to 71.—[See Journal 1816, pp.
489 and 490.] In the Senate, this bill passed by a vote of 22 ayes to 12 noes,
and it received the sanction of President Madison.
Here, Mr. Chairman, let us pause to analyze these votes, that we may see how
far the charge that this bank was a Federal measure, carried by Federal votes, is
sustained by the record. The ayes and noes are now before me, and I have pre¬
pared a careful analysis of them, which exhibits the following result: In the Sen¬
ate, of the twenty-two who voted for the bank, seventeen were Republicans,,
and five were Federalists; and, of the twelve who voted against it, seven were
Federalists, and five were Republicans. In the House of Representatives, of the
eighty members who voted for the bill, sixty-seven were Republicans and thir¬
teen were Federalists, whilst, of the seventy-one who voted against the bank,
thirty were Republicans, and forty-one were Federalists ! And yet gentlemen
tell us that this was a Federal measure!—a Federal measure! though two-
thirds of the Federalists voted against it, and two-thirds of the Republicans
in both Houses voted for it !
But the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Saunders) tells the House that the
constitutional question was not raised in 1816 ! The Federalists were estopped
from raising it; and as the Republicans intended to vote for it, of course they would
not raise it! I must confess, this is a novel doctrine to me. The constitutional
10
question not raised ! IJow was it possible to avoid it ? Does not the constitutional
power, or, in other words, the jurisdiction of Congress over the subject-matter un¬
der consideration, arise in every conceivable case 1 Does it not lie at the threshold
of every question? If you have no constitutional power over a subject, you
cannot act upon it at all; and, if you do act upon it, the conclusion that, in your
opinion, you have the [rower to act, is a necessary consequence of your action.
Away, then, with this notion that the constitutional power was not drawn in ques¬
tion in 181G! It was questioned, it was debated, and it was decided!
But, sir, it may not be uninteresting or unprofitable to let the country know who
some of these Federalists were, who conspired to fasten this horrible monster of a
Bank of the United States on the country in 1816 ! Taking the ayes alphabeti¬
cally, I find among them Mr. John C. Calhoun, the distinguished Senator from
South Carolina ; next we find Mr. Alfred Cuthbert, now a Senator from Georgia;
and next Mr. Forsyth, of Georgia, late Secretary of State. Then follow, in rapid
succession, Mr. Ingham, the former Secretary of the Treasury under General Jack¬
son's Administration ; John G. Jackson, the predecessor of my colleague, from the
Clarksburg district, (Mr. Hays ;) Mr. Kerr, the predecessor of my colleague from
the Halifax district, (Mr. Coles;) Mr. William R. King, then a Representative
from North Carolina, but now a Senator from Alabama ; Mr. Lowndes, of South
Carolina ; Mr. Lumpkin, of Georgia ; General William McCoy, the predecessor
of my colleague from the Rockingham district, (Mr. Harris ;) Mr. Samuel Smith,
of Maryland, late a distinguished Democratic Senator from that State; and Judge
Henry St. George Tucker, at present the able and respected president of the court
of appeals of Virginia, and the acknowledged head of the Democratic party in that
State. These are a few examples, Mr. Chairman, of the Federalists who were in¬
strumental in inflicting this deep wound upon the Constitution of their country !
Now, sir, let us look upon the other side of the picture, and see who were the
stanch Democrats who resisted this monstrous encroachment on the liberties of the
people ! Sir, I do not mean, in any thing I tuay say, to be understood as casting
any imputation on the motives of the Federalists, or as endorsing any of the vile
calumnies which have been propagated against their character. Although I dissent
widely from their doctrines, I believe that the Federal party was influenced, in the
main, by as elevated and patriotic impulses as any party that ever existed. No,
sir! far be it from my purpose, at any time, to denounce a party which numbered
amongst its members Washington and Adams and Hamilton and Marshall, and a
host of the noblest spirits of the Revolution ! I merely advert to the party distinc¬
tions of the day to rebuke the authors of the assertion that the bank was a Federal
measure, carried by Federal votes. Who, then, were those who were most distin¬
guished for their opposition to the bank ? First, sir, I will name General James
Breckenridge, of Virginia—a gentleman conspicuous for his elevated character and
sound judgment, but who was a consistent Federalist to the day of his death. Next
in order I will mention Judge Gaston, of North Carolina; Joseph Lewis, of Vir¬
ginia; Timothy Pickering, of Massachusetts; and my lamented and distinguished
personal friend, the late Daniel Shefley, of Virginia, who then represented the dis¬
trict from which my colleague in front of me (Mr. Hopkins) now comes, and who
always gloried in being called a Federalist. Last, but not least, among the op¬
ponents of the bank in 1816 was Daniel Webster, now Secretary of State, but
then a Representative from New Hampshire—a man, who, if the political journals
of the day are to be taken as authority, is the very impersonation of every vile po¬
litical heresy which a spirit of lawless usurpation ever generated ! Thus you see
who were the Federalists who voted for this bill, and who the Democrats who
voted against it!
Having now completed this general view of the subject, let me turn for a moment to examine
what has been the course of Virginia " the flag-ship of Democracy." on this great question. How
did her delegation stand upon this memorable occasion ? From the constant clamor which is kept
up about the devotion of Virginia to "Democracy," as gentlemen call it, and her steadfast and
uniform opposition to all implied powers, you would naturally be led to expect that she presented,
11
on that occasion, an unbroken front. But how stand the facts ' Virginia, in 1816, had twenty-
two Representatives, and, upon the passage of the bill, eighteen were present, and voted as foLlows :
Making eight for the bill and ten against it. Four members were absent, viz: Hugh Nelson,
James Pleasants, Magnus Tate, and W. H. Roane. Classed politically, the delegation stood,
nineteen Republicans and three Federalists. The Federalists were, Breckenridge, Lewis, and
Sheffey, every one of whom voted against the bill, whilst every man of the delegation who voted
for it was a Republican.
But we are not left in the dark as to the sentiments of the absent members ; for, after the vote
was taken on the passage of the bill, it was sent to the Senate, whence it was returned to the
House with amendments ; and, on the 5th of April, 1816, Mr. Randolph moved to postpone the
consideration of the bill and amendments indefinitely.—[See Journal, p. 593.] This motion gave
rise to much debate, and, the vote being taken, it stood—ayes 67, noes 91. Before this vote was
taken, the members from Virginia who had been absent at the former vote had returned to their
seats, and three of them, viz : Messrs. Pleasants, Tate, and Nelson, voted against the motion for
indefinite postponement, whilst only one, Mr. Roane, voted for it. Yes, sir, strange as it mav
seem to some gentlemen, Mr. Hugh Nelson, the predecessor of my colleague on my left, (Mr.
Gilmer,) and the immediate representative of the Monticello district, voted for the bank. Where
that gentleman was when the vole on the passage of the bill was taken, whether he was in the city
or had gone home to consult the Mountain Sage as to the vote he should give, I will not pretend to
say, though, if I were to hazard a conjecture on the subject, it would be the latter ! Adding these
absentees to the ayes and noes as given on the passage of the bill, we have eleven of the Virginia
delegation voting for the bank, and eleven against it. But, of the eleven who voted against it,
three were Federalists, whilst all those who voted for it were Republicans. These, sir, are authen¬
tic facts. But this is not all. Let us look to the Senate of the United States. There you will
find that both the Republican Senators from Virginia, James Barbour and A. T. Mason, voted for
the bank ? Where, then, sir, was the potential voice of Virginia ? Where were her instructions
to her Senators ? Did the sentinel sleep on the watchtower ' Let it not be said, Mr. Chairman,
that this question was suddenly sprung on the public, and that Virginia had no time to make her
voice heard in the councils of the nation. No, sir ; the facts will not warrant such an assertion.
The question had been the subject of discussion during the whole preceding session of Congress,
when the Virginia Legislature was also in session, and yet not a murmur of disapprobation was
heard—not a movement of opposition made. At the commencement of the session of 1815—' 16,
the subject was again brought to the attention of Congress, by the message of the President and
the report of the Secretary of the Treasury. The Legislature of Virginia commenced its sessions
cotemporaneously with Congress, and continued in session for months, and yet we have not a
whisper in the form of a remonstrance 1 Why was this ! Has it been the habit of Virginia to
be dumb, when she believes the Constitution is threatened with danger ' No, sir! she has always
been accustomed to give full expression to her opinions; and we are authorized to infer from the
absence of all opposition to the establishment of a bank, that she, too, like her beloved and trusted
Madison, had "waived" her constitutional scruples!
Sir, need I tell this House who James Barbour is> No, sir. He stands out in bold relief as
one of the most distinguished of Virginia'a sons—a man and a politician without spot or blemish!
He commenced his career when but a boy, as the colleague and friend of Madison, in the Legisla¬
ture of Virginia, in the memorable session of 1798-'9 ; and there, sir, he first won distinction by ad¬
vocating the celebrated report of his colleague. In after life, he filled every station within the gift:
of his native State, to say nothing of the distinguished offices which, at various times, he held un¬
der the Federal Government; and he still lives to enjoy the richest reward of a well-spent life—the
confidence and affectionate respect of all who know him.
These facts are surely enough to sustain the proposition that Virginia herself favored, or, at
least, did not oppose, the bank of 1816. If gentlemen wish any fuither evidence, let me point
them to the fact that a vacancy having occurred in the Senate of the United States, by the resigna¬
tion of Mr. John W. Eppes, in December, 1819, Mr. James Pleasants, who had, as a member of
the House of Representatives, voted for the bank of 1816, was elected to fill that honorable
station. And, to crown all, in 1824, Virginia, by a large majority, cast her Presidential vote in
Ayes.
Th. Gholson,
A. Hawes,
J. P. Hungerford,
J. G. Jackson,
J. Kerr,
Wm. McCoy,
Ballard Smith,
Henry St. George Tucker.
Noes.
P. P. Barbour,
B. Bassett,
J. Breckenridge,
J. Clopton,
P. Goodwyn,
J. Johnson,
J. Lewis,
T. Newton,
J. Randolph,
D. Sheffey.
12
favor of William H. Crawford, the man who, through good and through evil report, had been the
stanch, undeviating friend of the bank, and whose reputation as a statesman rested more upon his
able and uniform support of that institution than upon any other measure whatever.
With this historical review of the bank question, I leave it to this House and to the country to
say how far I am sustained in my assertion that the bank of 1791 was not a measure of the Federal
party, and that the bank of 1816 was emphatically a Republican measure.
There is yet another view of this question, which 1 wish to present to the House, and particular¬
ly to Southern members. The impression has prevailed very extensively that the Bank of the
United States was a Northern measure, forced upon the country by Northern votes, at the expense
of Southern interests. In other words, we of the South have regarded it as a cunningly devised
scheme of our Northern friends to take money out of our pockets and put it into theirs. Now, I
beg gentlemen to hear with me while I make an analysis of the vote of 1816, in reference to the
great geographical divisions of the country into North and East, Middle and South and West. If
gentlemen examine for themselves, they will find that the votes stood thus :
Northern and Eastern Division.
For passage. Against passage.
New Hampshire
-
1
5
Massachusetts -
7
7
Rhode Island
.
o
0
Connecticut
2
5
Vermont
.
1
4
13
21
Middle Division.
New York
12
8
New Jersey
.
4
2
Pennsylvania
-
6
12
Delaware
-
0
2
22
24
Southern and Western Division.
Maryland
.
4
3
Virginia
.
8
11
North Carolina -
9
3
South Carolina -
7
1
Georgia
-
5
1
Kentucky
.
4
4
T ennessec
3
1
Ohio
-
3
2
Louisiana
-
1
0
44
26
From this table it will appear that the Northern and Eastern States were strongly opposed to the-
bank—that the Middle States were comparatively indifferent as to its fate—whilst the South and
West carried the bill, giving nearly two-thirds of their votes in its favor ! This is a very striking
fact, and it has given rise to some reflections in my mind as to the probable reason of it, and I
invite the attention of my friends from South Carolina especially to one view which has presented
itself to my mind.
We of the South have always opposed a tariff for protection, on the ground that the duty en¬
hanced the price of merchandise, and that the consumers of the South ultimately bore the burden ;
or, in other words, that the duty was a bounty to the Northern manufacturer, which was paid by
the Southern consumer. Without pretending to discuss the precise extent to which this argument
is sound, I am willing, for the present, to admit its truth to the full extent. B ut let us see if there
is not another mode of taxing the South and West for the benefit of the North, which is equally
objectionable in principle, and equally onerous in practice. I allude to the derangement in the
exchanges of the country. We all know that the Northern are the importing and manufacturing
States, while the Southern are the consuming States. In 1816, Mr. MeDuffie tells us, in his
report, that the average rate of exchange between the Northern and Southern divisions of the Union
was about ten per cent, in favor of the North ; and it is not a great deal less now. Now, how did
this derangement operate practically, and how does it operate now ' The whole amount of our
imports is now estimated at one hundred and forty millions of dollars. Let us suppose that
fifty millions of this amount are consumed in the Southern and Western States. What is the
process which must be passed through before these goods are consumed ■ In the first place, they
are imported into the Northern cities, and the Southern merchants go there to lay in their supplies.
They either take with them their local paper, which is at a discount of ten per cent., or they pay a
13
premium of ten per cent, at home for a draft on one of the Northern cities. If they take the local
paper with them to market, they are not able to buy goods with it at cash prices, and they are
therefore compelled either to go to the broker's shop and have the money shaved at ten per cent.,
or they let the merchant indirectly turn broker, and exact the premium in the enhanced price of the
goods. What do the Southern merchants do next > Do they lose this ten per cent, out of their
profits ? By no means. The amount paid as a premium for the draft, or the amount paid to the
broker, is essentially just as much a part of the price paid for the goods as the amount paid to the
importer. The merchant so regards it, and in fixing his price on his goods he always adds to the
amount paid to the importer the amount of the brokerage or premium, and then lays his profit 011
the aggregate ; and the consumers—the farmers and planters of the country—pay the whole. And
who enjoys the benefit ? Is it not the brokers and money-changers of the North ? I beg gentle¬
men to look at this proposition seriously. If the South consumes fifty millions of imports, and if
the brokerage or premium on exchange is ten per cent., I ask, does it not operate to tax the South
to the amount of that ten per cent, or five millions of dollars, for the bonefit of the North ? Or, to
bring the case home to ourselves, do not the constituents of every gentleman on this floor who con¬
sume $100,000 worth of merchandise, brought from the North, pay a tax to the Northern brokers
to the extent of five or ten thousand dollars, as the rate of exchange may happen to be five or ten
per cent. ? I am aware that this state of things could not continue permanently, but it is always
the case upon any sudden and violent revulsion in the business of the country, which disturbs the
currency and deranges the exchanges. May not this view of the subject furnish some clew to the
reason which governed the votes of the Union in 1816 > Our Northern brethren are shrewd and
sagacious in seeing the different sections of their interests; and if they found that the derangement
of the currency was " enuring to their benefit," is it a matter of surprise that they should be opposed
to a bank which would restore a uniform currency, and equalize the exchanges, and deprive the
swarm of brokers and money-changers, who always reap in the field of a deranged currency, of the
rich harvest which they were gathering '
The middle country occupied a position of comparative neutrality, and hence you find that the
representation from that country was almost equally divided, whilst the South and West, who were
the principal sufferers, were the warmest advocates of a bank and its consequences—a sound cur¬
rency and equal exchanges. If this view of the subject be correct in regard to the year 1816, is it
not equally correct in regard to the present time > And I call upon members from the South and
West to say whether the interests of their constituents do not imperiously require that they should
now go for a bank.
Having thus presented an outline of the political history of the bank, I propose to submit a few
observations in regard to it, as connected with the currency and business of the country. I have
already adverted to the effects of the bank of 1791 in restoring to the country a sound currency,
and I shall not return to that early period of our history. But I wish to look at the state of things
which followed the dissolution of the bank in 1811. Gentlemen here found their objections to the
bank on their hostility to the paper currency system. Now, sir, I wish it to be understood that no
man can be more hostile to our present unregulated banking system than I am. But I am a friend
to the credit system, properly guarded. I go for a currency which is somewhat assimilated to our
political institutions. I go for a local currency for local purposes, and a general or national cur¬
rency for purposes of trade between the several States. This can only be effected by means of a
national bank, as the experience of the country, from the foundation of the Government, has shown.
Before the bank of 1791 was established, we had a degraded currency and a prostrate credit. That
institution re-established both, and they continued in a sound condition as long as the bank existed.
As soon as it went down, we again had the currency degraded, the exchanges deranged, a general
suspension of specie payments, emissions of Treasury notes, and floods of shinplasters through the
whole country. The bank of IS 16 caused the State banks to resume specie payments, restored a
sound currency and equal exchanges, and brought back prosperity to the country, which continued
until the expiration of the charter in 1836. Scarcely had it ceased to exist, before precisely the same
results which had ensued upon the destruction of- the bank of 1811 again took place. We again
have general suspensions of specie payments—again new emissions of Treasury notes—again new
floods of shinplasters—derangement of the exchanges and distress and ruin throughout the land.
I am for applying the same remedy now which gave efficient relief, under similar circumstances, in
1816.
But we are told by the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Sacv 11 ehs) that the bank did not
regulate the exchanges of the country, nor did it aid in the resumption of specie payments." To
the first assertion I oppose the official tables accompanying Mr. AlcDufiie's report of 1830, from
which it appears that the average rate of exchange during the existence of the bank was from one-
fourth to one-half of one per cent., instead of from five to ten per cent., as it has been for the last
three years. And I add the further fact, stated by Mr. Gallatin in his pamphlet on Banking, that
ill 1832 the amount a>f exchanges negotiated by the Bank of the United States was two hundred
and forty -two millions of dollars, at an average rate of one-eleventh of one per cent.
To the latter assertion made by the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Sauxoebs) I oppose the
statement of Mr. Calhoun, contained in the following extract from a speech delivered by him in the
Senate in 1832 :
14
"I might say with trjth that the bank owes as much to me as to any other individual in the country ; and I might
even add, that had it not b^en for my efforts, it would not have been chartered."
" I must content myself with saying, that, having been on the political Stage without interruption from that day to-
this, (having been au attentive observer of the question of the currency throughout the whole period,) the hank has
been an indispensable agent in the restoration of specie payments; that without it the restoration could not have
been effected short of the utter prostration of all the moneyed institutions of the country, and an entire depreciation
of bank paper; and that it has not only restored specie payments, but has given a currency far more uniform be¬
tween the extremes of the country than was anticipated, or even dreamed of, at the time of its creation."
But, to illustrate my views of this subject still more clearly, I will submit a few statistical tables,
which will show the effect of a national hank in keeping a cheek upon the State banks, and the
wild excesses into which they must inevitably run whenever that cheek is removed.
In 1811 the whole number of banks was 85.
Capital $52,510,000
Circulation ------- 28,000,000
Specie -------- - 15,000,000
In 1816 the whole number of banks was 242.
Capital ---------- 91,000,000
Circulation - -- -- -- - 66,500,000
Specie --------- - 19,000,000
Thus it will be seen that, in the brief period of five years which intervened between the banks of
1811 and 1816, the number of banks was nearly trebled, the circulation was increased in the same
ratio, or thirty eight million; of dollars, whilst the specie was augmented but four millions of dollars.
Pursuing this view of the subject still further, it will be found that, in 1830, the whole number
of banks was 330.
Capital ---------- $145,000,000
Discounts 200,000,000
Circulation - -- -- -- -- 61,000,000
In 1838 the whole number (see Raguet on Banking, p. 251) was 829.
Capital ---------- 317,000,000
Discounts - -- -- -- -- 485,000,000
Circulation - -- -- -- -- 116,000,000
From these tables it will bo seen that the increase in the number of banks from 1816 to 1830, a
period of fourteen years, when we had a Bank of the United States, was only 8S, whilst the increase
of the number from 1830 to 1838, a period of eight years, when we had no Bank of the United
States, was 499 !
The increase in the capital of the banks in the first-named period was about fifty-four millions of
dollars, whilst in the last-named period it was about one hundred and seventy-two millions. And,
what is still more remarkable, it will be found that one hundred and thirty millions of that increase
was made in those States in which the Democratic anti-bank party had the most decided political
ascendency !
But I am admonished, Mr. Chairman, by the progress of the minute hand of that clock (pointing
to the clock of the House of Representatives) not to dwell upon those statistics, and I will dismiss
this branch of the subject with one or two practical remarks. The first is, rhat whenever we have
had no Bank of the United States, our monetary affairs have been in confusion, we have had extrav¬
agant issues of paper money, general suspensions of specie payments, and prodigal emissions of
Treasury notes ; whilst, during the forty years that we had a Bank of the United States, we had a
sound currency, no general suspension of specie payments, a uniform system of exchanges, and a
well-regulated and substantial system of credit.
The second is, that during the forty years that a Bank of the United States was employed as the
fiscal agent of the Government, the country never lost a dollar by it ; while on the other hand, dur¬
ing the twelve years that the Government has used other agencies in collecting, keeping, and dis¬
bursing the public moneys, millions have been lost !
I shall not pretend, Mr. Chairman, to go into an examination of the constitutional power to es¬
tablish a bank as an original proposition. I have neither the time nor the inclination to do so. The
arguments are familiar to the House and to the, country. I regard that question as settled by the
judgment and acquiescence ot both the great political parties of this country, in both branches of
Congress, under circumstances ot the most solemn and imposing character—bv the unanimous
judgment of the Supreme Court of the United States, with John Marshall at its head, and by the
sanction, either directly or indirectly, of every President and of every Secretary of the Treasury,
from the foundation of the Government to the present day. But there is one view of the subject
which, as I have not seen it adverted to elsewhere, I will submit for the consideration of the House.
The gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Saundeks) tells us that this is a Government of enume-
rated powers. I grant it. But the Constitution contains this among the other enumerated pow¬
ers : " Congress shall have power to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for car¬
rying into effect the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the
Government of the United States, or in any department or office thereof." Is this provision a mere
dead letter, or was it intended to have an efficient practical operation in conferring on Congress a
power to discriminate in regard to the means " necessary and proper" to carry into effect the powers
specifically enumerated ? I presume the latter proposition will not be controverted by any one ;
and the only difficulty arises in regard to the extent of this power. Gentlemen tell us that meas¬
ures, to come within the influence of this provision, must not only be "necessary," but indispen¬
sably necessary ; the necessity must be overruling and absolute ; the measure proposed must have
such an intimate and inseparable relation to the specified powers, that it cannot be carried into ef¬
fect in any other manner. If any other means can be found to give effect to the power, then all
other measures, though they may be more convenient, cease to be indispensably necessary, and are
therefore unconstitutional. Upon this view of the subject gentlemen argue that, as the Govern¬
ment can exist and perform its functions without the aid of a national bank, though such an insti¬
tution may be highly beneficial and convenient to the people and the Government, it is not consti¬
tutional because it is not indispensably necessaty ! Now, sir, I have several objections to this train
of reasoning. In the first place, it is in direct opposition to my principles of strict and literal con¬
struction, as applicable to the Constitution of the United States. It assumes that you are not to
take the Constitution as it stands, but that you shall be at liberty to interpolate the word "indis¬
pensably" before the words " necessary and proper," so as to qualify and restrict the meaning of
those terms. In the next place, it gives to the word " necessary" a meaning entirely different from
its common acceptation. And, finally, it gives to it a sense different from that in which it is used
in other parts of the Constitution. It is one of the cardinal rules of construction, that every instru¬
ment is its own best expositor ; and hence, in endeavoring to ascertain the meaning of any partic¬
ular provision, you must look to the context—you must take the whole instrument together ; and
where the same phrases occur in different parts of it, you may infer from the use made of particular
words in one part of it what meaning was intended to be attached to them in another, Now, let
us apply this familiar principle to the Constitution of the United States, and see if it will throw no
light on the subject. In the1 first place, by reference to the 10th section of article 1 of the Consti¬
tution, in regard to the power of the States to lay duties on imports or exports, it is limited to cases
in which it is " absolutely necessary" for executing the inspection laws. Thus it will be seen that
when the Convention wished to convey a restricted idea, they employed qualified and restricted
terms. But in the 3d section of article 2, in which the duties of the President are prescribed, he
is required "from time to time to give Congress information of the state of the Union, and recom¬
mend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient." What is
the meaning of the words " necessary and expedient" in this clause of the Constitution ? Will gen¬
tlemen give the same restricted interpretation to them here as in the section enumerating the pow¬
ers of Congress ? Will they interpolate the word "indispensably" as an antecedent to the words
" necessary and proper" here also ? If they follow the plain dictates of common sense, or the es¬
tablished rules of construction, they must do so here if they do so in the other case ; for the framers
of the Constitution must be presumed to have used the same words in the same sense in the same
instrument. But what would be the effect of giving this narrow and unreasonable construction to
this clause of the Constitution ? The President would not be at liberty to look to the interests and
the honor and the happiness of the country, and recommend such measures as would promote its
wealth and prosperity, but would be limited to such measures as were indispensably necessary to
national existence. Ho would be compelled to disregard all the lights of experience—to suppress
all the emotions of patriotism which might swell in his bosom—to reject all the improvements which
might tend to ameliorate the social and political condition of his country, and limit his recommend¬
ations to such measures as were indispensably necessary to the existence of a half-civilized nation !
Need I argue to prove the absurdity of such a proposition as this > And yet, if the rule of construc¬
tion be applicable in the one case, it is in the other ! The true principle I apprehend to be this—
in both cases a wide discretion is allowed in regard to the means to be used. 'The President is to
recommend such measures as are, in his opinion, suitable and convenient to promote the general
welfare of the nation, and Congress is to make such laws as are, in their opinion, most suitable
and convenient to carry into effect the powers which are specifically conferred on them for the same
great end. And if, in the judgment ot Congress, a Bank of the United States is such a means,
it clearly falls within the influence of that clause of the Constitution.
These, Mr. Chairman, are some of my views of this important question. I have dealt but little
in speculation, and have confined myself principally to a detail of historical facts. I have investi¬
gated the history of the bank with much care, and if I have fallen into any error, I am not aware of
it. But, as I intend that these facts shall go before the country, and as there will be a full oppor¬
tunity afforded to gentlemen in the course ot this debato to correct any inaccuracies in my state¬
ments, I invite the most rigid scrutiny upon every point ; and if I have inadvertently misrepresented
any thing, it will give me pleasure to correct it.
SPEECH /2.»
. ARCHER, OF VIRGINIA,
DIXIYXRKD
IH THE SENATE OF TIE UNITED STATES,
IN (SECRET SESSION, MAY, 1844,
TBE TREATY FOR THE ANNEXATION OF TEXAS.
WASHINGTON:
PRINTED EY GALES AND SEATOJY.
1844.
SPEECH.
Mr. ARCHER said: He could not be insensible of the disadvantage to
which his peculiar position, throwing him the last in the debate, must ex¬
pose him, in the protracted and exhausted condition of it. It was a
circumstance of alleviation, however, his being, from this cause, ena¬
bled, to present a synoptic rather than argumentative view of the consid¬
erations which he wished to press on the attention of the Senate. The
organ of the committee which had recommended the rejection of the treaty,
and concurring in their judgment, it was due alike to both that the grounds
of his and their opinions should be exhibited. He had, he must admit, how¬
ever, a further motive for taking part in the discussion, even at this uninviting
stage. Look at the momentous character of the question. When, how
often, in our, in any history, had a question of this unapproached magni¬
tude—of the acquisition of an empire of scarcely less extent than our Confed¬
eracy—been presented? And this great question was complicated with
others, however seemingly subordinate, refusing separation, and claiming
to assert control of it. Such a theme might well assert an exciting influence
on the least confiding aspirants in debate. This great theme, too, had awak¬
ened through the land excitement extreme in intensity as extent. He (Mr.
Archer) thought this excitement was to be attributed to the transposition
in tile public mind of the just order of topics anrj inquiry. The desirable¬
ness of the acquisition of Texas was first or alone thought of—not at all, or
inadequately, the considerations which entered into and made a question
of the fitness of the acquisition, of its consonance to the authorized action,
to the fair reputation of the Government and the country. These were
not considerations to be excluded from the estimate on which a sound and
just conclusion must be founded.
His own quarter of the country, Mr. Archer went on to say, partook, as
he was advised, as largely as any other of the prevalent excitement; the cur¬
rent was said to run strongly in favor of the ratification of the treaty. He
could not speak with certainty, as he had been absent; it might be so ; he
had given himself no great trouble to inquire. It was his desire to be always
found expressing the sentiments of his constituents. This was the second
of his objects in public life, (they were but two :) the first was, to do right
for his constituents, and discharge his and their duty to the Constitution
and the country. It was of small consequence to himself personally, hav¬
ing enjoyed a continuance of public life which ought to content his ambi¬
tion, whether he was correct in the opinion. But he believed that this
was the true way to the favor of the major part of his constituents and of
the people. If it were otherwise, his course was not the less determined,
by the light of conviction, to explore the path of duty.
Whilst on this topic, he must be permitted to say, that whilst on many
subjects public sentiment ought to be decisive, and in nearly all ought to
enter, for an important element, in the formation of our determinations here,
there might be presented occasions and cases in which we ought to ex¬
pect, certainly to endeavor, to give shape to public sentiment. And what
classes of occasions and cases were these ? Those in which, from more
4
favorable opportunities of information, or larger advantages of advisement,
our lights of knowledge must be superior to those of our constituents.
This, as he apprehended, was the case in the present instance. And, for
himself, he had little doubt that the public mind, aiming to reach just con¬
clusions, would, however swayed for the moment by excitement in an ad¬
verse direction, in no long time settle, on the view which the decision we
were to-night to render would announce.
The Senator from Missouri, (Mr. Benton,) who had led this debate
with an ability which did him honor, had claimed to have been the pioneer
in denunciation of the alienation which our Government had made of
Texas by the treaty of 1S19 with Spain. He (Mr. A.) might claim to
have been little behind the Senator in this path, and even to have got be¬
fore him, when it had reached the halls of Congress. The dilatory forms
of Spanish diplomacy, by allowing the period for ratification to expire, had
restored the treaty to our control in 1820, and resolutions had been sub¬
mitted in the House ot Representatives by a gentleman (Mr. Clay) then
and since much distinguished, with the avowed design of procuring the frus¬
tration of the treaty. In the debate on these resolutions, which had oc¬
curred a short time after he (Mr. A.) had first taken his seat in that body,
his voice had been raised for the first time in reprobation of the policy of the
surrender of Texas. On this point he retained his opinion unchanged ; and
as he thought the alienation then unadvised, so he deemed the reacquisition
now advisable. But mind ! it was the reacquisition, not the reannexation of
the country which he sustained ; for these two phrases, however seem¬
ingly identical, had come to be of very variant import. Reacquisition
meant, that we were to get back the country on such terms as we might
deem expedient, and find attainable. Reannexation imported that the
country was ours still, notwithstanding that we had made a formal surren¬
der of it for equivalents. The argument to sustain the title of reannexation
was, that, having received the country from France, with a condition of
incorporation of the inhabitants into our Union, the obligation of this con¬
dition was indefeasible—invalidated any transfer of the territory. But
there were no people in the territory to be incorporated, and the engage¬
ment in question could be applicable only to population, and that not a su¬
perinduced, but indigenous population. We had received, too, Florida,
and held Florida, in compensation of our transfer of Texas. If we were
to reach out one hand for the reclamation of Texas, must we not extend
the other at the same moment for the surrender of Florida? Why the
first engagement more binding than the last ? A compact obsolete, break
and dissolve another of the same character in full force and opera¬
tion ? Or were we to recognise a standard of political competence pecu¬
liar to ourselves, which equally put it out of our ability to permit the valid¬
ity of concessions we had made, or to restore the equivalents we had re¬
ceived for them ? This might be a standard recognised by gentlemen who
asserted our title of reannexation to Texas, but not by the people, who
would utterly repudiate such a doctrine !
[Here some explanation passed between Mr. Walker and Mr. Archer,
not material.]
There was a principle (said Mr. A.) founded, as every sound principle
of morals or law was, in essential convenience, which did not permit es¬
tablished rights and interests to be broken up on abstract conceptions.
This was no more than part of the great, inestimable law of prescription,
5
applicable to international as to municipal concerns ; stare decisis. Do
not unsettle foundations. Florida was in the Union, with all her para¬
phernalia of rights, civil and political. Texas was gone, by solemn con¬
cession, to Spain, confirmed by compact with Mexico, when we stipu¬
lated for the arrangement of boundary, by compact with Texas when we
executed that arrangement. If Texas were to be ours, she must be reac¬
quired by new arrangements and stipulations.
He (Mr. A.) had said that he had been the opponent of the alienation
of Texas, when that question had been first brought before Congress, in the
earliest moment of his public life here. He might now add, that he had
given evidence of his disposition to recover Texas at the latest moment of
his public life—the present session of Congress. The position assigned
him by the Senate had brought him into the earliest conference with the
signers of this treaty of annexation ; and he had employed to both sides—
the Texan commissioners and our own Department of State—the language of
the most earnest, he might say importunate remonstrance, against the signa¬
ture, before the obstacles on the side of Mexico should have been removed,
or the attempt made, and unduly repelled, to remove them. He had urged
this importunity, in the conviction, that the frustration of the treaty and
of annexation, for the present time, must be the result of proceeding to
the perfection of the treaty, without the obviation of this difficulty. He
had pledged himself for the soundness of this opinion, the realization of
this prediction. His suggestions had not found acceptance.
And here he must take occasion to correct a misapprehension into which
the Senator from Missouri (Mr. Benton) has fallen. He had expressed
the impression that the Executive department of the Government had been
anxious, in the first instance, for delay, as respected the action of the Senate
on the treaty—had supposed the concurrence of Mexico required to the
validity of the treaty. This was a mistake. The Executive had held the
contrary opinion as to the occasion for the assent of Mexico—had desired
the immediate action of the Senate, as long as they supposed that immediate
annexation would be the result of immediate action. It was only when
they had given up this opinion, had renounced or began to falter in the
confidence of a present annexation, from the obstruction of those who de¬
manded the concurrence of Mexico, or of reasonable endeavors to obtain
that concurrence, and the defeat of these endeavors—it was only as a con¬
sequence of this change of opinion that delay, to give occasion to communi¬
cations with Mexico, had been desired. It was then that the messenger had
been despatched to Mexico, of whose mission so much had been said. He
(Mr. A.) had yielded his entire concurrence to the despatch of this messen¬
ger, not merely for the discharge of the indispensable debt to decorum,
which demanded the communication to Mexico of the part our Government
had taken in the signature of the treaty, but for the purpose also of sound¬
ing the sentiments of the Mexican Government on the subject of annexa¬
tion, of keeping open the door of explanation, of conciliation, of annexa¬
tion. He (Mr. A.) had not made the promise which the Senator from Mis¬
souri had supposed, that action 011 the treaty should be kept back for forty
days. He was not in the practice of promising more than he knew he
could make good. His promise had been, that his endeavors should be em¬
ployed in the Senate to postpone its action for the period of the probable
return of the messenger to this place, estimated at about forty-five days.
He had acted in good faith in discharge of this promise—had essayed ti
obtain the delay proposed, but without success, the Senate having over¬
ruled his suggestion on the subject.
But these were matters preliminary only, Mr. A. went on to say, which
had kept him too long from the topics (grave as they were) appropriate to
the discussion. The value of Texas, the desirableness of its acquisition,
he had already had occasion to observe, did not present the principal, nor,
indeed, any topic at all appropriate to the discussion. The value of Texas
as a territorial possession was unquestionably very great; the desirableness j
of its acquisition, in many views—political, commercial, social—might be as |
great as had been represented. Yet this value and desirableness had
no more to do with the appropriate issues in this discussion, than the value
of Belgium or the desirableness of the acquisition of Cuba. There might
exist circumstances (they were of perpetual occurrence in public as in pri¬
vate affairs) which required the value of objects presented to our acceptance
to be disregarded, and acquisitions in our reach, to be renounced. That
this pregent case of Texas was one which fell under the operation of these
principles of public and social morality, he was persuaded, would be found
on an unbiased examination.
The debate had presented several questions. The leading one related
not to the expediency but validity of the transfer of Texas made by the
treaty—was a question not of advantages, but authority. Was the Gov-~
ernment of Texas empowered to make?—ours to receive ? Could the ter¬
ritory be the lawful subject of this form of transfer ? The affirmative of
these propositions had been stated, and sustained with technical precision.
Our recognition of Texas, and that of other Powers, invested Texas, it was
said, with the character of sovereignty complete. This character of sover¬
eignty involved the fullest authority of disposal of the territory, and our
Constitution permitted a full authority and discretion in receiving iff.
TheSe were the propositions maintained in affirmance of the validity
of the treaty. Now, what he (Mr. A.) undertook to maintain was, that
neither of these propositions was well founded ; and that, if each of them
had been true, the inference in favor of the treaty would not be warranted.
The recognition of the independence of Texas by our own and other
Powers had not the effect, in the view of public law, of deteimining the
right of supremacy and sovereignty over Texas, in issue between the two
Governments of Mexico and Texas. This recognition could not therefore
have the effect of investing the disposing power, which was claimed
on this ground only, in the Government of Texas over the territory. The
purpose and office of this sort of recognition was, indeed, the reverse of
this effect, which had been imputed to it. Instead of decision on the
question of title and sovereignty between the contesting parties, it was
no more than a form of refusal to make that decision—a mode of escape from
the necessity of making it. The advantages of intercourse and traffic with
the belligerent parties were not to be lost to other nations whilst the con¬
test was depending for the ascertainment of the right of sovereignty. Other
Governments could neither be supposed versed in the merits of the contest,
nor at liberty to make inquisition, so as to pronounce the decision. What
course was left? Acknowledgment of the right indicated by possession,,
enduring no longer than its ground—the fact of possession—and asserting
no other results of any kind than this fact involved.
These conclusions, expounding the real and sound doctrine of public law
on this subject, did not stand in need, however, of a resort to treatises, and
7
publicists, to make them evident. Obvious illustrations sufficed for the pur¬
pose. In the case of competitors for sovereignty, (as in the wars of the
Roses, which so long desolated England,) alternately successful, each in his
turn of triumph, for purposes of traffic and convenience, might receive the re¬
cognition of other Powers. Does this recognition require to be recalled
for either, as the other becomes ascendant ? No ! Then it decided no other
than the right incident to temporary occupation of the sovereign authority in
the country. Suppose Mexico successful in the resubjugation of Texas: shall
we have to revoke our recognition of Texas before we can be restored to
Telations of intercourse with Texas, on the footing of a dependency of Mex¬
ico ? Must we refuse the exercise of authority by the functionaries of
Mexico in the ports of Texas ? Or do we stand at once, and without the
resort to any officious formalities, restored to our former relations with Mex¬
ico in Texas, as in other provinces, States, or dependencies of her empire,
over which she asserts effective supremacy ? The answer to these ques¬
tions was conclusive as respected the effects of our recognition of Texas on
the issue of title between herself and Mexico. But, (said Mr. A.,) was the
invalidity of this pretension of a disposing authority in the Government of
Texas as the result of recognition, the sole or the true ground for denying
it this authority ? Was it in the halls of our legislation, and in this the sup¬
posed conservative branch of it, that the doctrine was asserted, of a com¬
petence in the functionaries of Government in a popular State to dissolve
the institutions they were appointed to administer and conserve, and make
a transfer of their constituents and country, to the rule and occupation of a
foreign Power ? The people had an undisputed competence to do this,
or to authorize it to be done. Theirs was the authority to unmake as to
make their political institutions, to decompose as they saw fit into an ele¬
mental condition, and recompose into any form of domestic dynasty or sub¬
jection to foreign authority. What he (Mr. A.) maintained was, that it
was not given to the ordinary Government, in its common vocation, to do
these things, with no special designation of authority for the purpose. Gen¬
eral Houston and the Senate of Texas were not Texas !
It had been said, indeed, by the Senator from Pennsylvania, (Mr. Bu- ^
chasan,) that Texas, by her people as well as her Government, had given
assent to annexation. When ? Seven or eight years ago ! At a time
when her people were—how many ? Seven or eight thousand. Now
they were said to be one hundred and fifty thousand. Their views at that
earlier date may have been homogeneous, having been emigrants exclusive¬
ly from the United States. Time had since been afforded for the affusion
of streams of population from other quarters, with the possibility of vary¬
ing the character of these views. He (Mr. A.) did not affect to say that
this was the case—that the population was not disposed or was indifferent
to annexation with this country. He was entirely persuaded of the con¬
trary. Among other evidences, he had had addressed to himself during
the past winter, a letter of the character of that which had been referred
to by the Senator from Missouri, purporting to have the signature of every
member of both branches of Congress, save four, (the omission of two of
these said to be accidental,) from which he derived the fullest assurance of
the hearty desire of the people for incorporation with us. It was not the
reality of this desire that he questioned in the least. What he insisted on
Avas, that a due and adequate formality had not been observed in the as¬
certainment of this fact. It would not do from an expression, however au-
s
thentic, by seven thousand people, to bind the opinions and adjudge the
rights and dispose of the political existence of one hundred and fifty thou¬
sand. A formal authenticated expression of the popular will, or a special
delegation of authority to the Government to act in this respect, preced¬
ing, or a condition of subsequent ratification, annexed to the act of trans¬
fer, was indispensable, on the principle of all popular government, to give
validity to a transaction of this character. Any of these modes of authen¬
tication, he (Mr. A.) did not doubt, could be obtained; but neither had
been. The treaty of annexation stood before us, claiming our assent and
ratification, destitute of either of these indispensable formalities, however
they might have been or might be supplied. What, in these circumstances,
were we authorized to do ? Not to disregard the essential informality,
surely, but to withhold, however reluctantly, our concurrence and sanction
to a deed of so much gravity till the informality were removed. This
was the only mode of procedure which would not involve flagrant viola¬
tion of the vital, essential principle of our own institutions. The treaty-
making power in the Texan Government and our own were in the same
form, rested on the same footing, were identical, not analogous. This
power had 110 limit to its scope, as regarded the phrase which conveyed
it in our Constitution. Suppose our people to wake up some morning,
and find, not their entire Confederacy—that was a case, though analogous,
not conceivable—but one of their integral provinces or States, transferred
to a neighboring State, or foreign potentate. What would be our doc¬
trine, if the transferred population, however the organ of the Federal
Government had consummated the act, had not been directly consulted on
the transfer? Would it do to infer consent, from irregular declarations,
or a former remote vote, or to accept the action of their Representatives
assembled in the discharge of their ordinary functions ? There was bin '
one answer to be given to these inquiries.
Then the capacity of the grantor to convey in this treaty of transfer of
Texas was not established, but disproven. What was the condition of our
authority to receive the transfer ? That formed the second of the pre-ar¬
ranged topics of inquiry. He had no thought (said Mr. A.) of contesting
the authority of our Government to make acquisition of foreign territory.
Whatever might have been the just construction of the Constitution in that
respect, he considered this as a question concluded. A rule of prescription
of inquiry into title, ran in such a case. There were several of our States
and Territories which had their places in the Union through this avenue.
It was not for him, or any man, at this time of day, to insist on displacing
their pretension, or fixing the stain and emblem of illegitimate connexion
with us, 011 tlieir brows, and our name. They were to be regarded as le¬
gitimate members of the Confederacy as their seniors.
He admitted, then, a power in our Government to acquire foreign"terri-
tory—whether original or induced, it did not matter to inquire. The power,
as it had been most beneficially exerted, admitted of resort again, if exi¬
gency should demand, as in the case of Louisiana, or advantage persuade,
as in that of the two Floridas. He went still further. He recognised the
/ authority to admit foreign States into the Confederacy. He knew the
grounds on which this proposition had been denied, denounced, and made
the subject of apprehension. This did not hinder his recognition of it.
The phrase in the Constitution was of the largest character : " Congress
shall have power to admit new States into the Union." Where shalj
1
9
sanction be found, for limitation on the operation of ianguage, of this gener¬
ality and comprehensiveness ? Not in the circumstances of the case. We
were in juxtaposition with provinces, of which our fathers of the Revolu¬
tion had certainly contemplated the introduction into their Confederacy, as
not improbable, inasmuch as they had extended invitation to it. A depu¬
tation had been sent to Canada, during the war of the Revolution, to press
this invitation. Suppose concert in a common policy of States, on our con¬
tinent, as the counterpoise and safeguard against a foreign continental pol¬
icy—of the principles of our forms of political institution, imperilled in con¬
flict or by the policy of adverse forms—should demand the incorporation
of contiguous American States, for more imposing aspect, more effective
action, more indisputable security, were we to be regarded as precluded,
could the framers of the Constitution, those far-seeing friends of country
and freedom, have designed to preclude us, from this great resource of
power, and instrument of safety ? Did it involve no undue and unworthy
imputation on their renowned political sagacity, and unparalleled circum¬
spection, to make such asupposal ?
As one of the political powers of the world, having points of contact, and
exposed to the ordinary chances of collision with other Powers, we must
be liable to incur war, empowered to conduct it, and at liberty to reap and
realize its fruits. It might be our destiny, to make acquisitions of territory
by the fate of war. Were we to be prohibited irreversibly from retaining
these, compelled to surrender them, to become again points of annoyance,
and sources of peril to us? And if this doctrine must be considered un¬
sustainable, were we to be regarded as prohibited, from the incorporation
of States in this predicament, and constrained to continue them in a condi¬
tion of political inequality and vassalage, however they might deserve, and
we regard them as deserving, and they desire, exaltation, into union with
us ? But none of these conclusions, preposterous and untenable as they
obviously were, could be avoided, save by a recognition of the right,
should occasion require, to admit foreign States into the Union.
He (Mr. A.) had no hesitation upon this point on the mere language of
the Constitution. He repudiated this practice, perpetual in its employment
here, of going behind the language of the Constitution, when that was
plain, to contemporaneous history and labored expositions, derived from
. the opinions of individuals. Where ambiguity was not admitted and pat¬
ent, the language ought to stand as the sole exponent. But how raise an
ambiguity on language so explicit ? " Congress shall have power to admit
new States into the Union."
It happened, however, that the evidence from contemporaneous history
corresponded to the plain import of the language of the Constitution.
The journals of the convention, preserved by Mr. Madison, had been re¬
ferred to. They showed, that restriction on the power of admission to
States formed from domestic territory, had a place in the early draught of the
Constitution, had been the subject of remark, and now it was found omit¬
ted. The conclusion was irresistible, that the restriction was not contem¬
plated, as it was not only not expressed, but the expression had been made
the subject of exclusion.
Our Government was then endued with capacity to acquire foreign
territory or admit a foreign State. On what ground, then, it would be
asked, could he (Mr. A.) deny, as he did, the capacity to take Texas under
the present treaty. The difficulty, apparent only, was susceptible of an
10
easy explication. The treaty-making power in our Government—the
President and Senate—had authority to acquire territory. But Texas was
not a mere Territory. We had acknowledged her as a State—a political,
as distinguished from a mere numerical community, which a Territory
was. Nor had her Government, by which she was represented in the
formation of this treaty, shown the only authority which could be admitted,
by the principles of her Government and ours, as valid, to prove the fact
that she stood resolved from the condition of a political community, in
which we had acknowledged her to be existing; into a Territorial form, in
which we had never known her. The treaty-making power had, then, no-
competence to admit Texas, being no Territory.
But Texas might be admitted as a State. True ! But Congress, the two
Houses of Legislature, were invested with the exercise of this competence;
and we, the Senate, were not the Legislature. So, take the matter either
way, and there was no competence to admit Texas in virtue of this treaty.
The second fundamental proposition, then, of the advocates of the treaty
stood confuted, as the first had been. The third of those propositions was,
that the territory of Texas, in the present political condition of that country,
could be the lawful subject of transfer. This proposition, also, he
(Mr. A.) denied. Even, under municipal laws, a subject in litigation was
no proper subject of transfer. You were not allowed (and wisely) to make
purchase of a lawsuit. It was a principle of the public national law,
founded in considerations of a far higher expediency, that, whilst you
.night make acquisition from one of the belligerent parties in war, of any-
other, you could not, of the actual subject of contest. The reasons for this
restriction were plain. The just claims of the party on the eve of sue- ,
cess, in the war, might, if the rule were otherwise, be perpetually eluded
and frustrated, and always would be, as the contesting must always pre¬
fer the transfer, to a third party, of the subject in dispute, to the loss of it
to the adversary.
All the propositions, then, on which the validity of the acquisition of
Texas by this treaty had been rested, appeared, on examination, unsus¬
tainable. There were other and great considerations connected insepa¬
rably with the discussion—considerations of faith, reputation, policy. These
he should proceed to examine. It had been urged, that, having a treaty of
amity with Mexico in full force, breach of faith would be involved, by the
appropriation of what she claimed to be, what had undoubtedly been, her
dependency, and what she had been, and was, inarms to recover. Well!
i was not this true ? Our treaty of amity was not only in full subsistence
with Mexico; we had pledged ourselves three several times to the strictest
observance of neutrality in her contest with Texas : once under General
Jackson's administration ; once under Mr. Van Buren's; lately by our min¬
ister, General Thompson, under this administration. On the occasion of
giving one of these pledges, (under Mr. Van Buren's administration,) the
annexation of Texas then tendered had been declined, expressly on the
ground that it would involve the violation of our neutrality with Mexico.
If we were to contribute a soldier or a gun in aid of Texas in the con¬
test with Mexico, that, it will not be contested, would be a breach of our
neutrality; and yet persons are found, and on the floor of the Senate, to
maintain that divestiture of the entire subject of contest, its appropriation
to ourselves, constitutes no breach of neutrality, no act of ill faith, and no
li
offer of offence to Mexico. Such veasoners perplex us more than stronger
ones, from the difficulty of stating the answer to their propositions.
Aid had been invoked in the argument, from the supposed analogy of
the case of France extending support to us in our revolutionary struggle.
Alas ! How widely were the cases distinguishable, and how little to our
honor ! France broke, indeed, her amity with England, established by
treaty, as ours with Mexico. She professed to be extending the hand of
philanthropic support to a dependency of England, struggling against in¬
justice and oppression. Has any man contested that we should have been
at liberty, for the same purpose, to depart from our observance of neutrality
to Mexico ? The obligation imposed by a position of neutrality between
belligerent Powers is of high character. But obligations there are, of
force, to override this. That of affording rescue to the oppressed, of stay¬
ing the hand and the course of public injustice and outrage, if the profes¬
sion of purpose were sincere—not pretended—is of the number of those
higher obligations which may override the observance of neutrality with¬
out blame—with applause. France put forth this profession to the world,
and she did render us aid, noble and effective, in the establishment of our
just cause. Is this the position in which we have stood, in which we, our
Government, stands to Texas? Did France, waiting the moment of our
utmost exhaustion and inanition, when we must accept any resource of
refuge from our cruel, obdurate adversary, come then, at that moment, as
if perched to wait for it, not to rescue the victim of oppression and the
martyr of liberty, but to pounce from her aerie, and make him her prey ?
That to rescue was the course and the conduct of France. This to seize
, has been, is, ours. What outrage to reason and philanthropy, and justice,,
in the institution of this comparison !
Suppose France influenced, as has been alleged, by an entirely selfish
consideration, what was it ? To break the strength of a rival Power which
had been a thousand years the bitterest, the most formidable of her ene¬
mies, and who had then recently defeated, degraded, and reduced her to-
dangerous debility. She manifested no momentary purpose to make spoil
of our alliance as the consideration of her support. If she had, our noble
fathers would have renounced her communion in indignant scorn, and
taken the chance of a resubjugation to England, instead of calling French¬
men benefactors, and Lafayette brother !
But there was a further view of this case, of a supposed analogy to the
course of France in the war of the Revolution. Allow the policy of
France to have been selfish. France was a member of a great European
continental system, to preserve an adjusted balance of power among the
parts. England was supposed, by great recent successes, to have induced
weakness and menace, if not to the integrity, to the adjustments of this
system. France had a high and a just object irt this view, in breaking, by
aiding us, her obligation of neutrality to England. Not spoil, security, was
her object. Well, we had an American continental system. Gentlemen,
the friends of the present treaty, had been profuse of praise to Mr. Monroe
as the proclaimer and founder of this system, by his memorable declara¬
tion, in 1823, that the intrusion of no European Power was hereafter to-
be permitted for settlement on this continent. This was our system to
hold together, to be strong against Europe in any selfish direction here of
her policy or ambition. We were the first in ability to sustain and give ef¬
fect to this American system ; Mexico the second Power, of whom it was
12
one of our duties, in reference to this system, to uphold the consequence
and strength. If any new domestic Power arose, it appertained to this
same department of duty to nourish it into vigor. It was an obvious pre¬
scription of this duty to conciliate contentions among the members of the
system, to save the impairment of the common power.
Now, what had been our course in pursuance of this plan of American
policy ? How strikingly did it contrast with the course alluded to ot
France? France had a just motive to impair the power of England. We
had a strong obligation to prevent the impairment of that of Mexico.
France had operated against her most formidable rival and adversary. It
was proposed to us, by the ratification of this treaty, to put ourselves into
an adverse attitude to our natural ally and proper friend. As regarded
the office of nourishing the new-born American Power of Texas into
vigor, of conciliating and composing Mexico and Texas as parts of our sys¬
tem, our plan had been to yield no aid or useful interposition to the one ot
these Powers, and it was now recommended to us to make appropriation
of a claim of property of the other. France sought her object by rear¬
ing the weak and oppressed to independence. We were asked to convert
the weak and oppressed to a possession, which extinguished their independ¬
ence. We must be decent, not put into juxtaposition the course urged ort
our adoption with regard to Texas, with the course of France towards us
in the memorable era of the Revolution.
The gentleman from Missouri, (Mr. Benton,) in his resolutions, made
part of the debate, had presented another and insuperable view in support
of inaction as regarded the ratification of the treaty. His resolutions al¬
leged that the annexation of Texas would be the adoption of an existing
war between Mexico and Texas, and that this body (the Senate) had no'
authority to adopt war by the exercise of its treaty-making power; this
function having been committed, in express terms, to Congress, the general
representative body, by the Constitution. Supposing the fact unquestion¬
able, of the adoption of war with Mexico by the adoption of the treaty,
this would have of course to be abandoned. It has been around this propo¬
sition, therefore, that the storm of debate has raged. The point was main¬
tained, vehemently, that the war had been terminated since the period of
the battle af San Jacinto, in 1S36. Not that it could be pretended that hos¬
tilities had undergone cessation in all forms, in the succeeding lapse of time ;
that, with no regard to the facts, could be asserted. It was only insisted
that the hostility had been confined to irregular inroads and predatory ex¬
peditions; and these, it was affirmed, did not constitute war. Supposing
these to constitute war, their occurrence and recurrence nearly in every
year of the period in question was indisputable and admitted, down to a
late period of the past year.
This was a conception of the character and constitution of war truly cu¬
rious, (said Mr. A.,) and worthy of observation. War, to be defined, must
have a measure and scale of magnitude applied to it. The constitution of
its reality was to depend on the extent of its operations. It was not the
mere employment of force, but the amount of this employment, which was
to ascertain its existence. But this rule of definition would be found diffi¬
cult of application. By what principle of proportion or admeasurement
was the scale of definition to be adjusted ? What number of men required
to beemployed? Amount of destruction to be accomplished ? In the ap¬
plication of the standard, how many military operations, themes of praise,
13
would be reduced from the character or operations of war? The opera¬
tions of our own wars, the past and last—would they bear the test ? Bat¬
tles on the smallest scale—operations languid and transient ! The affair
of Trenton, the most signal in our revolutionary annals in its conception
and effects, which turned the tide of the wavering conflict to our preserva¬
tion, and*plants the brightest of the gems in the reputation of Washington—
what was this affair but an incursion, transitory, slight, too inconsiderable
to take the title of an operation of war in this new mode of designation of
war? The battles of Chippewa and Niagara, which we have been prone
to destine to an historical reputation, reverberating the loudness of the noble
cataract near which their scenes were laid—what were these but inceptive
incursions into Canada, inconsiderable in their progress or results, and fall¬
ing, therefore, below the recent standard of warlike operations ?
A Senator had quoted Vattel to show that inconsiderable incursions,such
as had alone occurred of late between Mexico and Texas, did not, in pub¬
lic law, attract the name of war. When he heard this declaration, he (Mr.
A.) supposed that he had read Vattel carelessly. But what did he find on
recurrence to this author—that the quality of predatory expeditions or in¬
considerable incursions took from these forms of military operation the char¬
acteristic of war? No! but that operations prosecuted without observance of
the formalities required to constitute lawful war, took these names in that
condition, to distinguish them reproachfully from war. And what were
these formalities, the observance or non-observance of which assigned the
lawful or the reproachful character and name? Authorization from the le¬
gitimate sources, and announcement in the established modes. In the occur¬
rence of these prerequisites, the operation took the quality of legitimate
war, with no reference to the extent or the mode of it. Well ! Had not
tr.e conflict of Mexico and Texas its warrant from the legitimate sources,
the Governments of the two countries ? Had it not been recognised as war
In the legitimate sense by these as other Governments? If restored to ac¬
tivity, would it not be held and treated in the character of lawful war?
The expeditions, then, which had kept unextinguished the flame of the dis¬
sension in blood as the infliction of calamity, jvere parts of this same war!
The attempt at the arrangement of an armistice between the Govern¬
ments of Mexico and Texas during the past year had been brought into
the debate, each side claiming this fact as available to its view on the ques¬
tion of a present subsistence of war between the two Powers. To him,
(Mr. A.,) the contest seemed superfluous; for did not the fact, which was
not disputed, of the entertainment of negotiation for this object, whether
it had resulted in an armistice or not, establish the fact in contest—the sub¬
sistence of the war ? If no war subsisted, what the occasion for an armis¬
tice ? For negotiation on the subject of it ? An armistice was an arrange¬
ment for the suspension of the operations of war. If adopted, it proved
the existence of war by the fact of the suspension. If it failed, by the evi¬
dence which the attempt and proposal of it afforded, that there was a war
to suspend.
The true view 011 this subject of the subsistence of war in Texas had been
taken by the Senator from Massachusetts, (Mr. Choate.) The question
did not involve a mere inquiry of fact, as had been strangely supposed. It
was an inquiry having for its object the ascertainment of a public state or
relation between Mexico and Texas. Public war imported a relation far
more than a state of facts. Though importing the exercise of force, it had
14
a legal subsistence independent of force, which carried all its incidents, di¬
versified and important as these were.
Illustrate by example. Suppose the two great Powers ot the world,
England and France, issuing formal declarations of war, respectively. The
maritime superiority of England renders her inapproachable. France, im¬
pregnable by land, withholds herself from unequal encounter on th» ocean.
What is the condition, in these circumstances, of these Powers, (war on
both sides, announced with all formality,) till a blow has been struck,, or
in the event that none be struck ? Do they, or do they not, stand in the
political relation of war? Suppose the relation ol amity re-established, no
blow having been struck in the interval of the suspension of this last rela¬
tion: have they or have they not in that interval stood in the relation of
war? If years of cessation of hostilities (no blow struck) ensued from ex¬
haustion, would the relation and subsistence of war be terminated by this
cessation ?
How was the subsistence of this relation and condition (war) between
foreign States to be ascertained ? How known to a Parliamentary body like
ourselves? What did we ? What ought we to do ? What source of infor-
tion have recourse to, if we wished to make inquiry into the fact ? Should
we explore newspaper accounts; go to New Orleans and Galveston ga¬
zettes, to ascertain the fact of the subsistence of war between Mexico and
Texas ? No ! We should send a message of inquiry to the Executive, in¬
vested with the duty, furnished with the means by our agents abroad, of
obtaining information on subjects of this sort. Well ! we had the fullest in¬
formation from the Executive on this point of the war in Texas. The Presi¬
dent had told us of its present existence in his message at the commencement
of the present session of Congress, when he expressed the opinion that meas¬
ures ought to be taken to arrest it. He had told us of its present existence in ,
his message accompanying the treaty. The Secretary of State had sent us
a correspondence disclosing the application of the Government of Texas,
late in the past year, for our intervention, to arrest the alleged barbarous
mode of the prosecution of the war. Mexico had declared, by her minister
here, in the fall, the subsistence of the war; and to our minister, General
Thompson, more recently, that* our annexation of Texas would be regard¬
ed as adoption of the war. He (Mr. A.) never read papers in debate. He
referred to the documents on our tables, for the evidence of what he stated
on this point.
Then upon this fact, admitted to be decisive as to the influence it ought
to exert on our decision on the treaty, of the present subsistence of war
between Mexico and Texas, we had what evidence ? We were only at
liberty, let it be remembered, to know this fact,so as to act on it, from offi¬
cial sources; and we had information from what official sources? First
from our own Executive, several times communicated. Secondly, from,
the declarations of the Government of Texas, one of the parties to the con¬
test, made officially to our Government. Thirdly, from the official declara¬
tions of the Government of Mexico, the other party, several times repeated.
A disputant desiring more evidence, would not be contented though one
from the dead rose to testify.
But suppose active war, not constructive war, required to make out the
case that the adoption of war would be the result of the adoption of the
treaty. To what cause was to be attributed this defect of active war?
How had it happened that war, except in the form of transitory incursion,
15
had been for such a length of time unknown in Texas ? The answer was
but too obvious. Though our Government had made profession, and had
not been averse to the observance of neutrality in good faith, had such
been the temper or the conduct of our people ? No ! whenever the threat
of new invasion had been supposed really to impend over Texas, and this
had been more than once, what had been the spectacle displayed to us ?
A rush from the population of the region of the Mississippi, as impetuous
as its current, irrepressible by the Government, too strong for even the
effort at repression ! Mexico saw this as we did ; knew what it portended ;
that the first rush was only the advanced guard, the first wave the precursor
of the irresistible and overwhelming torrent which would set on the shore of
Texas, and sweep a Mexican invasion in destruction and consternation
from the soil ! How idle would have been the folly or mad the passion
of Mexico, to throw herself on such a peril. Santa Anna was Canute
enough to know, that the wave would not cease to approach and to swell
over him, though he bade it like Canute to be obedient and retire.
If the existence of war, then, in Texas remained a question, the solution
was with ourselves. Were we, by failure, to repress our own outrage or.
the neutrality we owed to Mexico, to produce a state of Mexican inaction
in Texas, and then to make this inaction our plea for abandoned war there,
and blameless appropriation of the country by ourselves? The progress
of this debate had not enhanced certainly his estimate of the rigor of our
national morality. But he had no fear of its relaxation into the counte¬
nance of this degree and quality of opprobrium !
War subsisting, then, between Mexico and Texas, next came the question,
Have we, the Senate, in the exercise of our treaty-making power, privi¬
lege and liberty to adopt it ? The second of the resolutions of the Sen¬
ator from Missouri (Mr. Benton) made disclaimer of this authority in
the Senate. He (Mr. A.) was not entirely prepared to unite in this dis¬
claimer. We certainly had competence to make a treaty, which might in¬
volve or lead to war ; as a treaty of alliance, whether offensive or defen¬
sive, either of which might involve war. Suppose war raging between
two foreign Powers; we see our duty or interest in mixing in the contest;
but arrangements are required; terms and conditions of co operation are
expedient, indispensible - these can only be made by treaty stipulations—
are we precluded from making them ? The public interest demanding, the
popular sense concurring, have we no option, discretion, capacity, to act ?
The two Houses of Congress can make the war; but can they make the
conditional arrangements which may be required ? And do we stand di¬
vested of the discretion which appertains to the very idea of independent,
and must be regarded as essential to effective Government ?
How, then, was the peril from such a jurisdiction in the President and
Senate to be obviated ? The difficulty reconciled, from the seemingly con¬
flicting provisions of the Constitution—the one giving to the President and
Senate the power unlimited to make treaties ; the other assigning to the
two branches of the Legislature conjointly, to Congress, the power to make
war? The Constitution had, in other instances than this, assigned to the
treaty-making power and Congress a concurrent jurisdiction over the same
subjects of action. The guards in the coincidences of a concurrent juris¬
diction were discretion, comity, forbearance, the spirit not of compromise
only, but even of concession. Men were not obliged to do every thing
that they had authority to do. The possession of jurisdiction did not ne-
16
cessarily oblige to action. In the case of war, where it might merely be
involved, was not directly to be adopted, the obligation to forbearance on
the part of the treaty-making power, (this function being, from its nature,
appropriate to the control of the direct popular representative,) was more
than commonly imperative. '
Was there a power, then, to acquire Texas, with the condition of the
adoption of the war of Texas ? The constitutional prohibition from obvious
intendment was nearly as imposing as it would have been fiom positive
interdiction. We would not be at liberty from constitutional (saying
nothing of moral and other) considerations to adopt this war of Texas, if
all the world conceded our abstract competence and privilege to adopt it.
And now came the topics which, if not the most important, were cer¬
tainly not the least interesting in the discussion. Suppose the power to
adopt the Texas war uncontested, or that there was no war to adopt, not
even a peril of embroilment from the dissatisfaction of Mexico in our re¬
ception of Texas, from the disparity of the resources of Mexico to ours. Our
neutrality would still be violated, cause of just offence be given to Mexico,
our reputation in the eyes of the world be compromised and dispar¬
aged by the imputation of an unwarranted aggrandizement! And what
were the grounds upon which it it was asked that these consequences
should be incurred—alio mischiefs alleged, the threat of which was to jus¬
tify our proceeding to annex Texas in all hazards and events ?
A letter, it seems, had been received in October last, by our Government,
from a person not official, whose name did not carry authority enough to
be communicated, giving information that a person of so little consequence
as never to have been before heard of, (by the name of Andrews,) repre¬
sented to represent a society of abolitionists, which had not and could not
have existence in Texas, had been deputed to open communication in Eng¬
land, not with the Government, but another society, having no recognised
existence, to induce this last society to employ means of operation 011 the
Government of England, not by public negotiation, but private arrange¬
ments with the Government of Texas, to induce the consent of this last
Government to the abolition of the institution of slavery in Texas.
Was ever such a catalogue and catenation of circumstances, (one lost
breath in the recital,) of character so utterly inconsequential and insignifi¬
cant, brought to work out a result, with or without consequence ? And
then came directly 011 the back of this disclosure of conspiracy for the
abolition of slavery in Texas, the volunteered, explicit, peremptory, many
times repeated, disclaimer of the Secretary of State of the English Gov¬
ernment, that his Government had been party, or would in any event be
party, to this conspiracy, or to the exertion of " any undue influence" 011
Texas, or in any other quarter, for the procurement of the abolition of
slavery, though that result every where was strongly desired by the Eng¬
lish Government.
Were we to profess apprehension of the practices of England 011 the
subject of slavery in Texas, after this solemnity and iteration of disclaimer ?
If so, how was intercourse with other Powers of the world to be pre¬
served ? Were we, like the Turk formerly, (not now,) to be isolated from
intercourse, which we could not have, or with no benefit, if we acted on a
system that all confidence in disclaimers was to be refused, in conflict with
our prepossessions on disagreeing views of policy ? He (Mr. A.) had been
excited to 110 small indulgence of surprise at the views which his colleague
17
(Mr. Rives) had taken occasion to present to us, full of the harshest ar¬
raignment of the despatch of Lord Aberdeen of December last, denying
the policy imputed to his Government, in relation to this subject of the
abolition of slavery in Texas. Why ? What would his colleague have
Lord Aberdeen to have done on the subject of this imputation ? There
were three modes of conduct presented to his election. The imputa¬
tion had been brought distinctly to his view. He might sit silent, affirm,
or disclaim it. He had taken the last course—disclaimed it. Would
we have had better cause for satisfaction in his taking either of the
others ? And if in making the disclaimer on the subject of slavery, he
had distinguished it from a denial in gross, by a statement of the real
acknowledged views and policy of his Government, did a discrimination
of this sort deduct from the value or the candor of the avowal ? He (Mr.
A.) was far from imputing participation in this purpose to his colleague.
But every one had been obliged to see, in the whole progress of the nego¬
tiation of this Texas treaty and its vindication, the fixed purpose thai the
English Government was not to be allowed to shake off the imputation of
dangerous practice or purposes in regard to slavery in Texas which had
been fastened on its forehead. The vindication would be left, it was too
plain, in circumstances of desperation, if this artifice of excitement were
stricken from its hand.
And what was this Texas, this population of Texas, which we were so
committed to indulge the fear was to be wrought by the Government of
England to the surrender of an established institution, or it might be to
political subjection to England ? A population sprung from the bosom of
our slaveholding States, born in the nurture of the institution of slavery,
, carrying it with them in their migration, placing value on Texas for adap¬
tation to slave labor! And this was the people to be regarded as ready
to renounce the use of this same labor on this same soil of Texas, so pecu¬
liarly adapted to render it productive beyond all precedent. And this peo¬
ple, not descendants, a present offset from ourselves, must be protected
from a proneness to run under a present subjugation to England. It was
a fact which might appease the apprehension of the abolition of slavery
in Texas, if this apprehension would permit itself to be appeased, that
the Constitution of Texas contained a provision prohibiting the emancipa¬
tion of slaves. The State was precluded, therefore, from the surrender of
slavery, as an institution, save in conjunction with its political constitution.
Our Secretary of State, however, had changed the entire aspect of the
question, as far as the subject of slavery was involved. Admitting the dis¬
claimer of Lord Aberdeen to be entirely satisfactory, as regarded direct
action of his Government for the abolition of slavery in Texas, the Secre¬
tary plants himself on the ground of the general deolarations of the English
Government adverse to the institution of slavery every where, and makes
this the express justification of the signature of the treaty. Well! to what
did this declaration of doctrine amount ? England had avowed a desire to
see slavery put down everywhere; had declared a purpose to use all
modes of counsel, expostulation, it might be influence, to accomplish this
result, not the suppression, be it remarked, but the voluntary abandonment
(these were very different) of the institution of slavery. From this expo¬
sition of policy on the part of England, what was the authorized deduction,
according to our Secretary of State ? Not the right to encounter England, at
her own weapons, in resistance of her policy—to countervail by counsel, ex-
2
18
pectation, influence, the scope of her views, and give strength to ours—but
to plant our own views peremptorily, in the foreign region within our reach.
The ground adduced for our action, in the signature of the treaty, was ex¬
plicit and exclusive, the duty of precaution against the propagand spirit
announced by England against slavery. None other ground or occasion
of action than this was assigned or affected. It was on this allegation we
were to stand for our defence.
Well, was not action on this ground emulation of the spirit and policy
against which we made exclamation ? Were we not propagandizing for sla¬
very in Texas, against the adverse propagandism of England ? Opposing to
the abstract declarations of a propagandist spirit, the practical carrying of the
same spirit into effect—the fact against the abstraction ? This same spirit was
rife in our present time; displays itself on all sides; was multiform in politi¬
cal, in social development. It had been found in essay against the elective
form of chief executive magistracy in the partition of Poland; in furious force
in the anarchical excesses of French jacobinism, against domestic order and
general crusade against monarchical institutions. It stood now imbodied in
the well-arranged combination of the European Powers, to repress the devel¬
opment and triumph of republican principles and liberalized political institu¬
tions. Its most general social form just now, and direction, was to the de¬
nunciation and overthrow of negro slavery, without any discrimination of
time or mode, or estimate of consequences. In this form, it raged with an
intense virulence among ourselves, already breaking the concord and threat¬
ening fast the stability of the Union. Whether tested by its malignity of
temper or mischievousness of influence, there was no spirit more to be con¬
demned and resisted. Indeed, it imposed the necessity of resistance as a
law, as its wont was to keep no terms of faith or humanity. And this re¬
sistance was equally to be waged when the mischief took the form of ad¬
vancement or of obstruction of our own modes of policy !
All views, then, which he (Mr. A.) could take of the questions involved,
led him to refuse his assent to the acceptance of this treaty. One view
there was, on which he forbore to insist—not because it had been exposed
adequately by the Senator from Missouri, (Mr. Benton,) but because he
revolted from the details. He referred to the mode in which the achieve¬
ment of the treaty had been effected, the assent of Texas obtained to its
adoption. The treaty, so far from having been sought on the part of Texas,
had been repelled, then presented again, with circumstances of false state¬
ments, cajolery, menace, and the surrender of a military and naval force,
without color of constitutional authority, to the peremptory requisition of
the Texan authorities.
One further topic remained, to which its relation to his own quarter of
the country required him to advert. This, at the outbreak, had been re¬
garded as a question exclusively of Southern interest and policy—this an¬
nexation of Texas. It was to give augmented territory and wealth to the
population of the.slaveholding States, and extension to their proportionate
political influence. Mr. A. said that he was not one of those Southern
men who ever introduced this slave question into the Halls of Congress, or
into discourse here, knowing it to constitute matter of a pure domestic con¬
cernment. Nothing outraged him more than the temper and language of
Southern public men, authorizing the most unjust and unfounded infer¬
ences, that our constituents at home were full of disturbance, anxiety, and
alarm, on this subject, of the disposition manifested in Congress, and amid
19
the Northern and Eastern population, to disregard the guarantees by which
property in slaves was held—mind, lie did not say under the Constitution.
He held the argument of safety to this form of property from that guaran¬
tee in disdain. The resort to it implied that our rights of property, recog¬
nised by ourselves before the Constitution, stood in need of the protection
of this guarantee of the Constitution ! Or recognised by ourselves now,
after the formation of the Constitution, still stood in need of this guarantee !
What guarantee? The consent of other people, with 110 right of control
or dictation to us, to our designation of our forms o( property or modes of
tenure of it. Seek the aid of this guarantee, (said Mr. Archer,) invoke it
eternally as my safeguard ! No ? For one Southern man, he cast it to the
winds ! Whatever his State had before the Constitution, she retained
under that instrument, unless it had been conceded by it. Her guarantee
for her slave property, under the Constitution, was not the recognition in
the Constitution, (though it was there.) It was the recognition by defect
of evidence of surrender by the Constitution. This guarantee was higher
by antecedence and by digniry than the guarantee of the Constitution.
His constituents felt 110 portion of this blazoned and bellowed apprehen¬
sion and cpncern on account of the clamors or the projects of the horde
of abolitionists distilling an innocuous venom. His State left all this form
of defence to another quarter. No man in Virginia, whatever might be
said here, laid his head on his pillow perturbed by the machinations of the
abolitionists, or only perturbed by a sense of the folly, arrogance, and
malice, which, in impairing the concord, put to trial the foundations of the
Union.
The South, he (Mr. A.) hoped, was devoted to the Union, not merely 011
v account of the common, signal, multiplied, and inappreciable benefits it
conferred, but from the operation of infiuences stronger, more holy, than
the sense of benefit—the associations which sprung from the cost at which
it had been acquired, the recollection of the men by whom it had been
achieved. It had superadded, in the larger portion of the South, the
guard of reverence to the belief of interest. Yet let tiie North and East, with
or without cause, and more especially from a temper of insolent intrusion
into concerns not submitted to the common jurisdiction, manifest the in¬
clination to dissolve the Union, and the South was ready to stand by itself.
For one Southern member, if he should be here when proceedings tending
to this issue should be precipitated, he should be found, and recommending
to his coadjutors to be found, "calm as a summer's morning," affording
indication by no word or manner of any feeling of irritation or other feel¬
ing than contempt for unparalleled and suicidal folly. Were it possible,
indeed, for this folly to pass into a graver form, to assert itself in action
transgressing the limit of the free and slave population, (an extreme not to
be conceived, he (Mr. A.) did not conceive it,) then it was only necessary
to say, that small would be the number to return to narrate the dismal tale
of atrocious infatuation and miserable catastrophe.
He (Mr. A.) could bring a perfect composure, and he hoped frankness,
to the discussion of the interest of the South and slaveholding region of
th Union, in this subject of the annexation of Texas. The persuasion
was common, of great pecuniary advantage being involved to the South,
and a necessary and great extension of the sphere of slavery and slave
influence. These apprehensions involved great mistake. The benefit-in
a pecuniary form would, for a considerable time at least, enure almost
20
exclusively to different portions of the Union, and the sphere of slavery
and slave influence would be eventually not extended, but circumscribed
and reduced. The first effect of the annexation would be highly injurious,
little short of ruinous, in a pecuniary view, to the slaveholding regions, in
every aspect in which the subject could be regarded.
The lands in Texas were so incomparably superior to the Southern lands,
that the difference would with difficulty be estimated. A depression, and
a great one, in the price of these lands must be immediately experienced.
But then it was said that a proportionable increase would be felt in the
prices of labor. But would this occur ? The moment Texas should be
opened to our people, they would rush from all quarters to the new-found
El Dorado, taking their black labor with them. Now, the value of slaves
depended on the value of what they raised ; and tobacco and rice, and cot¬
ton and sugar, being all low, how could the price of slave labor rise ? The
market was already glutted with its products. How, then, could it un¬
dergo enhancement of price or value ? This remark had application to the
entire South, from Maryland to the Mississippi valley. What, then, was
to be the true value of annexation to the South ? it was true of Texas
as it was true of all new countries, that, for a time, slave labor, was very
valuable, and so it must continue as long as the prices of all sorts of pro¬
duce were high ; but these prices, after a time, underwent inevitable subsi¬
dence, and by degrees, as production multiplied, it would fall so low as to
be inadequate to the just maintenance of slave labor, which was expensive
from various causes, and especially the disproportion between the laborer
and the non-effective persons connected with him. In Pennsylvania arid in
New Jersey, and other Northern States,they once had slaves,and they made
a great merit of having given them emancipation. But he (Mr. A.) would put
it to any candid man north of Maryland to say whether, now, the subjects of
culture prevalent in those States would bear the expense of slave labor?
Slaves were prolific ; they usually had large families ; their proprietor,
while he maintained these, had little further compensation than from the
labor only of the father. For the labor of one man he had often to sup¬
port ten or a dozen persons. Would the products of the North bear this ?
They would not; and the inference was, that wherever there was not some
peculiar and very valuable product, such as tobacco or cotton, rice or sugar,
slave labor grew to be too expensive, and must cease. There did not exist a
country on the globe, not Flanders or China, which could endure the ex¬
pense on mere grain and vegetable productions. This condition of things
was fast coming both on Maryland and Virginia. Missouri and Kentucky
were so much better adapted to the production of tobacco, their peculiar
staple, that these States must speedily sustain the change from a planting
to a farming character of their agriculture. Mr. A. would not allow the
North that vast amount of merit it claimed for the emancipation of its
slaves. The Northern States could never have advanced as they had
done, or at all, had their labor been retained in this condition. The time
wouldcome in all merely farmingcountries having slave labor,that itwas not
the slave who would run from the master, but the latter who would run
from the slave, where the labor of the slave would no longer yield recom¬
pense to the master, nor the means of the adequate maintenance to him¬
self, which was equally his due, in a view of true economy, moral obliga¬
tion, and humanity.
Here, then, were to be the effects of annexation on the South. At first, de-
21
pression of the value of lands, no enhancement in the price of its peculiar
labor, but the certain (though gradual and slow) discharge of this labor
from a region of deficient recompense and subsistence, to a scene of ade¬
quate remuneration—the result of the value and demand for the produc¬
tions of slave labor there.
Did this result of keeping open a drain for slave labor in Texas involve
no advantage to the slaveholding States? Certainly, the highest advan¬
tage. But it was not present pecuniary advantage, nor did it tend to the
extension of a slaveholding influence in the Government. The number
of slaveholding States increased, in the event of the annexation of Texas,
by one or two, would, in the. ultimate result, be diminished ; slavery would
be removed from the Southern Atlantic States, probably from three of the
Western States now admitting it. The sphere of slavery, the number of
slaveholding States, the amount of slaveholding influence in the National
Councils, would be reduced. The gain would be great to the slaveholding
States, and to humanity, in the preservation of a better condition of the
slave. The gain would be no less to the free States, not only in the addi¬
tion of slave States to their number, but in the infusion of their own popu¬
lation, to supply the place of the proprietors, who would remove with the
slaves, and leave to their acquisition the land as it became unoccupied.
But would not slave labor, it would be asked, become redundant, too, in
Texas, and the evil of this redundancy be only transferred, not diminished ?
The answer was, first, this condition of things, full of calamity to all par¬
ties—the slave and the master, and the community—would be postponed.
Secondly, it would be alleviated by concentration. Thirdly, the avenue of
relief and escape from it would be open, in the contiguity to Texas of
* countries which would not refuse admission to the redundant slave labor,
not as slave, but as free labor.
There were two terminations to social slavery. The first was the dis¬
charge and intermixture of the slaves with the free portion of the popula¬
tion in an equality of civil condition. This mode of termination could be
never realized at the South. If it could, the result would be full of mischief
to the North, as of destruction to the South. A large proportion of two
and a half millions of persons, unfitted for the enjoyment of civil privi¬
leges, seeking subsistence in all modes, preferably to the exercise of indus¬
try, would be precipitated on the North, to exhaust its charity, fill its poor-
houses with lazars, its prisons with crime, and turn its philanthropy to cru¬
elty, from the necessity of self-protection. A member of the House of Rep¬
resentatives from New York had exhibited at this very session evidence of
strong and sober sagacity, in making on the-floor of that body a declaration
to the effect that, if the South should ever decide to emancipate its slaves,
the North would be driven to take arms to prevent it, from an obligation of
self-preservation. Never opinion was better founded ; and if such a crisis
were to come, which it could only do by occlusion of discharge to the re¬
mote South, of the redundant slave population, bitter would be the retribu¬
tion of the North, for the unfraternal, inconsiderate, and most injudicious
temper, which so many of its people are not ashamed to indulge towards
the South on this subject of her slave institution.
The second of the two modes of termination of social slavery was by
convulsion such as had been witnessed in St. Domingo, terminating its ex¬
istence in overthrow, not emancipation. Such is the termination which
must ensue when the slaves grow out of all proportion in number to
22
the masters, as their tendency is to do. This was the form of the
evil with which the Southern slaveholding States was threatened, if
the appropriate drain for their redundant slaves should come to be ob¬
structed. The question for the North to reflect on was, whether a con¬
dition of society of this character in the South should be more the object
of favor, in a moral, political, or commercial view of the consequences
which its introduction would involve, than the continuance of a state of
things like the present. Common sense must be lost in the vapor of fa¬
naticism, in men who should fail to see an interest of the whole Union,
hardly inferior in magnitude or directness to that of the immediate South,
in this momentous subject.
One other topic, said Mr. A., he had to advert to, and he would bring his
trespass on the attention of the Senate to a conclusion. Not a Senator, he
believed, had addressed us in advocacy of the treaty, but had insisted that
Texas must be taken now by this treaty, or be lost.. On the instant of our
refusal of the treaty, she was to throw herself into subjection, political or
commercial, to Great Britain. The cabalistical phrase " Now or never" was
pointed at our bosoms, to awaken the nerve of our terror. The Senator
from Missouri had placed this subject in its just point of view. Of whom
was the population of Texas composed ? Not descendants even—our own
people. Were they going to recolonize to England ? Forget the associa¬
tions in which they had been nurtured ? Renounce the pride in which
they lived, that they were sprung from the men of our Revolution ?
The yoke which we threw off at the Revolution, the heaviest pressure of
it commercial—was it men that stood in the same relation with ourselves
to the Revolution, who were going to put it on their necks? The Senator
from Missouri had answered for the friends he had in Texas. He (Mr. A.) '
had one friend there, for whom he would answer, that he would abjure
this imputation on his adopted State, and, in any extremity of her circum¬
stances, renounce this refuge for her, which she was accused of designing
to seek.
But even though the question presented by the treaty, was the accept¬
ance of Texas " now or never," were we at liberty even then, in the ad¬
mitted reality of this choice of alternatives, to forego the obligations which
invoked our rejection of the treaty ? The reality of broken faith, the im¬
putation of unscrupulous aggrandizement—these were the considerations
we were to pay. Our friends of Texas would cease to set value on the
Union, were this the cost, never desiring association with us but in honor.
If, then, this was decided to be the election presented to us, annexation
in the circumstances of this treaty—by this treaty, now, or annexation
never—if this were truly the real question, now or never ! was there
room for hesitation ? No! The loud exclamation ! let it go out from this
Hall—resound through this land—reverberate from Texas, Never ! oh,
never ?
J3.
SPEECH
OF
MR. JARNAGIN, OF TENNESSEE,
ON THE
TREATY FOR THE ANNEXATION OF TEXAS.
Delivered in the Senate of the United States, in Executive gession, June 6, 1844.
The Treaty annexing Texas to the United States, and also the resolutions offer¬
ed by the Senator from Missouri, (Mr. Benton,) on that subject, being under
consideration—
Mr. Jarnagin said : I will ask the indulgence of the Senate while I submit
the reasons which have determined me to vote against the Treaty now under
discussion. Upon this subject, the first question to us, beyond all doubt,in mag¬
nitude as in sacredness, is the constitutionality of the act proposed to be done
under the authority of the treaty-making power. For, after all, the rules of mere
national law are often violated .with impunity for the sake of policy, personal in¬
terest, and national aggrandizement. We did not establish that code : it is, in
many points, unsettled ; in others, we have refused to conform to it: but we are
inextricably bound, by direct faith, to the principles we have deliberately set up
for our guides at home and abroad. By common avowal, no temporary good,
however desirable in itself, can compensate a direct violation of the Constitution;
for the latter extends over the whole future, and breaks down every security to
us as a people.
The Constitution has given, and could give, no such authority as that now
assumed by the treaty-making power. It is a strictly extra and ultra-constitu¬
tional one > for a Constitution is an agreement between the parties to it. If it is
that of a single society, then the parties are the body of its citizens. If it is a
compact between several societies, forming by it a federative league, it is these
separately who make the parties to it. In either case, to introduce or exclude a
member cannot be within the scope of the compact; because it would vary the
parties, and so terminate the agreement. The terms of the instrument itself
could in no manner bestow a power contrary to this condition, inherent in the
contract itself, and incapable of being excluded from it. Legally to alter these,
the special assent of each party must precede the act. If done arbitrarily, with¬
out that assent, the act, though void in itself, may be rendered subsequently va¬
lid by the direct consent or the acquiescence of the original parties, who would
thus, with the new member, form a new league, upon the tenns of the old; but,
this done, it would be precisely as before. The fact just accomplished would
only reinstate the same indefeasible conditions between new parties. It would
bestow, no matter how often repeated, no power among the parties to act
otherwise, as to a new change of those parties, than by the special assent of
each to that change, to be given by the people themselves, according to the forn*
they may prescribe. No act of this sort could, therefore, confer a power, or con¬
stitute a precedent. This is the true answer to the alleged precedent of our ao*
3
according to the argument, Mexico is carrying on an open war with some of our
territories! She has invaded us repeatedly ; nay, complained seriously of our
letting our citizens go into Texas to defend our soil; while we, with a complai¬
sance that the world never saw equalled before, have pleaded that we knew it
was so, but that the Government really tried to hinder it; that we knew it was
wrong, but that our people were very unmanageable, and that, though we tried
hard, we really could not stop them ! But the most singular business of all is,
that, for a good while, we have really kept a Charge d'Affaires in our own terri¬
tory, just as if it was a foreign Government! If we ever did have any right to
Texas, it must be confessed to be of a tenacity of life to which that of cats and
turtles, and joint-snakes is nothing: a polypus that you only multiply by cutting
it all to bits, is perishable in comparison. This right is as hard to be rid of as
that ghost of which Macbeth so reasonably complains, which, "with twenty mor¬
tal murders on its crown," would'nt stay dead, but returned to push people from
their stools. But let us, for a moment, calmly examine this supposed right,
which, it is said, we once had to Texas, by cession from France.
It may be premised, that what has never been reduced to possession, nor ad¬
judged to you by law, is to be spoken of as a claim, not a right.' A right is a
perfected claim. There has, in this case, been just one hundred and fifty-four
years of counter-possession. Neither we, nor France, (in whose place we stand,)
ever has had a moment's possession since 1686. In 1819, we abandoned by
treaty even our claim, for an equivalent, which we now hold in Florida. In
1832, we reconfirmed to Mexico, by treaty, all that we had thus yielded. In 1837,
we solemnly declared that, so far as we were concerned, Texas was indepen¬
dent. In 1841, we marked out, by treaty, the lines between us, defining where
our possession ended and Iter's began. At present, even, under this claim, our
troops are ordered, avowedly, not to pass out of our soil, across the Sabine. And
to Mexico herself, while so unscrupulously plundering her of what she says are
her rights, among many pretences, we have not even the face to set up this one,
but say that we are acquiring, or mean to acquire, a right of Texas herself, as an
independent nation.
If, then, the word re-annexation is to be used for justifying what is to be
done, it is fatal to all the steps taken for the purpose of doing it. If we yet
have such a right to Texas as former treaties could not destroy, what have new-
treaties to do with it, or how can treaties restore what treaties could not take
away ? If it is ours, no more is to be said about it. If ours, how can we treat
with its possessors as an independent Power ? If ours, what is President Hous¬
ton but a mock-magistrate, and his Congress but men of straw ? If ours, why
offer Mexico repeated equivalents for it ? Why now offer more than we ever
offered before? To her we are tendering what is estimated at five or six mil¬
lions, and we contract to settle at least ten, perhaps twenty, with Texas herself;
all this being for what is already ours, by the law of the land and of nations !
If this be not so, there is no force in the word re-annexation, and it is used
deceptively.
But how came we by this indisputable right? Let us see. It came by ces¬
sion from France. She passed to us, by it, in 1S03, absolutely, all that she had
in posssession—that is, her positive rights, already made good up to the Sabine,
or nearly ; and, in addition, she passed to us a claim against like rights still
longer made good by Spain, of which she was equally in uninterrupted posses¬
sion. The first of these powers had, between 1712 and 1717, under claim of
discovery in 1683, occupied and settled Louisiana, of which it never after¬
wards, by possesion, extended the confines beyond the Mermento, nearly the Sa¬
bine. Nothing can be more indisputable than this. The second Power occupied
Texas in 1690, erected it into a regular province in 1693; and finally main!-
2
quisition of Louisiana and Florida, which are now properly a part of the United
States, upon the principles just declared.
But even upon less comprehensive grounds, these two facts confer no authority.
Mr. Jefferson, the author, (it may be said,) because the originator of both, avow¬
ed the one which he himself accomplished, to be unequivocally beyond the pow¬
ers of this Government by treaty, and urged that, to make it valid, the nation
should ratify it by a constitutional act, thereby getting the consent of the people,
and not alone that of the President and Senate. He obviously proposed, how¬
ever, only a special confirmation, not the embodiment of any general provision,
or future rule or precedent, for the treaty-making power. Those acts, then, were
done in contemplation of a constitutional ratification, held by the author himself
necessary to legalize them ; and that ratification has been neglected. If, then,
resorted to as precedents, it is directly in the face of his authority, as they never
were rendered constitutional, as he thought they would have to be rendered, but
became valid by acquiescence. Besides, he wished to make of them special ea¬
ses, legitimatized by a subsequent consent, to cure a past wrong, not to give a future
or further authority. The act thus avowed,by its very authors, unconstitutional,
and held ever since by the world to be so, is surely the very last that can be erect¬
ed into a constitutional precedent, and cannot be urged, with propriety, by those
who now attempt to avail themselves of it; for we have in our history many cases
of acts done as constitutional, to which, as precedents, all authority is denied by
them, and yet they here attempt to make a decisive precedent of (hat which no
man ever took to be constitutional at all!
The force of these reasons, even as stated in a far less conclusive form, is con¬
fessed by the many evasive methods taken to avoid them—this juggling of call¬
ing it " re-annexation," or that of pleading a political necessity, purely fictitious,
or some pretended engagement contracted, or right obtained by our having recog¬
nised the independence of Texas, or the slight-of-hand trick of bringing her in
as a territory, not a State, by one branch of the Government alone. These
grounds convey not only no slight avowal of the absence of any solid form of
doing the thing but by a resort to the people or their representatives, but are
subversive of all constitutional restraint, call in for their instruments all sorts of
violations of domestic and foreign obligations, remit for the purpose unbounded
powers to the Executive, and are in many particulars directly in conflict with
each other, or with the motives or excuses alleged in behalf of other points in
this scheme. We will examine them in their order.
The term " re-annexation " is meant to convey the idea that we have, some
how or other, a subsisting right to the country of Texas, so that, not being a for¬
eign one, it can be legally incorporated in our Government. It is easy to see
that, to the full extent to which this supplies a cure for any constitutional difficul¬
ty, it is fatal to other capital pretences set up or acts done. It utterly overthrows
our own allegation that Texas is independent and capable of being a party to a
treaty : it is in direct conflict with all the terms and objects of that instrument:
it renders ridiculous our avowals to Mexico, and especially our final measure of
buying her out: and as to our complaints of England and her intermeddling, it
points conclusively to what should have been our course—to let the British Go¬
vernment know that one of its public agents was making mischief, under pre¬
tence of a Royal commission, in our territory, and that we received diplomatic
personages here, and not in Texas. It is worse still as to Mexico. With her we
acknowledge ourselves, in every way, to be strictly at peace : we keep envoys at
her capital: we allege no subsisting wrongs, for she amicably and honorably
meets and settles all complaints : in fine, whatever may be said against her cruel¬
lies and barbarism, we cannot withhold the admission, that her national conduct
towards us is most friendly, exemplary, full of faith. And yet, all this while,
4
teuned uninterrupted possession, al all times, up to the Sabine. What more need
be said? If permanent occupation confers at last a territorial right, and that of
France to Louisiana, as she held it to the Mermento, was good, that of Spain,
to Texas, up to the same actual limit, was better, because older. In a word, it
was possession alone that made any real title for either. All the rest was much
like the style but lately abandoned by the English monarchs, which included,
as a part of their dominions, Fiance, where they had not had a foot of land for
centuries; or, like their keeping the title of "defenders of the faith," bestowed
by the Pope, long after they had turned Protest ants.
It is to be remembered that it was not only France that claimed Texas to the
Rio Grande, but Spain that claimed Louisiana as a part of Florida. The one
went back to discovery from 1677 to 1685, the other to discovery from 1512 to
1542. Now, all must grant that mere discovery must yield, as a right, to regu¬
lar, continued, uninterrupted possession. Discovery gives only the first imperfect
claim. If not speedily followed by regular occupation, that claim may be super¬
seded by another nation, which takes and keeps regular possession, the only
thing which can perfect a territorial right.
These are grounds which it would be perfectly idle to dispute. But if, from
these, we choose to go back to the only ones which can be set up as of prior va¬
lidity, then it is upon the mere fact of discovery, accompanied wi'h certain for¬
malities of taking possession, but not a real national settlement, that our claim
through France must be set up ; and if this is to be the test, and not possession,
we must not only fail to make good our title to Texas, but must lose that to Lou¬
isiana; for the Spanish discovery of both is full one hundred and thirty-five
years older than the French.
It is perfectly incontestible that Ponce de Leon discovered and took possession
©f Florida in 15L2; that Hernando de Soto penetrated from it to the Mississippi,
about the mouth of the Arkansas, with near five hundred men, in 1538 ; that
Alonzo de Soto made his way from that point to the mouth of the Mississippi in
1541; that his force coasted back to Mexico, discovering the intermediate region
in 1542.
On the French part, what can be opposed to this? That in 1677 La Salle
came down the Mississippi to the Arkansas; that in a second expedition, in 1683,
he descended the Mississippi to its mouth ; and that in a third expedition, (sail¬
ing now from France, as the others came from Canada,) he landed in the bay
of Espiritu Santo or San Bernardo, and there built and held a small fort, from
February, 1686, to January, 1687; but abandoned it then, and was driven off;,
since which time, the French right, if ever such at all, became but a claim found¬
ed on these facts, and maintained or urged only in the idle form of diplomatic skir¬
mishes of words, against the clear, definite, undisturbed possession by Spain,
.from La Salle's time up to the actual border of Louisiana, as at last settled une¬
quivocally in practice, in fact, in the jurisdiction exercised by the nations respec¬
tively, up to the Mermento. Then, whatever the old self-love of either might
say, in the gasconade of claim or counter-claim, the two nations, the two tongues,
met; and this last fact alone, were every thing else silent, would be enough to
overthrow the entire allegations of the French. For if, as I have shown, this
was a question of priority, of regular occupation, of planting and colonizing,
what proof is so strong, or what monument so lasting as that which the geogra¬
phy of both countries affords, in the names of all the rivers and towns ? On one-
side of the Sabine, they are nearly all French; on the other, all are Spanish
except a few, founded within the last twenty years. In a word, you have only
to glance at a gazeteer or a map of either country, and to consider in what
soBgue are the names all over its surface, in order perfectly, and beyond all argu-
5
merit to learn, what was a Spanish territory, and what a French, where Louis
krna ended and where Texas began.
I enter not, therefore, and consider it totally useless to enter into the long chi
canery of diplomatists on either part. To what tales of travellers, to what geo
graphers, to what maps, to what former pretensions on either side they may havt
referred, is certainly not of the slightest consequence. What are these thing
worth against original settlement and long established possession and jurisdiction
Could the Spanish claim that Louisiana was included in their great region o
Florida, (by their old assumption, stretching back to Texas,) shake the certainty
the legal authenticity of the French rights on the Mississippi, when they had onct
been suffered to establish themselves there without being dispossessed ? It mus
be granted, beyond question, that the first imperfect right there was in favor o
the Spanish ; but that this was afterwards entirely lost by their failure to perfec
it by settlement. In like manner, of course, of (he Spanish claim to Texas
This had been perfected, and was, besides, upon historical testimony, originally
much the older as to discovery.
What the quibbles of negotiators may be, about matters the most airy, we learr
abundantly from cases of our own, either yet pending or but lately adjusted.—
From the beginning of our national existence down to 1842, we had a boundarj
question of this sort with Great Britain, of almost indefinite extension. Yet hen
there was a definition by treaty; while there never had been any of these riva
claims of Spain and France, which, however, gradually settled themselves b)
opposite occupation. We have now pending another question with Great Bri
tain, almost equally old ; for we found our claim and light to Oregon partly or
discovery in 1786 or '7. In all these cases, the adverse Plenipotentiaries nevet
fail to assert, as perfectly unanswerable, every pretension which their nation evei
has or can set up. On each other, they may, or may not, make an impression
From 1805 to 1819, Messrs. Madison, Monroe, and Adams, made none on theij
their Spanish adversaries. Nothing was won of Great Britain, as to the North¬
west boundary, by a long series of able Ministers. From the year 1S15, all out
Secretaries of State and Envoys have done little to advance an adjustment of out
claim on the Pacific. Yet both nations are alike pertinacious in the persuasion
of their rights; for though, as I have said, they are little like to satisfy each other
the negotiators must be very bad ones, indeed, if they do not perfectly convince
their respective nations. I lrave known attorneys not to silence their adversaries
or persuade a judge, but I have never yet met the lawyer who did not convince
his client of the perfect justness of his claims.
What, then, need be said of it, if a popular confidence in our original claim tc
Texas yet survives its long and its deliberate abandonment, in 1819, by statesmen
thoroughly versed in the question, and entitled to the public reliance? As En¬
voys, or Secretaries, Monroe and Adams maintained our title; but, after negotia¬
tion, Monroe, Adams, Calhoun, and Crawford, as responsible agents of the nation,
gave it up. Are their pleadings, as advocates, to be opposed to their own final
judgment as public men? I maintain that, as to mere authority, the decision of
our negotiators themselves, (men of high ability, unquestionable patriotism, and
much better acquainted with the question than any of us,) is entitled to the high¬
est weight; and that to oppose to it a floating popular opinion of the day, though
ill-informed, guided by an ex parte argument only, and now sunk into a mere
tradition of what was at first but vague, would be utterly unworthy of the good
sense of our people, and still more unworthy of those setting up, as statesmen
and civilians, wisely to guide the people's judgment. \
The public, wise as it is when it chooses to be so,highly competent as all
confess it, to decide, when it has once canvassed things without passion, is
somewhat g;ves to be impulsive in its j-jdgments, and not a little prone to look
6
on the purpose, or fancy of the day as having always subsisted. Florida, now
long since obtained, has ceased, of course, to serve an important object. Yet .
that was once the darling aim of our great national organ of acquisitiveness,
upon which the idea once sat pnthroned, as the chief scope of all policy.
Even before the sudden and fortunate acquisition of Louisiana, we had began
to covet the land of flowers quite as warmly and with nearly as many visionary
notions, as we now long for the land of fruits. When we had once grown
masters of Louisiana, we proceeded, in 1810, to help ourselves to a very pretty
slice of Florida, which we had expressly, in 1805, recognized to be Spain's, by
an offer to purchase it, unaccompanied with the smallest assertion of any title
on our part. In 1818, by a still bolder stroke of that sort of diplomacy, which
clutches what it wants, when it can take it, we may be said to have struck at
all the rest of the Peninsula. It was, in a word, from 1803 to 1819, the lead¬
ing object of our territorial cupidity. To bar out, by its possession, all foreign
access within our shores: to close the door against foreign emissaries alledged
to stir up to war the formidable Indian tribes that lay in easy communication
with it; to round out our realm, and abolish its interruption at so dangerous a
point; to exclude smuggling, that transmitted and customary pretence set up
for every acquisition or encroachment, and now renewed even by the very
party who can least be accused of any violent zeal for the preservation of our
revenue laws—these, and the grasping a strong maritime position, the fortress
to us of the entire West India trade, and the sea-pass of all our great and rich
young empire, about to spring up on the Mississippi, were, in that day, both to
our statesmen and to the popular mind, the imperative motives for making it
ours, at almost any cost. To Texas, on the other hand, no eye of desire had
yet been turned. None of the transcendent advantages which it now offers,
none of the frightful dangers which now glare upon us from every part of its
soil, had then visioned themselves to the prophetic glance of the Secretary of
State, even during a four years continuous negotiation, (our second on the sub¬
ject,) and even though, during three fourths of that contest, he had been a
member of the cabinet which conducted it. Now, whatever may be said of any
other inducements of an airy sort, such as the imagination of a poetic and fanciful
politician can always easily call up, nay, and turn, with the assistance of anony¬
mous letters, (of which the present occasion has furnished an abundant crop,)
idle speculations into certainties the most positive and alarming—it is easy to
see, that all the physical and all the permanent political benefits that would
accrue to us from reducing Texas to possession, were the same as now, and
just as visible to the discerning eyes of great and skillful public men. The
question of right they surely much more thoroughly understood, than we un¬
derstand it now ; for I need scarcely say, that it has long ago passed out. of the
public mind. Mr. Monroe, the successful negotiator of the purchase of Loui¬
siana, subsequently our special minister at Madrid in this very matter—the
Secretary of State, who, in 1815, re-opened the conferences with Don Onis, con¬
ducted them above a year, and when he rose to the Presidency, must be sup¬
posed to have guided with particular care a great question like this, with which
he was every way so identified—must surely have understood our rights, and
was little likely to betray them. Had he been false, however, two other South- ,
em politicians of the first magnitude were there to watch him, and one of these,
at least, was surely a man not to be hoodwinked as to what was passing imme¬
diately beneath his nose, when his vast perspicacity stretches across the ocean
itself, and pierces the secrets of cabinets 3,000 miles away.
By a singular fatality, amongst the leading politicians in Mr. Monroe's cabi¬
net, it was a Northern member, (as seems now admitted) who came last into the
surrender of our claim on Texas. By a second fatality, not less singular, and
*
7
adding to its singularity a shocking injustice, it is upon this very opponent of 1
the surrender that, with a strange transfer of parts and a strange anachronism
of feelings not yet awakened in him towards the South by its treatment of him,
the blame of that measure has been thrown, with the addition of the most igno¬
minious, and most manifestly unfounded charges besides; and it has been '
attempted so to be thrown, for the benefit of this project, and of a leader, who
himself, if Southern interests had any foul play in this matter, must be held to
have been much less their guardian—much more their betrayer, than Mr.
Adams.
It will have been seen, that I consider it perfectly clear that there was no be¬
trayal in the case, and that in the past, there was any thing but guilt in what
was done. It is plain that, besides doing all he could to secure the great and
real object of the cabinet, (the acquisition of Florida,) the Secretary of State
fought to the last, as became the most pertinacious man of his day, to obtain
what the other members of the Administration had consented to yield all claim
upon, namely, Texas. Let me here say more explicitly, that the survey of all
these negotiations—-that of Paris for Louisiana in 1803—that of Madrid for
Florida and Texas in 1805—and that of Washington for the same objects in
1815, and 1819, has left on my mind only the thorough persuasion, that they who
conducted the business on our part, knew, could not help knowing, how utterly
untenable was our claim beyond Louisiana, as we had received and now held
it from the French; and that they employed it thus perseveringly, with but
the expectation of accomplishing the real aim, the acquisition of Florida, at a
cheaper rate, by thus harrassing about another territory, a power long in a pre¬
carious state at home, already widely threatened as to her possessions on this
continent, and to whom we ourselves had just given a humiliating lesson of the
little safety with which she could hold lands bordering upon our own. I know
that it maybe said, and especially by the advocates now of proceedings the
most utterly faithless, that I am here attributing to our negotiators a very dis¬
graceful, that is, a very immoral conduct. I have only to say, that such things
fie entirely within the permitted practices of diplomacy ; which is everywhere,
except as to deliberate fraud upon our adversary, or breach of faith when
pledged, but little more than a game of skilful pretences. Every thing here
warrants the belief that these were the resort in this instance. They have met
a fate which often attends all insincerity, individual or national. The efforts
made to impress upon Spain our earnestness and the solidity of our claim, had,
in the manner I have already pointed out, the hap to convince our own people,
and thus to leave, even down to the present day, a strong persuasion that Texas,
of which France had never been in possession, against which she had always
allowed her claim to slumber, and which she had, when applied to in 1805, di¬
rectly refused to say was included in her cession to us, had been yielded up by
the treaty of 1819.
Let me appeal to one final and decisive fact, brought to view, on the Spanish
part, in the contest. Don Onis establishes that, in the year 1803, our Govern¬
ment, then pressing Spain for the purchase of Florida, made to that country,
through our Minister at Madrid, the offer of a regular guaranty of all her pos¬
sessions west of the Mississippi, if she would agree to sell us what lay on this
side. This important instrument may be found in vol. 4, page 512, of Ameri¬
can State papers, by Lowrie and Franldin. Mr. Charles Pinckney, in his note
bf the 7th February, 1803, to Don Pedro Cevallos, says:
" To obtain this, they have authorized me to say, .that, should His Majesty be now in¬
clined to sell to the United States his possessions east of the Mississippi, or between that
and the river Mobile, agreeably to the propositions enclosed, the United States will make
8
to His Majesty, and I do now make, in their name, the important offer of guarantying to
hint and his successors, his dominions beyond the Mississippi."
Propositions enclosed.
" 1st. The United States will purchase the possessions of His Catholic Majesty on the
east side of the river Mississippi, for which they will pay dollars.
"2d. They will purchase these possessions, for which they will pay dollars: and,
moreover, guaranty to His Majesty, and his successors, his possessions beyond the Mississippi.
"3d. They will purchase the country between the rivers Mississippi and Mobile, belong¬
ing to His Catholic Majesty, and also places of deposite near the mouths of the pther navi¬
gable rivers passing from their territory through either of the Floridas, for which they will
pay dollars, or enter into other obligations which may be thought equivalent to the ac¬
quisition.
"4th. If neither of these propositions can be acceeded to, they will then purchase certain
tracts of country on the banks of the Mississippi, and the other rivCrs passing from their ter¬
ritory into that of His Catholic Majesty, for which they will pay dollars, or enter into
other obligations, which may be thought equivalent to the acquisition."
I need hardly point to the weighliness, in the present question, of this " impor¬
tant offer." It was made, be it remarked, after the French had acquired Louis¬
iana, but before yet our design to purchase of France had been started. Our
Government had been aware of this cession since March, 1801, but never knew
the precise terms, nor extent of the transfer, until a few months before the pre¬
sentation of this important offer. James Madison, in his letter of the 26th July,
1802, to Charles Pinckney, Minister to Spain, says :
" The last information from Paris renders it certain that the cession of Louisiana to France
has actually been concluded, and that the cession comprehends the two Floridas. In this
state of the business, it seems unnecessary to decide on the price which Spain might be led
to expect for a cession of the Floridas, including New Orleans, to the United States, and the
more so, as it would be of use for us previously to know the value she places on the guaranty
proposed in my letter to you of 25th of September last. For the present, the cession wished
by the United States must be an object of negotiation with the French Government. It will,
notwithstanding, continue to be proper for you to cultivate the good dispositions of Spain, in
relation to it, both as they may not be entirely disregarded by France, and as, in the turn of
events, Spain may possibly be extricated from her engagements with France, and again have
the disposal of the territories in question."
Now, here is a solemn and a voluntary pledge to Spain, by the Jefferson ad¬
ministration, and through James Madison, in behalf of alt the Spanish "domi¬
nions " and " possessions " beyond the Mississippi. It is made after the estab¬
lishment of those French rights to which we presently succeeded, and clearly,
therefore, as an engagement to unite with Spain in withstanding any attempt of
France in contravention of the subsisting possession of Texas, or other regions
beyond the Mississippi, by Spain. It is, in a word, a direct, and, at that time,
an impartial recognition of the rights of Spain to those territories, and a proffered
covenant, on our part,.not only that u-e will not disturb her there, but that we
will suffer no other nation to do it. I need hardly add, that, whether or not it
was accepted by the power to which it was made, is of no consequence, except
to the active duties which by it we might have assumed. Passively, it pronounc¬
ed the Spanish title unquestionable. It settled, or should have settled, forever,
as to us, the question of right, unless, indeed, there should now be found, under
the new system of national ethics, as adapted to the annexation project, learned
doctors who are ready to argue that the offer thus soberly made implied no per¬
suasion of what we undertook to affirm ; that our Government, the Jefferson ad¬
ministration, in no manner believed what it was willing to say, but only engaged
to believe it, if Spain would do an entirely independent thing to oblige us !
I have thought necessary, Mr. President, to enter thus distinctly into the re¬
futation of these lingering notions of our former rights, though now abandoned
not only by the irrevocable acts of honorable treaties, but our quiet possession
9
of Florida, then the great object of Southern wishes, as Texas is now :|Florida
yielded to us,'as then declared, in part as an equivalent for the renunciation of
all future claims in the other quarter. To moTmen's minds, there is no argu¬
ment so strong, in favor of a meditated act of injustice, as the convincing the
people that they themselves have been originally wronged out of the object they
seek. Upon this natural infirmity, this bad casuistry of the passions, the advo¬
cates of this wicked, this faithless Treaty under discussion—the advocates of
which call it "re-annexation"—have endeavored to operate. They have
availed themselves of the old and groundless public notion spread by the causes
I have explained. In aid of these, they have appealed to a personal animosity
existing, in many quarters, against a single negotiator of the treaty of 1819,
though but a subordinate instrument in the matter—though evidently guided
all the while by not only a superior power, but by an older and more familiar
agent in the question—though joined all the while with a strong Southern Ca¬
binet—though then unaffected with any resentment towards the South—though
now well understood to have yielded reluctantly what a Southern President, a
Southern Attorney General, and two Southern Secretaries had conceded. Not
content with all this, they have trumped up, to finish by imposture the work of
awakened prejudice and detraction, a charge as infamous as it is unsupported,
of the suppression by the Secretary of State of capital parts of the negotiation,
and his treasonous arrangement to avoid obtaining all that we had ever pretend¬
ed to claim. I need scarcely say to any one who has felt it his duty, as I have
done, to scrutinize these accusations, that the printed history of the negotiation,
to which I have more than once referred, affords a chain of testimony that an¬
nihilates every trace of these charges, even every possibility of their truth ; and
that not only do the new documents produced utterly fail to substantiate what
Mr. Ewing is said to have informed General Jackson of, but even, when a little
sifted, theanselves afford decisive proof against nearly all that they claimed to
establish. Of these last things, I need speak no more than thus to characterize
them, especially when I have so clearly shown the legitimate grounds upon
which the treaty was concluded, and the true stale of our original rights under
the cession of Louisiana from France. It is clear that we obtained at least as
much as we had any tolerable pretence to, and, in addition, at the inadequate
price of five millions, to be paid to our own citizens, our favorite object of that
day, the possession of Florida. And it was the more necessary that I should
endeavor to correct the erroneous opinion prevailing without on these matters,
because, even in this body, and among Senators averse to this wild Treaty, we
have heard the same opinions in regard to our original title to Texas as a part
of Louisiana.
I pass from this examination of the proper and'organic power of our Govern-^
ment over this matter by treaty, as one involving every domestic and constitution¬
al question, and from the consideration of the main subterfuge by which is to be
avoided any impediment arising out of the national compact itself, to other ob¬
jections as fatal to the form as those already glanced at are to the substance of this
act. The instrument before us is styled a Treaty ; yet I cannot but look on it as des¬
titute of all the essential characteristics of a great act of that sort, between nation \
and nation. Is that Irish act of union, which annihilated Erin's independent
legislation and her entire nationality, a treaty? Or was it only an act of in¬
corporation, of political extinction? Was it a treaty when Russia, by ukase,
bade Poland cease to be? I freely admit, the writers upon national law re¬
cognise as treaties exceedingly unequal engagements between States, and even
such as reduce one of them to the verge of non-existence. There are, also, tem¬
porary conventions, miscalled treaties, which may be made with de facto Govern¬
ments, for the mere purpose of peaceful intercourse, to which a neutral nation
10
may resort, under certain circumstances; but as these involve no absolute exer¬
cise of perfected sovereignty, they must take an inferior rank and name- A treaty,
in a word, supposes at least two parties ; and parties to such a thing they are not,
unless both are sovereign. Here there is but one such party. The other has;
yet to make good, against a power on which it but lately depended, still claiming
it as dependent, and with which we are bound not to interfere, its separate su¬
premacy, the eminent domain over its soil and people. Between them we can¬
not interfere without a faithless violation of treaty engagements. For this I have
high authority—no less than that of the Senator from South Carolina, (Mr. Mc-
Duffie.) In his message of 1S36 to the South Carolina Legislature, he says:
" If we admit Texas into our Union while Mexico is still waging war against that province,
with a view to restablish her supremacy over it, we shall, by the very act itself, make our¬
selves a party to the war. Nor can we take this step without incurring this heavy responsi¬
bility, until Mexico herself shall recognise the independence of her revolted province."
Were both the parties, however, really sovereign, so as to be capable of the
highest acts of nationality, (such as give no rights against them, to others,) there
are acts which, as between them, would not be treaties, because they put an end
to the seperate existance of the one or the other. For a treaty must leave, as
well as find, two parties, in order that the obligation itself may continue. Under
the ideas of monarchical systems, which suppose that a people may be held in
fee simple, the sovereign may, by renunciation, or alienation, extinguish the
sovereignty ; not so, however, under Republican principles. By these, a State,
once free, cannot divest itself of its freedom, cannot extinguish its individuality
as a people, and the act would be void, precisely for the same reason for which
we hold that a freeman cannot, by contract, part with his liberty. Were Texas,'
therefore, a State, sovereign and free, she could not by treaty reduce herself into
our dependancy and territory, though I admit that she might unite with us by
another process.
I have already shown, at the outset, in examining the powers of this Govern¬
ment over a matter like this, that it has no power and could have no faculty to
incorporate with ours, of its own action, another people,or an external territory.
It is equally clear that, could the sovereignty of Texas be extinguished, this
could only be done by the immediate act of her people itself, not of her public-
functionaries constituted for another purpose. Nor would some former assent
of her collective citizens, some vote of six or eight years since, such as is now
putin to stand for her will, be valid for the purpose, still less can it be valid,
when the assent then obtained, was to a thing totally different. The vote then
taken was for her union to this confederacy as an equal member, not a depend¬
ant territory ; for, as all know, this last evasion of the Constitution, this indi¬
rection, hud not then been thought of as within the reach of the treaty making
power. That blessed and bright invention of the strict constructionists had not
yet sprung, Pallas like, from the brain of any Southern Jove.
A treaty then supposes not only two parties, but parties competent to what is
to be accomplished by it. If the object is a cession of any kind, the one party-
must be qualihed to grant, and the other to receive that object; but since both
these conditions are wanting here, this is no treaty. Had we ourselves been
competent to such a transaction, beyond doubt a party, namely, Mexico, might
have been found, with whom we could enter into it. To search so far was
manifestly unnecessary, however; since when no right can be taken, it is of
exceedingly little consequence whether any can be given or not. But since
equality in treaties is greatly to be desired, it was clearly best, that a party inca¬
pable of receiving should have to deal with one equally incapable of giving.
Knowing the consummate prudetice as well as wisdom of the Administration, I
make no doubt that it gave, in its long and proi'ouud deliberations over this
11
matter, great weight to this last consideration. Not equality only is to be desired
in treaties, but simplicity ; and certainly the course taken greatly simplified this
business. For between our own incompetency to the thing and that of our
well chosen counter-party, there is a wonderful conformity. If Texas be sove¬
reign, the doctrine of some politicians is, that this Government is not—has but
a quasi sovereignty. Here, then are very pretty facilities to this State Rights
operation of clinching a State's sovereign rights to that which has none. What
becomes of the vanished supremacy? Does it flit to the moon, where the last
wits of heroes, the over-volatile virtue of dames, and whatever else is missing
from earth, (poets say) is treasured up ? Or does it lie dormant, like a bear in
his winter sleep, sucking his paws ? Or is it bottled up for another generation,
like South-side London Particular Madeira, to grow only the finer the longer it
is kept under cork? But according to the same creed of State sovereignty,
what are we buying, under this so called treaty? Are we purchasing of an
independent State, what our Declaration of Independancc declares to be inde-
feasibly in every people, the rights of their self-government? We surely are
not driving a bargain for the public domain of Texas, well understood to be
entirely alienated, perhaps twice over. Here I will take occasion to state an im¬
portant fact, without stopping to characterize it as evincing a purpose to produce
a false impression. I am utterly opposed, however, to the people of the United
States being deceived by it. The tact to which I allude is this ; the negotiators
of the Texas treaty on the part of Texas, Messrs. Van Zandt and Henderson,
in their note to John C. Calhoun, Secretary of State, of the 15th of April, 1844,
in reply to certain inquiries of Mr. Calhoun, say:
" Upon the subject of the public lands,'the undersigned submit a summary statement,
made from a late report of the Commissioner of the General Land Office, to the President of
Texas.
To this " late report" no date is given, although it was communicated to the
Senate with the treaty, as evidence of the quantity of land we were to get, out
of which to pay the debts of Texas assumed by us. Now, sir, what will you
think of this statement, when informed of the fact, that this " late report" was
made in 1841, since which time we have no account of lands sold or granted
by Texas? The date of the report appears by the memoir accompanying the
map of Texas, sent here by the President of the United States.
What, then, are we to get for the assumption in blank of all the public debts
of Texas? For, as to the attempted specification in the treaty, delusively put
there as if they who drew it meant to limit or could limit our liabilities, nothing
can be more falacious. With or without that specification, it is precisely the
same thing : we are none the less liable for her previous contracts, acknow¬
ledged or repudiated. She becomes our femme cover/e, and though we may
make with her before the bridal, or even at the alter, an understanding that we
are to discharge only a certain part of her debts, (pay her milliner only, for in¬
stance, and let her grocer, or her butcher go whistle for his* money,) these
honest tradesmen may be upon us with a capias next morning, before yet its
blush has met the bashful bride's, or we have given her timid charms the first
salutation of the day. What then, can we be "pretended to be buying, or other¬
wise getting, but her sovereignty ? And now, according to the very principle
in chief of those who are urging us to the acquisition, what is this worth, as a
vendible commodity ? Many of these very people say, that we can take no
sovereign right over her, except just so long as she pleases. A part of them
acres.
He estimates the aggregate at
Lands appropriated
Remainder unappropriated
203,520,000
67,408,673
136,111,327."
12
hold a Dorrite self-emancipation to be always legitimate ; another part hold that
secession is never to be denied ; and another portion claim peaceful nullification
as "the rightful remedy," to which a State may always resort when she lists.
What should hinder Texas, as soon as we have paid her debts, from " calcula¬
ting the value of the Union ?" If now so accessable to the offers of England,
as the friends of this treaty pretend, may she not be quite as much so then,
when suffering (as the Hon. Senator from South Carolina assures us that every¬
body in the South suffers) under " a worse than colonial vassalage," " the in¬
tolerable oppression of the tariff ?" Methinks there are some folks wonderfully
fond of "enormous burdens," and some who are strangely disposed to entice
others into wretchedness, no doubt upon the old principle, " that misery loves
company." But can we be at all sure that this singular Southern application
of that renowned democratic rule, called the " greatest happiness principle,"
will continue? After having drawn the Texans into a share in the inestimable
advantages of being one of us, are they not very likely, as soon as they shall be
of the household, to tell them some rather awful family secrets, as for instance,
under what " a grinding tyranny" we live, and how much better off they, the
poor folks of the lone star would be under the English dominion, dependant
on their " natural market."
It must be confessed that some Southern gentleman are a good deal given, in
the snug little circle here, and in that of the other House, or in fireside parties
of a few thousands at home, to talking just in this way. We ourselves are
quite used to all this sort of thing. We know the patriotism and loyalty of their
true sentiments, and that all this is but a joke. But when the Texas folks,
already with so many alarming affinities to England, come here, will not they who
know no better, take all this for earnest, and think this a very bad business that
they have got into, and this coveted blessing of annexation rather a sorry boon 9
It strikes me so, Mr. President, and that the probabilities of their long retaining
any very violent attachment to this Union, beyond the lapse of the mere politi¬
cal honey-moon, are by no means strong, especially under the indoctrination of
the teachers to whom I have just referred. It cannot be said that it was a love
of freedom that drove them from home; for that they had already, so that, as
to it, they could gain nothing, and might loose everything. A part of them
notoriously left us to become the denizens of a foieign land, strange to their
tongue, alien to their religion, and that of their fathers, utterly uncertain in all
its public destinies, and offering nothing to bind to it the affections of one bred
in our institutions, except the hope of overturning the very government to
which they pledged themselves, when they sought its protection, and received
its bounty. The only serious allegation of the Texans was, that Mexico had
' exchanged her Federative organization for a centralized one, which was disa¬
greeable to Texas, or rather feigned to be so; for I think it clear that, had the
fact been reversed, Texas would have picked the same quarrel, alledging other
and opposite reasons. Not freedom, then was their aim, not theoretical rights ;
not liberty of conscience, for which they had never stipulated, and in which
they had all they could expect, toleration for the very small degree of religion
about which they had ever troubled themselves. The real object, as all know
who watched the purposes of this movement, was a totally different one.
Mexico had given them liberally large gifts of fertile lands, highly fit for the
richest productions of slave labor ; but as the laws of Mexico diet not pefmit
slavery, those lands were comparitively valueless. The insurrection, then,
putting out of view thefpersoual ambition of those who were in hope its lead¬
ers had but two real aim-:, and both these land jobbing ones, to throw off the
Mexican laws, in order that slave property might be introduced; and with a
wide market for sugar and cotton lands thus obtained, to seize upon a great
13
public domain, and parcel it out among the small American population, so as
to enrich every man of them, and give their leaders even princely possessions.
It is futile to talk of Texan liberty as having any cause, any impulse but this,,
whatever show of patriotism, and devotion to the cause of self-government may
have been made. It is equally futile to pretend that, whatever dishonest en¬
couragement to the design, the troubles, or the weakness or wickedness of
Mexico afforded, the attempt itself could ever have been thought of by a body
of population not now 200,000, and then far less, against an empire of fully
eight millions, unless under a thorough persuasion, justified by every part of
the event, that our people, breaking loose as individuals from every just obliga¬
tion as a nation, would pour down to the war, afford arms, supplies, every thing,
and in reality, as it has proved, do most of the paying, and all the fighting.
Such was the fact. In the first glare of that enthusiasm which among us awakes
so easily to any cause (hat will take the style of "freedom" " Constitution,"
self government," our hardy, brave, confiding, and generous men of the West
made a wide rush to the war, under the cry, believed by them, of liberty.
Among this number, Mr. President, I had myself many friends, and relatives,
whose devotion to freedom, noble nature, and daring spirit induced them in a
cause supposed honorable, to hazard every thing; and but too many of them
fertilized the battle-fields of Texas with their life blood. By such, Mexico was
beaten, and borne back, Texas seemed won, and its independence, for the time,
achieved.
So plain and manifest bad been, in that contest, our dereliction of national
duty as a neutral, that after' the seeming completion of its success, our Govern¬
ment, though invited by Texas, did not venture to profit by it, dreading too
much the imputed infamy over the civilized world, of so foul a transaction.
Such was the ground taken by the Senator from Pennsylvania, (Mr. Bu-
•chanxan,) when he voied against recognizing even the independence of Texas
in 1837. So the new Republic of the moment was left to confirm, if it could,
by those things which, even much more than valour in the field make or mar
a nation, all that arms appeared to have won.
From almost that moment, the cause and the hopes of Texas have gone
•backwards. Her councils have failed to shape out for her anything secure;
nothing respectable abroad, nothing worthy at home, has attended her efforts to
prepare for the contest never relinquished on the part of Mexico, and certain to
be pushed again as soon as that power was disembarrassed of still closer conflicts
with France, and afterwards with Yucatan. Gradually, a complete inefficiency
of every thing belonging to a government, a destitution of all resources, a ruin
of all the public character which might have supplied their place, a general loss
of all confidence or sympathy, and finally the visible signs of a total incapacity
to be a nation, of an established imbicility and anarchy, have gathered over her
fortunes. This is in effect avowed by the very authors and defenders of the
treaty. In the midst of her enemies general inactivity, she has contrived to
exhaust all her means of defence; and, therefore, it is said needs our protection.
She has no army ; her navy has been sold at auction. She is without revenue
for even her ordinary expenditures, and her credit is utterly gone. In this state
of collapse urged as one of the grounds for this treaty, with every symptom of
political dissolution upon her, the rattles in her throat, and the last rigidity set¬
tling over her members, after she has been plied with divers stimulants of invi¬
tation, of threats and wheedling, fomented with certain warm flannels in the
shape of perhaps more than one sort of treaty, the cordial of an army poured
down her throat, and the smelling bottle of a fleet clapped to her nose, a Presi¬
dential nurse, and a diplomatic doctor come to us, and tell us, that she is at
death's door—that she has not even had a finger ache—that, however, she is very
14
poorly—that, again, she is in singulaily fine health and spirits—but that she is
very bad, and the undertaker may be sent for—that it is nothing but the me¬
grims, produced by certain confabulations with one Mr. Andrews, who has put
her in great bodily fear, by offering to buy all her negroes, if some body will
lend him the money, and of whom her apprehensions have become, very natu¬
rally, almost uncontrolable upon his being compelled, for fear of lynching, to run
away! All this, certified by any quantity of anonymous letters, they still tell
us, insisting that Texas is perfectly independent, but on the immediate verge of
falling a prey to the first comer; that she is entirely at peace with every body,
and especially with Mexico, but yet is in the most imminent peril of being over¬
whelmed, no body can say precisely how, or by whom ; that there has been no
war between her and Mexico for full eight years, though, to be sure, we did last
year mediate for an armistice between them, and though the President's last
annual message, drawn up since this treaty was set on foot, declared that there
mas war between them, and that war carried on with a shocking inhumanity.
Such are the apologies and pretences for this precipitate treaty, made without
authority, and without consulting the American people. Let me return, how¬
ever, from my history to my argument, and show a little further, that, for still
other reasons, this thing before us is in no sort a treaty. A treaty supposes, if
not faith towards the party with whom you are dealing, at least faith towards
yourselves. Here there is none on either side. The treaty will in no sort effect
what it expresses. It in no manner expresses what it will effect; and this was
perfectly well understood between those who drew it; so that it is a fraud upon
us, by Texas, to which this Administration are parties.
A treaty is surely not such which conveys not its expressed object, but one
directly opposite. Here we stipulate for a sovereignty, and a territory: we get
only a war. We bargain for possession, and we have to fight for it, and that
.under dishonor for the violation of treaties. If it be a purchase, it is of that
which cannot be delivered, on one side, and cannot be taken on the other by
treaty. If it is a conveyance, it is, as to the sovereignty of what cannot be
alineated, and, as to the territory, partly of what is in disputed possession, and
partly of what never was in possession of Texas, but adversely held and occu¬
pied by Mexico. For the professed objects, which we are thus not to get, we
are to give in money, a consideration much larger than appears, and all our na¬
tional honer besides. To lighten it, pretended assets, long ago dissipated, are
set forth; but, as 1 have said, nothing is delivered to us but a quarrel upon dis¬
honorable terms. We get no title but to a war. If this was what we wanted,
why the formality of a treaty, and the expense of a purchase ? Surety we could
have got a fight somewhere for nothing. Why then pay down in advance some
fifteen or twenty millions for one? Why not settle the Oregon question in that
way, where we have a right disputed, and an adversary worthy our prowess?
Again, a treaty is something made by a treaty making power; but the acts,
which, as treaties, it has no right to do, are, when done, no treaties at all. The
President and Senate have no right to make war; they cannot, therefore, right¬
fully enter into a treaty, the direct effect of which is war, and gives to another
nation a right of war against us, or assumes'a war pending. They surety cannot
do that, which is an aggression upon another nation, as well as an usurpation
rupon our own Constitution. It is manifest that, pending a war between Texas
and Mexico, a so called treaty, by which the former alienated to us all her pos¬
sessions, and her sovereignty, (the entire subject of the war,) would of course be
nothing but a direct asssumption of the war, a substitution of ourselves for Texa°.
True, we may have stipulated for possession only ; but while that possession is a
matter of war, and can only arise out of the fortunate issue of that war—war,
though not stipulated, is the direct and principal effect, and possession only con-
15
tingent and subsidiary. Texas cannot deliver us possession, but only the war
upon the event of which that possession depends; so that the misnamed treaty
of annexation or incorporation is not such, but war under another name, faith¬
lessly and unconstitutionally made, [l is manifest that such would be the object
on the part of Texas, and such alone the expectation on our part.
If Texas be not already in the condition I have described; if she be not on.
the very eve of political extinction ; if possessed of an independence in any sort
real enough, (and high and clear it should be, that our honor may be free of all
suspicion,) to justify this step on our part, why should she thus yield up her
seperate, her individual being, as a people, and become not a State, but a depend¬
ant territory ? Nations never do this voluntarily. They recoil as instinctively
from such forfeiture of their own identity, as the soul of each man in them
shrinks from the thought of annihilation, preferring, almost, deliberately to en¬
counter any chances of eternal pain, rather than to perish, to be swallowed up
and lost in nothingness. Nothing is stronger than this principle or feeling, im¬
planted by nature herself in the hearts of every people as soon as formed. In a
nation, it is the very life, the vital fire that must have warmed it up into thought
and motion, and made it a political existence. If Texas never had this, she never
has been a nation free and independent. She has been but a poor automaton,
dressed up. perhaps imposingly enough, in the semblance of one, and like that
haughty Turk, whom most of us have seen playing an exceedingly good game
of chess, apparently hard to beat, but really an empty image all the while, moved
by unseen springs,guided by some operator not for off", who looks on with a most
disinterested aspect, and has not the slightest apparent connexion with the game.
If Texas was free, independent, the mistress of no.t only her own soil, but of
Mexican regions in addition, which no man of hers had ever trod except in
anklets of iron ; if she laughs at Spanish arms, and has no greater danger to fear,
in any other quarter, than Mr. Andrews, and his shadowy bands; if especially,
she be so strong that it was necessary for us to turn suppliants and intriguers for
a connexion with her; if, I say, she be all this, why seek to lay down her national
existence, like a heavy burden to be borne no longer? Why forfeit her untram¬
melled liberty, her proud self-reliance, her guardianship of her own interests,
surely'now quite hostile to our own, according to the very gentlemen who here
urge this union? With what, at worst, is she threatened? On the one side, 1
see nothing more awful than Mr. Andrews, and on the other nothing more for¬
midable than a free trade treaty with England. Are these the things that unman
the Southern chivalry, and make the heroes of San Jacinto quake? Why, as to
abolition, any alarm which Texas feels, must surely be at the prospective failure
of profits, rather than the danger of the loss of any thing she now has; for it
seems that there are, in all, but 25,000 slaves in Texas, or about one eighth of
the entire population she claims. Now, where but one man in seven owns a
slave, the popular dread of abolition, extending only to one seventh of the whites,
cannot be very engrossing. Besides, I can see no evidences of any such terror,
In spite of alt the contagious alarms, bred in our State Department, her people
are calm, her statesmen self-possessed. Her very diplomatists have failed to take
the hint, to comprehend the nods arid winks of our cabinet, to copy its simulated
trepidation, to echo the dolorous language of its apprehensions. In short, they
never advert to it at all; and even our complaisant minister, Mr. Murphy, though
of a soul in which all sorts of tornados of the feelings are easily produced, has,
on this matter, so far bridled " the whirlwind of hi? emotions," as not to attribute
to Texas the slightest share in this dread. Yet it is there that these dire plans
are hatching, and over her that these dangers impend ; dangers which she either
does not see, or does not fear; visible and frightful only to those who are two
thousand miles off!
16
The truth is, this whole business is a fraud, a plan, with which John Tyler
intends, if he can, to bamboozle (he American people in the approaching Presi¬
dential election. Sir, names lower than befit things often presented in this body,
contemptuous terms rarely ever applicable to matters of such grave consequence,
can alone convey in their truth these miserable pretences. They are hardly de-
scribable but as trumpery and humbug. The dialect, not of affairs of Slate, but
of the gaming table or race course,can alone body them forth in their turpitude,
their nefariousness. The conspirators who conceived them could not well have
talked of them, hut as the adepts in Hoyle and the stud-book speak of the plans
by which pocket hooks are to he emptied, or purses taken. The metaphors and
the vocabulary of such people could alone illustrate or elucidate the purposes to
be accomplished, or the means to be employed. Without even the assistance of
what we hear, we know how the chief player of this despicable game must have
told his confederates of his expectations. Their common organ,the sporting
calender here of this fraternity, has talked of the thing all the while much in that
jockey phrase which was appropriate to it. From it we could collect the cutting,
the shuffling, the stocking of the pack that was going on. Through it, we have
learnt [low the President held back this card of annexation as an ace of trumps,
that was, in the nick of the play, to give him the game, and sweep the hoard.
At times, however, (as the figures of speech of the Government paper are often
not a little mixed, and glide into (he lofiier style of the camp and the field of
glory,) this trump card became a bomb that was suddenly to fall from the skies
among the forces of one adversary, or a mine that was to blow the assailing legions
of another into the sky. Now, it was to come down upon Mr. Van. Buren's
bead, and now, to burst beneath Mr. Clay's feet, knocking one into the earth,
and the other into (he air. Presently, again, relapsing into more pacific phrase,
the bomb or the mine became a high-mettled steed, bestriding which the Presi-
dent was to distance in the race of popularity all such mere tackeysas were rode
by others. There stood, hooted and spurred, in blue jacket, red cap, and yellow-
breeches, the Executive, John Jones holding his bottle, attendant Secretaries his
whip and stirrup, (he Postmaster General his bridle ; while the trainer-in-chief
(he of the Slate Department,) stood prepared to lift him into the saddle. Mean-
lime, as the Baltimore Convention drew nigh, abandoning their own used up
cavalry, about him came the veteran Indian slayer of the West, his military rival
of the Lakes, and others of high pretensions. All looked with longing eves at
his saddle. All would have gladly leapt into it, but for John Jones and the
stable boys, who loudly announced that juslice demanded that the owner alone
of this purse-laker should straddle him; when lo ! the convention appears with
a candidate of their own. They thrust by trainer and all, scat Polk in the saddle,
slap the horse on the rump to start him, and bid him go ! And while lie hob¬
bles off, the dismounted Executive stands aghast. The Secretaries are thunder
struck; while Johntrnd the stable hoys protest, in vain, rliat it is the President's
horse, that there is cheating going on, I hat this is too bad.
But to return to the other great cause of fright, which has so alarmed the Sena¬
tor from Pennsylvania, (Mr. Buchanan,) as to make him overleap his opinions
as expressed in 1837, a treaty with England (hat shall give her all the trade of
Texas. It is difficult to conceive why (he possibility of this should produce any
panic. As in the other case, I see no manifestations of the presence of such a
peril to the minds of those whom it ought chiefly to affect. Still less can I
imagine why those should impute it to them, or should endeavor to fling them
into a tremor about it, who themselves meditate or desire just about the same
arrangements with Britain, as the aim of all rational policy, the requisition of
all constitutional right.
Texas has no manufactures, no mechanic arts, no moneyed capital to set them
17
on foot, no skill formed to them, no body of working population dependant on
them for employment. She is, even far beyond any of our Southern States, a
producer of raw material alone. If, then, to a people like us, of most mixed
occupations, of climates and soils compelling them, where the intimate division
of labor is already in existence, where the power of supplying ourselves with
almost everything has grown up, vieing, in sjioi t, with Europe in no small part of
the useful arts, and possessing a vast and rapidly swelling internal trade, in com¬
parison with which our foreign shrinks into insignificance : if, I say, to a people
so situated, free trade with Britain be so great a good, what is there in it which
should so horribly frighten Texas? If, nevertheless, it is her pleasure, mid that
of her free trade friends, to be so excessively discomposed, I think only a few
plain considerations are needed to set them at their ease. England, it well ap¬
pears, is not willing to conliact towards Texas any responsibilities, either politi¬
cal or pecuniary. Of that the documents presented to us to prove these designs
afford proof enough ; and though these papers are far from being such as are fit
to be relied on for the affirmative question, where they sustain the negative, surely
they must be accepted. Now, is it in the smallest degree likely that this great,
far-seeing power, the most eminently practical, the least visionary that the world
ever saw, can expect to reduce an American and an Anglo-Saxon republic to
vassalage, by means of a commercial treaty? How long, if it imposed any
terms oppressive of Texas for the benefit of England, could it be expected to
last? She does not trust the uncertain faith of Texas now, when she is weak,
will it be better when she has started up into the vigor of wealth, success, and
populousuess, all certain to come about by the means lent, by the security and
confidence bestowed? Her colonies on our continent, already infected with
radicalism, and endangered by the democracy propagated from our shores,
threaten every day to fall off from her, are a burden rather than a benefit, and
cost her much more than they come to. National pride alone induces her to
retain them. Is she likely, then, to burn her fingers with new dependancies,
planted by us, and reeking with more than Republicanism, more than Democracy,
with repudiation ? Can she trust men filled with so many antipathies to her in¬
stitutions, or is it possible that any thing short of the last public distress can have
induced Texas to cherish, in any seriousness, the idea of coining under England's
monarchical,rule? Sad as, in England, is the opinion, unjustly, but somewhat
naturally, entertained of even the best of us, in what light, I pray you, must she
look upon people considered by her the winnowings, which the fan of the law
has blown from our land ?
But consider the broad eye of English policy is supposed to see every thing.
Is it probable, then, if she values her West India possessions, that she will ven¬
ture to place in such domestic connexion with them, a source from which will at
once gush into them every idea most pernicious, most fatal to her power there ?
I can imagine no step more certain speedily to snatch from her all that the Gulf
washes, or the waters of the Caribbean sea, instead of giving her'any more foot¬
hold on the mainland. These being the views she must take, as to the question,
of her power merely, what will be those in which she must see the thing, as a
question of her trade f The advantages to be got, and those to be lost are here,
it seems to me, easily measured—it is enough to say, that Texas presents to
English industry, the mart of not above 200,000 inhabitants, in order to dissipate
all this part of the Texas theory forever. Will England quarrel with the com¬
merce of this country for that market, or such a market? f If she makes a treaty
with it, bestowing peculiar privileges, what becomes of all her conventions with
us, stipulating admission to our productions on the same terms granted to any
other? Has she not like arrangements with every body else ? How, then, will this
IB
idea of her extending to the little people of Texas peculiar privileges, hold water
for one moment ?
1 have thus surveyed, Mr. President, the main questions of our competency to
acquire Texas,in the manner proposed—of her thus to dispose of herself—and of
die form as to either in which the thing is to be done ; together with the most
immediate points arising incidentally to these. I have shown that our former
) right to Texas is an error, and how that error arose ; that a long series of national
acts, originally correct, and irreversible as long as we attempt to preserve the
slightest character as a people, utterly forbids us to recur to that matter, except as
an historical one; that Texas can make us no title to herself, not being mistress
of any thing but a war, and a debt; and that these, and not Texas, are all we
shall take under this treaty, except as much confusion and uproar at home as
dishonor abroad. Let me now come directly to what the treaty itself sets forth,
and what the accompanying pieces that form what we are allowed to know of its
history, substantiate or betray.
By its title, it. is a treaty for the annexation, not the union, of the Republic of
Texas to that of the United States. Now, what was to hinder it from being an
annexation of the United States to Texas? Constitutionally, the one is as pos¬
sible as the other, inasmuch as the people have not been consulted about either.
If her sovereignty, (which is alledged by the fact of our entering into the act
with her) can be thus extinguished, so, of course can be ours; for a State can
but be sovereign. In the eye of right, its size can make no difference; and as
■-we, not Texas, were the solicitors for the amalgamation, 1 hold that it is rather we
that should have been annexed than Texas. I need hardly repeat that as, in a
Republican government, the sovereignty is in the body of those who are citizens,
not their mere representatives exercising for them only a momentary and a dele¬
gated power; nothing but the collective will of that people, deliberately given,
and distinctly ascertained, could extinguish or alienate that sovereignty. To the
reason given some time back, I may add another: that it must be confessed that
a people is always such when it chooses to be—has always the right of being
governed as it likes. It is clear, therefore, that it cannot have conveyed away,
what at its pleasure it has again. But here impossibility lies upon impossibility :
Texas could not give, we could not take her sovereignty by means of a treaty;
and if her people, eight years ago, willed to unite her to us, that would not au¬
thorize the present act, for two overwhelming reasons: first, because a past act,
an act of last year only, an act of another occasion, is not valid for any such
purpose; and, secondly, because that act authorized a totally different thing,
namely, her union with us, as a State, not her annexation as a mere territory.
Surely the high Slate rights doctrinaries who aim at this thing, intent in a most
extraordinary manner on their present object only, utterly overlook consequences
not only fatal to their own favorite opinions, but really most formidable to the
future safety of all government upon our present plans, with our intended limita¬
tions. For surely a foreign State can claim nothing at the hands of this Govern¬
ment or Confederation, to which, as a benefit, our own would not be much better,
or at least equally, entitled. Suppose, then, one of our own States should, for
some reason or other, desire to give up her sovereignty, like Texas, for a price ?
Suppose Pennsylvania, with the honorable purpose of paying her debts, should
do it, we assuming them ? Or suppose, again, what I fear is much less probable,
that the State of Mississippi were to make the same proffer? Could this Govern¬
ment buy them all out? Why not? What should hinder it from lending them
all money, as an usurer does to young spendthrifts, taking mortgage after mort¬
gage, until finally, eating them up with interest, it forecloses upon them, and
buys them in ? If it can open a shaving shop for foreign sovereignties, surely it
can oblige a brother. If it can speculate in the foreign article, surely it can deal
in the domestic.
The preamble proceeds to set forth that the treaty has been concluded in con¬
formity with the almost unanimous vote of Texas at the adoption of her Consti¬
tution, (1836,) and her present equally unanimous wish. Now, I have already
shown that, at best, the first fact was of no import; that, further, it was untrue ;
and it is notorious that the second assertion is a mere assumption ; about as valid,
for a high and authentic purpose like this, as it would be for an election of our
Chief Magistrate under the forms of the Constitution, to say that John Tyler is
elected, because John Jones, and two princely youths asseverate, all the while,
that he is the people's undivided choice. But again, all this, as a statement of
the motives of the treaty is false, because even to Texas the motives of to day,
are not those of 1836, when her purpose was entirely different; while the pre¬
tences now set up on our part, had then never been imagined even.
As if the mere reiteration of what is false could make it true, the 1st article of
the treaty goes on to reaffirn all these things, as thus; " The Republic of Texas,
acting in conformity with the wishes of the people, and of every department of
its government, cedes to the United States all its sovereignties, to be held by them
in full and proper sovereignty." As here, however, with a growing confidence
in itself, assertion takes a fuller swing, let us see precisely what this comes to.
The " Republic of Texas," as thus conveyed to us, includes all between our
borders and the Rio Grande. These limits embrace Mexican provinces, of which
the Senator from Missouri has given a skilfull and accurate account, with his well
known and accustomed ability. According to the memoir embraced in the offi¬
cial documents of the treaty, they contain a population of probably some 300,000
souls, in addition to that of Texas proper. The latter is estimated at from 100,-
000 to 200,000; but at the former number by their own envoy, General Hunt,
in 1837. Now, putting aside, as lost in this bolder stretch of false asseveration,
the plain fact, that Texas herself has not assented to such a treaty, what have we
here ? Has Tamaulipas, or Coahuila,or Chiahuahua, or the Eutaw Band, been
consulted ? As for New Mexico, her accession to the surrender must be pre¬
sumed to have been signified to that admirable combination of war, traffic, and
diplomacy, the Santa Fee expedition ; for that is well known to be the latest
consultation held with that part of the Republic. I should not have suspected,
from Mr. Kendall's account, that.such was precisely the result of the colloquies
with that gentle republican, Governor Armijo. Here, then, it strikes me, must
be said to be from three fifths to three fourths of the " Republic," as we get it,
who cannot even be pretended to have been even consulted as to this cession ;
for these are provinces that have never taken any voice in the affairs of Texas,
for the very simple reason, that neither voluntarily nor by compulsion did they
ever submit to her sway, or join in her institutions.
Then follows a long inventory of many airy public chatties, which we shall no
doubt take, when we find them. They sound very like the enumeration of
weapons in an indictment for assault and battery, where, from the abundant
caution of the law, almost every thing—as sticks, stones, staves, and other imple¬
ments of harm, is declared to have been employed, and in fact every thing with
which it is possible to beat a man. " All public lots and squares, vacant lands,
mines, minerals, salt lakes and springs, public edifices, fortifications, barracks,
ports and harbors, navy and navy yards, docks, magazines, arms, armaments, and
* accoutrements, archives and public documents, public funds, debts, taxes and
dues unpaid at the time of the exchange of the ratifications of this treaty." All
this looks a great deal more like what a nation should and might have, than any¬
thing that Texas posseses. There are said to be marriage contracts, in which the
bride, though as poor as the beggar's-maid that King Caphilua loved and dressed
20
•off in borrowed clothes, has castles, hunting-lodges, villas and hotels, with a long
rent-roll, all in imaginary lands and visionary cities only. It is fit that the bride
and the nation should be supposed to have these things, whether she have them
or not; they are for her beauty, or her dignity. I fear that, in this pompous
schedule, the only part we shall ever realize is the last, a very solid body of that
sort of public wealth which is usually called indebtedness, and a very plentiful
lack of any thing to pay it with. Of " lots and squares" there may be lots, but
in towns little more than ideal. The mines and minerals have not yet been
worked, through the omission or casualty of not being yet discovered; or if any
exist, they are surely those of New Mexico, from which the ingots fly, by some
strange attraction, into a very different treasury. There may be in Texas, a
"salt river;" but I have never heard of her salt lakes. As to her "public edi¬
fices, fortifications, barracks, potts and harbors, navy and navy yards, docks,
magazines, arms, armaments and accoutrements," that figure here in architec¬
tural splendor, or make up the " pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war,"
these are surely put in for the flourish. Now, God forbid, that I should laugh
at honorable poverty, national or individual. That of Texas is not so. Let lie.
repudiated bonds, let the unfortunate difficulty into which she has plunged a
brave and honorable South Carolinian, to whom she owes still more in gratitude
than in money, tell that tale. Is it, at any event, when she is driving a bargain,
that this long display of titular possessions can be fairly made? Would not the
plain words, all'her " public property and domain" have been equally determinate
and far more modest? And why this long enumeration, unless to catch the
popular fancy ? _____
The next article provides for erecting Texas into a State as soon as may '
be consistent with the principles of the Federal Constitution. In this article lie?
one of the grand frauds of the whole transaction, as every body knows. It is a
shallow and a shameless evasion of the difficulties known to attend the bringing
her in by treaty as a State, a sovereignty. To avoid these, the name, not the
thing, is changed, and one-half the matter only is openly done at present; but
with a care so to stipulate it in this article, that the faith of treaties may be invoked
in favor of the very fraud of a treaty, " as soon as may be consistent with the
Constitution !" Need I say, sir, that the benefit of this provision may be claimed
the instant you ratify this treaty ? The population of Texas would already en¬
title her to one representative in the other House, and that is the first and main
condition to the right of being admitted. Nor was this political evasion the only
one meant. Another, fully as important in the view of a great part of this body,
of Congress, and of the nation, was to be accomplished—the adtmission, not only
of a foreign State into this Union, but that of a foreign slave Slate. To the
latter, it was felt that insuperable objections of feeling lay, in addition to those
of constitutionality. But, as now done, the constitutional bar is to be got over
by her consenting for a moment to be called a. territory; while the slave question*
is silently passed over by the same means. Here, sir, are some 25,000 slave-
impoited by a treaty, a vast apd wholesale operation, such as even Cuba and
Brazil never witnessed, and as utterly against our subsisting laws, utterly beyond
any warrant to the treaty-making power. So I must beg leave to add another
clause to my. enumeration of points, which prove this treaty an original nullity,
and no treaty at all.
Both these, sir, are abominable and dahgerous frauds upon the Constitution,
upon the people, and against the future peace of the Union, already abundantly
put in jeopardy by questions of this sort. As a Southern man, the citizen of
a State, whose present safety demands that all the public and national guaran¬
ties be stiictly preserved, and maintained to our subsisting interests of this soit:
as the public agent of such a community, I will do all that I can to see that no
21
injurious hand shall be laid upon rights within this nation, to which every part
of it is faithfully pledged. But, sir, I should not seek—the wisely moderate
State to which I belong will not seek—any thing beyond our present good secu¬
rities, far more likely to suffer, than to gain, from any rash disturbance of them,
under the hazardous idea of extending them. Pray let us hold on to what we
justly have, and not drop it to catch at a shadow. If we can break through the
Constitution to extend slavery, how are we to expect that like breaches will not
be made to subvert it? This scheme is one directly and violently to raise up a
new agitation, that will not fail, and (I say it with a solemn repugnance) is but
too probably meant, to exasperate the head-strong and the extreme, in opposite
quarters of the confederacy, to rush into speedy disunion.
I would not, in a word, Mr. President, seek to extend slavery, even by fair means.
I know of none, but the assent of the common body of parties to our contract with
each other. Of these parties, nothing like this can be asked with any probabili¬
ty of success, nor ever without an adverse probability of awakening resentments,
distractions, far beyond any good to be accomplished. If, from prudence and
for peace, I would not now attempt such a thing even fairly, it may be judged
with what alarm as well as horror I recoil from the thought of a fraud like this,
aggravating every mischief an hundred fold, and complicating impolicy with
dishonor.
The next article secures all land claims valid under the laws of Texas. Of
/bourse, if, in the event it should prove to be true, (as it no doubt is to" a large
extent) that Texas has, for consideration received, granted her whole public
, domain twice over, we shall be bound in equity to the claimants, (now our citi-
izens.) and to her acts, (now our own,) to make good any deficiency ; and thus
miay have to piece out her exhausted soil with a broad parcel of our own, per¬
haps as large as the real Texas herself.
The next provides, substantially, that we shall give back to Texas what s/ie,
apparently, has never given to herself—every sixteenth section of the public
lands for purposes of education; that is, one-sixteenth of her entire soil is to re-
■ vert to her, or an equivalent somewhere else.
' The rrext article assumes all the debts and liabilities of Texas, however cre¬
ated. I have already shown that, with or without any assumption, we became
liable for all her engagements, when we took her sovereignty, and that the faith
she has violated binds us just as much as that she meant to keep. Not only her
acknowledged, but her repudiated debts, then, are to be paid, and the very stock
which she has created and sold at, perhaps, but a fifth, or a tenth of the value
expressed on its face, is to be redeemed at par, with an interest of eight or ten
per cent. If this provision of the treaty is ratified here, I think I may then pro¬
pose an appropriation to erect, in congenial brass, a great and eternal monument
to the anti-assumptionist States and party, that hold it constitutional to assume the
debts of a foreign State, but not of our own. High 011 its glittering sides shall
shine many a lofty name of Southern strict constructionists. The Secretary of
State shall top the eminence, as the acknowledged chief of all interpreters. At
his feet shall blaze the titles of (he Senator from South Carolina, and of the fer¬
vid anti-assumptionist of Mississippi, whose State herself will merit a peculiar
distinction of being much readier to pay the debts of Texas than her own. A
little lower, but somewhat emulous of her honors, must be emblazoned the
names of Illinois and Pennsylvania, and their Senators. Alabama and Arkan¬
sas, if not quite so high, will still be eminent. The New Hampshire Senator,
now the sole surviving "Northern man with Southern principles," shall take to
himself that side of this political mausoleum which looks northward. Those
votaries of strict construction, those apostles of anti-assumption, John Jones,
Thomas Ritchie, and he of the Charleston Mercury, shall daily, at noon and eve,
22
lead a devout band of innocent youths of party, and virgins of the press, to
strew flowers about it and to hang around the garlands of their praise.
I should like, had I time, to inquire into the peculiar causes (unexplained in
even that lucid body of papers, called the documents,) which have led to the
selection of a single gentleman to be introduced by name into the benefits of
the treaty, to the pretty little tune of $250,000. What peculiar merits of Mr.
Frederick Dawson, of Baltimore, have placed him so far above all other creditors
of Texas, I cannot stay to a^k, though I should be glad the Senate knew.
The 6(h article, besides settling the forms, tfcc., under which liabilities are to
be ascertained, provides also, with great discretion, how they shall be repudiated.
By one general and positive provision, all the contracts of Texas, as to the rate
of interest on her debt, are set aside, and their evidences, after being ascertained,
replaced by United States bonds at 3 per cent, per annum. But their present
stipulated rate, as declared by the statement of Messrs. Van Zandt and Hender¬
son, is 10. A nice little repudiation this, of only 66| per cent, on the interest.
Then, on the principal—if the entire amount now in existence is found to ex¬
ceed 10,000,000, the claims are all to be rateably reduced within that amount.
Thus, our Government is, beyond all doubt, making itself directly a party to an
imperative repudiation of interest, and a contingent spunging of principal. All
this, as I have said, is for debts that become our own, if we merge the na ional
existence of Texas in ours. Before that act, how can we set aside her contract^-
with'olher parties? We had surely no power over them. It is only by assum¬
ing them that we could take any sort of right over them. The repudiation, then,
is ours, not hers; and the more plainly, because she abandons to us all interest
in the fund, (the land sales,) out of which they are to be paid : so that it is for
our profit alone that the repudiation is to be made.
By the next article, the existing Legislative authorities of Texas, her Execu¬
tive and Administration are abolished and overthrown, her army ceases to exist,
and her fleet that was sold under the hammer ceases ; nothing is left of them;
all is stricken out of being but her judicial officers and the subordinate Execu¬
tive ones. It is, I presume, not pretended that the Government of Texas is to
be made to cease at the bidding of the Executive and Senate of this country.
I have shown that there was no act of her people that can seriously be pretend¬
ed to have set her high functionaries aside ; it can then, only, be their own power
and discretion that has thus terminated their functions in their own persons, and
transferred those functions to the disposal of the United States, and annulled the
Constitution of Texas, that they were sworn to support. If all this is legiti¬
mate, valid, on one side, so is it on the other, and we may, therefore, thank our
stars if it proves to be Texas, not ourselves, which was thus extinguished. Nei¬
ther Government possesses any such Revolutionary powers—neither can subvert^
annihilate, transfer itself, by functionaries of constitutional government created
for different purposes.
Attached directly to the treaty, the main features of which I have thus sur¬
veyed, comes a document from the Texan plenipotentiaries, meant to show thd
power their people had given thus to annex Texas. It only shows the very reverse,'
inasmuch as it exhibits an authority for a different thing, upon a former occasion*
as I have already said. That authority, to the whole.extent given, ceased with
the failure and the abandonment of the effort made under it to procure from Mr. »
Van Buren's Administration a union between this country and Texas in 1837. ?
In lieu of such a popular authority, however, it offers the personal assurances of >
the plenipotentiaries that they have "the most abiding confidence that, should '
the annexation be consummated, the same will receive the hearty and full con- r
currence of the people of Texas." This, then, is all we have for the thing.
23
The plenipotentiaries next furnish statements of the extent of the grants made
of their public domain, and of the condition of their Treasury. Of the former
of these, it is sufficient to say that it is only vaguely described as a " late report
of the Commissioner of their Land Office," and was really made in 1841. It
cannot, then, be in the slightest degree depended on. But, besides, a glance at
the most recent maps, the last of Mitchell's, will show that vast grants cover the
whole surface of Texas. Those are laid down upon it, like the names of coun¬
ties on our State maps, and equally serve to designate territorially the whole soil.
Besides these, there are great bodies of floating grants and loans, redeemable at
the option of the holder, in lands to be chosen by him. Such is, in general, 1
apprehend, the real condition of their public lands.
The Treasury statement is equally delusive. That which is furnished is only
to the year 1840; for its date is of. the 12th January, 1841. This evidently
relates only to their acknowledged debts. The repudiated are left out of view,
and also the issues, said by well-informed people to have been made, and put into
market for just what they would bring, with scarcely a record kept in their Trea¬
sury of such emissions. From the character of many of their functionaries, few
doubt that the loosest possible administration of their pecuniary affairs has gene¬
rally prevailed. Certainly, the plenipotentiaries say that " it is known" that
since " the above date, the revenues of the Government have nearly equalled
expenditures; "so that the debt has not materially increased ; but it is notorious
that until the present annexation speculation began, Texas scrip was from 3 to
7 cents in the dollar, and that their navy was latterly sold under execution—facts
a little decisive, I take it, but even less significant than the following very frank
or very unguarded avowal, let out in this very document, intended to exhibit to
advantage the state of their finances. Speaking of the Treasury report, above
cited, (for 1840,) the plenipotentiaries say, " since the date above referred to, no
further general estimate (of their debts) has been made at the Treasury De¬
partment.'''' These are their own words; and I ask any man to figure to him¬
self, if he can, the state of a Treasury in which, for more than three years, not
an estimate even has been attempted of its liabilities!
Let me now, from these main papers, turn at once (for I must hasten forward)
to the message itself which conveyed them to us, sift the rights which it alleges,
the State reasons which it sets forth, and compare it with the further series of
official or other papers, which make up the history of this negotiation.
The President, of course, sets up the independence of Texas as so established
as to warrant our acting as if the struggle between her and Mexico was at an
end. He relies for his justification, partly on the length of the contest, partly on
the failure of Mexico since 1836 to attempt the re-conquest with any serious
mass of force; yet, further, on the recognition, by various great Powers, of
Texas as an independent Government; then again, on the inhuman character
which the conflict has assumed; and lastly, on the political necessity imposed
upon us, by a design in which he considers England busy, to subvert our slave
institution, by means of bringing about emancipation in Texas. I need scarcely
say that if the last is a sincere motive, or real justification, it is of a nature so
preponderating as to reduce the others to insignificance, or cast upon them strong
suspicion of being employed merely to palliate the wrong upon which that ne¬
cessity forces ps. Nevertheless, I will consider these several points according to
their order, not their importance.
As to the question of the Independence of Texas, a few plain principles of
common sense can settle that, without any reference to treaties or national law.
When the revolt of a country, heretofore dependent, takes a more settled form,
by its establishing a provisional government of its own, other nations do not
abandon their neutrality towards the Government from which the insurgents
\
24
have broken off, by merely recognizing these last as forming a distinct people,
when they seem fairly to have rendered themselves so. Nevertheless, a neutral
must, of course, confine herself to peaceful acts, strictly, as long as the contest
really is such. To supply either party, by public means, with troops, or ships,
or arms, or subsidies, is an abandonment of neutrality ; and so is it equally, to
obtain of either that which is in dispute between them. Precisely in conformi¬
ty with these principles was tire conduct of the Van Buren administration in
1837, when Texas, (after our recognition of her independence, so far as we
were concerned, so far as we could do it inoffensively towards Mexico,) solicited
a union with us. The Secretary of State then said, 011 the part of our Govern¬
ment :
"In determining with respect to the independence of other countries, the United States
have never taken the question of right between the contending parties into consideration.—
They have deemed it a dictate of duly an.l policy to decide upon the question as one of fact
merely. This was the course pursued with respect to Mexico herself. It was adhered to
when analagous events rendered it proper to investigate the question of Texan independence.'"
And a little further 011, he says:
" So long as Texas shall remain at war, while the United States are at peace with her
adversary, the proposition of the Texan Minister Plenipotentiary necessarily involves the
question of war with that adversary."
Of like effect, and of authority in some respects still higher, are the following
sentences from the message, about the same time, of a distinguished Governor
of South Carolina, General McDuffie, a near kinsman of the honorable Senator,
though of very different politics. Speaking of the intention of Texas to apply
for admission into this Confederacy, he says:
" In my opinion, Congress ought not even to entertain such a proposition, in the present
state of the controversy. If we admit Texas into our Union while Mexico is still waging
war against that province, with a view to re-establish her supremacy over it, we shall, by
the very act itself, make ourselves a party to the war. Nor can we take this step without
incurring this heavy responsibility, until Mexico herself shall recognize the independence of
her revolted province."
Again, a little later, what said the Envoy of Texas herself, when moving
this question a second time, in 1842? The words, considering the importance
of the subject, and that this was its opening, can pass for nothing short of those
of Texas herself. Mr. Van Zandt writes, on the 14th December, 1S42, to our
Secretary of State, to urge an interposition to stop the war by receiving Texas-
into the Union, and says, distinctly :
" If Mexico believes herself able to resubjugate Texas, her right to make the effort will not
be denied," &c.—(Senate Doc. 311, p. 17.)
This plain principle Mr. Webster copies almost literally into the interposition
which he accordingly, 011 the 3lst January following, addresses to Mexico :
" Mexico has an undoubted right to subjugate Texas, if she can, so far as other States are-
concerned, by the common and lawful means of war."—(Same Doc. p. 70.).
In conformity with these same plain facts and principles, Mr. Thompson, out-
Envoy, thus repledges to Mexico, 011 the 14th March following, our observance
of the duties of a neutial:
" In obedience to your instructions, I then alluded, in the most friendly atfd respectful
terms, to the character of the war now going on between Mexico and Tex is, and told him,
(Santa Anna,) that, whilst our G jvrnment was determined to observe the s/rie'est neutrality,
in that tear, it'fe't that it was its duty to remonstrate, in the most respectful manner, with
both Governments, against predatory forays, really not war, which were now made by both
Mexico and Texas," &c.
Finally, the present Secretary of State, in his letter of April 18th, (same do-
25
cunient, p. 50,) to the British Minister, directly admits every thing in the follow¬
ing avowal, (p. 51 :)
" It is true the United States, at an early period, recognized the independence of Texas;
hut, in doing so, it is well known that they but acted in conformity with an established prin¬
ciple to recognize the Government de facto."
The recognition, then,, as Mr. Forsyth said, did not enter into any question
of right, and, as thus limited, bound us necessarily to the observance of every
neutral duty, until that question had been settled between the parties to it;
while, on the other hand, it implied, of course, nothing unfriendly to Mexico.
The distinguished Senator from Pennsylvania, who has lately taken a promi¬
nent part in this matter, was therefore wrong, when he resisted in this body
even the mere recognition of the independence of Texas, as likely to engage us
in war with Mexico, and to involve us in national suspicion ; for neither of
these facts would have followed a mere recognition, as long as we went no
further. Mr. Buchanan then said, by way of objection to the bare recognition :
*' We can never, with any proper regard for the welfare of our constituents, devote their
energies and their resources to the cause of planting and sustaining free institutions among
the people of other nations."
Again, he said, on the same subject :
" But let us not, by departing from our settled policy, give rise to the suspicion that we
have got up a war for the purpose of wresting Texas from those to whom, under the faith of
treaties, it justly belongs. Since the treaty of 1819 with Spam, there can no longer be any
doubt but that this province is a part of Mexico.'"
The citations which I have made from our own high official acts, from a series
of declarations addressed either directly to Mexico herself, or, when to her oppo¬
nent, none the less pledges to Mexico than repulses to Texas, show beyond dis¬
pute, that when, in last November, her Envoy put in a protest against all that
the Executive was then preparing, and all that he has since accomplished in
this treaty, Mexico but repeated to us our own language, but recalled to us out-
own pledges to her and the world. We had proclaimed, again and again, in
solemn and decisive forms, that we could not incorporate Texas, (the war yet
pending between her and Mexico,) without an utter breach of national faith—
without making ourselves directly a party to that war. When, therefore, an
administration was found abandoned enough to occupy itself with violating all
these duties, so often recognized—all these pledges, so often given—what could
Mexico, for purposes of justice, do more rightful, or what, for purposes of peace,
more necessary, than to give us the notice of the consequences authorized by
all international law, and as clearly authorized by so many voluntary pledges
of our own ? She protested then; and how was that protest received ? As
nothing short of an insult and a threat! With a singular mixture of audacity
and fraud, the Executive, through the head of the State Department, turnei
this perfectly legitimate and even necessary notice into a pretended offence, and
made the simulated wound of its dignity and honor a pretext for the refusal of
all peaceful and proper assurances. Busily engaged all the while (as we now
know) in finding the means of carrying into effect, by surprise, against our own
people as well as Mexico, this perfidious plan, all the indignation of outraged
integrity, all the sensibility of stainless truth, were assumed, to cover the trickery
until its moment of calculated success, and double its turpitude with this inso¬
lent affectation of affronted virtue !
Nor were our pledges confined to mere words, however solemn—to declara¬
tions however sacredly binding: we carried into an act of the highest nature
as a tie a bond of faith still more peculiar. We put in our mediation, as a
friendly, an impartial, and a humane power, to stay the strife on foot, to bring
it to a safe and honorable conclusion for both parties : and it is while the mat¬
ter has thus stood suspended in part by our intercession—while Mexico, trusting
to our honor, which should always be a safe reliance, exchanges arms for ne¬
gotiation—that our President secretly sets on foot a traffic with her opponent,
and presently, when the bargain is made, alleges for our justification that very
truce which had been granted, in part, at our intervention ! Sir, a more infa¬
mous fraud, under the mask of amity, was never committed. Could we sanc¬
tion it here, tire name of "Punic Faith" so long the by-word of the earth, or
Ligurian or Numidian duplicity, so much the transmitted abhorrence of man¬
kind, wherever not mere oath breakers, will grow honorable and fair beside our
own ; for this, I insist, is a crime without even a single bad example of other
nations, of its kind, to countenance it, to keep company with it in ignominious
fellowship. Not even in Texan breasts does the dishonest thought of such
villainous collusion seem to have entered, but by suggestion from our State
Department. It is thence that the lesson of iniquity is darkly breathed through
Mr. Murphy into President Houston's ear, in the execrable exhortation which
may be found in the despatch of January 16th, (Doc. 341, p. 47.) It is in the
following strain that those speaking in the name of this country, after drawing
the parties into an armistice, endeavor to work one of them up to making the
very negotiation we have meditated, an utter fraud for our benefit:
"The pending negotiation with Mexico ought not to present any difficulty, unless Texas
is prepared to go back again under the dominion of that power. As it is certain she will
not consent to this, under any possible circumstances, the result of that negotiation cannot
affect unfavorably the proposition of annexation to this country. If Mexico should acknow¬
ledge the independence of Texas, then Texas will have an undisputed right to dispose of
herself as she pleases; and if Mexico should refuse that acknowledgment, Texas will the
more need the protection which the Umted States now offers. She can require nothing more,
in this last event, than that the United .States shall lake upon themselves the adjustment of
her difficulties with Mexico.'"
In every mediation, the powers interposing their good offices can surely be
held to nothing less than a pledge to each of the parties, that the mediator be¬
lieves both sincere in their intentions, and that the mediation shall not be turned
into a fraud upon either. Not a little, indeed, is the mediator bound, should
fraud ensue, to aid in punishing the party so abusing the good office done. If,
as in this case, there be several mediators, then all of these are bound to a mutual
enforcement of good faith, and to sustain against any serious wrong the party
made to suffer by perfidy in the negotiation. Such is the position, as full of
danger as disgrace, in which the Executive has ventured to place us. We,
one of the mediators, are iound contriving the ruin of one of the parties, and for
this purpose persuading the other not to regard the negotiation on foot; telling
him that it cannot possibly come to anything—that he can't be worsted, there¬
fore, and may be bettered, by conducting it without any sincerity !
Nor, in the shameful management of this business, has the dignity, the self-
respect of our country been less prostituted than its morality. Mark the despi¬
cable wheedling with which the Executive approaches the Government of
Texas !—the cringes, the congees, the coaxings, with which we are made to seek
to propitiate its favors! Hear how our Government is made to whine and
supplicate:
"The failure of the proposition heretofore made by Texas for admission into our Union,
should not be allowed to influence her present course. At that time, the question was not
understood in this country. - It had not been canvassed, even by leading politicians, much
less by the people at large, and the consequences dependent upon it were not then develop¬
ed as they now are. If the proposition could have been placed at that time in the light in
which it is now seen, there would have been no hesitation upon the subject. Indeed, it was
then regarded rather as a question of time than anything else; for I am well assured that a
majority of the people of this country have alwys considered the annexation of Texas to
27
their territory as an event that must happen, sooner or later. At all events, no other ques¬
tion can grow out of the failure of the first proposition than one of mere etiquette or national
self-respect. I have anticipated and provided for this. Supposing that Texas might fee*
some reluctance to renew a proposition which had been once rejected, I have invited her,
through her Charge at Washington, to enter into negotiations upon the subject."
Every body understands that this Treaty has been shaped for individual aims alone ; that
its moving cause was a desperate Presidential speculation; that its main agents were the.
gamblers and brokers of the bankrupt finances and fraudulent land grants of Texas.—
Through legitimate and sober negotiation, necessarily deliberate and quiet in its movements,
nothing could be done rash enough, extravagant enough, nor noisy enough, to be brought to
bear, in popular agitation, upon the Baltimore Democratic Convention, and, through its de¬
cision, upon the next Presidential election. In this one great aim, all public purposes were
forgotten. For this, we were to take, not the justest, nor the most feasible method, but the
suddenest. That might certainly, in the end, plunge us in endless difficulties, disaster, dis¬
honor—every thing most to be deplored; but all these, though speedy effects, would be
tardy enough only to injure the Union after they had served the momentary purpose of the
President yet again to be. Their latal consequences were at least not swift enough to arrive
before the struggle in the Democratic Convention.
Such being the great ruling aim, of course the subordinate questions were to take that
form which would best suit those who were likeliest to lend to the plan the animated, the
vigorous, the vehement support of strong individual interest, not the mere affected fervor of
patriotism. Next to the mighty electioneering interest came, therefore, in the treaty, what¬
ever could enlist the zeal, by enlisting the cupidity of that great and wide spread body of
adventurous speculators, who were dipped deep in Texas lands or Texas bonds.
I pass, however, to other things. Having shown that rightfully, this Government could
not, pending a war, step in to decide between two States, the subject of the dispute, (which
is here the right to Texas,) and that we had so declared in every form, up to the time When
this intrigue and fraud was set on foot. I will next show that, in many parts of this cor¬
respondence, there are the most direct and decisive contradictions to the President's mere
assumption and allegation, that Texas is able to withstand Mexico, that Texas has obtained
a positive and permanent independence.
That fact or assumption, is abundantly disproved by every circumstance in her position,
by a great part of what the President urges, and especially by the alarm which he spreads
of the imperative necessity of acting " now," because Texas must otherwise be driven upon
very hard terms, and at once, into the arms of some European power. But what foreign
power, having treaties with Mexico, would be faithless enough to deal with Texas as our
President has done? In the very message itself that accompanies the treaty, the President
says, "It cannot be denied that Texas is greatly depressed in her energies by the long pro¬
tracted war with Mexico. Under these circumstances, it is but natural that she should seek
for safety, and repose under the protection of some stronger power." Yet, we are told, this
treaty does not make war by giving that protection and repose. Again he says, " I repeat,
the Executive saw Texas in a state of almost hopeless exhaustion." What exhaustion ?
That occasioned by the pending war with Mexico, which we are now asked to assume, in
direct violation of our treaty of peace and amity with Mexico, and thereby to disgrace the
United States in the eyes of the civilized world. I cannot, and I will not, advise and con¬
sent to the ratification of a treaty for any such purpose, or one attended by such consequen¬
ces. Were I to d© so, with my views, I should be faithless to myself, to my constituents, to
nty country and my God.
What says Mr. Secretary Upshur, in the very outset of this business in his letter of the Sth
August last ? ?' Pressed by an unrelenting army on her borders, her treasury exhausted, and
her credit almost destroyed, Texas is in a condition to need the support of other nations, and
to obtain it upon terms of great hardship, and many sacrifices to herself." On this subject,
our Minister in Texas, says, " Inasmuch as the commissioners of Texas, now in Mexico, in
treaty or negotiation touching an armistice, are supposed not to have concluded their labors,
and it is clear to the President of Texas, that so soon as this negotiation in relation to annexa¬
tion is known to the Government of Mexico, all negotiation on that, and all other questions
between Texas and Mexico will cease, and that the President of Mexico will instantly com¬
mence active hostilities against Texas, which Texas is wholly unprepared, by sea or land, to
resist."
I presume no one will think it necessary to call on me for further proofs, that it was per¬
fectly well known to the Executive that Texas is incapable of defending herself; that her
Independence was merely nominal; that her condition is now far more precarious than in
1837; that she has progressively grown weaker since then, and Mexico stronger; and that,
in very truth, her Independence, which was the gift of the individual aid and sympathy of
28
our citizens, ceases the moment she shall no longer be upheld by the hope of help from the-
United States.
To take the measure of the credulity of folks like these, especially when their wishes,
and designs come to the help of their belief, may seem somewhat rash ; but still as I do not
know that they have eaten of that plant which was said of old to make men mad, I must
hold it utterly out of the question to suppose that they can have swallowed all this stuff
aoout Mr. Andrews. Certainly, even the Secretary ot State, who first seized upon the
thing, saw full well the extreme nonsense of it, in one of its main points; and, in remarking
upon it in his letter to Mr. Murphy of the Sth August last, after repeating the statement of"
the "private citizen of Maryland," he admits, in the very outset, " that there is some diffi¬
culty in comprehending the terms of the proposition as stated," which is as good as to say
that it is nonsense. And so it surely is ; for what is the plan ? " That an English compa¬
ny should be raised, and pay Texas for her slaves." Here one would think was the end of
the bargain ; for when equivalents are to be interchanged, what more is to be done? Texas
here would give up her slaves, and the English association its money—so oce would say.
But this is far from being the result; for Texas has paid for the money, thus far, only in
slaves ; whereas she is to pay over again in lands 1 Nor is that all; when she has thus
paid twice over, it is but a loan after all; and the English Government is to aid the third
operation, to come in as a guarantee of the interest! Of course, then, the principle still
remains against Texas as a debt! Well might the Secretary confess that there were some
obscurities in the plan 1 Yet that is far from hindering his blazing out upon it, and making
it not merely the corner-stone, but the entire foundation of a mighty national affair. Nor
does it become a whit more rational, in the corrected version which Mr. Murphy under¬
takes to give. In it, again, the Texans are first to give their slaves to the full value of a
loan, and then to grant, in addition, a vast amount of lands, so large as to form a future fund
for the abolition of slavery all over the United States ! The main difference which he
makes is, that the British Government was to guarantee, not Texas, but the punctuality of
her own citizens ; and really I do not see that there was any thing very alarming in that,
though much extremely improbable. Such is this strange tale; and though, as I have said,
the Secretary evidently sees its folly, yet what does he do? Inquire into it ? Not at all.
Resort to the British Government for explanations ? By no means. Instantly, a letter full
of simulated alarms is written to Mr. Murphy. To the English Minister here, or to his
court, not a word is said, not a syllable to Mr. Everett, until just one month and twenty
days after the first letter to Mr. Murphy, the overture to the whole opera that has been sung
us since, and in which (as I am told is usual in overtures) the rudiments, or what musicians
call the motives of the whole peice may be found. This idle tale, then, discredited by him¬
self, is made, with not the smallest attempt to fathom it, the basis of all these proceedings.
It is not till fifty-one days afterwards, the 28th September, that Mr. Everett is directed to
look into the affair; and on the 16th October, just eighteen days after that, when yet Mr.
Everett could but just have got the despatch, we learn, from the note to Mr. Van Zandt,
that the Executive, in view of " recent occurrences in Europe," had made up his mind
to invite Texas, in all haste, to be annexed to the United States! Meantime, with all
his precautious not to diminish, by inquiry, the small pretences on which he has seized,
the Executive has got some information on the subject. He has learnt by Mr. Murphy's
letter of the 24th September, that Mr. Andrews had been driven out of Texas by its popu¬
lace, as soon as they heard of what he had been about, and the envoy himself expressly
entitles the whole affair, " the ridiculous transaction played off in London." Nor, indeed,
did Mr. Upshur himself attach any real consequence to it; for in his despatch on the sub¬
ject to our Minister at Mexico, on the 18th November, he directly admits tint there is no-
proof of any English design such as he was not only imputing, but acting upon ; for he says,
" I have no sufficient reason to suppose that England desires to acquire it, (Texas,) but the
subject in all its bearings is of deep interest to the United States." Thus, sir, disappears,
before a little scrutiny, all these phantoms of English abolition in Texas. Nothing re¬
mains of them but a parliamentary flourish of a man of no high repute in England, Lord
Brougham, some general declarations by the Premier, such as Premiers must always make
when popularity demands it, and the frank avowal of Lord Aberdeen to Mr. Everett, that
the Government had been solicited to stand guarantee to Texas, on a loan offered by the
Abolition society, but had refused; and that it had suggested to Mexico to connect the ad¬
mission of the Independence of Texas with the abolition of slavery there; hut thacMexico
had refused to listen to the suggestion, and that it had not, therefore, been renewed.
I take it, therefore, that all this official history of the motives and tfee rise of this proceed¬
ing is entirely false, meant but to mislead. Nor are we without proof of the fact, a great
deal more substantial than the Executive concludes treaties, sends out military and naval
forces, and puts us in a state of war upon. In other times, that which I am about to cite,
however well shown by facts to be authentic, would scarcely, fiviu Its orir. (at*
29
paper communication) have been brought into the Senate, but now things infinitely less fit
tc be produced are brought here upon the gravest occasion, and I surely need not hesitate
to give what I take to be the true secret history of this Texas treaty.
Ap annexation meeting was lately attempted in the venerable town of Williamsburg,
Virginia, the capital in some sort of the former judicial circuit of the Original negotiator
of this treaty. At it, among others, appeared Judge (now Professot-y Beverly Tucker, ot
William and Mary, whose extreme intimacy and whose close coincidence of political opin¬
ions and purposes with Mr. Upshur, various members sf this body perfectly understand.
The Professor, upon this occasion, entered into a recital of the true origin of this matter,
claiming himself to have set it on foot. The outline of what he told has been reported and
published, about two weeks since, in the Richmond Whig. It is no doubt faithful, since
though exceptions have been subsequently sent in and published to other parts of the re¬
port, the fidelity of this portion of it remains unimpeached. An abstract is as follows :
" Having first avowed his intimate acquaintance with this whole subject, and that he possessed petuliar
opportunities for being informed upon it, lie stated that the first proposition for annexation was made to
him, and by him next made to the fate distinguished Secretary of State, Judge Upshur. He stated that he
owned a large tract of land in Texas, and one half of about GO slaves, in partnership with a certain gentle¬
man there (name not recollected) of whom he spoke in the highest terms ; that this gentleman, in a letter
written some time in the year 1843, mentioned the subject of annexing Texas to the American Union; that
be (Professor T) immediately caught the idea and at once opened the subject to his friendjudge Upshur; that
Judge U. as eagerly took hold of an idea, declaring in a private letter that he was the only man in the Union
who could do the thing—that he could show the Northern people that annexation was their interest, and as
this was the weak point of a Yankee, there could be no difficulty in reconciling the Yankees to annexation ;
but if this could not be done, let things come to the worst. These iac/s were given from priva e letters
which had passed between Professor Pucker and Judge Upshur, and was communicated with egotistical
complaisance and evident pride, as if the communicator wa6 desirous to have the world know that he and
bis friends were alone eniitled to the glory of starling this great project of annexation !
" I must state another fact which will illustrate the spirit with which this matter was undertaken by one
of the distinguished actors in it, the country has a right to know it. Professor Tucker stated among other
things of a like character, that Judge Upshur had declared that if he could find one man in Congress with
firmness enough, he would, at the next session of Congress, bring things to a direct issue between the
North and the South."
This latter part, it must be confessed, smacks not a little of those resolutions from Beau¬
fort, South Carolina, which all have read with astonishment and pain, and with the open
declarations of many of the leading presses of the South Carolina party, especially their or¬
gan here, which has declared that Texas was to be preferred to the Union. Allow me to
examine that position for them, and to see what a new Southern Confederacy, founding its
existence on an act of rapine like this, and on a violent disruption of its previous national
ties, would be.
Let us suppose, for a moment, that what cannot well happen without a violent convulsion
is nevertheless brought about without any, and that a separate Confederacy quietly estab¬
lishes itself through all the States West and South, to the Ohio. The good which is to
follow for its people shall be, lor the sake of argument, security to slave institutions at large,
Free Trade, the opening to migration of a new, a fertile, and a highly genial region, and an
advanced value of slave property, as the consequence of all, but of the last especially. Let
us see how these causes will work.
If slaves advance in price, that cannot be in countries of exhausted soil, already stocked
with them, or in those where, from climate, the sugar and cotton culture cannot be carried
on in competition with the rich soils in the lower valley of the Mississippi and beyond.—
They will, then, only rise in price in Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina, Geor¬
gia, Tennessee, and Kentucky, because they will be sold to be carried away. And as a rise
in their value will make a la'rger capital necessary to carry on planting where it is already
unprofitable, of course this latter cause will hasten their rapid transfer South, by adding to
the cost with which slave labor must be carried on North.
They will be swept off, then, in but a short time, and the very States where this scheme
pretends to secure the permanence of slave property will be stripped, within four or five
years, of all slave property whatever. With them will go a large body of their masters,
nearly all averse in the extreme to turn wholesale slave-sellers, and attracted by the cheap
lands and large profits of the new country. Such numbers will probably yield to these in¬
ducements, that, from some parts of Virginia, a great portion of North Carolina, and nearly
all South Carolina and Georgia, except the rice lands, it will be a migration almost en masse,
and hardly any will remain that can get away.
Thus, then, by a speedy change in the labor and property of the seven States I have men¬
tioned, they will take just the same relation to the slave interest south-west of them as
Pennsylvania and the North now bear to the planting States; and abolition, sure to exist
where there are no slaves, will occupy the northern, and plague and threaten the Southern,
part of the new Confederacy, just as of old. In the great tract thus abandoned by much of
its proprietary, and more of its laboring population, lands must of course sink prodigiously
30
in Value. At last, for want of purchasers, many of them will be abandoned by their own¬
ers, one half whose slaves alone will, upon lands bought in Texas with the other half, make
far better crops than all on the worn and ill-used soil they now exhaust rather than culti¬
vate. Nor is this all: another very serious cause of depreciation will act. In the greater
part of the Southern States, there is a heavy public debt. On a diminished population and
depreciated property, that debt (which even now they can hardly provide tor) will fall with
a terrible weight of taxes; and these will operate strongly to induce fresh migration into
a new country whose debt has been assumed, and where there will be light taxes only.—
This effect cannot but happen as to Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, my own
State, Arkansas, Louisiana, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois.
There may, in a word, be benefits in the plan to Texas—very great benefits; but they
will be such as, to fill her veins, will drain the very life-blood of most of the present South¬
ern States. There may be advantages to those who are to break up and to leave their native
communities; but to those who remain and cling faithfully to them, the results will be de¬
plorable. Property will decline; cultivation will cease in its main branches; new objects
and methods of tillage, new forms of industry, will have to be sought; all improvement will
cease; the whole society will go backward for a time; and every thing, in a word, will de¬
cline, except taxes, and perhaps repudiation.
From this changed order of things, what relief will Free-Trade bring, where the staples
that bred the desire of it have ceased to be grown in these nearer Southern States ? They
will be planting States no longer; and their soil and climate fit them little for farm¬
ing, for grazing, or for grain-growing. Producing no longer anything for exportation,
what sort of a boon will Free Trade,be to them ? It strikes me that it will be not a little
like a present of mustard to a man who has no meat, or ruffles to one withouta shirt. But,
sir, to them, in such a Confederacy, yet another condition of things must ensue. In the
States which I have described, in the necessities imposed by their position, it is among them
that manufactures must spring up, as the most profitable employment. In this, then, again,
they will occupy, as in regard to slavery, the very same relation to the States beyond them
as New England now does to the South. The existing sectional opposition of interests will
thus start up afresh between the extremeties of the new league; and the present Free
Trade men (including some of the distinguished gentlemen whom I see around me,) will,
unless they, in the meantime, have gone to Texas, become violent advocates ol a protective
Tariff—unabated enemies of Free Trade. *
Already, sir, from the causes I have mentioned, acting only with less intensity, this very
state of things is eoming about. Maryland is already a Tariff State ; Virginia, North Caro¬
lina, and Georgia, are rapidly becoming so; my own State and Kentucky have shown how
they regard that policy. What I have said is but the history of what we have seen and are
seeing, the facts only compressed, by more sudden and stronger causes, into a few years' space.
Such and so conclusive are the economical, the pecuniary objections to this scheme ot
Southern Confederacy : but there is, further, a political, I might almost say a physical diffi¬
culty, of which these statesmen have not considered, though it is not less obvious than it is
insuperable. Near its very centre, their intended territory is crossed by a mighty valley,
itself, at no distant day, an empire. Do they expect to bridle, with what will be compara¬
tively but a little Atlantic border, that wide and powerful region ? Do they think to give
law to the entire Mississippi, by seizing upon its mouth ? Sir, the race that possesses that
great stream, is not one, in point of either spirit or strength, to be tamed to the will of any
builder of political castles in the air, that thinks, at a word, to lock them in from the sea.
That vast valley must have one common social destiny ; dor will the arrangements which
schemers make, in South Carolina or Texas, at their ease, pluck away from the Great West
its passway abroad, and reduce it to dependence. No ! The strong do not follow the for¬
tunes ol the weak; and if the one or the other is to submit, the Great West is much more
like to give the law to this new realm, than to receive the law from it. I have shown what
consequences, what new social arrangements, this entire plan would work; how surely it
must empty of all their slave population, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee, and part of Alaba-
bama. Now will these, after having been, by the very execution of this scheme, converted
into free States, and will the many and populous countries behind them, consent to be a mere
appendage to a league like this ? Never, sir ! The entire valley, I repeat, must ever have
a common political destiny. Its natural ties, and thsoe of habit and feeling, bind it to this
Union. If 'here is ever to be a Southern Confederacy, it cannot stretch across to Texas, but
must be girdled in by the Mississippi. Such a thing, agitators and speculators may talk of;
but I do not think any man here will live to see it; and I am sure, if he does, he will live to
see troubles, disasters, conflicts ending but in mutual injury, misfortune, and misery, which
will make him deplore that he has lived so long.
I think I have thus shown what will be the special benefits, the benefits to the slave
States as they now are, which this thing' promises; that it will transfer a large part of
31
their population and wealth; that it will break down the value of their lands; that it will
add heavily to taxation ; that it will revolutionize property and pursuits ; that as it will only
shift the slave region further South, and convert as large a space into free States as it adds
of slave territory, it will leave the very interest for which all this is to be done, still weaker
than before; that if dismemberment, which I regret to say seems to me clearly in the con¬
templation of a part of these political projectors, ensues, it will inevitably reproduce on a
smaller theatre the same questions of protection and of abolition, the same sectional strife,
which, in an evil hour, has bred the disaffection that urges men to this design ; that if such
dismemberment come, it would not quietly stretch across to Texas ; that a war for the low¬
er Mississippi would probably follow : and now let me add, that I see no possible event from
such a war, but that the new Confederacy, to sustain itself against the superior force of the
rest of the Union, must do precisely what we are told Texas is about to do, and in this very
prudent plan for the permanent security of slavery, cast itself for protection upon that very
foreign power, whose alarming designs of abolition are made the great bugbear to frighten
us into the jaws of this plan, and drive us, by terror, into crime and shame.
But advantages of a more general nature are alleged, such as will benefit the whole Union.
They tell us that it will give us a new and a noble territory; that its peopling will offer a
fresh mart for the manufactures of the North, the provisions of the West, and additional em¬
ployment for our Eastern shipping; that it will add to our military security ; that it will
prevent smuggling; that it will afford scope for the illimitable Anglo-Saxon propensity to
scatter, and to get more land ; that it will promote the diffusion of our beneficent principles,
and, as General Jackson expresses it, " extend the area of Freedom." Were all these things
true, I should still refuse to seize such advantages at the price of national dishonor which
we are to pay lor them. I should still, under my special duty to my own State, and to ma¬
ny others, vote against a measure which will deeply injure them. The Union is well as it
is, and ha$ much greater need to govern itself well, to manage wisely what it has, than to
call upon a large part of it to submit to a grievious loss with the object of merely extending
our territory.
All know, sir, what a deplorable system of farming that is, where the landholder grasps at
more than he can employ, cultivating most wretchedly a large surface, while the skilful til¬
lage of but half as much would, with the same labor, yield him a larger crop, and give him
an improving soil, instead of one growing every day worse. This individual propensity, long
the misfortune of our husbandmen, is now rapidly correcting itself; and so will soon do, I
trust, that kindred national rage for wide, rather than well-managed possessions, which men
have largely counted on, in calculating the popularity of this attempt.
If extent of possessions is to stand to us in the place of public honor, and beneficence and
wisdom of sway, still we must yield in that species of glory to Russia, whose arbitrary rule
covers a far wider surface of misgovemment. Nor shall we yet at all equai Tamerlain or
Ghengis Khan, who had the honor of reducing under their absolute domain still broader
tracts. Spain herself, whom we now so despise, once held in fee almost a third of the known
world. Her thirst for misused dominion was as unscrupulous as ours can aspire to be; her
enterprize as active; her military spirit far higher. What, then, is to assure us, treading
the same career, from the same, or a yet speedier fate ? There are surely simple lessons in
these things, which every citizen of a land like this, where all order is but the result of in¬
telligence, should have learnt—that there is more genuine gratness in governing wisely even
a narrow territory, than in stretching ever so widely, a cruel, an unjust, or an imcompetent
dominion, that only acquires, but knows not how to rule, to benefit. What is a mere em¬
pire of disorder, compacted together by none of the true arts of sway. It is preparing but
a speedier downfall for all that we have of good, or right or happy. Already we have cast
the wide foundations of what, if we persevere in the sober and steadfast, and sure greatness
before us, must rapidly become the noblest government that the earth has ever seen. Are
we to abandon the brightness, the certainty of a public destiny like that before us, for a
scheme as wicked as it is wild ; that, to compensate for the general abhorrence with which
it will turn the eyes of all nations upon us, offers us no probability but that of earlier dis¬
ruption, and decay? In all the past, history has presented one uniform truth—that govern¬
ments must be oppressive somewhat in proportion to their extent. Already fierce divisions,
conflicts of interest the most threatening, warn us to keep within our present limits, and, at
least, before we add to them, to compose, to consolidate, to unite. At this instant, the very
men who would teach us to dream this sad and perilous vision of a greatness without honor
or prudence or need, are many of them intent on demolishing the very grandeur to which
they invite you. It is disunion that beckons on to this scheme of rapacity: you are to
plunder, that disunion may possess; you are to steal, that it may receive ; you are foully and
faithlessly to wrest Texas from Mexico, in order that disunion may be furnished with a
broader and surer basis for a new confederacy. These men tell us that they themselves
groan under the curse of this government; and in the same breath, that they pant to imparl
32
its blessings to others; they rave of England, and her terrible designs; and what are these
designs? Apparently nothing worse than their own summum bonurn, Free Trade, the acme
of ail wise policy! But if the embrace of England be so terrible, why seek a seperatiou
which must fling them at once into her arms ? I remember too well the day when a direct
dissociation from us, a direct association with England, gave them any thing but alarm, the
days of nullification; nor have their thoughts changed since then, if their language inter¬
prets them. As little can I trust their promised advantages, in the new region, for our
manufacturers, our provision trade, or our navigation, Texas, they design as a new aug¬
ment of the Free Trade region, an addition of anti-tariff votes. What will the consump¬
tion of its present population of not lSO.OOO^add to our trade ? And its augmented popula¬
tion will consist of but our own citizens, whom we already supply. As to the provision
trade, they themselves boast that the upper regions of that countryare fit only for stock
raising; so that it is likelier to be the rival of Kentucky and Ohio abroad, than their cus¬
tomer at home. If th'e carrying of its cotton and sugar is to employ our shipping, then it
must be at the expense of a great overproduction of the first of those articles, with which
we now glut the market of the world. In short, sir, I see nothing but what is utterly falla¬
cious in the object, and utterly bad and disgraceful in the method. The entire plan is a
complication of rapine, of impolicy, and of imposture, such as I had trusted never to see
presented for public favor in this country, by any that presumed to set themselves up as the
guides and the lights of this nation.
To Texas herself, meantime, sir, I give, as I have ever given, my warm sympathies in
her brave struggle for the highest privilege to which a people can rise—independence. I
acknowledge the kindred blood that runs in the veins of her people. Most gladly would I
see her free; but free by her own arms, the only sure, the only noble way to freedom, such
as our common forefathers trod. I have no confidence in any liberty that is the gift of
others, and not wrought out by the good right hands of the free themselves. Even them,
sir, the successful battle field may have won, but something yet nobler tharrvalor is neces¬
sary to keep the bright attainment, a spirit as calm, as right, as wise, as pure, as order-loving
as it is brave, and that knows how to conquer what is far more difficult to subdue than any
foe without—the foe within, the wild tendency to misrule, to faction, to disorders that shake
or disgrace the State, to a rage of personal selfishness or corruption that heeds no claim of
country, to a liberty that knows little of private morality, and nothing of that true public
spirit without which freedom is but a letting loose of every man's hand against the rest, in
the ignoble anarchy of parties intent only on pillaging the State, and of leaders without ca¬
pacity and without the thought to govern any thing but a caucus.
Most gladly, then, were there no such things as national honor or faith—were treaties
but so much waste paper—were Constitutions as idle within as the great rules between
people and people empty without, would I assist Texas in her struggle. She has my re¬
spects, and my good wishes, in honor of many men really soble and brave, whom I know to
have engaged in it. I yield them my sincere sympathies and best wishes; but I can, at
present, yield them nothing more. I will not set my feelings above an honest discharge of
my duties. I will not, out of kindness to Texas, trample on all the solemn obligations
tohich we owe to faith, to peace, to justice, to the Constitution, to this Union itself, to the
principles that are to sustain it, and to its people. I pretend not, however, sir, to that pro¬
phetic skill of politics which can settle questions like this for all time to come. My humble
effort at statesmanship is but to reach, and prudently to resolve, the question now to beaded
on. These things may take another form. Annexation may, at some day, assume a shape
neither perilous nor dishonorable, nor coupled with any of those sectional dissentions, or de¬
signs which would now deter me from it. It may present itself, and probably will, as a
question of expediency alone. Should it so come, while I have any public part to take on it,
I will, as now, endeavor calmly to examine all the attendant circumstances, and to guide
myself in action by them, and the wishes of the people I represent. With givingmy vote
against ratifying the present treaty, my present duty on that subject will be performed,
T E X A11 A N N E X A T I O N BILL.
SPEECH OF MR. BENTON, OF MISSOURI,
IN REPLY TO MR. McDUFFIE.
Delivered in the Senate of the United States, Saturday, June 15, 1814.
Rising, as Mr. McDuffie concluded, and taking up the last words of his speech, Mr. Besto»
exclaimed—but with this-great difference! this great difference! that my bill refers the question
of war with Mexico to Congress! where all questions of war belong! and the negotiators of
this treaty made war themselves! They, the President and his Secretary of State, made the war
themselves; and made it unconstitutionally, perfidiously, clandestinely, and piratically. The
secret orders to our army and navy were piratical, for they weic without law; and to waylay,
and attack a friendly power, with whom we have a treaty of amity; and as a member of a court
martial, I would sentence to be shot any officer of the army, or navy, who should dare to attack
Mexican troops, or ships, or cities, under that order. Officers are to obey lawful orders, and no
others; and they are not to make war by virtue of any presidential orders, until Congress has
declared it. They may go to the place under the orders of the President; but to attack the
ships and troops of Mexico, is another affair, and subjects them to a responsibility for which an
illegal order is no justification. The army and navy belong to the United States, and not to
the President and his Secretary of State; and no degree of ignorance—no feeling of subjection,
or passive obedience—can justify officers in a case of flagrant illegality. General Wall, a
governor and a general in the British service, was hanged twenty years after the event, for
illegally putting one man to death: what should be done to American officers, whose fealty ie
due to the law, and r.ot to individuals, who should commit war by virtue of illegal orders?
Happily, the rejection of the treaty, and the consequent recall of our ships and troops, releasee
the question from further difficulties as it concerns the officers. But how stands it with a I'resi
dent and Secretary—who have literally done what Patrick Henry never conceived (for his
famous expression applied to the Federal Government itself, and not to its mere administrators)—
when these two functionaries, by a secret compact with a foreign power, employ the pnrsc and
the sword upon a peaceful neighbor, with whom we have treaties of amity, commerce, naviga¬
tion, and limits; and that without the knowledge of Congress, then sitting in their presence?
Officers, since the rejection of the treaty, may get out of their position without the guilt of pirati¬
cal war; but what is the gui|t of the men who sent them out to commit it—who concealed their
illegal orders from Congress—gave contradictory reasons for them to the Senate, when delected—
and whose folly might make war even after their absurd reason for it had ceased: for how could
these naval and military officers know that the treaty was rejected until long after it was rejected?
and during all which time their orders were still in force to lie in wait for the Mexicans, and
attack them going to Texas! What is due to the guilt of men who have ordered such ciimcs as
these, although the decision of the Senate may prevent their perpetration 1
The Senator from South Carolina, (Mr. McDufpif.,) assimilates my bill to the treaty, and
makes if one equally insulting to Mexico. Strange comparison this! Hyperion to a Satyr?
Printed at Gideon's office, Ninth street, Washington
Q
My bill is constitutional; for it refers the question of war to Congress. It is respectful to Mex¬
ico; for it requires lier to be consulted before, and not after, the treaty. It assumes her consent
to be necessary now, in the present state of the question between her and Texas; but supposes
a time when it will not be necessary, and of which Congress is to judge. In all this, as in eyery
other particular, it differs as light differs from darkness, and as reason differs from folly, from the
treaty of the administration; a treaty that makes war without the knowledge of Congress, and
without a preliminary effort to conciliate Mexico! And whenever Congress comes to decide the
question of war with Mexico, as a means of getting Texas a year or so sooner, then they will
have a serious question on hand, and one to be viewed under many aspects. The justice of such
a war may claim a thought from the consciences of some, not having, as we certainly have not,
any cause of war with Mexico. Its policy may claim consideration with others, who might
deem it impolitic for the republic of the United States to commence a war upon the republic of
Mexico, with the certainty of exasperating against us all the republics of South America. Its
profit might arrest the attention of others, who might see in the loss of the Mexican trade more
injury to individual and national wealth, than the difference of a few years in the acquisitions of
Texas could balance ur repair. All this a Congress, representing the people, might consider and
count the cost of, before they engaged in a war with a neighbor with whom we have trade and
treaties, and wfiich is at the head of the cordon of southern republics. Congress would consider
these thinggs—our administration did not.
"The} rushed in
Where angels fear to tread."
Compared to this treaty, my bill is an angel—I use the word in a Greek sense, (eu nggclos)—
a gvtod messenger—a messenger of good tidings; for it is a messenger of peace; not a firebrand
of war—piratical war. It gives Mexico a chance to do what it is her interest and true policy to
do; for she and Texas can never live in harmony together; and soon or late separation is inev¬
itable. And here I again remark upon the absurdity of saying, Mexico has no right to disagree
to the annexation. That absurdity has been repeated too often. Mexico is a sovereign State,
and decides that question for herself! She decides for herself whether she has claims on Texas,
and what price she sets upon them; and that she has often declared is war! and, not waiting
' for war from her, our President and Secretary make it upon her, and ask the Senate to do the
: same. The ratification of the treaty would have been the adoption of the war by the Senate.
The Senator from South Carolina, who has done me the honor to address his whole speech
to me, takes exception to the word neophyte, applied by me to the new friends of Texas. I am
surprised at this exception, coming from him. That Senator is a scholar—no mean one—(I use
the term in its literary sense)—and in his ear, familiar with the language of scholars, the word
can imply nothing offensive or derogatory. It is, indeed, a chaste and classic phrase, known to
the best writers, both sacred and profane. St. Paul uses it in his epistles, (the Greek copies;)
and after naming him, no higher authority is wanted for what is gentlemanly and scholastic, as
well a6 what is pious and christian; but, bring me a dictionary, (speaking to a page of the
Senate,) bring me Richardson, letter N, and let us see what he says.
The book was brought. Mr. B. read :
"Neofhyte.—In French, neophyte; in Italian, neofito; in Spanish, neopbyto; Latin,.floo-
phytus; Greek, neophutua, from neos, new, and phut on, a plant, a new plant; figuratively, a
new convert; one newly implanted (s. c.) in the church; and consequently, newly converted t»
the Christian faith; one newly initiated, ne.vly introduced or employed."
3
This (resumed Mr. B.) is Richardson's definition and etymology; and nothing can be more
classic or innocent. It is pure Greek, only modified in sound and termination, in going through
3ii languages; and, both literally and figuratively, has an innocent and decent signification.
iJichardson gives illustrations in the use of the word by eminent wri'.ers. Let us follow him,
and see the application of the term: and first he quotes from the great Lord Chancellor Bacon,
characterized by Pope in a single line, which I will not repeat; for it is only of the scholar and
philosopher of whom we speak. In his essay on the Union of Laws, he says:
"Nay, in effects of grace, which exceed far the effect" of nature, we see St Paul makes a difference hptween
those he calles neophytes—Uiat is, newly grafted into Christianity—and those that are brought up in the faith."
This is a scriptural or sacred application of the word, and very applicable; for the Senator is
a graft in the Texas faith, and I was brought up in it But it has many other applications; and
Ben Johnson applies it histrionically, (a professional application with him,) and shows that the
stage, as well as the church, had its crops of these new plants. He says, in Cynthia's Revels:
" It is with your young grammatical courtier, as with your neophyte player, a thing usual to be daunted at the
first presence or inter view."
In poetry, as well as in prose, the neophyte figures; and thus we find him again in Ben John-
son, in the Revels of Cynthia:
•' There stands a neophyte, glazing ®f hia face:
and repeats,
(Like an unperfect prologue, at third music,)
His part of speeches, and confederate jests,
In passion to himself."
There stands a neophyte ! I hope the Senator will feel nothing personal, remarkable as the
coincidences are. I read as I find it in the book. There stands a neophyte ! and certainly the
Senator is a new plant in the Texian garden, his sprouting or taking root there being of quite
modern date, and entirely posterior to the delivery of a certain governor's message that he and I
wot of. But then it is accidental that he stands before me, and provokes the vindication ol a
phrase innocently used. There stands a neophyte! and repeats, not an unpeifect prologue, or
epilogue; for the Senator is very perfect in his part upon a three days' preparation, and repeats
with becoming accuracy. And then his jests! although confederate, they are innocent and
good, and prove their worth by their age; far they have lasted a long time, seen hard service,
and still survive. Even two thousand years ago the satiric poet celebrated the virtues of old
jokes, and assigned them a durability, under hard use, of more than metallic or lithotic power.
" Even flint and steel, continued use impairs,
" But your old joke no diminution fears."
But, to be done with joking 1 the Senator is certainly a new plant, and an exotic, in the
Texian garden Land those friends of his, the defence of whom has called him from a sick bed
to do what he has not done, defend them—a task which would indeed require angels and min¬
isters of grace ! these friends of his, they are also new plants, and exotics, and strange plants
in the same good garden ; and of them I must say, moreover, what I cannot and will not say of
him—they are intrusive, noxious, and poisonous weeds in that fair garden ! I remember the
fame when they flung the whole garden, as a worthless incumbrance, away, and they enter
it now, as the serpent did Eden, with deceit in the face, ani death in the heart.
The Senator has complimented me upon a part of my character is which I take a great pride—
the didactic part—a faint imitation of the elder Cato—that of teaching my children; and I trust
that the exercise of the morning will not diminish hia good opinion of the teacher's tact or
taste in driving languages into boys' heads. Tb« schoolmaster has certainly been about; and
4
the day's tvoik is a specimen of his skill and power That word, neophyte ! the Senator now
knows it in six languages; and the better in each for knowing it in all ; and learnt in al'l
while learning it in one, according to the method of Locke and Wilton twp hundred years ago.
And here en la the first lesson. I nerr overtask my neophytes.
The Senator who has laid me under the necessity of making this reply, finds it disrespect¬
ful and offensive that I should treat the President's message to the House ol Representatives as
an appeal from the Senate to that body. Certainly I could not treat it otherwise, without de¬
parting from the universal sense and understanding of the public, and repudiating the mean¬
ing of language. That message is, in its very nature, and, as near a3 possible, in its very
language, an appeal from the Senate to the House of Representatives ; and is so understood
by everybody. The Senator who speaks for the administration does not deny this universal
understanding. On the contrary, he admits and justifies. He admits the appeal by name, and
justifies it by name, and has introduced a joint resolution for the legislative action of the two
Houses, and for the ratification of the treaty, by name.* The treaty is dead by the constitu¬
tional action of the Senate, and it is an outrage to the Senate and a revolt against the Constitu.
tion to send it to the' House of Representatives for revival and ratification. I claim no veto
power for the Senate except where the Constitution gives it, and this it has done in making it
the supreme arbiter of the formation of treaties. Its power is as absolute in the case of treaties
as in the case of nominations ; and if this appeal is tolerated, I see no reason for not sending all
the rejected nominations to the House for confirmation, or openly taking; some unconstitutional
and fraudulent method of nullifying the rejection of favorites, and retaining, or smuggling them
into office, in spite of the Constitution and ot the Senate.
The Senator from South Carolina, whom a feeling of private friendship, as he informs us, has
induced to enter the lists for the President and Secretary of State, is shocked that their conduct
should have been compared to that of the French revolutionary minister, Genet. He is shocked
at I ins comparison ; and finds the cause of the misapplication of it, as he supposes, in the non-
development of the phrenological bump of comparativeness on my head ; and thereupon dis¬
courses upon phrenology, as if his own head had been well fingered for bumps. Mine never
has been; but since the Senator has raised the question, I will accept it, and will vindicate
my title to the power of comparing, if not to the signs of comparativeness. He says Genet
•was a foreigner; I happen to have said that myself. He says his appeal from President Wash,
ington's proclamation of neutrality was very audacious : I said so likewise. And content with
that, I pursued the comparison no further. But, since the Senator provokes it, he shall have
it—those friends for whom he has spoken shall have it—they shall have the full benefit of the
difference between Genet and themselves in endeavoring to excite an insurrection against a
part ot the Government Genet, then, was a foreigner. He owed no allegiance to our Gov¬
ernment, and had taken no oath to support our Constitution ; and therefore, in endeavoring to
destroy a constitutional part of the Government, he was guilty of no treachery, and committed
no perjury: the President and Secretary, owing that allegiance, and having taken that oath,
and now attempting to destroy the Senate, cannot claim the benefit of these exemptions which
belong to Genet. And that is the difference in the degree of the offence which they have
respectively committed. Is the Senator now satisfied that 1 can compare, although unfurnished
with his sign of comparativeness ?
* Resolved by the Senate end House of Representatives of the United States of Jtmerien in Congress assembled^
That Uic compact of annexation mrwle between the Executive tJovernment of the United states and that of
Tex a*, and submitted to the Senate for conbrmation by the President of the United States, be, and the same is
hereby, ratified as the fundamental law of union between the United Stales and Texas, as soon as the supreme
executive and legislative power of Texas shall ratify and confirm the said compact 01 annezauon."—Mr. M«-
Jtuffie s reakMon,
5
The Senator undertakes to answer my speech ; but he avoids all the hard plarcs. lie rays
nothing of the two tnouyanJ rinks of Mexican territory, (over and above Texas, an 1 to which
no Tt xian soldier ever went, except to he kilted or captured,) and which, by the treaty, is
annexed to the United States. He says nothing about the private engagement for war aga'nst
Mexico; anl sending our troops to join President Houston. He says nothing about this open
assumption of the purse and the sword ; nothing about the admission of now States by treaty,
without the consent of Congress ; nothing about the loss of Mexican commerce, and the aliena¬
tion of all the South American States from our cause : nothing about the breach of the armis¬
tice, and breach of treaties with a friendly power: nothing about the Duff Green stories for
making pretexts for predetermined conclusions ; nothing, in fact, to the pregnant indications
which show that the treaty was made, not to get Texas into the Union, but to get the South out
of it. He defends the feelings, not the doings, ot his friends. The great objections to the
treaty are in its encroachments upon New Mexico, Chihuahua, Coahuila, and Tamaulipas—in
its adoption of the Texian war—in its adoption ofthat war unconstitutionally—in its destruction
of our trade with Mexico—in our breach of treaties—in the alienation of Mexico and all the
South American States from us—our permanent loss of trade and friendship with those powers—
and the seeds of disunion (dissolution of our Union) so carefully and so thickly planted in it.
Above all, he says nothing to the great objection to admitting new States by treaty—an act
which Congress only can do. These are the great objections to the treaty ; and all these the
defender of the President and his Secretary leaves undefended.
The Senator from iiouth .Carolina defends the idea of a treaty, offensive and defensive, be¬
tween Texas and Msateo ; but he does not take the point of objection to that alliance. Cer¬
tainly it is ridiculous—it is Tom Thumb's alliance with the giant. But ridiculousness is the
smallest part of the objection to its feasibility. The loss of twenty millions of silver dollars per
annum—now annually drawn by the government and merchants of Great Britain from Mexico ;
the loss of this specie, the loss of Mexican trade, the loss of the friendship of seven millions of
people, with their three hundred mines, and the disgust of the other South American States
which would follow Mexico:—these constitute the objections to British and Texian alliance,
offensive and defensive. The Senator from South Carolina is read in the law of nations: he
knows the purport of an alliance offensive and defensive ; and that it binds each of the parties
to adopt all the wars, and all the quarrels, of the other. Engaged in such an alliance with
Texas, Great Britain immediately becomes the enemy of Mexico, and of all the South Ameri¬
can States, which sympathize with her ; not one of which have acknowledged the indepen¬
dence of Texas, and all of which harmonize with Mexico. Great Britain has no notion of
giving up such advantages for the honors, or profits, of the Texian alliance, offensive and de¬
fensive. She has no notion of denying herself a rich commerce—losing an immense annual
supply of silver—drawing upon the vaults of her own bank for the many millions sent to her
troops and ships abroad ; and thus literally killing the goose which lays her the golden eggs.
That folly is reserved for our President and his Secretary ; and, once more, I ask ! how long
would our thousand banks, and our paper money currency preserve their existence when de¬
prived of their supply of Mexican dollars ? A war with Mexico, even without a gun being
Sred—such a war as she now has with Texas, destroying commercial intercourse—would be
to the United States the most calamitous of events; and that calamity the ratification of the
Texian treaty would have instantly involved. Great Britain is too wise for these follies. She
has been courting Mexico with redoubled assiduity since we have been alienating her. She
has managed wisely, taking both Mexico and Texas by the hand—preserving the good will and
friendship of each—conciliating both—instead of outraging either; and she is not going to be-
6
come the enemy of either for the sake of the other; much lees make an enemy of an empire of
mines, and of seven millions of people, for the small cotton-growing and slave-holding popula¬
tion of Texas.
The Senator from South Carolina, in his zeal to defend his friends, goes beyond the line of
defence, and attacks me; he supposes me to have made anti annexation speeches; arid certainly,
if he limits the supposition to my speeches against the treaty, he is right. Bnt that treaty, far
from securing annexation of Texas, only provides for the disunion of these States. The an¬
nexation of the whole country as a territory, and that upon the avowed ground of laying it all
out into slave States, is an open preparation for a Missouri question, and a dissolution of the
Union. I am against that—and for annexation in the mode pointed out in my bill. I am for
Texas—for Texas with peace, and honor, and with the Union. Those who want annexation on
these terms, should support my bill—those who want it without peace, without honor, and with¬
out the Union, should stick to the lifeless corpse of the defunct treaty.
The Senator shows much zeal, but more discretion, in the defence of his friends ; he carefully
avoids the tender parts. Picking an abolition quarrel with Great Britain to favor the ulterior
design here; concentrating troops in the South under an unconstitutional pretext; assuming
the war with Mexico by a private contract with President Houston—placing our ships and troops
under his authority—the criminal blunder of our Secretary in locating a pretext for a previous
conclusion in the subsequent letter of Lord Aberdeen—the whole tenor of the slave correspon¬
dence, designed to prevent the admission of Texian States, and to iijpuiq reunion—the uncon¬
stitutionality of admitting new States by treaty—all these tender parts, and others, the Senator's
discretion carefully avoids. These nerves are too sensitive to be touched, even by the instruments
of the friendly surgeon.
The Senator from South Carolina, stili directing his whole attention to me, counsels me to
reserve my sympathy for the massacred Texians—for those who have suffered from Mexican
cruelty—for the victims of the Alamo, of the Old Mission, of San Patricio, and of Goliad. He
says these massacres were the proper occasion for sympathy—the slaughtered prisoners the
proper subjects to receive it—and violated laws of war and capitulations the fit subjects for de¬
nunciation. Good ! I agree with the gentleman exactly ! and am glad to see him, like a genial
twos phulon, beginning to sprout and take root in my old ground. It so happens that I have
done every thing bcfoie, which he now recommends to me, and done it in the tight time, and in
the natural way, when the massacres were fresh, and when the sorrows of the heart took their
course. I gave vent to my feelings eight years ago, when the present champions of Texas were
silent and callous; and, with the leave of the Senate, I will now read something of what I
then said:
" Unhappy day, forever to be deplored, that Sunday morning, March 6, 1836, when the un¬
daunted garrison of the Alamo, victorious in so many assaults over twenty times their number
perished to the last man by the hands of those, purt of whom they had released on parole two
months before, leaving not one to tell how they first dealt out to multitudes that death which
they themselves finally received ! Unhappy day, that Palm Sunday, March 27th, when the five
hundred and twelve prisoners at Goliad, isi-uing from the sally port at dawn of day, one by one,
under the cruel delusion of a return to their families, found themselves enveloped in double
files of cavalry and infantry, marched to a spot fit for the perpetration of the horrid deed, and
theie— without an instant to think of parents, country, friends, and God—in the midst of the
consternation of terror and surprise—inhumanly set upon, and pitilessly put to death, in spite
of those moving cries which reached to heaven, and regardless of those supplicating hands,
stretched forth for merry from which arms had been taken, under the perfidious forms of a
capitulation 1 Five hundred and six perished that morning—young, vigorous, brave—sons
of respectable families, and the pride of many a patent's heart; and tlieir bleeding bodies, torsi
7
with wounds, and many yet alive, were thrown in 'heaps upon vast fires, for the flames to
consume what the steel had mangled. Six only escaped, and not hv merry, hut by miracles.
And this was the work of man upon his brother, of Christian upon Christian, of those
upon those who adore the same God, invoke the same heavenly benediction, and draw pre¬
cepts of charity and mercy from the same divine fountain. .Accursed he the ground on which
the dreadful deed was dune! Steril, and set apart, let it forever be! No fruitful cultivation
should ever enrich it. No joyful edifice should ever adorn it. But shut up, and closed by gloomy
walls, the mournful cypress, the weeping willow, and the inscriptive monument, shotild forever
attest the foul deed of which it was the scene, and invoke from every passenger the throb of pity
for the slain, and the start of horror for the slayer. And you, neglected victims of the Old Mis¬
sion and of San Patricio, shall you be forgotten because your numbers were fewer, and your
hapless fate, more concealed ? No! but to you also justice shall be done. One common fate
befel you all—one common memorial shall perpetuate your names, and embalm your memories.
Inexorable history will sit in judgment upon all concerned, and will reject the pica of govern¬
ment orders, even if those orders emanated from the government instead of being dictated to it."
In such terms as these, and as long since as eight years ago, and when the events were fresh,
and vengeance for them still crying from the earth, and the wailings of bereaved families still load¬
ing the air, then did I vent my sorrow for the slaughtered victims, and my indignation against
the slayers. But I was not blind and indiscriminate. I did not look upon the black side of the
picture only. There was another side to it, reversed in character, and glowing with spots of
heavenly white; and to these I turned for relief, and for the consolations which alleviate crime,
and soften the asperities of nations. The Mexicans are like others : some inexorable, some ac¬
cessible to pity. There was humanity as well as barbarity—mourners as well as executioners—
at these cruel massacres—many unwilling instruments, or mournful witnesses; and to these,
also, I did justice. Of them I said :
" But let us not forget that there is some relief to this black and bloody picture—some allevia¬
tion to the horror of its appalling features. There was humanity as well as cruelty at Goliad—
humanity to deplore what it could not prevent. The letter of Colonel Fernandez does honor to
the human heart. Doubtless many other officers felt and mourned like him, and spent the day
in unavailing regrets. The ladies Gosero, and others, of Matamoras, saving the doomed victims
in that city from day to day, hv their intercessions, appear like ministering angels. Several
public journals, and many individuals in Mexico, have given vent to feelings worthy of Chris¬
tians and of the civilization of the age; and the poor woman on the Guadaloupe, who succored
and saved the young Georgian, Hadaway, how nobly she appears. He was one of the few that
escaped the fate of the Georgia battalion sent to the Old Mission. Overpowered by famine and
despair, without arms and without comrades, he entered a solitary house filled with Mexican
soldiers, hunting the fugitives of his party. His action amazed them ; and thinking it a snare,
they stepped out to look for the armed body of which he was supposed to be the decoy. In that
instant, food was given him by the humane woman, and instant flight to the swamp was pointed'
out. He fled, receiving the fire of many guns as he went; and escaping the perils of the way,
the hazards of battle at San Jacinto, where he fought, and of Indian massacre in the Creek na¬
tion, when the two stages were taken and part of his travelling companions killed, he lives to
publish in America that instance of devoted humanity in the poor woman of the Guadaloupe.
Such acts as all these deserve to he commemorated. They relieve the revolting picture of mili¬
tary barbarity—soften the resentments of nations—and redeem a people from the olfencc of in¬
dividuals."
Thus I spoke of the mourners as well as of the executioners, eight years ago. And how did
the Senator from Scuth Carolina, who now reproaches me for a supposed misdirected humanity,
how did he then sneak ? To this question let a certain message from a Governor to his State
legislature, of the cotemporary period—let that message answer! It was too notable to be for¬
gotten ; and comes into play now, like a many-edged sword, cutting many parties, and even its
own master 1 and cleaving down the treaty for which he now stands up. That message repudi¬
ated Texas and her cause—saw nothing hut aliens and insurgents in her struggling patriots—
and rebellious subjects in her massacred prisoners. To that message I remit him for the state of
his feelings, (so different from this day!) when the calamities of the Texians were recent, and
8
i
(lie mnnc=? of (he unhuried dead Wi.ro cr\ing to licivrn for merry, and to mm for comn.isera-
tion. The feelings of that message contract strongly with the )am< nfations of tills day, a-'id read
us a new lesson in the physiology of the pas-ions. Love, it is said, has agents in the heart,
careless or deceitful creatures! that lie long dormant, doing nothing, and then, on some sudden,
unexpected occasion, or no occasion at all, break out in a fury and conquer all before them.
This is said of love—but I never heard the same of grief. Sorrow, I had always understood,
was an extemporaneous passion, breaking out on the instant, and dying out in time. Not so
with the Senator's new doctrine of the passions, and of his Texian grief. It slept until the
calamity was old, and then broke, out with the violence of a sudden affliction. But there is
another part of that same message which it is good still to look upon—that part in which annex¬
ation was repulsed, because it violated treaties, made war, destroyed commerce, and planted en¬
mity between neighboring nations which ought to be friends. In all this, the sentiments of the mes¬
sage were so just, that its author's present position would be perfect, if he only spoke now as he
did when he delivered it.*
The Senator assumes it for certain that the great meeting projected for Nashville is to take
place i and wishes to know who are to be my bed fellows in that great gathering: and I, on my
part, would wish to know who are to be his ! Misery, says the proverb, makes strange bed-
*" While South Carolina is indignantly repelling all foreign attempts to violate the sanctuary, and endanger the
existence of her domestic institutions, it becomes her m a peculiar manner to abstain from every sort of inter¬
ference with domestic concerns or domestic controversies of all other states, foreign or ciwifederate. The doc¬
trine of rion interference is one of the most important in the code of international law, and there are no commu¬
nities on earth who should hold it so sacred as the slaveholding States of this Union. If, by their example in giving
countenance to the unlawful enterprise of their own citizens against a neighboring and neutral power, they
should weaken the influence of that principle among nations, they would commit an offence against their own
institutions, by impairing the sanctity of their surest guaranty against foreign intrusion.
u Entertaining these opinions, I have looked with very deep concern, not unmingled with regret, upon the oc¬
currences which have taken place during the present year, in various parts of the United States, relative to the
civil war which is still in progress between the republic of Mexico and one of her revolted provinces. It is true
that no country can be responsible for the sympathies of its citizens; but I am nevertheless utterly at a loss to
perceive what title either of the parties to this controversy can have to the sympathies of the American people.
If it be alleged that the insurgents of Texas are emigrants from the United States, it is obvious to reply, that, by
their voluntary expatriation, under whatever circumstances, of adventure, of speculation, of honor or of infamy,
they have forfeited all claim to our fraternal regard. If it be even irue that they have left a land of freedom for
a land of despotism, they have done it with their eyes open, and deserve their lestiny. There is but too much
reason to believe that many of them have gone as mere adventurers, speculating upon the chances of establish¬
ing an independent government in Texas, and of .seizing that immense and fertile domain by the title of the
sword. But be this as it may, when they became citizens of Mexico, they became subject to the constitution
and laws of that country ; and whatever changes the Mexican people may have since made in that constitution
and those laws, they are matters with which foreign states can have no concern, and of which they,have no right
to take cognizance. I trust, therefore, that the Slate of eSouth Carolina will give no countenance, direct or indi¬
rect, open or concealed, to any acts which may compromit the neutrality of the Unifed States, or bring into
question their plighted faith. Justice, stern and unbending justice, in our intercourse with other States, should
he paramount to all the considerations of mere expediency, even were it possible that these could be separated.
But they cannot. Justice is the highest expediency, and I am sure South Carolina is the last State in the Union
that would knowingly violate this sacred canon of political moralitv.
If any consideration could add to the intrinsic weight of these high inducements to abstain from every speriea
of interference with the domestic affairs of a neigh loring and friendly State, it would be the tremendous retribu¬
tion to which we are so peculiarly exposed on our southwestern frontier, from measures of retaliation. Should
Mexico declare war against the United States, and, aided by some great European power, hoist the standard of
servile insurrection in Louisiana and the neighboring State*, how deep would be our self reproaches, in reflect¬
ing that these atrocious proceedings received even a colorable apology from our own example, or from the un¬
lawful conduct of our own citizens!
•'There is one question connected with this controversy of a definite character, upon which it may be proper
that you should express an opinion. * You are doubtless aware that the people of Texas, by an almost unani¬
mous vote, have expressed their desire to be admitted into our confederacy, and application will probably be
made to Congress for that purpose. In my opinion, Congress ought not even to entertain such a proposition in
the present stite of the qontroversv. If we admit Texas into our Union while Mexico is still waging war against
that province, with a view to re etalilLh hdr supremacy over it, we shall, bv the verv act itself, make ourselves
a party to the war. Nor can we take this step, without incurring this heavy responsibility, until Mexico herself
shall recognise the independence of her revolted province.
" We have no official information of the precise stale of our relations with Mexico. Enough is known, how¬
ever, to satisfy us that the conjuncture is eminently critical. Let us be scrupulou-ly careful that we do nothing
to countenance, and all we can to prevent, the calamity of a war. We are now engaged in a fearful and doubt¬
ful struggle to reform our federal system of government, by throwing off the corruptions under which it is rapidly
sinking. 1
" In this state of things, a war with any country would be the greatest of calamities ; "of we could scarcely
hope to conic oat of il wilh any thing but the mere wreck of a free constitution, and the external forms of a free
government"—Governor McDuJfie'e Message, December, 1833.
•
follows; aril political combinations, somet.uiis, make them equally strange. 'J'he fertile ima¬
gination of Burke has pr >s-ntcd us with a view of one of those strange sights ; an.l the South
Can 1 ina procession to Nashville (if nothing occurs to balk it) may present another. Burke
has exhibited to us the picture of a cluster ol old political antagonists—(it was alter th'e forma¬
tion ol Lord North's broad-bottomed administration, and after the country's good and love of of¬
fice had smothered old animosities)—all sleeping together in one truckle bed : to use hi3 own
language, all pigging together (that is, lying like pigs, heads and tails, and as many together)
in the same truckle bed : and a queer picture he made of it ! But, if things go on as projected
here, never did misery, or political combination, or the imagination of Burke, present such a
medley of bed fellows as will be seen at Nashville. All South Carolinais to be there : of course
General Jackson will be there ; and will be good and hospitable to all. But let the travellers
take care who goes to bed to him. If he should happen to find old tariff disunion, disguised
as Texas disunion, lying by his side 1 then wo to the hapless wight that has sought such a lodg¬
ing. Preservation of the federal Union is as strong in the old Roman's heart now as ever: and
while, as a christian, he forgives all that is past, (if it were past !) yet no old tricks under new
names. Texas disunion will be to him the same as tariff disunion; and if he detects a Texas
disunionist nestling into his bed, I say again, wo to the luckless wight. Sheets and blankets
will be no salvation. The tiger will not be toothless—the Senator understands the allusion—nor
clawless either. Teeth and claws he will have ! and sharp use he will make of them. Not
only skin and fur, but blood and bowels, may fly 1 and double-quick-time scampering may clear
that bed. I shall not be there : even if the scheme goes on, (which I doubt after this day's oc¬
currences ;) but if it should go on, and any thing could induce me to go so far out of my line,
it would be to have a view of the Senator from South Carolina, and the friends for whom he
speaks, and their new bed fellows, or fellows in bed, as the case may be, all pigging together
hi one truckle bed at Nashville.
But I advise the contrivers to give up this scheme. Polk and Texas are strong, and can carry
a great deal, but not every thing. The oriental story informs us that it was the last ounce
which broke the camel's back ; what if a mountain had been put first on the poor animal's back?
Nullification is a mountain! Disunion is a mountain! and what could Polk and Texas do with
two mountaing on their backs ? And here, Mr. President, I must speak out. The time has
come fop tho^ to speak out who neither fear, nor count consequences, when their country is in
danger. 'Tffe country is in danger ! Nullification and disunion are revived, and revived under
circumstances which menace more danger than ever, since coupled with a popular question
which gives to the plotters the honest sympathies of the patriotic millions. I have often inti¬
mated it before, but now proclaim it. Disunion is at the bottom of this long-concealed Texas
machination. Intrigue and speculation co-operate; but disunion is at the bottom; and I de¬
nounce it to the American people. Under the pretext of getting Texas into the Union, the
scheme is to get the South out of it. A separate confederacy, stretching from the Atlantic to
California, (and hence the secret of the Rio Grande del Norte frontier,) is the cherished vision
of disappointed ambition ; and for this consummation every circumstance has been carefully
and artfully contrived. A secret and intriguing negotiation, concealed from Congress and the
people : an abolition quarrel picked with Great Britain to father an abolition quarrel at home :
a slavery correspondence to outrage the North : war with Mexico : the clandestine concentra¬
tion of troops and ships in the Southwest: the secret compact with the President of Texas,
and the subjection of American forces to his command : the flagrant seizure of the purse and
the sword : the contradictory and preposterous reasons on which the detected military and na¬
val movement was defended : all these announce the prepared catastrophe ; arid the inside view
•
of the treaty betrays its design. The whole annexed country is to be admitted as one territory,
with a treaty promise to be admitted as States ; when we all know that Congress alone can ad¬
mit new States, and that the treaty promise, without a law of Congress to back it, is void. The
whole to be slave Slates, (and with the boundary to the Rio Grande there may be a great many;)
and the correspondence, which is the key to the treaty, and shows the design of its framers,
wholly directed to the extension of slavery and the exasperation of the North. What else
could be done to get up Missouri controversies, and make sure of the non-adrnission of these
States ? Then (he plot is consummated : and Texas without the Union, sooner than the Union
without Texas (already the premonitory chorus of so many resolves) receives its practical ap¬
plication in the secession of the South, and its adhesion to the rejected Texas. Even without
waiting for the non-admission of the States, so carefully provided for in the treaty and corres¬
pondence, secession, and confederation with the foreign Texas, is already the scheme of the
subaltern disunionists. The subalterns, charged too high by their chiefs, are ready for this ;
but the more cunning chiefs want Texas in as a territory—in by treaty—the supreme law of the
land—with a void promise for admission as States. Then non-admission can be called a breach
of the treaty Texas can be assumed to be a part of the Union ; and secession and conjunction
with her, becomes the rightful remedy. This is the design, and I denounce it ! and blind is he
who, occupying a position at this Capitol, does not behold it !
I mention secession as the more cunning method of dissolving the Union. It is disunion,
and the more dangerous because less palpable. Nullification begat it ; and, if allowed, there
is an end of the Union. For a few States to secede, without other alliances, would only put
the rest to the trouble of bringing them back : but with Texas and California to retire upon, and
the Union would have to go. Many persons would secede on the non-admission of Texian
States, who abhor disunion now. To avoid all these dangers, and to make sure of Texas, pass
my bill ! which gives the promise ol Congress for the admission of the'new States—neutralizes
the slave question—avoids Missouri controversies—pacifies Mexico—and harmonizes the
Union.*
The Senator from South Carolina complains that I have been arrogant and overbearing in this
debate, and dictatorial to those who were opposed to me. So far as this reproach is founded, I
have to regret it, and to ask pardon of the Senate and of its members. I may be in some fault.
I have, indeed, been laboring under deep feeling ; and while much was kept dowrf, something
may have escaped. I marked the commencement of this Texas movement longlislbre it was
visible to the public eye; and always felt it to be dangerous, because it gave to the plotters the
honest sympathies of the millions. I saw men who never cared a straw about Texas—one of
whom gave it awayf—another of whom voted against saving it)—and all of whom were silent
and indifferent, while the true friends of the sacrificed country were laboring to get it back : I
saw these men lay their plot in the winter of 1842-43, and told every person with whom I
talked every step they were to take in it. All that has taken place, 1 foretold : all that is in-
*Mr. McDuffik did noi reply to this denunciation of disunion. He replied to the allusion to his message, but
naid nothing to disunion. At Richmond, Virginia, his attention was called to it, and he made a public speech,
in which, according to the Richmond Enquirer, he thus noticed it:
"Mr. McD. noticed at some length the charge of " Di-union," which had been thundered by Mr. Botts and
others in the Clay club house and elxwhere against himself and his ^tate. He showed that the first cry of dis¬
union, in case of annexation, came from John Q,. Adains and his northern friends, and he asked, whether Mr.
Botts had then rai-ed the cry of disunion? Mr. McD. asserted, that the meetings in South Carolina had merely,
declared that disunion would be the cj'ej of non-annexation—as the northern fanatics had raised the cry of 4 Texas
and Disunion*—but, at all events, he was nit responsible for what hit constituents mi^ht do ; for they were loo
proud, too patriotic and enlightened, to be under the dictation of any man or set of men."
f Mr. Calhoun, in Mr. Monroe's cabinet.
}Mr. Tyler, on Mr. Clay's resolutions in 1820 Mr. Clay's resolutions were, at that time, well founded; for
Texas then had only been ceded by treaty: since then a law of Congress sanctioned the treaty, and bad U*e
boundary line vf 1819 run, marked, and established.
11
tended, I foresee. The intrigue for the Presidency was the first act in the drama: the dissolu¬
tion of the Union the second. And I, who hate intrigue, and love the Union, can only speak
of intriguer^ and disunionists with warmth and indignation. The oldest advocate for the reco¬
very of Texas, I must be allowed to speak in just terms of the criminal politicians who prosti¬
tuted the question of its recovery to their own base purposes, and delayed its success by de¬
grading and disgracing it. A western man, and coming from a State more than any other inte¬
rested in the recovery of this country so unaccountably thrown away by the treaty of 1819, I
must be allowed to feel indignant at seeing Atlantic politicians seizing upon it, andtnaking it a
Bectional question, for the purposes of ambition and disunion. I have spoken warmly of these
plotters and intriguers ; but-1 have not permitted their conduct to alter my own, or to relax my
zeal for recovery of the sacrificed country. I have helped to reject the disunion treaty ;
and that obstacle being removed, I have brought in the bill which will insure the recovery of
Texas (with peace, and honor, and with the Union) as soon as the exasperation has subsided
Which the outrageous conduct of this administration has excited in every Mexican breast. No
earthly power but Mexico has a right to say a word. Civil treatment and consultation before¬
hand would have conciliated her; but the seizure of two thousand miles of her undisputed ter¬
ritory, an insulting correspondence, breach of the armistice, secret negotiations with Texas,
and sending troops and ships to waylay and attack her, have excited feelings of resentment,
which must be allayed before any thing can be done.
The Senator from South Carolina compares the rejected treaty to the slain Cresar, and gives
it a ghost, which is to meet me at some future day, as the spectre met Brutus at Philippi. I
accept the comparison, and thank the Senator for it. It is both classic and just; for as Ctesar
was slain for tho good of his country, so has been this treaty; and as the spectre appeared at
Philippi on the side of the ambitious Anthony and the hypocrite Octavius, and against the
patriot Brutus, so would the ghost of this poor treaty, when it comes to meet mc, appear on the
side of the President and his secretary, and against the man who was struggling to save his
country from their lawless designs. But here the comparison must stop; for I can promise the
ghost and his backers that if the fight goes against me at this new Philippi, with which I am
threatened, and the enemies of the American Union triumph over me as the enemies of Roman
liberty triumphed over Brutus and Cassius, I shall not fall upon my sword, as Brutus did, though
Cassius be killed, and run it through my own body; but I shall save it, and save myself, for
another day, and for another use—for the day when the battle of the disunion of these States is
to be fought—not with words, but with iron—and for the hearts of the traitors who appear in
arms against their country.
The comparison is just. Caesar was rightfully killed for conspiring against his country; but
it was not he that destroyed the liberties of Rome. That work was done by the profligate poli¬
ticians, without him, and before his time; and his death did not restore the republic. There
were no more elections. Rotten politicians had destroyed them; and the nephew of Caesar, as^j
heir to his uncle, succeeded to the empire on the principle of hereditary succession.
And here, Mr. President, history appears in her grand and instructive character, as philosophy
teaching by example; and let us not be senseless to her warning voice. Superficial readers be¬
lieve it was the military men who destroyed the Roman republic. No sucji thing! It was the
politicians who did it ! factious, corrupt, intriguing politicians ! destroying public virtue io their
mad pursuit after office 1 destroying their rivals by crime! deceiving and debauching the people
for votes! and bringing elections into contempt by the frauds and violence with which they
were conducted. From the time of the Gracchi there were no elections that could bear the
12
name. C „r, ,l, fat, ami fiiUttt p ft i • r. li u4Iit n 11J s i]J the cmmfillip. Intiigue, end the
OuigiT, ill-posed t f rivals. Fiaud, t iulcm c, h.itlcs, Icrii>r, and the plun !rr of the public treasury,
Ci'iimiaiicled rotes, 'i'lie jrcojilo li ul 110 chuh'e; and long lieforc the time of Ctcsar nothing re-
lnaini'il of republican government, hut the name and the abtlsc. Head Plutarch. In the life of
CiETjr, and nut three pages heforc the crossing of the Rubicon, he paints the ruined state of the
elections—shows that all elective government was gone—that the hereditary form had become a
necessary relief from the contests of the corrupt—and that in choosing between Pompey and
Catsar, maity preferred Pompey, not because they thought him republican, but because they
thought he would make the milder king. Even arms were but a small part of Oatsar's reliance
when he crossed the Rubicon. Gold, still more than the sword, was his dependence; and he
sent forward the accumulated treasures of plundered Gaul, to be poured into the Iaps^f rotten,
politicians. There was no longer a popular government; and in taking all power to himself, he
only took advantage of the state of things which profligate politicians had produced. In this he
was culpable, and paid the forfeit with his life; but in contemplating Iris fate, let us never forget
that the politicians had undermined and destroyed the republic, before he came to seize and to
master it.
It was the same in our day. Wc have seen the conqueror of Egypt and Italy overturn the
Directory, usurp all power, and receive the sanction of the people. And why! Because the
government was rotten, and elections had become a farce. The elections of forty-eight depart¬
ments, at one time, in the year 1798, were annulled, to give the Directory a majority in the
legislative councils. All sorts of fraud and violence were committed at the elections. The
people had no confidence in them, and submitted to Bonaparte-
All elective governments have failed in this manner; and, in process of time, must fail here,
unless elections can be taken out of the hands of the politicians, and restored to the full control
of the people. The plan which I have submitted this day, for dispensing with inteimediate bodies,
and holding a second election for President when the first fails, is designed to accomplish this
great purpose; and will do much good if adopted. Never have politicians, in so young a coun¬
try, shown such a thirst for office—such disregard of the popular will—such readiness to deceive
and betray the people. The Texas treaty, (for I must confine myself to the case before us,) is
an intiigue for the presidency, and a contrivance to get the southern States out of the Union,
instead of getting Texian States into it; and is among the most unscrupulous intrigues which
any country ever beheld. But we know how to discriminate. We know how to separate the
wrong from the right. Texas, which the intriguers prostituted to their ambitious purposes,
(caring nothing about it, as their past lives show,) will be rescued from their designs, and res¬
tored to this Union as naturally, and as easily, as the ripened pear falls to the earth. Those
who prepared the result at the Baltimore convention, in which the will of the people was over¬
thrown, will be consigned to oblivion ; while the nominees of the convention will be accepted
t^and sustained ;* and as for the plotters of disunion and secession, they will be found out, and
* 1 write yna a line on the nominations, chiefly on account of Mr. Dallas, whose former United States Bank
opinions may be quoted against him. He is a man of ton much probity 10 declare a chance of opinion which he
does not feel; and having for years back acted against the bank, I shall rely implicitly upon all he says against
any future support of such an institution.
Neither Mr I'olk mar Mr. Dallas have had anything to do with the intrigue which has nullified lite choice of
the people, and the rights of the people, and the principles of our Government, in the person of Mr. Van Buren;
and neither of them should he injured or prejudiced by it. Those who hatched that intrigue have become its
victims. They who dog a pit for the innocent, have fallen into it; and there let them lie, for the present, white
all hands attend to the election, and give us our full majority often thousand in Missouri. For the rest, the time
will come; and the people, now, as twenty years ago, (when their choice was nullified in the per.-on of General
Jackson,) will teach the Oougress intriguers to attend to law making, and let president making and un making
atone in tuture.
13
tvill receive their reward; and I, for one, shall be ready to meet them at Philippi. sword in hand,
whenever they bring: their parricidal schtme to the test of arm*.
I am now what I have been for five and twenty,years—for Texas! but I want it with peaco
and honor, and with the Union! and for that purpose have brought in the bill* which ii ca'cu-
lated to conciliate every interest, and which the Senate, even in the expiring days of the session,
has unanimously admitted, and ordered to its second reading; and which nothing I)at the want
of time prevents from now passing this body.
The Texas treaty, which consummated this intrigue, was nothing but the final act in a long conspiracy, ia
which the sacrifice of Mr. Van Huren had been previously agreed upon ; and the nomination of Mr. Wright for
Vice President pioves it; for his opinions and those of Mr. Van Bnrcn, on the Texas question, were identical ;
and if fatal to one, should have been fatal to the other. Besides, Mi. Van Bui en was right, and whenever Texas
is admitted, it will have to be done in the way pointed out by hnn.
Having mentioned Mr. Wright, I will say thai recent events have made him known to the public, as he has
long been known to his friends, the Veto of America, and a star of the first magnitude in our political firma¬
ment.—Letter to my constituents, June 3, 1844.
* Be it enacted, fyc., That the President of the United States be, and he hereby is, authorized and advised to
open negotiations with Mexico and Texas, for the adjustment of boundaries, and the annexation of the latter to
the United States, on the lollowing bases, to wit: f
1. The boundary of the annexed territory to be in the desert prairies west of the Nueces, and along the high¬
lands and mountain heights which divide the waters of the Mississippi from the waters of the Rio del Norle, anil
to latitude 42 degrees north.
2. The people of Texas, by a legislative act, or by anyaullientic act which shows the will of the majority, to
express their assent to said annexation.
3. A State, to be called "the State of Texas," with boundaries fixed by herself, and an extent not exceeding
that of the largest State in the Union, to be admitted into the Union, by virtue of this act, on an equal fooling
with the original States.
4. The remainder of the annexed territoiy to be held and disposed of by the United States as one of their Ter¬
ritories, and to be called "the Southwest Territory
5l The existence of slavery to be forever prohibited in the northern and northwestern part of said Territory,
west of the one hundredth degree of longitude west from Greenwich, so as to divide, as equally as may he, the
whole of the annexed country between slaveholding and non slaveholding States.
6. The assent of Mexico to be obtained by treaty to such annexation and boundary, or to be dispensed with
when the Congress of the United Stales may deem such assent to be unnecessary.
7. Other details of the annexation to be adjusted by treaty, »o far aa the same may come within the scope of
the treaty-making power.
14
APPENDIX.
From the Washington " Globe."
SOUTH CAROLINA'S MODE OP ANNEXING TEXAS,
The Richmond Enquirer copies from the Charleston Mercury, portions of the proceedings of
public meetings held in Barnwell, Sumpter, and Edgefield counties, touching the Texas treaty.
The Enquirer with much pleasure marks the favor with which all these meetings receive the
nominations of the late Baltimore convention, but it silently puts the seal of reprobation on cer¬
tain passages in the transactions of these assemblies of nullifiers, by omitting such resolutions
and remarks as squint at a dissolution of the Union- Por instance, the Barnwell meeting has
this passage in the preamble, the whole of which is properly suppressed by the Enquirer, as an
evidence of its disapprobation. The preamble puts the dissolution of the Union in issue with the
Texas question, and says: " We believe that the very existence itself of this blood-bought and
blood-cemented Union will be determined by it." The fifth resolution takes the ground, in re¬
gard to the annexation of Texas, that " its final rejection as an evidence of that increasing hos¬
tility to Ike institutions of the South, which has already shaken the caiifidence of our -people in
the patriotism and fid-.lity of our northern brethren, and which may render it necessary for us
(~ in the words of our own declaration of independence J ' to provide new guards for our future
security.''"
The ninth resolution attempts to identify the name of General Jackson with the new design of
revolution, "to provide new guards for our future security " beyond the Constitution. It reads
thus:
" 9. Resolved, That in relation to the immediate annexation of Texas, we view with pride and satisfaction the
conduct of the venerable Andrew Jackson, whose heart (though the hand of time and affliction has fallen heavily
upon him) beats true to the interest and honor of his country ; and we rejoice that his days have been so length¬
ened out that he might unite his name with our third great strugg.e for independence."
Col. 8. W. Trotti, who was at the head of the committee to prepare the preamble and resolu¬
tions, after they were read, explained them in a speech, the substance of which is thus given,
with the proceedings; but is omitted by the Enquirer, as well as the ninth resolution :
" After the preamble and resolutions were read, Col. Trotti rose and addressed the meeting in
their support for more than an hour with great eloquence and ability, and was interrupted in the
course of his remarks by frequent and long-continued plaudits. He dwelt with great force and
earnestness upon the importance of the immediate acquisition of Texas as a measure of national
I defence, and exposed the deceitful position of Lord Aberdeen and the British government on the
subject. He conclusively demonstrated, that the safety, if not the very existence of the institu¬
tion of slavery is dependent upon the success of the measure, and contended with great power
and ability that THE ONLY TRUE ISSUE BEFORE THE SOUTH SHOULD BE TEX¬
AS OR DISUNION."
The Sumpter meeting is of the same cast; and the resolutions are fraught with the same
threats against the Union.
The 5th resolution, which is stricken out by the Richmond Enquirer, is given in the Charles¬
ton Mercury:
" 5. Resolved, That we regard the opposition to annexation by a portion of the people of these
United States on account of the existence of slavery in Texas, an unwarrantable attack upon
southern rights guarantied to us by the Constitution ; rights which we are determined at «Ji
hazards to maintain in spite of resistance either abroad or at home."
Here it would seem that " opposition to annexation by a portion of the people of these United
L States" is held to bo " an unwarrantable attack upo* southern rights ! P*
15
The sentiments of the Edgefield county meeting, (at which the Hon. Mr. Pickens officiated
as a resolution committee man,) were in perfect keeping with those spoken by Mr. It. Barnwell
Rhett's constituents of Barnwell. The disposition to dissolve the Union was somewhat bettor
disguised, although plainly hinted at in the following resolution:
" Resolved, That the grounds upon which this annexation is mainly resisted compel us to
consider this measure as a question as to the maintenance of slavery, guarantied to us by the
Constitution ; and we avow our determination to maintain this institution against all the attempts
of abolitionists in our own country or elsewhere; and we shall not resist the separation from the
Union of such Slates as denounce the slavcholding members of the confederacy as unworthy of
connection with than, and as avow the purpose of not tolerating the admission into the Union
of any new slavcholding country."
This resolution is also omitted from the proceedings, as published in the Richmond Enquirer,
from the Charleston Mercury, which contains it. The omission shows the sense entertained by
Mr. Ritchie of its dangerous import. The gratuitous statement prefacing the invitation to a
dissolution of the Union, is utterly unfounded ; not a member of the Senate, nor, as we have
seen, a leading press of either the federal or democratic party, has given any pretence for the as¬
sertion that " this annexation is mainly resisted as a question as to the maintenance of slavery "
nor does any Slate " denounce the slavcholding members of the confederacy as umoorthy of as¬
sociation with them." The issue of annexation, as necessary "to the maintenance of slavery,"
was made by Mr Calhoun himself in his Packenham letter, evidently for the purpose of furnish¬
ing his partisans in the South the means of rallying a party, and getting up a sectional feeling
between the South and North, to answer the very purpose to which it is now applied.
These several public meetings in South Carolina look to a convention called together from tho
States favorable to annexation, to give effect to the resolutions passed by them. The Edgefield
meeting broaches this scheme thus:
" Resolved, That the members of Congress favorable to annexation be requested to resort to
all legitimate expedients within their power fur the consummation of this great measure; and
that, in the last resort, they take steps for assembling a convention of the States friendly to an¬
nexation."
The Barnwell resolution is more precise, and fixes the place, with a view to identify the demo¬
cratic nominee for the presidency and General Jackson with their incendiary movements, under
the disguise of Texas annexation. It is as follows:
" 8. Resolved, That if Texas be not sooner annexed, we deem it expedient that a convention
of the friends of immediate annexation throughout the Union be held at Nashville, in the State
of Tennessee, on the first Monday in August next, and that, should such suggestion meet the
approbation of our friends elsewhere, we will meet again at this place on the first Monday in
July, to appoint delegates to said convention."
The organ of this nullifying party, (the South Carolinian,) published at the seat of govern¬
ment, (Columbia,) is still more specific in laying down the chart of this new dissolution move¬
ment. After a series of remarks on the probable chance of the Texas treaty before the Senate,
it proposes, in the event of its failure, the following:
" t. To call upon our delegations in Congress, if in session, or our Senators, if they be at
the seat of Government, to wait on the Texian minister, and remonstrate with him against any
negotiation with other powers, until the Southern States shall hare had a reasonable time to de¬
cide upon their course.
" 2. That object secured, a convention of the people of each State should be promptly called,
to deliberate and decide upon the action to be taken by the slave States on the question of an¬
nexation ; and to appoint delegates to a convention of the slave States, with instructions to
carry into effect the behests of the people.
•<3. That a convention of the slave States, by delegations from each, appointed as aforesaid,
should be called, to meet at some central position, to take into consideration the question of an-
16
rmxing Texas to Iho Union, if Hip Union will accept it; or, if the Un.on will not accept if,
then ot annexing Texas to thn Southern State,t.
" t That the 1'resi lent of the United States be requested by the crnera! convention of the
slave States, to call Congress together immediately; when the tinnl issue shall be made up,
and the alternative d stinetiy presented to the tree States, either to a Imit Texas into the
Union, or to proceed peaceably and calmly to arrange the terms of a dissolution of the Union."
Now we ask, can this convention be proposed, and such inflammatory subjects chosen for its
discussion, with a view to the annexation of Texas, or to the election of Governor Polk to the
Presidency ? The South is united in favor of annexation, every body knows ; and we believe
that, as a friend to the measure, and a Southern man, Governor Polk will get the Southern vote.
Do Mr. Calhoun and his friends imagine that, by exciting sectional feeling in the North, anil
provoking hostility by fostering designs against the Union, they will be most likely to attain
the ends they profess to have at heart—that is, to unite the northern democracy in support of
annexation, and the. election of Gov. Polk to the Presidency ?
We can readily comprehend how Mr. Calhoun might serve his purpose of consolidating
Southern influence on himself, by making that section believe that the North sought to oppress
it, and wishes to exclude a fair territory from the Union, lest it might give strength to the
weaker portion of the confederacy. We can readily understand how it would assist the grand
nullification scheme, (if again revived,) to rouse prejudice in the North among the northern de¬
mocracy, to have Governor Polk defeated, and the lather of the Protective system, with his
tariff manacles in his hand, placed in the Presidency. If this be the aim of those who have
seized on the Texas question for agitation, the drift of the late South Carolina conventions is
easily explainable. But to identify Governor Polk and annexation with nullification, is not the
way to carry either. This every sharp-sighted man perfectly understands, and none better than
the politicians ol South Carolina. Governor Polk and his true friends in the South will shu*
all commitments to such a scheme, and will be true to the cause for its sake and their own, and
for the sake of Texas.
WHIG TEXT BOOK, OR DEMOCRACY UNMASKED.
TO THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES.
The period will soon arrive when you will be called upon to exercise a right, which, of all the inde¬
pendent nations of considerable power on the Globe, you alone possess—that of electing, by your own
free choice, the person who is to be entrusted with the high functions of your chief magistrate. Such
being the importance of the right which you will soon be called upon to exercise, you owe it to yourself,
to your children, to your country, to the cause of humanity, which is deeply involved in the issue ot the
political experiment thatjis now making among us, to exercise it with full and mature deliberation. You
owe,,this not only to the interests, but to the honor of the nation.
Although the issues connected with the Presidential election have been ably and elaborately dis¬
cussed, still we are inclined to think a more extended analysis will be productive of some good, in
diffusing among the people correct notions as regards the principles of the Locofoco party, and the dis¬
advantages likely to result to the community from their restoration to power.
Since the result of the Baltimore convention, the leaders of that party have been strenuously urging,
and a large portion of the party adopting, the annexation of Texas to the territory and Government of this
Union, as a permanent measure, upon the agitation and excitement of which the party relies for its hope
of success in the ensuing fall election. Politicians who dared not pronounce the name of annexation
previous to the assembling of that convention, are now loud in their vociferations in its favor. The orders
of the hero of the Hermitage have gone forth, and they must be obeyed. " The Northern man with
Southern principles," even, was not flexible enough on this point—and he has been sacrificed. Aye,
with all his services to the party, and devotedness to its interests, he was sacrificed. He dared for one
moment to desert " the footsteps of his illustrious predecessor," and he was soon abandoned by his po¬
litical friends.
Among the seven Locofoco votes recorded in the United States Senate against the Texas treaty, wa3
that of Silas Wright, of New York. He is as thorough an opponent of annexation as any man in the
country. And yet this gentleman was almost unanimously nominated for the Vice Presidency by the
late Baltimore convention, and but for his own refusal, would have been the candidate of the party, whose
battle cry is, " hurrah for Texas"—" Texas or Disunion."
The Locotocos unanimously nominated Mr. Wright before they nominated Dallas. They unanimously
nominated an opponent of annexation before they nominated a friend of annexation. And now they af¬
fect to think that the question of annexation is more important than all other, and ought to be made the
great test question throughout the canvass. Could any thing more forcibly illustrate their hypocrisy and
total destitution of all principle.*
It will be recollected that South Carolina was not represented in the Baltimore convention, and refus¬
ed to have any thing to do with its proceedings until Mr. Polk was nominated. Why ? Mr. Van Buren
had declared himself opposed to both the principles and details of the tariff of 1842, and, so tar as that
measure was concerned, he stood upon the same ground that South Carolina occupied; but he had
declared himself opposed to the annexation of Texas to the United States, and as South Carolina
proclaims that " the only true issue before the South should be Texas or Disunion," he was not her
man. When Mr. Polk was nominated, Mr. Pickens and Mr. Elmore, of South Carolina, came into the
convention in Baltimore, and pledged the support of that State to him; and why were they satisfied
with his nomination ? Because he was known to be hostile to the tariff, and in favor of the immediate
annexation of Texas to the United States, honorably or dishonorably, wright or wrong, with or without
the assent of Mexico, and in violation even of solejnn treaties, existing between her ana the United
States; and it is for these reasons that South Carolina now gives her hearty support to Polk and Dallas.
Do the leaders of the locofoco party throughout the country give them their support for the same reason?
Are they in favor of the treaty-annexation of Texas, and opposed to the tariff ! If not, why are they
found acting in concert with the opposers of the tariff poi.icv ? It is certainly a curious co¬
alition, a strange union, to see the friends of the tariff, or those who profess to be such, standing shoulder
to shoulder and foot to foot with those who denounce it as " the most infernal bill that was ever passed by
a legislative body."
When political men, who have been remarkable for their reciprocal hatred of each other, surrender
their judgments to the influence of envy and sectional jealousies, abandon their former principles, their
political and private friends, and unite in the support of a man who the Democracy of the country never
indicated a disposition to bestow such a trust upon, the public have a right to demand, and certainly ex¬
pect an explanation, and a full development of the means resorted to to effect his nomination.
Do not the ciicumstances connected with the nomination furnish strong ground of justification for the
opposition to Mr. Polk; and, when connected with his known vacillating and contradictory public acts,
afford conclusive reasons, even with his friends, for an abandonment ? Do they not relieve his opponents
from an enumeration of other objections to him, and justify them in the general grounds of their opposi¬
tion? As far as our information extends, the position assumed by Col. Polk, relatively to the treaty of
Texas, is the only question which prompted the convention to nominate him as a candidate for the Pre¬
sidency.
* Extract from Colonel Benton's letter,
" The Texas treaty, which consummated vthis intrigue, was nothing but the final act in a long conspiracy, in which the
sacrifice of Mr. Van Buren had been previously agreed upon ; and the nomination of Mr. Wright for Vice President proves
iifor his opinions, and those of Mr. Van Buren, on the Texas question, were identical, and if fatal to one should have been
fatal to the other. Besides, Mr. Van Buren is right, and whenever Texas is admitted, it will have to ue done in the way
pointed out by him."
Printed at Gideoh's office, Ninth street, Washington,
-z
His advocates should at least be able to refer to great and overbalancing considerations in his
principles, to justify their support. They ought not to rest for their grounds of preference upon the sup¬
port which he gives to one measure, the adoption of which is highly questionable and of equivocal
utility. They should be able to point to bright and overpowering qualities in their candidate, which
have for their basis political wisdom and political integrity. That objections of a strong character to the
election of Mr. Polk do exist, his friends must admit; and that many others, of much graver import,
liave also an existence, seem to be equally indisputable,and that they are readily deducible from the history
pf his past life. It will now be our purpose, as briefly as we can, and as the limits of this communica¬
tion so obviously require, to enumerate some of the most prominent, and to give them a free and candid
examination. The occasion, and the circumstances connected therewith, seem, as an act of justice, to
require this at our hands; and while the harsh and burning ordeal to which his patriotic and illustrious
competitor has been unsparingly subjected, might be cited for justification for the freedom with which we
shall act, we disdain to follow such an example, and shall therefore make the examination with the cour¬
tesy and regard to truth, which men who regard the public, or respect themselves, should always observe.
The political sins which characterize Col. Polk's public life, are so various and so numerous, that it is
more difficult to state exceptions than to describe his aberrations. They exhibit one dark turbid stream,
adorned by few verdant spots on which the patriot's eye may repose with pleasure: affording to mankind
another instructive lesson, among those registered in history, how feeble are the lessons of wisdom to
restrain the wild exertions of delirious party spirit. It is not my purpose to misrepresent the motives or
the sentiments of Mr. Polk. They stand forth in number and form too prominent to require additional
coloring to render them conspicuous. The history of Mr. Polk's life, published, we presume, by his con¬
sent, furnishes no evidence of his qualifications for the office of Chief Magistrate; the whole book, with
the exception of a small portion of it, being occupied in eulogizing his talents arid his consistent demo¬
cracy ; nor have the debates in Congress preserved any account of his statesmanlike views or the valuable
services rendered to the country. On the contrary, we have conclusive demonstration of his entire igno¬
rance, or total disregard of the constitution and laws of the land, and the nature and structure of our in¬
stitutions, and a manifestation of the arbitrary and despotic disposition which be is disposed to indulge,
whenever he is entrusted with the exercise of political power.
Will the restoration of this party to executive power conduce to the interest of the community ? What
measures of a beneficial tendency were recommended by the preceding administration calcinated to ad¬
vance its prosperity 1 During the existence of this administration, we ask if the country 'was pros¬
perous and successful! Where is the evidence of it! The national Government was embarrassed in all
its operations, and struggling 011 from day to day under the pressure of an insolvent Treasury ; public
works neglected and postponed; public credit endangered. As to affairs of individuals, what kind of busi¬
ness was prosperous ! Manufactures had largely declined ; commerce, distinct from navigation, diminish¬
ed ; jnternal trade greatly reduced ; specie payments suspended over a considerable portion of the Union.
OPINIONS OF JAMES K. POLK ON INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS.
Political consistency is not a virtue to which Col. Polk can have any just claim ; on more subjects
than one he has changed his opinion, without giving any substantial reasons for the change. This we
think can be made apparent, notwithstanding he said in a speech at Murfreesborough, in 1839, " I chal¬
lenge the newspaper press of the State to pick out the act—the single act—upon which I have changed
my principles." That he sent forth this challenge, and so expresses himself, we believe has not been
denied. An examination of his former opinions on the subject of internal improvements by the Nation¬
al Government, will show that, notwithstanding the above disclaimer, lie, like others of his party, has
found it convenient to change, and from an advocate of internal improvements by the State or the Gene¬
ral Government, he has become the bitter opponent of the system, and the advocate of all the views of
Gen. Jackson on the subject. It is not our object on the present occasion to present our views, or the
opinions entertained on this subject by the Whigs as a party, but to present the views of Col. Polk, be¬
fore he became so deeply imbued with the spirit of modern Democracy.
In a report of the proceedings of the Legislature of Tennessee, on the 23d September, 1834, we find
it stated, that Col. Polk uttered the following sentiments on the bill to incorporate the Murfreesborough
Turnpike Company. The correctness of the report has never been questioned :
" He (Mr. Polk) spoke of the propriety of such works being constructed by the State, or the General
Government, said the question with regard to the powers of the Government to make internal improve¬
ments had been settled at the last session of Congress, and he thought it likely that the attention of the
Government might be directed to the object of extending the military road from New Orleans."
What is this but a clear admission of the power of the National Government to construct work3 of
internal improvement ? Where is the consistency between this and his present opinions ? Which are
adverse to die whole system ?—a system which he now pronounces unconstitutional ! But he goes still
further in a circular letter addressed by him to his constituents, dated May 10th, 1825. In that docu¬
ment he says:
" How far the General Government has power to make internal improvements, has been a question of
some difficulty in the deliberations of Congress. It has been a question long and ably controverted by
our wisest statesmen. It seems, however, to have been lately settled by thethree great departments of
the Government in favor of the exercise of such a power."
Again, he says, in the same circular letter:
3
"The expediency of making internal improvements is unquestioned; it is only on the question of
power that doubt has arisen. They are calculated to promote the agricultural, commercial, and manu¬
facturing interests of the country; they add to the wealth, prosperity, and convenience ot the great
body of the people, by diminishing the expenses, and improving the facilities for the transportation of
our surplus products to market, and furnishing an easy and cheap return of those necessaries required
for our consumption A judicious system of internal improvements, within the powers delegated to the
General Government, I therefore approve."
No Whig could have made a more appropriate argument in favor ot internal improvements-ftan is
contained in the last paragraph, yet now, Col. Polk and his political associates, denounce the system as
a Federal measure ; as a violation of the Constitution.
james k. polk's votes in congress on appropriations for internal improvements.
Marchl, 1827.—On the passage of "An act to grant a quantity of land to the State of Illinois, for the
purpose of aiding the opening a canal to connect the waters of the Illinois river with those of Lake Mi¬
chigan," ayes 90, nays 67, J. K. Polk in the negative. (Jour. H. R. 1826, page 375.)
Feoruary 18, 1829.—On ordering the bill to be engrossed " for the preservation and repair of the
Cumberland road," yeas 105, nays 91, J. K. Polk in the negative. (Jour. H. R. 1828-'9, page 305.)
March '29, 1830.—Mr. Polk made a speech against internal improvements by the General Govern¬
ment. (Cong. Debates, vol. 6, page 692.)
May 29, 1830.—On agreeing to amendment of the Senate to the House bill, which amendment pro¬
vided for " the improvement of harbors, bays, rivers, and creeks," &.c., ayes 85, nays 53, J. K. Polk in
the negative. (Jour. H. R., page 795.)
May 29, 1S30 On the passage of an act to authorize subscription for stock on the part of the United
States to the Louisville and Portland Canal Company, yeas 80, nays 37, J. K. Polk in the negative.
(Jour. H. R. 803.)
\ January 18, 1831.—The House proceeded to the consideration of the bill making additional appropri¬
ations for the improvements of certain harbors, and removing obstructions in the mouth of certain ri¬
vers, &c. &.c., yeas 113, nays 45, James K. Polk voting in the negative. (Jour. H. R., page 328.)
February '24, 1835.—On agreeing to an amendment for the navigation of the Ohio river, between
Pittsburgh and the falls of the Ohio river, fifty thousand dollars ; yeas 110, nays 86, James K. Polk vot¬
ing in the negative. (See Jour. H. R., page 250.)
In 1834, he opposed the appropriation ot one hundred thousand dollars for the removal of the "raft,':
an obstruction in the Red river. He also opposed an appropriation of 25,000 for the improvement of the
harbor of St. Louis, Missouri. (See Congressional Register tor the session of 1834.)
The bill granting land to Alabama, to aid in constructing a canal round the Muscle Shoals, was passed
by the following vote, yeas 94, nays 61, Mr. Polk voting in the affirmative.
It must be remembered that this work is in the neighborhood of Col. Polk's district, which he repre.
eented, and his constituents were of course interested in the improvement of that portion of the Ten-
nessee river.
col. folk's hostility to the tariff policy.
If any friend of the tariff policy, of the principle of protection, is disposod to doubt the hostile dispo.
sition of Mr. Polk, their doubts must be removed, once and forever, by the facts and authentic quotation!
which follow. From Col. Polk's speech we extract the following:
" No member of the committee (of which he was one) who yielded his assent to this bill, I may safely
affirm, desires to prostrate the manufacturer, nor will such, in their judgment, be the effect of the bill
I venture to affirm that the bill, so tar from prostrating these establishments, affords sufficient incidental
protection to enable all such as are based on real, not borrowed, capital, and which are conducted with
economy and skill," &c.
This extract is taken from a speech delivered by James K. Polk, on the 28th day of January, 1834.
Mr. Polk says—we wish the reader to mark it—that " it affords sufficient incidental protection to enable
all such as are based on real, not borrowed, capital." Now, this is a doctrine which every true
American will repudiate. What would the poc^t do, if the principle were carried out that all who
trade on borrowed capital need no protection ? Is he the poor man's friend ? Is he the friend
of him who works and earns his bread on borrowed capital ? No, no. How many thousand, yea, mil¬
lions, whose business was based on borrowed capital, and who were poor men, rose to great wealth. Yef
James K. Polk would not protect them because they go on borrowed capital.
It may be said, that Col. Polk was in favor of passing a law affording incidental protection to American
industry. Nothing could be further from the truth. Mr. Polk spoke in opposition to the protective
clause in the compromise act, and was in favor of immediately reducing the revenue to the
necessary expenses of the Government, contending that that would afford sufficient incidental protection
to all such as are " based on real, not borrowed, capital." To prove this, we give below an extract
from the speech of the Hon. John M. Clayton, (United States Senator in 1834,) delivered at Wilming¬
ton, Delaware, who refers to the files of debates of Congress to sustain the truth of hi9 remarks :
" On the 28th day of February, 1834, [just one month after Polk's speech,] within one year after th«
passage of the compromise, Mr. Hall, of North Carolina, in the House of Representatives of the Unitei
States, introduced a resolution, the object of which was to procure from the Committee of Ways anc
Means a reDort of a plan, accompanied by a bill, to repeal the protection guarantied by the compromise
under the pretext of immediately reducing the revenue to the necessary expenses of the government
4
and James K. Polk, of Tennessee, who was, at that time, the Chairman of that very Committee of Ways
and Means, voted for that resolution. There were 69 yeas in favor of that resolution, and 115 nays
against it Mr. Polk was backed by six of the nine members of that same committee, and by all the
nullifiers and ultra anti-tariff men in the House."
In December, 1832, the Committee on Ways and Means reported a bill to repeal the existing tariff of
1828, and in lieu thereof to collect a revenue of but $12,500,000, by all imports on foreign merchandize,
the average duty on which, as proposed, was about 15 per cent., and that to beassessed on the foreign val¬
uation. James K. Tolk was one of that committee, and the measure had his earnest support, as the jour¬
nals of Congress will prove. This bill, which will be found to be the 11th document in the volume of
Reports of the Committee at the 2d session of the 22d Congress, is as follows :
" All assessable, be it remembered, on the foreign valuation; on woollens, to 15 per cent., on all not
exceeding 35 cents the square yard, 5 per cent.; on worsted stuff goods of all kinds, 10 per cent.; on
worsted and woollen hosiery, gloves, mits, bindings, and stockinets, 10 per cent.; on all other cloths,
merino shawls, flannels, baizes, and cassimeres, carpetings and rugs of all kinds, 20 per cent; on cloth¬
ing, ready made, of all descriptions, 20 per cent.; on all cotton goods, 20 per cent, except nankins,
from India, on which Mr. Potts' duty was 15 per cent.; and cotton hosiery, gloves, mits, and stockinets,
on which his duty was ten per cent.; as well as upon cotton twist, yarn and thread ; on all manufactures
ef flax and hemp, or sail duck and cotton bagging, 15 per cent.; on all manufactures of tin, japanning,
gilt, plated, brass and polished steel, 20 per cent.; on common saddlery, 10 per cent.; on earthern and
stoneware, 20 per cent.; on all side and fire arms, rifles and muskets, 20 per cent.; bridle-bits and glass
ware, 20 per cent.; on manufactures of iron and steel generally, a duty of 20 per cent.; on salt and coal,
5 per cent.; on every thing produced by the farmer in the middle and northern States, Mr. Polk, who
is a cotton grower, recommended, in this bill, one unvarying standard of only 15 per cent.; 15 per cent,
on wheat, and wheat flour, butter, bacon, beef and pork."
Had a destructive tornado passed over all the manufacturing establishments of the country at that time,
it would scarcely have proved a greater curse than that measure which had the earnest support of Go¬
vernor Polk, of Tennessee. By reducing the duty on wool to 15 per cent., it put the knife to the throat
of every sheep in the country. By a duty of 20 per cent, on ready-made clothing of all descriptions, it
ruck down a whole class of the most industrious and useful mechanics of the nation.
On the 23d of June, 1832, he voted for the motion of Mr. McDuftie, of South Carolina, to reduce the
duty on cotton goods, costing not exceeding 15 cents the square yard, to 12 1-2 per cent, ad valorem. On
the same day he voted for Mr. McDuffie's motion to abolish the duty of $30 per ton on rolled iron. On
the previous day he voted against the duty on boots and bootees, on cabinet wares, hats and caps, whips,
bridles, saddles, carriages and parts of carriages, blank books, earthern and stone wares, and manufac¬
tures of marble ; and also against the duty on wool.
With this exhibition of the friendship of J. K. Palk for the laboring freemen of all classes in this
country, we leave him in their hands, to dispose of him as he deserves, by a defeat unparalleled in the an¬
nals of political history.
During the canvass for governor of Tennessee, in the summer of 1843, a number of respectable citi¬
zens of Memphis, of both parties, addressed a series of interrogatories to Governor Polk and Governor
Jones, touching their opinions on the leading questions of the day. Their, answers were published at
length at the time ; the respective candidates resting their chances of success upon the opinions and
sentiments therein expressed. The answer of Governor Polk has recently been incorporated in a bio¬
graphical sketch of his life, prepared for and published by the Nashville Union, and his opinions en¬
dorsed and re-affirmed. The Nashville Union says :
" His answer was written in the midst of the conflict, and with great haste ; but it will be found to
bear all the marks of a statesman who has nothing to conceal from the public eye—who has his
opinions well matured, and whose reliance, at all times, is upon the virtue and intelligence of the people."
The fifth and sixth interrogatories, thus republished in the Nashville Union of the 13th June, instant,
relate to the tariff. We copy the question, with Mr. Polk's answer:
" 5th. Are you in favor of a tariff or direct taxes for the support of the General Government!"
" 6th. If a tariff, do you approve of such a tariff as would give protection to home industry against
foreign industry !"
Mr. Polk replied, and went into a string of arguments in favor of free trade, and misrepresentations of
the operations of the protective policy- He closed as follows:
" I am opposed to the tariff act of the late Congress, considering it to be in many respects of this charac¬
ter—and, indeed, so highly protective upon some articles as to prohibit their importation into the country
altogether. I am in favor of repealing that act, and restoring the Compromise Tariff Act of March 2d,
1833, believing, as I do, that it would produce more revenue than the present law; and that the incidental
protection afforded by the twenty per cent, duty, especially when this would be paid in cash, and on the
home valuation, will afford sufficient protection to the manufacturers, and all they ought to desire, or to
which they are entitled."
The following extracts from a speeeh delivered by James K. Polk before the people of Madison county,
on the 3d day of April, 1843, will show that he is, and always has been, an uncompromising opponent of
a protective tariff:
5
" He was opposed to prohibitory and protective duties, and in favor of such moderate duties as would
not cut off importations. In other words, he was in favor of reducing the duties to the rates of the com¬
promise act, where the Whig Congress found them on the 30th of June, 1842."—Pamphlet speech at
Jackson, Tennessee, April, 1843.
" The south, and he with them, had voted for the act of 1833, because it was a reduction of the rates of
the act of 1828, though by no means so low as he would have desired it to be,- still it was the greatest
reduction which could be attained at the time of its passage."
" The difference between the Whig party and myself is, whilst they are the advocates of distribution
and a protective tariff—measures which I consider ruinous to the interests of the country, and especially
to the interests of the planting States—7 have steadily, and at all times, opposed both."
The Globe, in commenting upon the extracts from Col. Polk's speeches, recently published, says :
"These extracts, we agree with Mr. Hardin, contain a fair exposition of Col. Polk's views, at tb^
same time it announces, in brief, the doctrine of a tariff for revenue only, which we regard as the doc¬
trine entertained universally, almost, by the Democratic party."
POLK ON WOOL.
Jan. 17, 1827, Mr. Mallory, of Vermont, reported a bill for the better protection of wool and woollens,
and made an elaborate speech in its support. Mr. CamWlang, of New York, (Locofoco,) immediately
rose and avowed free trade doctrines, and commenced war upon the bill. Mr. Polk voted against the
bill throughout.—Cong. Deb., vol. 3, pages 986, 996, 1,027, 1,028, 1,087, 1,098.
Jan. 31, 1828, Mr. Mallory, of Vermont, reported the famous tariff bill of 1828, giving increased pro¬
tection to wool, woollens, and other branches of domestic industry. Mr. Polk went with the enemies of
the bill and voted against it.—Same, vol. 4, part 2, pages 2,348, 2,472.
April 15, 1K30, Mr. Mallory reported a bill to prevent frauds in the importation of foreign products and
enforce the tariff of 1828. Mr. Polk voted against it.—Same, vol. 6, part 2, pages 979, 987.
Dec. 14, 1830, Mr. Barringer introduced a resolution to reduce the duty on coarse wool, woollens,
sugar, &c., and on the question of consideration, Mr. Polk voted in the affirmative.
FARMERS LOOK HERE !
" The Wool-growers consider the duty upon foreign wool as important to their prosperity. This
opinion is founded in error !"—James K. Polk.
" My opinion is, that wool should be dutyfree."—Congressional Debates, vol. 9, page 1174.
It would be easy to multiply quotations, but the above will suffice.
PROSPEROUS CONDITION OF THE FINANCES UNDER A WHIG TARIFF AND THE
MEASURES OF A WHIG CONGRESS.
The following is the comparative statement of the receipts from customs at the port of New York for
She first six months of 1843 and 1844 :
1843. 1844.
January - - - $548,056 39 $1,876,614 68
February - - - 492,215 39 2,169,110 18
March - - - 967,148 48 1,698,527 72
April - - - 1,033,263 71 1,890,626 68
May - - - 950,843 43 1,868,674 56
June - - - 654,743 74 1,918,044 15
Total ^ - - $4,646,271 14 $11,421,597 89
Here is the highly gratifying fact, that under the Whig tariff the revenue for the first six months of
the present year is more than double the amount received duiing the corresponding period of the last year!
For the port of New York alone the increase is nearly seven millions of dollars.' If the increase at other
points corresponds, as it has done hitherto, with the increase at New York, the total revenue for customs
during the present year will fall but little short of forty millions of dollars. And this, too, under a tariff
■which the Polk and Free Trade party predicted would ruin the commerce and drain the public treasury!
Where are these false prophets now !
At the same time that the revenues of the General Government have increased so largely, the expendi¬
tures, thanks to the economizing spirit introduced by the Whig Congress of '42 '43, have been materially
reduced. Under the spendthrift and corrupt administration of Martin Van Buren, the national expendi¬
tures were swollen to an average of more than thirty-eight millions of dollars a year. They are now-
brought down to about twenty millions. There will be a surplus, therefore, in the Treasury at the
end of the year, of seventeen or eighteen millions, applicable to the payment of the outstanding Van
Buren debt. This is an improvement in the financial affairs of the Government, only equalled by that
•which has taken place in the general condition of the country. During Mr. Van Buren's presidency, the
federal expenditures constantly exceeded the revenues. At the close of his term the balance against him
was something like thirty-four millions of dollars. This debt was the legacy which he bequeathed to the
Whig Congress. One of the first acts of that Congress was to adopt measures for replenishing the pubjic
treasury and restoring the prosperity of the people.
6 *
Tho tariff of 1842 wns the instrument upon which they relied to secure both these gTeat objects. And
how gloriously has it fulfilled their most sanguine expectations! Yet, notwithstanding the beneficent
influence which the tariff exerts upon the industrial interests of the whole country—notwithstanding the
substantial fruits, in the shape of revenue, which it has already yielded, and will continue to yield, to the
General Government—James K. Polk and his partisans clamor for its repeal! We ask the farmers, the
mechanics, the laboring men of the country, if they will consent to give up this great national restorative at
the bidding of political quacks and empirics'!
One of the principle topics of denunciation against the Whig tariff of 1842 was: " It raised the rates
of duties so high as to shut out imports, and consequently to cut off and diminish revenue."
Such was his declaration in his speech at Jackson, in April, 1843; and at the same time he ventured
the prediction that—"It (the tariff of 1842,) will not produce annually half the amount of rtvenue
which would have been produced by the lower rates of the compromise act, hud that act been left undis¬
turbed."
The actual results show what pretensions Col. Polk has to consideration for sound reasoning or sagaci¬
ty. Have imports been "shut out!" Has the revenue been "cutoff or diminished V' Passing over
the evidence which we have repeatedly- adduced of the steady increase of the revenue, what is the very
last exhibit at New York !
From the foregoing extracts, it must be perciived that James K- Polk stands in opposition to the ex-*
isting tariff, which protects our citizens against the pauper labor of Europe—which has reduced the prices
of almost every article of general use among the people—which affords ample revenue for the economical
administration of the Government—which has turned the balance of trade in favor of our country. By
the beneficial operation of the present tariff, tho trade has been turned in our favor; and, instead of an
annual balance against us of §40,000,000, or $60,000,000, the commercial document, which will soon tie
published, will exhibit about §26,000,000 in our favor, and $20,000,000 of that in specie. Official docu¬
ments show, that the importations of specie for the last year were §23,000,000, and the exports §3,000,000
a clear balance in our favor, in specie, of §20,000,000. We ask every farmer and mechanic and pro
fessional man throughout the whole land, to bear witness to this happy result of the tariff And this ie
the system that the Democratic party would break down, and let in foreign goods, ruin our domestic man¬
ufactures, and involve the country again in debt and irretrievable embarrassment.
But Col. Polk and the Democracy are for restoring the compromise tariff of the 2d of March, 1833 t
What observer of public affairs must not be forcibly struck with the course now pursued by the Rich¬
mond Enquirer and the Democracy as tegards the compromise, which, at the time of its passage, was de¬
nounced as not conceding enough to the south, and declaied that they would not regard the question fairly
settled until it was brought down to the revenue standard. But, " a change has come o'er the spirit of
their dreams," as they now declare that same abused and much abused compromise, the " bargain and
bond" in reference to the tariff question. This very " bond" that was vilified with all the rancor that
party malevolence could invent.
THE EXPENDITURES, APPROPRIATIONS, SURPLUS REVENUE, AND LIQUIDATION CF THE
PUBLIC DEBT.
In the Senate, Mr. Evans, chairman of the Committee on Finance, made an interesting and highly
satisfactory expose of the state of the finances of the country. He stated that a public loan of §5,672,000
would fall due on the first day of January next. The Committee on Finance had not deemed it neces¬
sary to make any special provision for the payment of this loan, and he would state the reason.
There was on hand, on the 1st of June instant, not embracing the receipts of the preceding week,
§6,500,000; and he estimated that there would be an available balance in the Treasury, on the 1st of
July, of §7,700,000.
Many, he said, thought, at the commencement of the present session, that there would be a deficit ire
the Treasury of four millions and a half of dollarsinstead of which we had a surplus of seven mil¬
lions seven hundred thousand dollars.
The receipts into the Treasury, up to the 30th June, for the present fiscal year, would be, from customs,
&c., §25,612,000, and from the sales of the public lands, §1,900,000—total $27,512,000 The expen¬
ditures for the same time would be about §20,000,000, leaving an excess of receipts over the expenditures
of §7,500,000. It was the first time in many years that the receipts had, -not fallen short of the ex¬
penditures.
Mr. Evans then went on to show what would be the condition of the Treasury on the 1st of January
next. The total receipts of the calendar year, up to the 1st January, be estimated at - §31,659,249
And the expenditures at 21,756,529
Which would leave a balance of §9,902,72®
gay ten millions, in the Treasury on the 1st January next
In the meantime, Treasury notes would be falling due to the amount of something more than two mil¬
lions. These, and the loan above mentioned, will make a sum total of §8,000,000, which, deducted froux
the surplus on hand, will still leave a balance in the Treasury of two millions of dollars.
The public debt now amounts to §23,391,140—after paying off the loan and the Treasury notts falling
due, it will be, on the first of January next, about fifteen millions of dollars, Mr. E. expressed a decided
7
opinion that the tariff act of '42, left to its fair operation, would yield a revenue, with the land sales, of
¥25,000,000. This will be more than will be wanted for a series of years to come, the appropriations
this year being only $ 18,000,000. The ordinary expenses, he thought, need not exceed $20,000,000 a
year. This would leave an annual excess of $5,000,000, and enable Congress to make such disposition
of the proceeds of the sales of public lands, as may be demanded by the popular voice.
who is for, and who against the tariff ?
The attempt of the Loco Focos to play the double game representing Mr Clay as being for the Tariff
at the North and against it at the South, and, at the same time, of making this very pretension for Mr.
Polk, is the most absurd and weak of all their efforts in this campaign to infuse something like vitality
into their death-stricken party. Every body can see through it at a glance, and every body will do so.
James K. Polk is utterly opposed to, and, if there be truth or honor in him, is irreversibly pledged, on
principle, to repeal, if his influence can do it, the Tariff of 1842. He is opposed to the principle of
Protection of American industry, incidentally or directly. He is for such a Tariff as will raise just
money enough or a very small and economical revenue expenditure, and not one farthing more. And
yet feeling " the shoe pinch," his desperate adherents are trying to delude the people into the belief
that he is in favor of Protection, after all !
#
Ashi.and, 29th Jane, 1844. Winchester, May 29, 1843.
Dear Sir : I have received your favor, stating To the u of ?ennessee.
tnat our political opponents represent me as being
a friend to protection at the North, and for free The object which I had in proposing to Governor
trade at the South : arid you desire an expression Jones, at Carrollville, on the 12th April last, that
of my opinion under my own hand, for the purpose we should each write out and publish our views
of correcting this misrepresentation. I am afraid and opinions on the subject of the Tariff, was that
that you will find the effort vain to correct misrep- our respective positions might be distinctly known
resentations of me. Those who choose to under- and understood by the people. That my opinions
stand my opinions can have no difficulty in clearly were already fully and distinctly known, I could
comprehending them. I have repeatedly express- not doubt. I had steadily, during the period I was
•ed them as late as this spring, and several times in a representative in Congress, been opposed to a
answer to letters from Pennsylvania. My opin- protective policy, as my recorded votes and pub-
ions, such as they are, have been recently quite as lished speeches prove. Since I retired from Con-
freely expressed at the South, as I ever uttered gtess I had held the same opinions. In the present
them at the North. I have every where maintain- canvass for Governor I HAD AVOWED MY OP-
ed that in adjusting a Tariff for revenue, discrimi- POSITION TO THE TARIFF ACT OF THE
nations ought to be made for Protection ; that the LATE WHIG CONGRESS, as being highly pro-
Tariffof 1842 has operated most beneficially, and tective in its character and not designed by its au-
that I AM UTTERLY OPPOSED TO ITS RE. thors as a revenue measure. I had avowed my
PEAL, 'these opinions were announced by me at opinion in my public speeches that the interests
public meetings in Alabama, Georgia, Charleston of the country, and especially of the producing and
in South Carolina, North Carolina, and in Vir- exporting States, REQUIRED ITS REPEAL,
ginia. * and the restoration of the principles of the compro-
Your friend and ob't s'vt, H. CLAY. mise tariff act of 1833.
Mr. Fred. J. Cope, Pittsburgh, Pa. JAMES K. POLK.
We present our readers with a short extract from Mr. Polk's address to the people of Tennessee, of
April 3d, 1839, (printed at Columbia, Tennessee, Mr. P.'s own residence.) On page 7, we find the fol¬
lowing paragraph :
" In repeated instances, he (Gen. Jackson) recommended modifications and reductions of the Tariff
with a view to the final abandonment of the odious and unjust system. So effectual were these recom¬
mendations, and so rapid the change of public opinion, that the friends of the tariff, and even Mr. Clay,
its imputed father, seized on a favorable moment to save the whole from destruction by a timely compro¬
mise. It was the defence of Mr. Clay with his friends at the North, that by yielding a part he prevented
the destruction of the whole, and in their continued and devoted support of him, the Northern capitalist
have shown that they are grateful for the fortunate rescue."
Mr. Clay has most explicitly defined his position on the subject; and it was done, too, in the face of
the nullifiers of South Carolina.
He had ever been in favor of the protective system to a certain extent To preserve at once the peace
and the great interests of the country, he had been active in effecting the compromise of 1833. Mr. C.
denied that the principle of the compromise required the maximum rate of duty to be fixed at 20 per
cent.—its true principle was, that no more revenue should be raised than was necessary for an honest and
economical administration of the Government, and within that limit there might be discrimination in
favor of domestic industry. Mr. C. concludes this branch of his subject, by declaring himself in favor
of a system of protection, moderate, reasonable, certain, and durable.—Speech at Charleston, S. C.,
April, 1h44.
If this is not plain language, we know not what is—comment cannot be necessary. A revenue tariff
is defined by the clearest terms language is capable of.
We love to try men by their actions. When Mr. Polk tells us he is in favor of " such moderate
discriminating duties as would produce the amount of revenue needed, and at the same time afford reason-
8
able incidental protection to our home industry," we are left in the dark ; for wo cannot tell how much or
how little protection he thinks reasonable. We are much obliged to Mr. Polk, therefore, for referring us
to his acts. He tells us he voted against the tariff of 1828. He voted for the act of 1832, which was
an act to reduce the tariff. And in December, 1832, he voted for further reductions of the tariff. He
then, in common with all the anti-tariff, and all but the extreme tariff men, voted for the Compromise act,
which also reduced duties. We thus see that Mr. Polk has, invariably, voted against protection—never
for it. This is from his own lips.
col. polk supports the propositions to impose a duty of twenty-five per cent. on
cotton fabrics, and a duty on tea and coffe and salt.
While the Locofoco nominee for the Presidency, is the advocate of Free Trade, and the uncompro¬
mising oponent of the protective policy, so far as it relates to the common articles of wear, used by the
poor and laboring classes, he is, as he always has been, for taxing tea and coffee at such a rate, as to place
it beyond the power of the poor, to purchase these articles. Mr. Polk was a member of the Committee
of Ways and Means, in the House of Representatives, in 1832, and signed a report which bears date of
December 28 of that year, which says : ,
" The committee perceiving no sufficient reason why the consumers of foreign luxuries should not pay
their shares of the public burdens, propose to raise the rates of duties upon silks nearer to the average
rates of duties imposed by the bill, than they now are under the act of 1832. They also propose to fix a
moderate specific duty, equal to about 20 per cent, on the value upon teas, and also upon eoffte, which were
made wholly free of duty by the act of the last summer."
We ask the admirers of Col. Polk to recollect a portion of Congressional history in relation to the tariff
question. The tariff act of 1832, for which James K. Polk voted, contained a provision imposing a duty
of 25 per cent, on cotton fabrics, (the shirt of the poor man, according to the Locofoco orators 1) and on
salt a tax of ten cents a bushel—only 8 by the " Black Tariff," the act of 1842 ! When the bill,
reported from the Committee of Ways and Means, (of which Col. Polk was a member.) was considered
in the House of Representatives, December, 1832, a motion was made to strike out the duty of twenty
per cent, on tea, and Mr. Polk was found among the sixty-two negatives ; and on motion to strike out
the duty of one cent per pound on COFFEE, Mr. Polk was in company with 57 negatives. Now be it
remembered, that Mr. Clay, in his Compromise bill of 1833, so far from proposing a tax upen articles of
prime necessity, as tea and coffee, (which were made duty free by the act of July, 1832,) increased the
list of free articles- And the whig tariff of 1842, denounced by Mr. Polk, made tea and coffee duty
free, and reduced the duty on salt to eight cents a bushel.
locofoco party in favor of raising revenue for the support of the federal
government by direct taxation, instead of adopting the impost system.
" Mr. Smith, of Va., followed Mr. Summers. After pointing out the various modes by which Govern¬
ment could raise revenue, expressing his preference for*a system of internal taxation," <Src.—Debate in
Congress, July 9, 1812.
These are the remarks of the Hon. Wm. Smith, one of the Polk electoral candidates in the State of Va—
" Direct taxation is not only the doctrine of Democracy, but it is the doctrine of the Constitution. It
is plain that direct taxes were contemplated to be raised as a permanent source of revenue by those who
framed it."—See Mr. Ithett's speech on the Independent Treasury, Congressional Globe, vol. 3, p. 651.
" Indirect taxation, that is, laying the taxes on foreign articles when imported into the country, is aa
admirable expedient lor a Despotism.—Same as above."
We might add to the above quotations, but we feel confident the above extracts are sufficient to indicate
the disposition of the Locofoco party to resort to direct taxation, with the view of raising revenue to defray
the expenses of the National Government.
locofoco principles defined in relation to the tariff.
" Democracy " and the Tariff.
We contend, and we think we establish the fact beyond all controversy, that James K. Polk, and the
Locofoco party, are opposed to the principle of protection to American industry. Look at the facts which
are starting up every day to support this position. In addition to the extracts from the speech of Col.
Polk, we have the following from Mr. Benton, in a speech in the Seriate. Hear him state the issue
for 1844:
"The question itself is now on trial before the Areopagus of the American people, and must have its
solution before that tribunal before we meet again. The presidential election involves the fate of the
tariff and to that fate a future Congress will have to conform, be our action now what it may. Now, as
in the year 1832, the fate of the high tariff is staked in the person of its eminent champion—its candidate
for the presidency of the United States. That champion was defeated then, and his system with him—
and he may be defeated again."
" His system with him do you hear 1 The defeat of Mr. Clay is the destruction of the tariff; so-
f
9
says Col. Benton, who was once a Clay man and then a tariff man, but is now hostile to Mr. Clay and
so to protection. So says Senator Colquit, of Georgia:
" Most of the Whig Senators who have discussed this question, have, in an open, manly manner, ad¬
mitted that the act of 1842 was a bill passed for protection ! that they advocated it because of its ample
recognition of the protective principle ; that jit is a favorite Whig measure, to which all other measures
are subordinate and of secondary importance. This is fair, and places the issue between the parties upon
this subject, to be determined by the American people; the tariff act of 1842, with its high duties and
principles of protection, on the one side; and the advocates of low duties and an equal system of taxa¬
tion, on the other."
Then we have the opinion of Mr. Henley, a Locofoco member of Congress from Indiana, which comes
tip to the point, without flinching or dodging:
"The Democratic party had been taunted with a fear of passing the late tariff bill. I can tell the gen¬
tlemen that the present tariff will be reduced as soon as we are in full power. We well knew that it
was no use to pass it in the House now, as we had not the majority in the Senate. Give us a majority
there, and see if we don't pass the bill! We will do it, for such is our resolute determination
What say you to that! " We will do it, for such is our resolute determination." If this should not
satisfy you, we will add the declaration of Mr. E. Fisher, one of the most prominent Locofocos in Ohio,
and a warm and intimate friend of Col. Polk. He says :
" The Whigs accuse us of not being willing to go before the people upon our principles—of being
afraid to avow our naked principles, and discuss them fairly and openly, unaided by the gunpowder popu¬
larity of a Jackson, or the secret power of a magician. We have now nominated a man who is neither a
hero nor a magician; a citizen comparatively undistinguished, beaten twice in his own State in the
governor's canvass, but a man out and out fur frte trade, openly and unconditionally opposed to protec¬
tion, as inexpedient and unconstitutional! We nominate a man as the exponent of our principles, and
we expect to conquer on our principles without any extraneous aid."
"We are opposed to a Protective Tariff We consider it a fraud upon the great body of the people,
which, when stripped of its sophistry, and placed before an intelligent community, will be rejected with
-abhorrence !"—[Extract from an address to the people of Kentucky, from the Locofoco Convention of
the 8th of January.}
" I deny the right of imposing any duties but for revenue, or to make any discrimination but oh reve-
venue principles.
" Fort Hill, September, 4843. " JOHN C. CALHOUN."
Then we have the assurance of the Nashville Union, Jackson and Polk's organ in Tennessee, setting
forth, in positive terms, that, from the nominee of the party, the mechanics and laboring men have no¬
thing to expect or hope for should he be elected. Down with the Tariff is the universal cry of those
now advocating the cause of Polk and Texas. Thus saith the Union :
" We wish it borne in mind, that the oppressive tariff of 1842 has been condemned by every true Dem¬
ocrat, and by none more decidedly than by Mr. Van Buren. That its provisions are viewed with AB¬
HORRENCE by Gov. Polk, and all his friends, we need not repeat."
The AVashington correspondent of the Journal of Commerce, a leading Locofoco paper of New York,
■writing from Washington, says :
" HE IS FOR FREE TRADE : he is for Texas; he is hostile to distribution. It will be easy to
make issue with him on all these questions."
Remember, friends of the tariff, James K. Polk is for Free Trade. Under such a system the price of
labor would sink to the European standard. What mechanic wants to work for eleven cents a day ?
Those who do, let them vote for Polk and Free Trade !
The New York Plebian, a Locofoco paper, on this subject, says :
" The language of Mr. Ritchie is an index of the feeling of the South, which is nearly unanimous in
favor of James K. Polk, Texas, Oregon, and opposed to a Bank and the protective feature of the Tariff."
The Charleston Mercury, the leading nullification paper of South Carolina, an official organ of John
■C. Calhoun, speaks as follows of James K. Polk's nomination for President:
" Mr. Polk's views on the Tariff, the Bank, and the all-absorbing question of Texas, are Southern to
the back bone."
Then we have the proceedings of a meeting in Edgefield, S. C., at which the Hon. F. AV. Picken
made a speech, and at which several resolutions were passed, among which are the following:
a Resolved, That the Tariff act of 1842 is liable to all the objections we have heretofore made to the
•constitutionality and expediency of the measures of the Federal Government for the protection of domes
tic manufactures, with the aggravation that it was a gross breach of the faith plighted to us in the Com¬
promise of 1832; and that we regard the time and measure of our resistance to this act, as matters to be
settled upon our own views of expediency, in no wise to be hindered by our SUPPOSED allegiance
to the Federal Government."
10
The above proceedings of the Edgefield meeting, do not go forth to the world without endorsers in
other sections of the State, but from one end to the other the same sentiments are avowed. The most
bitter and deadly hostility is evinced to the Tariff', and measures are about being agitated in the State
Legislature in opposition to it. The Charleston Mercury copies from the South Carolinian an article,
announcing that Air. Pickens, who endorsed Mr. Polk's nomination in the National Convention, is to be
a candidate for the State Senate, a vacancy having been made for the purpose, " to go into the Legisla¬
ture, with the view ol urging a highly important defensive measure against the present destructive Tariff."
A meeting in Putnam, Georgia, says:
" The Tariff.—It is Northern protection and Southern destruction ; may its advocates be taxed in
their homes and taxed in their lands—taxed in their beds and taxed in their blankets—taxed in their
food and taxed in their medicines—taxed in their coffins and taxed in the spot of their graves—and, with
Harry Clay tacked to their backs, may they in misery go home to their fathers to be taxed for their folly."
A few days before the adjournment of the Senate, Mr. Tappan, of Ohio, proposed a resolution, declar¬
ing " that the duties imposed by existing laws on importations are unjust, and OUGHT TO BE RE¬
DUCED." The question being taken, the resolution was rejected by the following vote : "
Yeas—Messrs. Allen, Atchinson, Bagby, Benton, Breese, Fairfield, Fulton, Hannegan, Haywood,
Huger, Lewis, McDuffie, Niles, Semple, Sevier, Tappan, Woodbury, Wright.—18.
JV~ays—Messrs. Archer, Barrow, Bates, Bayard, Buchanan, Choate, Clayton, Crittenden, Dayton,
Evans, Francis, Henderson, Huntington, Jarnagin, Mangum, Merrick, Morehead, Miller, Porter, Rives,
Simmons, Sturgeon, Tallmadge, White, Woodbridge.—25.
Affirmative 18, all Locofocos; negative 25, viz: 23 Whigs and 2 Locofocos, (Messrs. Buchanan and
Sturgeon, of Pennsylvania.) This vote shows that, with two exceptions, the whole Locofoco party in
the Senate are opposed to protection.
british party.
Twenty-six members of the House of Representatives recorded their votes against the amendment
proposed by Mr. Pollock, to the Civil and Diplomatic Appropriation Bill, directing that the articles pur¬
chased for the use of Congress should be of American manufacture. The twenty-six patriots, all
Locofocos, were—
Messrs. Arrington, Atkinson, Bower, Bowlin, Aaron V. Brown, Burt, Campbell, Reuben Chapman,
Augustus A. Chapman, Cobb, Daniel, Dromgoole, Duncan, Holmes, Hopkins, Hubbard, Hughes,
Jameson, Lumpkin, Lucas, McKay, Mathews, Murphy, Emery D. Potter, David S. Reid, and Wood¬
ward.—26. *
It is hardly necessary to add, that the whole twenty-six belong to the Locofoco party, whose politi¬
cal instincts prompt them to oppose any thing like encouragement to home industry or American manu¬
factures. What do American mechanics and laboring men say to such doctrines? Can they sustain a
party whose principles lead them to extend to European capital and foreign pauper labor the favor and
protection which they refuse to the industry and enterprise of our own land?
Here we have, then, open and bold avowals of the course which the Locofocos in Congress have de¬
termined to pursue. These avowals are not made by a single man, on his own responsibility, but by
men from different sections of the country. Now, what really is the policy of locofocoism ? Let the
answer be from their own mouths : " We go," say they, " for Free Trade, Hard Currency, Di¬
rect Taxation, and a reread oe the existing Tariff."
These are their measures—open, undisguised, unmistakeable ; and this is the end to which we have
long believed the locofoco party must come. Let every man, of any party, ask himself what will he
gain by putting such a party in power. Let him ask himself in all seriousness, for it is a serious matter
to us all.
Having so far traced the wonderful revolutions of Mr. Polk's mind, from one extreme to another or
these important subjects, our attention will next be given to the causes that have produced them. We
have seen him at one time claiming all power for the General Government, and then shifting his position
as by magic, in contempt of public understanding, at another time placing paramount sovereignty in
the States ; and from both principles, as they alternately prevailed, deducing the most absurd heresies.
That he has been both wise and honest in maintaining opposite sides of the same questions is more than
charity can concede. Is it deficiency of sagacity ? We cannot protect his honesty at the expense of
his intelligence. His friends say that he possesses a clear and vigorous intellect. The inference is
forced upon us that, ministering to the unhallowed ambition of aspiring demagogues, he has wandered
from political rectitude, valuing principles and country only, so far as they might be instrumental to
their success and gratify their passions for distinction. He erected in his heart an altar to ambition, and
held no victim too sacred for the unholy sacrifice.
the whig tariff of 1842, adopted by congress to suppdy the wants of the govern¬
ment, and forced upon the nation.
The enactment of this law was a matter of the last necessity, involving the honor and integrity of the
whole nation—its abandonment now would subject us to the risk of renewed disgrace. It was forced
upon the nation by the wasteful and improvident administration ofMr. Van Burenand hisdemocraticallies.
Mr. Van Buren had a surplus in the Treasury, about $9,000,000 ! ! when he entered upon the duties of
his administration on the 4th ol March, 1837. Now, every administration should not only be prudent and
economical in the expenditure of the means provided, but it should also arrange for an income equiva¬
lent to the future wants of the Government. So utterly did the last Locofoco administration neglect
11
&oth of these duties in 1840 '41 that, on the assembling of the 27th Congress, there was found an actual
debt—$18,00;),00.)—showing an excess of expenditures over income, during the 12 years previous, of
$48,577,480 ! In 1840 the importations bad so fallen off under the reduced duties, that there was an
estimated deficit of $16,000,000 in the revenue. In 1842, under a considerable reduced expenditure,
the deficit was $14,000,000 ! ! The credit of the country was gone—had been hawked through the Eu¬
ropean markets without finding a purchaser at any price ! !
To this condition had the country been reduced by a locofoco administration. In this condition was
it found by the whig Congress of 1842. The only alternative was an increased revenue, or open, palpa¬
ble disgrace. But an increase of revenue could only be effected by an increase of duties on imports.
Well and firmly was the crisis met by the patriotic men of that Congress ; and who can blame the Senator
or Representative for voting for a measure involving the character of his country. The sacrifice was
one of expediency to principle, of mere local interests to an enlarged and commendable patriotism.
The tariff was then, we conclude, necessary to the proper replenishing of the Treasury. Any pro¬
vision falling short of this requisition would have betrayed an improvidence in the Government, tending
to impair its general character, to sap the foundations ot its credits, and to enfeeble its energies. Should
the system of relying altogether upon the aid of loans for defraying not only the expenses, but the liqui¬
dation of the indebtedness of the Government, an operation, by which, throwing into the market a large
amount of stock, accompanied with no adequate provision for its payment, but relying on the decreasing
ability to borrow, must have produced a most unfavorable effect upon the general price of the public
stocks. It may be added that a system of that sort would, it is believed, be found altogether unprece¬
dented in the financial history of any wise and regular Government. To establish a high system of
credit, the tariff act of 1842 was indispensable to place the revenues of the country upon a basis com¬
mensurate with the public exigencies. A contrary system would have evinced, in the eyes of foreign
nations, an imbecility of action and design, the effects of which must be too obvious to be mistaken.
And, as regards our own country, would have indicated a policy as feeble and short-sighted, as it must
have been considered deceptive and disingenuous—as unworthy of the rulers of a free and enlightened
nation, as in its results it would have been found fatal to its interests, and paralyzing to all its efforts.
MR. POLK AND DISTRIBUTION OF THE PROCEEDS OF THE SALES OF THE PUBLIC LANDS.
From Mr. Polk's speech delivered at Jackson, Tennessee, the 3d of April, 1843, printed in pamphlet
form, and written out by himself, in reply to Mr. Brown, we give the following extract, setting forth his
hostility to distribution and protection:
"The difference between the course of the political party with which he, (Mr. Milton Brown,) actsand
myself is, whilst they are the advocates of distribution and a protective tariff—measures which I consider
ruinous to the interests of the country, and especially to the interests of the planting States—I have,
steadily and at all times opposed both."
Jan. 4, 1832, a vote was taken to lay on the table, (i. e. to kill,) a resolution to distribute the proceeds
of the public lands among the States, in just proportions, for the purposes of internal improvement and
education. Mr. Polk voted in the affirmative. — Cong. Deb., vol. 8, part 2, page 1,479.
July 5, 1832, the vote was taken on postponing, (i. e. defeating,) Mr. Clay's land bill, and Mr. Polk
voted in the affirmative.—Same, part 3, page 3,853.
We quote the fact of Mr. Polk's opposition to Mr. Clay's land bill from the record; there is, therefore,
no such thing as disputing it.
OPINIONS OF THE LOCOFOCO PARTY IN RELATION TO THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE SALES OF
PUBLIC LANDS AMONG THE SEVERAL STATES OF THE UNION.
Among the greatest interests of the country, there is none deserving of a higher degree of attention
from the people than the public domain; and there is no part of the policy of the Locofoco party deserving
of more decisive rebuke than their persevering efforts to wrest from the older States of the Union all their
rights in the public lands, and the rejection of the bill for distributing the nett proceeds of the sale6 of
such lands in a just and rateable proportion among all the States.
The opposition made to the adoption of this great scheme of national policy when it was proposed by
Mr. Clay in 1833, and still continued up to the present by the leaders of the Locofoco party, we proceed
4o show, is in direct contrariety to their own professions and recommendations.
In December, 1831, the Hon. Louis McLane, General Jackson's Secretary of the Treasury, in his reg¬
ular annual report, referred to the extinction of the national debt, presented the question of the public
iands, and thus remarked :
" It must be admitted that the public lands were ceded by the States, or subsequently acquired by the
United States, for the common benefit ; and that each State has an interest in their proceeds, of which
it cannot be justlt deprived."
The editor of the Richmond Enquirer, whose authority no " Locofoco" will doubt, referred to the same
report of the secretary in the following terms:
" The Public Lands.—Mr. McLane proposes, (in his Treasury report,) also to 'lop off this resource
from the public treasury, by disposing of all the public lands, in the aggregate, to those States wilhia
-whose territorial limits they lie, at a fair price, to be settled in such manner as might be satisfactory to
;3lU. The aggregate price of the whole may then be apportioned among the Several States of the Union t
12
according to such equitable rates as may be consistent with the objects of the original cession ; and the
proportion of each may be paid or secured directly to the others by the respective States purchasing the
lands.'"
The editor then proceeded to comment, in the strongest terms of approbation, upon the proposal, and
thus glowingly depicted the numerous blessings which would be certain to flow from it. This portrait
may be held up as justly representing the advantages that would have resulted to the States of the con¬
federacy, if the measure had not been strangled by executive power:
" Put them down at even half a dollar per acre, and we obtain at once the immense sum of one hun¬
dred and fifty millions of dollars. We shall not undertake to settle the principles of a just distribution—
to say how much more this State should receive for the lands it has ceded ; how much to make up for
what the others have already received of the public domain, &c. But taking even the inadequate ratio of
representation, as the basis of distribution, it will follow that Virginia would receive for her share 22-213ths
of the whole—that is to say, more than fifteen millions of dollars. Let that stock bear an interest of five
per cent., and we should draw, from this fund alone, between 7 and 800,000 dollars.
"The very amount of any such hypothetical sum, shows us the great extent of the interests which are
involved in the proposition. What might not Virginia do with an annual dividend of $800,000 1—or
even the half of it 7 How many miles of road might she not complete ? How many schools establish I
How many of her degraded population might she not transport to the shores of Africa 1
" Putting aside, however, all the allurements of self-interest, and viewing the question alone as one be¬
tween the United States and the States where the lands are situated, we are prompted to acquiesce at once
in the proposition of the secretary, and very much for the reason he assigns: that ' all cause of difficulty
with the General Government on this subject would then be removed.' "
So much for the Treasury organ of General Jackson's administration, and for Mr. Ritchie, its most dis¬
tinguished newspaper advocate. Now let us see what were the views of General Jackson himself. He
thus followed up the suggestions of his secretary in the annual message of December, 1832 :
" Among the interests which merit the consideration of Congress after the payment of the public debt,
one of the most important, in my view, is that of the public lands. Previous to the formation of our
present Constitution, it was recommended by Congress that a portion of the waste lands owned by the
States should be ceded to the United States, for the purpose of general harmony, and as a fund to meet
the expenses of the war. The recommendation was adopted, and at different periods of time the States
of Massachusetts, New York, Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Georgia granted their vacant soil
for the uses for which they had been asked. As the lands may now be considered released from this
pledge, the object for which they were ceded having been accomplished, it is in the discretion of Congress
to dispose of them in such a way as best to conduce to the quiet, harmony, and general interest of the-
American people."
In the same message, he says:
" It seems to me to be our true policy that the public lands shall cease, as soon as practicable, to be &
source of revenue."
Let us investigate General Jackson's views further on this interesting subject. The following is from
his annual message in 1833- It is most clear and satisfactory. It is good Whig doctrine.
"The cession of Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia, in express terms, and all the rest impliedly,
not only provide specifically the proportion, according to which each State shall profit by the proceeds of
the land sales, but they proceed to declare that they shall be faithfully and bona fide disposed of for that
purpose, and for no other case whatsoever." And adds: "This is the fundamental law of the land at
this time, growing out of compacts which are older than the Constitution, and formed the cornerstone on
which the Union itself was erected." " The Constitution" (it says in another place) " left all the com¬
pacts before made in full force, and the rights of all the parties remain the same under the new Govern¬
ment, that they were under the confederation." And again: " The solemn compacts invited by Con¬
gress in a resolution declaring the purposes to which the proceeds of the lands should be applied, originat¬
ing before the Constitution, and forming the basis on which it was made, bound the United States to a
particular course of policy in relation to them, by ties as strong as can be invented to secure the faith
of nations." ,
Here General Jackson recognises, in express terms, the power of Congress, unconditionally and without
restriction, at its discretion, to dispose of the public lands, repudiating the doctrine that they are ordinary
revenue.
The next position we propose to notice is the assumption that the proceeds of the public lands are
ordinary revenue, and as such Congress has no power to distribute them. This position has been assumed
with great boldness and apparent confidence. We will, in addition to what we have already said, add
one more name in support ot our views. In support of these views we will adduce an authority for which
modern Democracy professes to entertain the most reverent regard, although in this instance, as in others,
its practice is directly opposite to its professions. The Hon. W. R. King supported just such a "Federal
policy!" The whole Whig doctrine of distribution was maintained by him in its most comprehensive-
form, as is evident from the following:
13
The Hon. William R. King, whose strict construction doctrines are well known, in his report from tb
Committee on Public Lands, after elaborating the whole subject, came to the same conclusion. He r<
marks, that " This committee turn with confidence from the land offices to the custom-houses, and sa;
here are the true sources of federal revenue. Give lands to the cultivator, and tell him to keep his mone
or lay it out in their cultivation."
mr. benton's opinions in 1828.
" The lands were ceded to be disposed of for the payment of the public debt—they were accepted to t
disposed of for that purpose. The Federal Government was constituted the trustee of the lands, an
bound to make application of them to a specific object. She accepted the trust, and neither party dreame
at the time the lands were ceded in fee simple and in perpetuity to the Federal Government, to be ke]
forever, or lavished upon innumerable objects, as the whim or caprice or interests dictate "—See Congre
sional Register, vol. 1, part 4, page 617.
mr. calhoun's opinions.
On the 3d of January, 1840, Mr. Calhoun asked and obtained leave to bring in a bill to cede the publ
lands within the limits of the new States, on certain conditions.
Extracts from the bill.
" All lands that may have been offered at public sale, and remaining unsold for thirty years or upward
preceding the said 13th day of June, 1842, shall be ceded immediately to the States in which the said lam
are situated." -
This section, it will be perceived, surrenders the entire charge of the public domain, as well as tl
property in the same ; and thus recognises the constitutional power on the part of Congress to dispose
the public lands.
On tile 17th of January, 1839, Levi Woodbury, Mr. Van Buren's Secretary of the Treasury, in con
pliance with a resolution of the Senate, transmitted to that body the following—
Exhibit of the proportion of the nett proceeds of the sale of the public lands which each State icout
have received up to and including the 30th of September, 1838.
STATES.
Twelve and a half
per cent, on the
nett proceeds of
sales in each of the
States in which
the public lands
are situated.
Total amount of
nett proceeds that
would have been
received by each
Slate.
STATES.
Twelve and a half
per cent, on the
nett proceeds of
sales in each ofthe
States in which
the public lands
are situated.
Total amount of
nett proceeds that
would have been
received by each
State.
Ohio, -
Indiana
Illinois -
Missouri
Alabama
Mississippi -
Louisiana
Michigan
Arkansas
Maine -
New Hampshire -
Massachusetts
Rhode Island
Connecticut
$554,182
1,182,404
1,126,724
559,793
845,334
1,201,198
248,319
401,016
96,818
$4,557,932
2,646,744
1,797,554
1.116,530
1,965,934
1,672,294
982,149
443,196
134,905
1,705,206
1,149,714
2,605,734
414,897
1,270,683
Vermont
New York -
New Jersey
Pennsylvania
Delaware -
Maryland -
Virginia
North Carolina -
South Carolina -
Georgia
Tennessee -
Kentucky -
-
$1,198,058
8,190.102
1,365,691
5,754,697
322,003
1,732,475
4,369,167
2,730,979
1,942,432
1,834,794
2,669,148
2,654,502
-
$6,215,788
$57,227,520
If tbe administration of General Jackson had permitted Mr. Clay's bill to become a law, as Congress
by unparalleled majorities, had decreed, what would have been the condition of the country at the presen
moment, by applying the public lands held by the United States, as a fund for the payment of the loam
already made by the States, for their several plans of internal improvement, or which may be necessar;
to carry them into complete execution, or for the establishment of school systems for the diffusion of thi
blessings of intellectual light among all classes of society. This immense domain derives all its pecuniar
value, and most of its capacity to become useful to men, and to support future settlements, communities
and commonwealths, from the population, trade, and industry, fiom the roads and canals of the olde
States. The most just appropriation then of their proceeds is, to distribute them amongst the severs
States of the Union, and for whose benefit they are now confessedly held. How many of the State;
would be able to liquidate their pecuniary engagements 1 They would not be laboring under the taxatioi
necessary to the maintenance of their credit.
mr. polk and state banks.
Mr. Polk, when in Congress, was the identical man who introduced the bill to establish the " Pe
Banks" !
14
From the report of the Committee of Ways and Means, of which Mr. Polk was chairman, made in
March, 1834, wo give the following quotation, asking the reader to compare the past history of State
Banks with what this locofoco Presidential candidate says :
" The committee are satisfied that the State Bunks are fully competent to perform all the services
which the General Government ought to require in the collection and disbursement of the revenue, and
to afford also all facilities to the internal commerce and exchanges of the country, which have been de¬
rived from the Bank of the United States."
And again, in a speech delivered in Congress, on the 20th of June, 1834, Mr. Polk thus concludes an
argument in favor of State Banks for depositories of the public moneys :
"I have thus briefly considered the two principal points of objection—the alleged unsqfety of State
banks as public depositories, and their incompetency to perform all the duties required of them as fiscal
agents of Government. As regards the first, it has been my object to show, from well attested facts,
that they are as safe as any other description of agency could be. That occasional losses, during their
employment for a long period of time, may be possible, is not controverted. But should these occur, (as
is not anticipated,) it should be remembered that such losses are incident to all credit, and is not likely
to be greater, nor, indeed, under the many guards contained in this bill for the public security, so great,
as that which might reasonably be expected from the employment of any other description of agents."
* * * "As regards the second objection—the alleged incompetency of these banks as fiscal aeent3
—the manner in which they have performed, and are performing, these duties, must remove all doubts
which may have existed on that point. It is no longer a question of doubt whether they can with faci¬
lity and promptness, transfer the public funds to the most distant points for disbursement, and perform
all other duties which, as fiscal agents, they may be. required to perform."
" The country, then, has been prosperous ; but she is indebted for that prosperity neither to the bank
nor to the panic, but to the new impulses springing out of the employment of State banks as fiscal agents
of the Government, to which the bank and its friends had been the most inveterate enemies, and did all
in their power to sweep them from the face of the earth."
Our only object in making this quotation is, to bring the political history of Mr. Polk before the
public eye—and to show how far he was disposed to go in the support of State banks when they were the
pets of the party, forced into existence by Locofoco Legislatures, controlled by Locofoco officers, and
which afterwards exploded, bearing with them distress and ruin to almost every household ; how he
opposed the sub.Treasury, when it was first proposed, and at a subsequent time advocated it because the
Locofocos could find nothing else to stand upon, and his pet bank system had occasioned a loss of mil¬
lions of dollars to the treasury of the nation.
They carried out their point by inviting the trading community to come in and borrow of the Pet
Banks as they were called.
They afterwards pronounced all trading whatever, on borrowed capital, fraudulent and criminal.
They had used the State Banks, or rather abused them, as artillery against the United States Bank,
assuring their friends that nothing could be safer than these engines, which they were loading to the
muzzle, and heating even to burning ; and when, at the close of a triumphant action, they all exploded
on their hands, as was, of course, inevitable, they denounced the whole system, as, even under their
best management, detestable ; and propose, for a fanatical, clamorous party support, one, inconsistent
with our previous habits, and of the successful operation of which, the only guaranty they give is their
total failure in all their previous schemes.
VVe ask the advocates of Col. Polk if these democratic institutions, as they were denominated, did
not fail to comply with the stipulations of their engagements with the Government—if they did not fail
to transmit the public moneys from one point of the Union to another, when required by the Union to do
so ? Did they not prove to be unsafe depositories, and corrupt fiscal agents ?
But these "fiscal agents" soon became unpopular with the locofoco party. General Jackson, in
1836, issued his celebrated specie circular, prohibiting the receipt of the paper ol local banks in pay¬
ment of the public lands ; the banks were so drained of their specie as on longer to sustain the extended
operations devolved upon them by the withdrawal of the energies of the United States Bank. These
hitherto eulogized institutions, and only means left to the people for the currency needed by them,
were thereupon denounced and repudiated by the administration, and divorce of Bank and State, and
an exclusive metallic currency for the Government, without regard to the wants of the people, became
the party watchwords of its partisans !
mr. polk's views on a hard money currency, and " divorcwg" bank and state.
The Administration in 1835 promised to give the country " a specie currency," and " a hard money
Government," by a "divorce of the Government from all banks" ! At the very time these professions
were made, Mr. Polk and the locofoco party were conspiring to gain the sanction of law for that very
combination of local banks, eighty or ninety in number, which they afterwards did establish by the act of
1836.
The Whig party knowing their professions at the time to be false, hollow, and hypocritical, as they
knew their designs to be foul and fatal to the country, endeavored to prevent the greater evil of the two,
and to demonstrate the truth of their convictions as to the promises of " the party."
Accordingly, when the House proceeded, on the 3d day of January, 1835, to consider a proposition
submitted by Mr. Gamble, of Georgia, to wit: "Resolved, That the Secretary of the Treasury be di¬
rected to communicate to this House whether, in his opinion, it is practicable or convenient for that de¬
partment to collect, safely keep, and disburse the public moneys of the United States, without the agen-
15
cy of a bank or banks, and, if so, to report to this House the best mode, in his opinion, by which that
object can be accomplished
A motion was made by Mr. McKim (a prominent member of the Committee of Ways and Means, and
a friend of the administration,) that the said resolution be laid on the table. And the question being put
on th is motion, it passed in the affirmative, yeas 106, nays 87, Mr. Polk voting in the affirmative. This
was the first trial of their sincerity. •
Monday, January the 5th, 1835, Mr. Gamble renewed his proposition in another form, but to the same
effect, and it was allowed to be read and ordered to lie on the table. This was the second test of their
sincerity.
Tuesday, February 10, 1835, " the House proceeded to the consideration of the bill (No. 563) regu¬
lating the deposites of the money of the United States in certain local banks." A motion was made by
Mr. Robertson, of Virginia, that the said bill be recommitted to the Committee of Ways and Means,
with instructions so to amend the same as to dispense with the agency or instrumentality of banks in the
fiscal operations of the Government. On the 11th of February, the question recurring on Mr. Robert¬
son's motion, it was put and decided in the negative, yeas 91, nays 115, Mr. Polk voting in the negative.
(See H. Jour.) This was the third test of their sincerity.
Again, the question, on the same day, recurred on the motion made by Mr. Gordon to amend the said
bill (No. 563) by striking out all thereof after the enacting clause, and inserting his proposition, the first
section of which made the collectors, at places where the revenue should not exceed dollars per
annum, the agents of the Treasury, to keep and disburse the same ; the second section of which pro¬
vided, that all places where the amount of public revenue collected should exceed the sum of
dollars per annum, there should be appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of
the Senate, receivers of the public revenue, to be agents of the Treasurer, &c.; and the third section of
which provided that, " from and after the — day of , the whole revenue of the United States
derived from customs, lands, or other sources, shall be paid in the current coins of the United States."
This amendment, it will be perceived, proposed in substance, from a day to be specified, to divorce the
Government from all banks, by collecting, keeping, and disbursing the revenue, by the hands of public
officers, in specie. And on the question—Shall the bill be so amended ? it was decided in the negative,
yeas 33, nays 161, Mr. Polk in the negative. (See H. Journal.) This was the fourth test of the since¬
rity of " the party" in their professions of divorce from banks, and of " gold and silver currency."
There was one very important measure, however, in the form of an amendment to this bill. After
Gen. Gordon's amendment had failed, Mr. Binney, a leading Whig member from Pennsylvania, offered
a series of salutary amendments, which were intended to secure the safety of the deposite banks, and of
the money of the United States entrusted to their safe keeping. Among others he offered the amend¬
ment requiring each deposite bank " to keep in its vaults an amount of specie, which, together with the
balance of all its accounts with specie-paying banks, should be equal to one-fifth of the amount of its
notes and bills in circulation, and its public and private deposites." This amendment, with the aid of
some six Administration members, was, on the 11th of March, 1835, passed by Whig votes in the affirm-
ative, yeas 109, nays 99, Mr. Polk voting in the negative. The next day, Mr Plummer, of Mississippi,
an Administration member, moved a reconsideration of this vote, and on Thursday, February 19th, 1835,
the question recurring on the motion of Mr. Plummer to reconsider, it was put and passed in the affirm¬
ative, yeas 119, nays 109—the entire Administration party, except four, voting in the affirmative, and
thus to defeat this specie clause, which had once passed, and which, if it had become a part of the depo¬
site act, would have provided the greatest security against those terrible expansions and ove-rissues which
the President has so much deprecated. And let us here remark, that after the action on these amend¬
ments of Mr. Binney, some of which were-incorporated in the bill then proposed, Mr. Polk, the Admi¬
nistration organ in the House, never again we believe called up that bill ; it was smothered because it
did not leave every thing discretionary wth the Executive, and the country was without a law regulat¬
ing its public deposites until July, 1836! This was, therefore, a fifth instance of " the party's" hypo¬
crisy.
ASSUMPTION OF THE DEBTS OF TEXAS ADVOCATED BY THE LOCOFOCO PARTY.
The "Democratic" National Convention adopted, among other resolutions, the following:
"That the Constitution does not confer authority upon the Federal Government, directly or indirectly,
to assume the debts of the several States, contracted for local internal improvements, or other State pur¬
poses, nor would such assumption be just and expedient."
Yet the same Convention nominated two candidates who go in for the immediate annexation of Texas
and the assumption of the ten millions of debt of that country—it may be fifty millions. It is alleged
that Texas will give lands to pay the debt. Other States of the Union, Virginia, North Carolina, and
Georgia, for instance, have given lands to the General Government; and yet, according to the creed of the
strict constructionists, the Constitution does not confer authority upon the Federal Government, directly
or indirectly, to assume debts of the several States; where, then, is the authority to assume the debt of a
foreign nation 1
COL. POLK ON ECONOMY IN THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE GENERAL GOVERNMENT.
In answer to certain interrogatories propounded to him by Wyatt Christian, J. T. Leath, and others, of
Memphis, Gov. Polk, under date of May 15, 1843, addressed a letter to the editor of the Memphis Ap¬
peal, in which the following passage occurs :
" I am in favor of a moderate scale of duties, laid by a tariff on imported goods, for the purpose of rais¬
ing the revenue which may be needed for the economical administration of the Government."
16
In 1839, Col. Polk, being then a candidate for Governor, issued an "Address to the People of Tennes¬
see," which was published in the Nashville Union of 10th, 12th, and 14th of July, 1839. In that ad¬
dress is found the following paragraph:
" This charge of extravagance [against Mr. Van Buien] is not a new one. It was made many years
ago by the old opposition. * * * Now, when there is no better foundation fur the charge than
there was then, they join the opposition in making it."
Martin Van Buren, in the year 1837, spent $37,265,037—in 1838 he spent $39,455,438—and in 1839
—the year in which Gov. Polk says there is no foundation for the charge of extravagance against Mr. Van
Buren—he spent $37,614 936—as fully appears from the report made by the Committee of Ways and
Means in the House of Keprcsentatives, July 9, 1841, compiled from the hooks of the Treasury, and or¬
dered to be printed. (See page 26.)
Now, if the squandering of an average of thirty-eight millions of dollars per year, is what Col. Polk
means by an " economical administration of the Government"—and the above extracts, taken in con¬
nection, clearly prove that such is his meaning—the people would like to know what "moderate scale"
of duties on foreign imports it would require to support the Government under an administration thus
economically conducted.
profuse ani) extravagant expenditure of the people's money by the locofoco
party.
The people of the country call upon James K. Polk, and ask him to answer at the bar of public opi¬
nion, why the National Treasury was bankrupted by his favorite—Van Buren—and a national debt left
his successor in office to provide for and pay off He took the field in 1840, shortly after he was in¬
ducted into the Gubernatorial chair, as a stump speaker for Mr. Van Buren's re-election, thereby virtu¬
ally acknowledging that Mr. Van Buren was right in all he did, and even worthy of the peeple's confi¬
dence. Did Mr. Polk as a member of the House of Representatives, object to this wasteful expenditure
of the people's money ? On the contrary, he supported Mr. Van Buren's measures—he justified and
palliated his conduct, and never attempted to arrest the officers of the Government in their career of
extravagance and folly.
the florida war.
The profuse and wasteful expenditures of the public money, as partially disclosed under this head,
and one or two others, might alone account for the startling expenses of Government during the two
administrations preceding the one now current, as compared with our former financial history, and the
level of public expenditures as reduced by the 27th Congress. We have room only for a few quotations
from the volumes of public documents on this and kindred topics, which may serve as a clue to the rest.
extravagant hire of steamboats and other vessels.
From the beginning of 1836 to 1841, the number of steamboats and sail craft employed in the trans¬
portation service for the Florida war, was 737, for which a very extravagant hire was generally paid-
About fifty of these are named in the House Document No. 458, 2d Session, 27th Congress, and their
rates ot hire specified. We give the following as SDecimens : the steam boat John Crowell, estimated
to be worth $15,000, was hired at $300 a day, provided for and insured, till the compensation amounted
to $82,555. The Reindeer, 42 days, at $175 a day—being $7,350. The Georgian, 32 days, at $200 a
day—$6,400. The Charleston, for 10 months, at $4,000 a month—$40,000. The Mobile was paid
$11,625 for 25 days. The Minerva, 73 days, at $300 a day—$21,900. The Merchant, 85 days, at $450
a day—$3S,250.
Many other vessels were hired for short periods, at rates which, on settlement, quadrupled the price
at which they might have been purchased in the outset, so that much money would have been saved, if
they had been bought and manned, and then burnt in the end.
the cost of a wagon.
Grant's concentric wheel wagon cost the Government $2,363 50, of which Mr. Grant was paid
$654 50, for superintending the construction of it, and $15 was paid for engraving plates on the wheels,
to travel in the sands of Florida.
Cost of two hundred and six Oxen.—The purchase and delivery of two hundred and six oxen,
$9,170 ; to the agent, $1,980, and for expenses in the transaction, $1,037 20.
Cost of house rent and saddles.—A house at Picolata was rented at $3,600 a year. For saddles $50
each was paid. For 12 do. $87 50 each. At Pilatka, in 1840, when the end of the war was every day
expected, more than $100,000 was expended in public buildings on private lands, when there was Gov¬
ernment land hard by. It is of course sacrificed.
Great frauds in the removal of Indians.—The removal of 16,533 Creek Indians was made to cost the
Government $590,448 58. It is proved pretty fairly, by the Committee on Public Expenditures, that
these 16,533 Indians might have been removed for $186,530, thus making a clear saving, in the single
transaction, honestly done, of $303,909 42—nearly two-thirds of the actual cost.—(Doc. No. 458.)
All these accounts were allowed at the Treasury Department.
the charity of col. polk to the poor.
There is one little incident in the career of Col. Polk, as a public man, to which we will direct your at-
17
tention. That you may see what a lively interest he feels for those in reduced and humble circumstances
of life, we give it. The circumstances are as follows : On the 1st of February, 1831, Mr. Washington,
of the House of Representatives, presented a statement from the mayor of Georgetown, D, C., relative to
he suffering condition of the poor of that city. The winter was one of unusual and extraordinary seve¬
nty, while the supply of wood was insufficient in the city to meet the wants of the suffering population.
It so happened, that there was at that period collected within the yard of the Capitol, l^ore wood, much
nore, than would be needed for the wants of Congress. Mr. Washington accordingly moved that of this
siperfluity thirty cords be placed at the disposal of the mayor of Georgetown, to be appropriated for the
reief of the suffering poor of that city. Was there any one present, so insensible to the dictates of hu-
KHnity, so deaf to the cry of distress and suffering that went up to the Capitol from around its very walls,
as to object to this charitable proposition 1 Yes, there was one. He rose and opposed the motion. It was
a bad example, he said, and undignified for legislators to become overseers of the poor—to hoard up wood
to deal it out to the poor of the District. And when the House, containing a large majority of the politi¬
cal friends of that gentleman, voted, by a decisive majority, to extend a helping hand to their freezing fel¬
low citizens of Georgetown, the name of that member was recorded in the negative. His name was
James K. Polk.
POLK AGAINST THE OLD PATRIOTS OF THE REVOLUTION ! !
March 13, 1828, on the passage of the bill for the relief of surviving officers of the revolutionary war,
Mr. Polk voted in the negative.—Cong. Deb. vol. 4, part 2, page 2,670.
Subsequently, on a bill to pay certain.militia, &c., he voted in the affirmative.
March 18, 1830, he voted against the revolutionary pension bill.—Same, vol. 6, part 1, page 629.
March 19, " Mr. Polk spoke some time against the bill," and voted against it.—Same, page 635
February 17, 1831, he voted against the bill for the relief of revolutionary soldiers.—Same, vol. 7,
page 730.
May 2, 1832, he voted against the revolutionary pension bill.—Same, vol. 8, part 2, page 2,713.
The foregoing extracts, from the Journals of the House Of Representatives, exhibits Mr. Polk's uniform
opposition to the acts passed, from time to time, providing some relief for the aged veterans of our Revo¬
lution, robbed of their pay by the worthless continental currency.
POLK AGAINST ABOLISHING THE SLAVE TRADE ! !
March 3, 1831, Mr. Mercer introduced the following resolution :
Resolved, That the President of the United States be requested to renew and to prosecute from time
such negotiations with the several maritime powers of Europe and America, as he may deem expedient,
for the effectual abolition of the African Slave Trade, and its ultimate denunciation as Piracy, under
the law of nations, by the consent of the civilized world.
On passing this resolution the ayes were 118, noes 32. Mr. Polk voted in the negative. Cong. Deb.
vol. 7, page 850.
The opposition of Mr. Polk to the above resolution is inexplicable. The Federal Government had
been zealously engaged in promoting the universal abolition of the slave trade, and in holding out to the
world their sense of its extreme criminality. It has been denounced in terms of great severity; and
those concerned in it subjected to the heaviest penalties the law can inflict. The act of Congress of
1822, adopted with a view to the interdiction of this trade, declares that a citizen engaged in the trade
" should be adjudged a pirate." Almost every maritime nation in Europe had, also, solemnly and de¬
liberately, either by legislative acts, or by treaties, and other formal engagements, acknowledged the
injustice and inhumanity of the trade, and pledged itself to promote its abolition ; yet, when a proposi¬
tion is submitted to Congress to extend the influence of the Government over the question, to bring
other nations into the same system, and to interdict this abominable trade by the consent of all, Col.
Polk is found on the floor of the House of Representatives exerting his influence in opposition to the
adoption of a measure which was calculated to elevate the Government in the eyes of the whole civil¬
ized world.
POLK ON OREGON.
We are happy to find that the position now occupied by leading Whig statesmen, in reference to Ore¬
gon territory, was completely established by Mr. Polk in a speech in 1828 : he held to our title as the
Whigs now do ; agreed that to extend jurisdiction, without the notice required by the treaty, would
bring upon us a costly and unnecessary war, as the Whigs now do ; and that all it is necessary for us to
do is, to let our emigrants go on, and to give them the same protection and exercise the same jurisdic¬
tion as is done by England to her citizens, leaving the ultimate settlement of the disputed questions to
be decided by peaceful diplomacy without war, instead of diplomacy after a long, bloody and costly war.
Dec. 29, 1828, Mr. Polk delivered an elaborate speech against the bill for the occupation of Oregon.—
Cong. Deb. vol. 5, page 129.
He also voted against the bill.—Same, p. 192.
COL. POLK'S INCONSISTENCY DEVELOPED—TEXAS, &C.
" Old documents are dangerous things."
In an old circular of Mr. Polk's to his " Fellow citizens of the sixth Congressional District of the
State of Tennessee," dated " Washington City, March 4th, 1827," we find the following:
18
" Early after I had taken my seat in Congress, it became my duty as a member of that body to act on
a proposition, emanating from the Executive, as novel in its character as it was believed to be important
in its consequences. From (he commencement of the Government down tu that period, our policy ii
relation to foreign nations, had been distinctly marked and was well understood. 'A strict neu¬
trality,' * friendship with all nations, but entangling alliances with none'
were our mottos." »*«**«
" I was not prepared to say that the policy laid down by Washington, and steadily pursued by his re¬
publican successors, a policy under which the country had been prosperous and happy, should be abaa-
doned for untried and hazardous experiments." * « « *
" It was equally hostile to oui interests and our settled policy, to interfere or take any part, between
the belligerent powers, old Spain and her former Colonies, in the war that had been for years waged be¬
tween them. For however great our sympathies may be in behalf of those struggling for liberty in every
portion of the Globe, (and I confess mine are great,) yet to avoid the disastrous calamities of war, and to
preserve the peace and tranquility of our own country, are paramount considerations with an American
politician."
So Mr. Polk was of opinion, and asserted in 1827, that " from the commencement of the Government
down to that period, our policy in relation to foreign nations had been distinctly marked and wa3 well
understood. ' A strict neutrality,' ' friendship with all nations, but entangling alliances with none.'"
" This is," says Mr. Polk, " the policy laid down by Washington, and steadily pursued by his republican
successors, a policy under which the country has been prosperous and happy;" " and which," continues
Mr. Polk, " I was not prepared to say should be abandoned for untried and hazardous experiments." No,
Mr. Polk was not prepared to abandon the policy " laid down by Washington, and steadily pursued by
his republican successors," " for untried and hazardous experiments." It seems he then had some re¬
gard for the policy laid down by Washington, and pursued by the republican fathers ; but how changed
is Mr. Polk now ! He has deserted his former position, the settled policy of Washington and his repub¬
lican successors, and is going headlong for an untried and hazardous experiment, and even denounces
those who will not turn traitors and go with him for the immediate annexation of Texas to this Union,
regardless of the present state of things and the probable disastrous consequences. Mr. Polk, in 1827,
thought *' it was equally hostile to our interests and our settled policy, to interfere or take any part be¬
tween the belligerent powers (old Spain and her former Colonies) in the war that had been for years
waged between them." And hear his reason for coming to this conclusion : " For however great our
sympathies may be in behalf of those struggling for liberty in every portion of the globe, (and I confess
mine are great,) yet to avoid the disastrous calamities of war, and to preserve the peace and tran¬
quility of our own country, are paramount considerations with an American politician." So opposed
to "entangling alliances " was Mr. Polk in 1827—so anxious was he to avoid the "disastrous calamities
of war "—so strongly was he in favor of "a strict neutrality " and " friendship with all nations," that he
takes great credit to himself for opposing a proposition to send a representative to a Congress of nations to
assemble at the Isthmus of Panama, to try amicably to settle the difficulties between Spain and her re¬
volted colonies. But now he is for settling the difficulty between Mexico and her revolted province,
Texas, by taking Texas from Mexico, whether it is right or wrong to do so.
mr. polk and sterling bonds.
The Locofoco candidate for the Presidency is opposed to a National Bank, because foreigners will
become the owners in part at least of the stock of such an institution, but he is decidedly in favor of
foreigners owning stock in our State Banks! See the following extract from his message to the Legis¬
lature of Tennessee, in 1839, p. 6:
"It is respectfully submitted, that if the million and a half of State bonds authorized by the act and
remaining unsold, he now sold, that the Bank would be enabled by the increase of her available metallic
capital, safely to afford such additional facilities as would be required to relieve the immediate pressure,
until the proceeds of the present crop will afford more solid and durable relief. If in the present state of
the money market in the United States, they cannot be sold at par with the interest payable as at pre¬
sent authorized, within the United States, it is worthy of consideration, whether if they were made
STERLING BUNDS, with the interest payable, and without any increase of the rate of interest, they
may not in a short time be sold at par, if not for a premium. It would be a matter of no greater incon¬
venience to the Bank to pay the semi-annual INTEREST ABROAD than at the Eastern cities, and i*
order to make the bonds available at an early day, it is recommended that they be authorized to take thai
form"
opinions of the loco foco party in relation to the sub-treasuhy.
The Globe promulgated the views of General Jackson, on this question as follows: "It is well that the
President himself is opposed to the project, and that his friends in Washington, whether of the cabinet
or not, heartily concur with him in the course of policy it is expedient to pursue."
And again: "If General Jackson had suggested such a scheme, (the sub-Treasury) what peals of pat¬
riotic indignation, would have burst from eloquent senators against the usurper and tyrant, who dared to
put the millions of the Treasury into the very hands of his partizans and favorites."
And again: " We verily believe that the present system (State Banks) of deposites for the public
money, guarded as it will be, as good for safety, and the least liable to abuse, of any which the wit of
man can conceive."
♦
19
AnJ again: " It is as palpable as the sun, that the effect of the schcmo would be to bring the public
trrasure much nearer the actual custody and control of the Executive, than it is now, and to expose it
to be plundered hy a hundred hands."
And again : "It (the sub-Treasury) is disorganizing and revolutionary, and subversive of the funda¬
mental principles of our Government, and its entire practice from 1789 down to this day."
The Richmond Enquirer, the chief organ of Mr. Polk in Virginia, said : " We have objected to the
sub-Preasury scheme, (so called) that, in the first place, it increases the Executive power, already too
great for the republic; 2d, that it contributes to endanger the security of the public funds; and 3d, that it
is calculated to produce two currencies, a baser one for the people, and a better one for the Government.
The more we reflect upon the matter, the mote we read the speeches of the orators on both sides, the more
we are satisfied of the strength ot these objections."
x». Gordon's scb-treascry proposition.
" Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Con¬
gress assembled. That, from and after the — day of —, in the year —, the collectors of the public rev¬
enue, at places where the sums collected shall not exceed the sum of — dollars per annum, shall be the
agents of the Treasurer to keep and disburse the same, and be subject to such rules and regulations, and
give such bond and security as he shall prescribe, for the faithful execution of their offices, and shall re¬
ceive in addition to the compensation now allowed by law, — per centum on the sums disbursed, so that
it does not exceed the sum of — dollars per annum.
"Sec. 2. And be it further enacted, That at places where the amount of public revenue collected shall
exceed the sum of — dollars per annum, there shall be appointed by the President, by and with the ad¬
vice and consent of the Senate, receivers of the public revenue, to be agents of the Treasurer, who shall
give such bond and security to keep and disburse the public revenue, and be subject to such rules and
regulations as the Treasurer shall prescribe, and shall receive for their service — per centum per annum,
on the sums disbursed, provided it does not exceed the sum of — dollars per annum.
" Sec. 3. And be it further enacted, That from and after the — day of —, the whole revenue of the
United States derived from customs, lands, or other sources, shall be paid in the current coins of the
United States."
This was Mr. Gordon's proposition. It was debated for three days, and received the affirmative vote
of only one or two friends of the then administration. James K. Polk, and one hundred and sixty other
members voted against this sub-Treasury scheme, and it had the support of only thiity-three representa¬
tives. But then the pet bank deposite system was the favorite policy of the Locofocos, and nothing else
would do. 0
But to show Mr. Polk's inconsistency still farther—to show what this anti-bank, hard money party
once thought of Banks—and how they repudiated them, and adopted the sub-Treasury panacea for the
evils which had then been brought upon the country by the use of these institutions as government de¬
positories—we place in juxtaposition Mr. Polk's recorded opinions at two separate periods of his public
life. They are amusing and instructive, as showing the versatility of a Locofoco politician's principles,
and the ease with which they can be put on and cast off, as circumstances may require:
the sub-treasury in 1835.
Extracts from James K. Polk's speech in Con¬
gress, I Oth February, 1835.
" It may be questioned whether the heaviest se¬
curity which the most wealthy individual could
give, would make the public deposites safe at the
points of large collection. In the city of New
York half the revenue is collected. Several mil¬
lions of public money may be in the hands of a
receiver at one time, and if he be corrupt, or shall
engage in speculation orTtrade, and meet with a re¬
verse of fortune, the loss sustained by the govern¬
ment would be inevitable. With ample security
as it was supposed, the government lost a million
or more in the tea case, a few years ago. The
losses in three cases alone, is already stated. In
1827 and 1828, when it was supposed that ample
care had been taken to seeure the debt, it amounted
to near two millions. As then between the RE¬
SPONSIBILITY of a PUBLIC RECEIVER,
and BANK CORPORATIONS, as banks do ex¬
ist, and are likely to exist under State authority,
THE LATTER UPON THE GROUND OF
the sub-treasury in 1839.
Extracts'from James K. Polk's pamphlet address
to the people of Tennessee, April, 1839.
" The public money, it is said, will be unsafe.
A sub-treasurer is represented as a sort of moral
monster not to be trusted. It is the name only that
is new—not the thing. From the beginning of the
government down to this day, there have always
been sub-treasurers, and there always must be.
Whether banks are employed or not, to keep the
money intermediately, between the time of collec¬
tion and disbursement, it must go twice through
the hands of public officers, once in the collection,
and once in the payment out.
" Every man who may have public money in his
hands is a sub-treasurer. All receivers, collectors,
marshals and disbursing officers are sub-treasurers,
and must be employed, as well when banks are used
as depositories, as when they are not. Money must
be collected and disbursed by human hands, and
every man employed in such business is a sub-trea-
sarer. You have postmasters sll around you, and
they are, and always have been, sub-treasurerg.
20
SAFETY to the public, ARE TO BE PREFER¬
RED.
" BANKS, when they are safe, RECOMMEND
THEMSELVES TO THE SERVICE OF THE
TREASURY FOR OTHER REASONS.
" 1st. The increased facility they possess over
individual collectors and receivers, in making trans¬
fers of public money to distant points for disburse¬
ments, WITHOUT CHARGE TO THE PUB¬
LIC. Indeed this is a service which INDIVIDU¬
ALS, to the extent of our large revenues, COULD
NOT PERFORM.
" 2d. It may happen in the fluctuation of the
amount of revenue and expenditures, that there
will be at some time considerable surplus in the
Treasury, which though it may be temporary, if it
be withdrawn from circulation, and placed in the
strong box of the receiver, the amount of circula-
lation will be injuriously disturbed by hoarding
the deposite, by which the value of every article
of merchandise and property would be affected. So
that, inasmuch, as we cannot anticipate or estimate
what the exact amount of revenue or expenditure
may be from year to year, there may occur an ex¬
cess of revenue in the Treasury, not immediately
called for to be disbursed, which it would be very
inconvenient to abstract from trade and circula¬
tion. Whilst the deposite is in a bank, the bank
may use it, keeping itself at the same time ready to
pay when demanded, and it is not withdrawn from
the general circulation, as so much money hoarded
and withdrawn from the use of the community.
" If in the hands of RECEIVERS, they must
either hoard it by keeping it locked up in a strong
box, or use it at their own risk in private specula¬
tion or trade, or they must for their own security
and on their own responsibility, place it at last on
deposite in banks for safe keeping, till they are
called on by the government for it.
" This temporary use of money on deposite in a
bank, constitutes the only compensation which the
bank receives for the risk of keeping it, and for the
services it performs If RECEIVERS be employ¬
ed, they can perform no other service than to
KEEP the money, and must be paid a compensa¬
tion from the Treasury."
" I have thus briefly considered the two PRIN¬
CIPAL points of objection—the alleged unsafety
of State banks as public depositaries, and their in.
competency to perform all the duties required of
them as fiscal agents of government. As regards
the first it has been my object to show, from well
attested facts, that they are as SAFE AS ANY
OTHER DESCRIPTION OF AGENCY
COULD BE." * * "As regards the second
objection—the alleged incompetency of these banks
as fiscal agents—the manner in which they have
performed, and are performing, these duties, MUST
REMOVE ALL DOUBTS, which have existed on
that point."
They keep the money they collect, until called upen
to pay it over to the contractors or other officers of
the government. Is there any difficulty in the ip-
eration—any violation of principle—any usurpa¬
tion or any abuse of Executive power in this 1
**»»»*»•
" Another objection is, that the power and pat¬
ronage of the Executive would be dangerously in¬
creased. Directly the contrary is the fact. By the
plan proposed, it would be necessary to employ
some dozen or two additional officers and clerks,
without power to loan out or use a dollar of the
public money, but on the contrary, subject to se¬
vere punishment, and prevented by severe penalties
from doing so. What is this compared to the pow¬
er and influence of the Executive, if banks are to
be employed 1 All the banks are candidates before
the President for employment. The banks that
get the money nominally to keep, will loan it out
to their customers. Their numerous officers, stock¬
holders and debtors, are made dependent upon Ex¬
ecutive favor. Under which plan would a Presi¬
dent, disposed to exercise it, possess most influence,
or have most patronage and power I Under the
Independent Treasury scheme, no money can be
loaned out or used, and there are no favors to be
dispensed. If the banks are employed, they have a
direct interest in conciliating Executive favor.
They would most likely be operated upon by their
hopes or their fears—by the favor or frowns of the
Executive power. Even the banks which are not
employed, would probably consider their interests
identified with those that were, in the extension of
the credit system by the use of the public money,
and would be stimulated by the hope of future em¬
ployment by the government. Equally unsubstan¬
tial are all the other objections which have been
urged—such as the union of the sword and the
purse, neither of which, under our Constitution, is
posssessed by the President. By the sword is
meant the power to declare war, or raise armies, and
by the purse is meant the power to levy taxes from
the people. Both these powers are vested in Con¬
gress, and not in the Executive, and can only be
exercised by Congress, whatever place for keeping
the public money may be provided. The President
has no more power or control over the public mo¬
ney under the Independent Treasury plan, than if
it be kept in banks."
MH. POLK IN FAVOR OF RE-ESTABLISHING THE SUB-TREASURY IN 1S43.
While Mr. Polk was canvassing for the office of Governor in this State, last summer, the Locofocos of
Memphis addressed him a long string of questions, to which he replied at length. One question asked
him was—" Are you in favor of the sub-Treasury system passed by Congress in 1840, and repealed in
18411" To this he replies:
21
"I ANSWER THAT I AM. I fully submit to you, gentlemen, whether such a Treasury or plan
of fiscal agency (as that proposed by Mr. Clay's bank bill,) is one which you can approve, or which you
prefer to the independent treasury system, under which the Government kept control of its own money
by placing it in a treasury in fact, and not in theory only, under the care and control of responsible agents,
selected by the people according to the Constitution and laws."
While Col. Polk was a member of Congress, the sub-Treasury scheme was introduced by a thorough
nullifying member. The measure then had but one solitary vote from the friends of General Jackson, and
so destitute was it of any apparent claim to merit, that it received no countenance from the opposition
members generally. The organ of the administration, with the sanction and authority of President Jack¬
son, denounced the measure as " disorganizing and revolutionary, subversive of the fundamental principles
of our Government, and its entire practice from 1789 to that day as tending incalculably to enlarge the
powers of the Executive, and place in his hands the means of corruption, as endangering the safety of the
public money, and exposing it to be plundered by an hundred hands when one could not then reach it."
In the justice and truth of these declarations, Col. Polk and the whole locofoco party at that time concur¬
red. The measure was not locofoco then, and the objections then urged against it by the whole party
show that it is wholly inconsistent with their principles; yet, in 1837, Col. Polk himself sustained this
same project of the nullifiers with all the fundamental objections to it, and its previous condemnation by
the party before him, and has avowed his determination to persist in it in spite of the decision of the
people.
If elected, will not Col. P. bring the weight of his official station to his aid to force this often rejected
scheme upon the people 1 Was Col. Polk honest in concurring in the rejection of the sub-Treasury
scheme by General Jackson's administration in 1835 ? Was he a democrat when he opposed the project
of the nullifiers then 1 If so, can he he honest in supporting it now ?
Can he be a democrat when he has embraced the measure of his enemies ? Are the objections that it is
" subversive of the fundamental principles of our Government," and " incalculably enlarges the Executive
powers," such as any sincere republican or man of integrity can overcome? Was the support of a measure
thus truly denounced by him, either honest, republican, or patriotic?
It is a measure which proposes as its foundation the subversion of the fundamental principles of our
government. It proposes to place the public revenue in the hands of the Executive, through agents ap¬
pointed by him and removable at his will. It unites the " sword and the purse," and deprives the people
of all control over the public revenue. It takes the custody of the public money from those who pay, and
places it unreservedly in the hands that spend it. It vastly increases the power of the Federal Executive:
by putting in his hands the means of corruption.* It creates a multitude of new offices, and enables the-
Executive to send forth swarms of officers, " to harrass our people and eat out their substance." It unites
in the person of the Executive the command of the army and navy, the execution of the laws, and the
keeping and disbursement of the public revenues, and endows him with every attribute which defines a
monarch and creates a tyrant. It brings the whole banking business and financial interests of the country
at the feet of the Executive, and enables him to sport with the liberties and fortunes of our people. It cre¬
ates the most odious and terrible of all National Banks—an Executive Bank—possessing all power, and not
accountable to the people. The agents to wield this ".infernal machine " are the servants of the Execu¬
tive, and only removable by him, and when he is freshly seated in the chair of state for a constitutional
term, he may again mock at your impotence by saying, you shall have these corrupt instruments over you:
for four years, in spite of all lamentations here or elsewhere. It separates the government from the people,
and renders the servant superior to his master.
Its influence upon the public interests, are equally direct and dreadful. It is a part of the plan, and
the only scheme that Van Buren has ever recommended, that the public revenues shall be received in
gold and silver only ; and to delude you into the adoption of this measue, you are told that it will enlarge
the specie basis, and bring the precious metals into more general circulation; that it will create a demand
for specie, and the supply will come. These are fatal errors! and we warn you against their adoption.
It has always happened, and it always will happen, that the greater the demand you create for money the
less will be the supply ; and the reason is, that it is not subject to the rules ot demand and supply, but it
governsthem. The action of the sub-Treasury scheme will diminish and absorb your specie basis—of
bring down your cre'dit system, your lands, production and labor—and inflict upon you all the untold and
incalculable sufferings of a transitive state of society.
The idea of establishing a circulating medium to be composed entirely of gold and silver is futile in
the extreme. It is the exploded doctrine of gone-by time. It is the doctrine of despotic Russia—of
weak and exhausted Spain—of enfeebled and tottering Turkey. Against the soundness of the princi¬
ple itself it is also to be observed, that its advocates, instead of leaving it to an age of refinement and
* But we will turn to the testimony of the editor of the Richmond Enquirer—he whose political career has been so re¬
markable for disinterestedness and consistency. What says this press about this notable scheme? In 1834, speaking of Mr.
Leigh's scheme, the editor said:
" As to the letter of Mr. Leigh it may saUsfy his twenty-six friends ; but it certainly does not satisfy us. The letter
which they have called forth should call forth, in its tum, another letter to explain the true meaning of that passage which
speaks of divorcing all connection with banks, Slate or Federal. Do you mean, (they might say) that the public money is
to be left in the hands of the custom-house officers, responsible to the President, and removal by him ? If so, is Mr. Leigh
prepared to incur the irresistible objections urged by the " Globe," and to increase in so alarming a degree the patronage^
power, and influence of the ExecuUve ?"
23
»
you, by his echo, Woodbury? Think of it, and answer him as he deserves, with scorn and indignation.
Andyou Mechanics, listen to the sentiments he adopts in reference to your wages:
"By which means (protective duties) the workmen are enabled to tax the home consumer by great
prices, while the higher wages they receive makes them neither happier nor richer, since they
onei BRINK more and WORK less."
EXTRACTS FROM MR. BUCHANAN'S SPEECH ON THE INDEPENDENT TREASURY NOTE BILL.
" Reduce our nominal to the real standard of prices th.roimh.out the world, and you cover our coun"
try with blessings and benefits"—See 3d vol. Congressional Globe, page 156, Appendix.
Now what is the slandaid of prices throughout the world? ft must be a standard which will enable
us to sell us low as others—to produce as low as the nation that produces the lowest, or we cannot get
the exclusive possession of our market, nor enter the markets of the world in successful competition.
We must come down to the wages of France, Germany, Cuba, and other countries that produce
lower than our laborers, or those of England.
We would ask if the hard money sub-Treasury system^of the twenty-two foreign Governments to
which Mr. Van Buren referred to in his communication to Congress, is so well calculated to promote the
happiness, and improve the condition of all classes of the people, and especially of the poor, how is it
that every one of these Governments is being lost and abandoned forever, in spite of all social endear¬
ments and personal ties, by all their people, especially of the middle classes, who can obtain the means
of escaping from them? And how comes it, that this, our land of the exactly opposite system, is being
sought as—
" The green spot that blooms o'er the desert of life."
Ask one of those exiled sons of foreign governments why they have fled the land of hard-money and
sub-Treasury, and he will tell you that the influence of those systems destroys all individual enterprize—
despoils labor of all recompense—deprives the people of the needful supply of money—makes the rich
rich indeed, but dooms the poor to endless and inevitable poverty.
Go to any of those foreign governments, from which we are now most strangely taught to draw our
measures of administration, by way of improving our democracy, and we see the husbandman tilling hie
ground to realize sixpence, or the eighth part of an American dollar per day, and the ordinary laborer
less than that sum, aud obliged from that pittance to support himself, and then you may judge of the
glory of a system which, though avowedly derived from monarchies, is, in the name of democracy, being
again forced upon the country as a permanent system!
In France, yearly wages for an able bodied man, a good ploughman, ranges from 48 to 250 shillings,.
and day laborers get in that country from 4J to t'b pence per day; and whenever they get as much as
5 pence, they have to find themselves. In Gennany, wages are still lower, and by the year be¬
tween 52 and 100 shillings, and day laborers receive Tbrom 4£ to 7 pence per day, and find themselves in
food. In South Holland, farm hands get by the year'from 200 to 250 shillings, and day laborers from
3 to 4 pence per day, and are found. We ask the reader to examine the following statistics 6f labor, &c.,
in the kingdom of Bavaria, belonging to the German Confederation. It will be perceived that the wages
of labor in Bavaria are quite as high as in other parts of Europe, to which Mr. Van Buren referred the
two Houses of Congress as examples of the blessings which flow from a hard-money sub-Treasury system.
Kingdom of Bavaria, Germany.— Wages of common laborers.—Men from 16 to 24 dollars, wo¬
men from 8 to 20 dollars, per annum, and found, except clothing. Their food consists generally of bread
and vegetables ; meat is given only ori holidays.
Wages of day laborers.—Men from 8 to 12.cents per day ; women 8 cents. In the harvest season,,
men receive from 18 to 20 cents per day ; women from 12 to 18 cents. The day laborers find them¬
selves. _ m
Wages of mechanics.—Carpenters, 25 cenCHJday ; bricklayers, 20 to 25 cents, and find themselves.
We now can see and understand what Mr. Buchanan and his political friends mean, by " bringing down
wages and prices, by means of the sub-Treasury systtm, to a level with the prices of the world,;" by
which our country is to be " covered with blessings." We think the farmers, mechanics and laborers of
every class, in this country, will not covet such " blessings." . It is not to be wondered at that the indig¬
nation of the producing classes, throughout the Union, has been excited to a high degree, by this atrocious
project of reducing them to the condition of the laboring classes of monarchical Europe, by means of the
anti-State bank, anti-credit, hard-money, sub-Treasury Government bank scheme of Mr. Van Buren.
mr. folk opposed to banks.
Monday, May 10, 1830.—Mr- Fotter moved a series of resolutions connected with the banks and cur¬
rency of the country.
3. Resolved, That the paper money, or banking system generally, is in its tendency ruinous to the in¬
terests of labor, and dangerous to the liberty of the people. Yeas, 89—Nays, 66. Mr. Polk voting in
the affirmative.
MR. POLK AND THE INVESTIGATING COMMITTEE ON DEFALCATIONS.
As early as December, 1836, Mr. Garland then a member, sought with much industry the opportunity of
inquiry aud investigation into the condition of the various executive departments. This investigation
24
%
was resisted by Mr. Polk until the 17th day of January, 1837, the session to expire on the 4th of March.
He was charged by members, on the floor of Congress, with opposing the investigation with the view of
shielding the officers of the Government from all scrutiny into their oflicial conduct.
In selecting the committee to represent the administration party, Mr Polk chose from among those
who had been the most prominent actors in Congress, and who had on all occasions been the most prom¬
inent actors to fight the battles of the administration on the floor of Congress. If Mr. P. were desirous
to give the most unlimited and unrestricted investigation in relation to the condition of the executive
departments, surely he ought to have appointed a majority of those who were heartily in favor of the
inquiry. He committed the subject to a fcommittee who were decidedly adverse to the investigation.
Such were the proceedings on the part of Mr. Polk, that the investigation was crushed, and the officers
of the Government permitted to go on in plundering the Treasury of the Federal Government. Follow¬
ing the phantom of his ambition—forgetting all ties of patriotism and country in the pursuit of popular
exaltation—he leagued with the executive departments in shielding their conduct from inquiry, and
labored to paralyze the arm of those engaged in ferreting out abuses, and arresting the career of crime
and corruption. If measures of inquiry had been taken early in the session, and a complete examination
made in all of the departments, how many thousands of dollars might have been save to the nation. . It is
in proof, that Mr. Polk contributed his influence to defeat the object of the opposition to the then admin¬
istration of the Federal Government. Was it not known to Mr. Polk, even at this crisis, that immense
defalcations had taken place ? Then we hold him accountable, to a certain extent, for this waste of public
money ; for we cannot arraign the measures of the Locotoco party without arraigning the conduct of those
who are at the head of the party. Thus then, we contend, and we prove our position by the action of
the committee, that Mr. Polk prevented a fair examination into the condition of the executive depart¬
ments by his evasive acts, by his one sided committee, organized to smother all the malconduct ot his
political favorites ; we therefore hold him up to the American people, just as accountable as those who
supported and countenanced this official delinquency.
Again: Defalcations of the most alarming character, and for an immense amount, carried on and
concealed for a series of years by the collector of the principal commercial city of the Union, and the re¬
ceivers at the land offices, were developed in 1838. A resolution was offered in Congress to refer the
communication from the Secretary of the Treasury, upon the subject of these defalcations, to the Com¬
mittee of Ways and Means. This reference was objected to. It was moved to refer the whole sub¬
ject to a Committee of the Whole on the State of the Union, and opposing the reference to a select com¬
mittee on the ground that the committre would be "packed" by Mr. Speaker Polk, and, therefore, pro¬
duce nothing more than a whitewashing report.
It was contended by those who were disposed to investigate the frauds which had been practised upon
the Government that the select committee, if appointed by Mr. Polk, would be so constituted as to pre¬
vent any investigation. Under this impression, the House, composed of a majority of the political friends
of Col. Polk, decided that the committee should be appointed by ballot. This step deprived Col. Polk of
the appointing power. This act was certainly based upon their want of confidence in his disposition to
prosecute thoroughly the investigation, and must be looked upon as a severe rebuke to his action in ap¬
pointing the committee in 1837, and as casting a severe imputation upon his fairness and partiality.
Are not these conclusions fair and legitimate deductions from the action of the House of Representatives'!
When, in the history of this country, was such a spectacle exhibited in our National Legislature 1 When
was it that the House deprived their presiding officer of this power 1 If the House of Representatives had
full confidence in his honesty—that he would sustain a fair investigation, and appoint a committee who
would make a report developing the full amount of the loss and injury sustained by the Government in
consequence of the infidelity of its officers, why did they strip him of all power, and thus sink him below
the condition of his predecessors.
VOTES OF THE DEMOCRACY ON THE TARIFF.
In 1824, Gen. Jackson and Mr. Van Buren voted for the Tariffbill. Yeas, Chandler, Holmes, Me.; Bell,
N. H.; D'Wolf, Knight, R. I.; Edwards, Lanman, Ct.; Palmer, Seymour, Vt.; VAN BUREN, N. Y.;
Dickerson, Mcllvaine, N. Y.; Findlay, Lowrie, Penn.; Johnson, Talbot, Ky; Eaton, Jackson, Tenn.;
Brown, Ruggles, Ohio ; Noble, Taylor, Ind.; Thomas, 111.; Barton, Benton! Mo —25.
Nays—Parrott, N. H.; Lloyd, Mills, Mass., King, N. Y.; Clayton, Van Dyke, Del.; Smith, Md.; Bar-
hour, Taylor, Va.; Branch, Macon, N. C.; Gaillard, Hayne, S. C.; Elliott, Ware, Ga.; Johnston, John¬
son, La.; Kelly, King, Ala.; Holmes, Williams, Miss.—21.
In 1828. Mr Van Burer. supported a protective tariff. Yeas, Webster, Mass.; Knight, R. I.; Foot,
Willey, Ct.; Chase, Seymour, yt.; Sandford, VAN BUREN, N. Y.; Dickerson, Bateman, N. J.; Bar¬
nard, Marks, Penn ; McLane, Ridgley, Del.; Johnson, Rowan, Ky.; Eaton, Tenn.; Harrison, Ruggles,
Ohio; Bouligny, La.; Hendricks, Noble, Ind.; Kane, Thomas, 111.; Barton, Benton, Mo.—26.
Nays—Chandler, Parris, Me.; Woodbury, N. H.; Silsbee, Mass.; Robbins, R. I.; Chambers, Smith,
Md.; Tazewell, Tyler, Va.; Branch, Macon, N. C.; Hayne, Smith, S. C-; Berrien, Cobb, Ga.; White,
Tenn.; Johnston, La.; King, McKinley, Ala.; Ellis, Williams, Miss 21.
(See Journal of the Senate for 1824 and 1828.)
25
OPINIONS ON GEORGE M. DALLAS, ON THE CONSTITUTIONALITY AND EXPEDIENCY OK ESTAB¬
LISHING THE BANK OF THE UNITED STATES.
May 30, 1844.—Resolution of the Baltimore convention, which nominated Polk and Dallas:
Resolved, That Congress has no power to charter a National Bank ; that we believe such an institu¬
tion one of deadly hostility to the best interests of the country ; dangerous to our republican institutions
and liberties of the people, and calculated to place the business of the country within the control of
a concentrated money power, and above the laws and will of the people."
Since the nomination of Mr. Dallas, by a Congressional caucus, to supply the place of Richard M.
Johnson, who had been nominated by four-fifths of the " Democracy" of the Union in their primary as¬
semblies; we have taken the trouble to enquire a little into his political history ; supposing as a matter
of course, that our Congressmen had a good and substantial reason to justify their interference with the
clearly expressed will of their constituents, in thrusting aside their favorite, Richard M. Johnson, and
supplying his place with a man whose name had not been used in connexion with the office of Vice
President by a single " democratic" paper in the Union, nor by a single individual within our know¬
ledge.
We have been told by all the leading " democrats" of the land, that all who are in favor of a National
Bank, a Protective Tariff and Distribution, were Federal-British-Bank-bought Whigs, and that the lead¬
ing and prominent principles of the democracy, were opposition to a Bank, a protective Tariff, and the
Distribution of the proceeds of the sales of the public lands among the States.
It is admitted by the friends of Mr. Dallas, that he voted for the recharter of the United States Bankr
but then, poor man ! he was so hampered by instructions, that he could not help himself, but was com¬
pelled to vote against the dictates of his own conscience, and the teachings of his sober judgment. We
shall not argue this point, but content ourselves with a simple statement of facts, leaving the candid
reader to deduce from them his own inferences. And first, as to the instructions.
Of the seven resolutions, it will be seen by a reference, that six refer exclusively to the Tariff, and
but one to the re-charter of the United States Bank ! And in this seventh resolution, are found those
positive, binding instructions, which were so strict, that even the ingenuity of George M. Dallas could
not devise a way to evade them ! Here it is—
And be it further resolved, fyc., That connected as the prosperity of agriculture and manufactures are
with the successful financial operations and sound currency of the country, we view the speedy re-char¬
tering of the bank of the United States, as of vital importance to the public welfare.
We now solicit the attention of our readers, to the following sketch of the proceedings in the Senate
of the United States, when the question of re-charter of the Bank was under consideration. Let them
judge how far Mr- Dallas was bound by such instructions, in the course pursued by him on that occasion.
Our references are to the 42d volume p. 247 of Niles' Register, and we challenge the Locofocos to im¬
pugn the correctness of any of our statements :
The first thing we notice, is the opinion of Mr. George M. Dallas, on the subject of the United States
Bank; and for fear we may misrepresent his views and opinions upon this whig measure of policy , we
quote his own words, on his introducing into the Senate of the United States, in 1832, the petition of
Nicholas Biddle, for the re-charter ot the old United States Bank. He says :
"Being requested to present this document to the Senate, praying for a renewal of the charter of the
Bank, he begged to be indulged in making a few explanatory remarks. With unhesitating frankness,
he wished it to be understood by the Senate, by the good Commonwealth, which it was alike his duty
and pride to represent with fidelity on that floor, and by the people generally, that this application, at
this time, had been discouraged by him. Actuated mainly, if not exclusively, by a desire to preserve
to the nation the practical benefits of the institution, the expediency of bringing it forward thus early in
the term of its incorporation, during a popular sensation in Congress, which must cease to exist some
years before that term expires, and on the eve of all the excitement incident to a great political move¬
ment, struck his mind as more than doubtful. He felt deep solicitude and apprehension, lest, in the
progress of enquiry and in the development of views, under Dresent circumstances, it might be drawn
into real or imaginary conflict with some higher, some more favorite, some more immediate wish or pur¬
pose of the American people. And from such a conflict, what sincere friend of this useful establish¬
ment, would not strive to save or rescue it, by at least a temporary forbearance and delay ? Neverthe¬
less, his conscious inexperience in the forms and contingencies of legislation, inspired a distrust of his
own judgment on this merely preliminary point. The determination of parties interested ;may be, nay,
must be, wiser and better; and he could not but feel strongly impressed by the recollection, that the Le¬
gislature of Pennsylvania, recently, and in effect, unanimously, had recommended the renewal of the
charter of this bank. He became, therefore, a willing, as he was virtually an instructed agent, in pro¬
moting, to the extent of his humble ability, an object which, however dangerously timed its introduction
might seem, was in itself, as he conceived, entitled to every consideration and favor."—[See Niles*
Register, Vol. 41, page 360 ]
Jan 20, 1843.—Mr. Benton asked leave to introduce a resolution to declare the branch draft3 of the-
Bank of the United States illegal. Mr. Dallas replied in favor of the bank, and said, " to me the Bank
of the United States is nothing but a bank, a mere bank, enacted under the influence of the purest
motives, for admirable purposes." On granting leave the yeas were 16, nays 25—Dallas voting against
granting Mr. Benton leave.
On the 20th ot January, 1832, George M. Dallas, who had then been in his seat but a few weeks as
Senator from Pennsylvania, made a warm and animated reply to an attack upon the U. S. Bank, by
Thomas H. Benton. The following was the closing sentence :
" To me, the Bank of the United States is nothing but a Bank—a mere Bank—enacted under the in-
26
fluence of the purest motives, for the most admirable purposes. If it shall have prostituted its faculties,
by embarking in the contests of political party, it will find me, however humble and weak, an implaca¬
ble opponent; but if, as I unhesitatingly avow my expectation, it shall appear uprightly, and impartially,
and efficiently, to have achieved its great public duties, and to promise still further usefulness to the
country, I must and will wish it to have justice, stability, and success."
February, 1882.—Mr. Dallas made another speech in favor of the Bank, and in reply to Mr. Benton.
March 13, 1832.—Mr. Dallas, from the select committee, reported a bill to renew the charter of the
Bank ot the United States.
March 13, 1833.—Mr. Dullas reported a bill to renew the charter of the Bank of the United States
for the term of fifteen years. The following is a synopsis of the bill as reported :
Here follows an abstract; but it is only necessary to copy the 6th and 7th sections, in order to under¬
stand aright the subsequent action of the Senate :
" 6. Not more than two branches to be established or retained in any State ; and not more than one,
except in the States in which they now exist, without the assent of the Legislature.
" Bonus of $500,000 to the Government, payable in the three first years, in three payments."
Here is the evidence of the original paternity of this "bill of abominations." What inexorable in¬
structions ! Mr. Dallas was not only compelled to vote against his " own convictions," but also to give
life and being to the " Monster" which was to ruin the country, and all its Republican institutions, had
not the Hero of New Orleans," like Hercules of old, strangled the Giant in its infancy !" Novel in¬
structions indeed ! and a most dutiful Senator ! But further: Mr. Dallas having given life to this
dreaded " Monster," does not then leave it to its fate, or to the tender nursing of strangers, but watches
over it with a parent's tenderness and fostering care. Ecce signum :
" May 15. Mr. Dallas gave notice that he should, on Tuesday next, move the Senate to take up the
bill to recharter the Bank of the United States."
Again : " May 23.—The Senate resumed the consideration of the bill to modify and continue the act
So incorporate the subscribers to the Bank of the United States.
Mr. Dallas addressed the Senate for about an hour in favor of the bill."
It would seem that even our not too scrupulous cotemporary could not say that Mr. Dallas, in these
particulars, was bound by his instructions 1 Certainly here is prima facie evidence of " free agency,"
and a support of the bill con amore.
We will now notice some of the votes of Mr. D. It will be seen, by reference to the original bill,
that the assent of the States was required to the establishment of branches within their limits. But we
find that May 29, a motion to strike out this provision prevailed by a vote of ayes 28, noes 18. Among
the affirmative votes will be found the name of Mr. Dallas ! This vote, too, was doubtless in strict ac¬
cordance with his instructions !
June, 1832.—Mr. Benton's amendment, forbidding the issue ol any currency by the Bank not redeema¬
ble in specie. Mr. Benton said he offered this to test whether it was intended to make the Bank a spe¬
cie paying bank or not. Rejected, 17 to 27, Mr. Dallas voting against it.
Same day.—Mr. Marcy's amendment, reserving the right of repeal of the Bank charter to Congress,
rejected, 15 to 29, Mr. Dallas voting against it.
Same day.—Tazewell's amendment to shorten the term of the charter from 15 years to 10 ; Dallas
earnestly opposed it, saying, " that the Bank heretofore had done no mischief, and could not hereafter,"
and that, " in his opinion, nothing was so weak, so contemptibly weak, as a moneyed corporation."
Messrs. Clay and Webster sustained Mr. Dallas. It was rejected, 20 to 27, Mr. Dallas voting against it
June 5, 1832.—Amendment to strike out the bonus and limit the rate of interest to 5 per cent. Mr.
Dallas and Mr. Frelinghuysen opposed it. It was rejected, 18 to 26. Mr. Dallas voting against it
June 6, 1832.—The bank bonus in Mr. Dallas's bill being .$150,000, Mr. Marcy moved to increase it
to $525,000. Rejected, 10 to 36. Mr. Dallas voting against it.
Mr. Knight moved to increase it to $350,000. Rejected, 20 to 27. Mr. Dallas voting against it.
Mr. Seymour moved to increase it to $300,000. Rejected, 20 to 27. Mr. Dallas voting against it
Mr. Dickerson, of New Jersey, moved to increase it to $250,000. Rejected, 20 to 27. Mr. Dallas
voting against it.
But further : The bonus of $500,000, to be paid by the Bank, was subsequently altered to $200,000 per
annum for fifteen years—making a total of 3,000,000. What a magnificent " Corruption Fund," and
for this too, Mr. D. voted. Nor was this all. The principle of Distribution has been most unscrupu¬
lously assailed by the Locofocos of the present day. And speeches, editorials, reports, and even labored
addresses from Locofoco Legislators to their constituents, have teemed with denunciations of the policy
of " raising revenue for the purposes of distribution ?" Mark the consistency of the so-calied De¬
mocracy ! Here was to be a sum of $3,000,000 raised from this Bank, and certainly it must be classed
as one of the revenues of Government. The question of the proper distribution of this revenue was
raised, and a motion of Mr. Sprague, that the Bonus be " divided among the States in proportion to their
population," was agreed to, ayes 25, noes 19—Mr. Dallas voting in the affirmative! Where then slept
the thunders of Locofocoism ? Will not the Locofoco party, even at this late day, atone, by launching
its fierce denunciations at the head of its " Bank Candidate" for the Vice Presidency ?
Same day.—Mr. Marcy's amendment, reserving right to the States to tax, rejected, 22 to 25; M*.
Dallas and his friends voting against it.
"June 11.—The bill to modify and continue the act to incorporate the subscribers to the Bank of the
United States was read a third time. The question being on its passage, the same was taken by yeas and
nays, and decided as follows:
"Yeas—Messrs. Bell, Buckner, Chambers, CLAY, Clayton, DALLAS, Ewing, Foot, FRELING-
27
HUYSEN, Hendricks, Holmes, Johnston, Knight, Naudain, Poindexter, Prentiss, Robbins, Robinson,
Rujgles, Seymour, Silsbee, Smith, Sprague, Tipton, Tomlinson, Waggaman, WEBSTER, Wilkins—28.
"Nays—Messrs. Benton, Bibb, Brown, Dickerson, Dudley, Ellis, Forsyth, Grundy, Hayne, Hill,
Kane, King, Mangum, Marcy, Miller, Moore, Tazewell, Troup, Tyler, White—20."
But Mr Dallas, as his friends intimate, was not content with a simple vote in favor of the bill. He
did '• define his position," and here it is. A precious morccau truly :
" On his name being called—
" Mr. Dallas said, that being called to vote on the passage of the bill, he felt it to be his duty to
make a brief statement to the Senate. He had been returned to the Senate on the list of stockholders, as
holding a part of the stock in the bank. As soon as he found that this subject would come in for discus¬
sion, he had directed (he stock which he held in the institution to be sold It had been sold, he had re¬
ceived the amount of the sales, and had no longer any interest in the bank ! !!"
Let this explanation be read with attention. It is rich. So fearful was Mr. Dallas that when the
trying hour came, he should be debarred from voting in favor of the bill, that he took the precaution to
sell his stock, pocket the proceeds, and thus stand before the Senate " redeemed, regenerated, and disen¬
thralledAnd in this, too, doubtless he was "bound by his instructions." Could impudence or men¬
dacity go furthei, when such a pretence was set up 1
But Mr Dallas has not yet left the stand. July 3, the tariff bill was under consideration, when the
following proceedings were had :
" Mr. Dallas moved to lay the bill on the table, in order to take up a message just received from the
House—yeas 26.
" I'he Senate then proceeded to consider the message, which communicated the passage of the bill to
modify and continue the act to incorporate the subscribers to the Bank of the United States, with an
amendment.
" The amendment allows all the branches now existing in any State, where there are more than two,
to continue.
" On motion of Mr. Dallas, the Senate concurred in the amendment."
Here we find Mr. Dallas, as was very proper on his part, acting as sponsor to his cherished offspring.
To none else did this duty so appropriately belong.
The celebrated "Veto" made its appearance July 10, and then came up the question, "Shall the bill
pass, notwithstanding the objections of the President 1" Debates were had thereon, when the vote was
aken, and resulted as follows:
«Yeas—Messrs. Buckner, Chambers, Clay, Clayton, DALLAS, Foot, Frelinghuysen, Hendricks,
Holmes, Johnston, Poindexter, Prentiss, Robinson, Ruggles, Seymour, Silsbee, Sprague, Tipton, Tom¬
linson, Webster, Wilkins—22.
» Nays—Messrs. Benton, Bibb, Brown, Dudley, Ellis, Forsyth, Grundy, Hayne, Hill, Kane, King,
Mangum, Marcy, Miller, Moore, Tazewell, Troup, Tyler, White—19."
On the 23d, ten days afterwards, at a public meeting in Philadelphia, he vindicated that same veto ;
and he was appointed Minister to Russia, where he staid but a short time, receiving $22,500 for his year's
services. Is there nothing suspicious in this sudden conversion from an opponent of the veto into its
advocate—and in the fact that his " reward" followed that conversion .'
It may be urged, that the investigation which was had into the bank during the session of 1833-'4,
together with The opinions of General Jackson contained in his veto of the bill, induced a change in.
Mr Dallas'opinions. The following extract from a letter written by Mr. Dallas, dated Philadelphia,
July 7, 1836, is entirely conclusive upon this point. He says:
" Of tne constitutional power of the National Government to create a bank, I did not then, and da
not now, entertain a doubt,- of the ability of Congress to create such a bank as would be a safe machine
of finance, and a serviceable agent in preserving a sound currency, I then was, as I still am, quite con¬
vinced ■ and even after the experience of the last four years, am inclined to believe, that if one particu¬
lar and practical feature recommmended by the Secretary of the Treasury in 1816, to the Committee of
Ways and Means, had not at that time been struck from the original draught in the House oi Representa¬
tives, the bank would never have become the detested enemy of the people it has since been " [See
Niles' Register, vol. 51, page 42.]
In connection with this bank question, and by way of showing that he was, while in the Senate, a
warm and ardent friend of just such a bank as was then desired by Mr. Clay and Mr. Frelinghuysen, we
note the fact that Mr. Dallas voted with Mr. Clay and Mr. Frelinghuysen on almost every question
connected with the bill in its progress through the Senate. He voted with them against an amendment
limiting the charter to ten years, instead of 15 as proposed in the bill ; and he also voted with them in
favor of allowing the bank to establish branches in the States without the consent of the State Legisla¬
tures • and finafly, he voted to pass the bill over General Jackson's veto.
We' have traced the progress of Mr. Dallas from the first inception to the final disposition of the
" bank" question We might have multiplied, to an almost indefinite extent, the record of votes on the
incidental and collateral questions which arose during the consideration of this bill. In every instance,.
Will Mr D'a name be iound associated with Messrs. Clay, Frelinghuysen, Ewing, Webster, &c.;,
28
and in opposition to each and all the amendments offered by Messrs. Benton, Forsyth, Marcy, White, and
other opponents of the bill. In view of this fact, let the reader again peruse the "instructions," and
form his own opinion of the extent of that unblushing love of falsehood and misrepresentation, which
■can deliberately assert that Mr. Dallas voted " under instructions," and against the convictions of his
own conscience. The pretence is too tlimsy—the assertion too barefaced. Not one of the Senators
took a more active part in the progress of this bill than did Mr. Dallas. He was the friend of the bank,
and he fought its battles manfully. The fierce denunciations of Messrs. Ritchie, Blair, and Croswell,
had then no terrors for him. Despite their threats, and the thunders of the then " Lion of the White
House," he voted for the bank, and again voted to nullify the veto of General Jacxson.
mb. dallas and distbi b utio n.
Resolution of the Baltimore Convention that nominated Messrs. Polk and Dallas :
" Resolved, That the proceeds of the public lands ought to be sacredly applied to the national objects
specified in the Constitution ; and that we are opposed to the law lately adopted, and to any law for the dis¬
tribution of such proceeds among the States, as alike inexpedient in policy and repugnant to the Consti¬
tution."
Now, let us see what were the votes of Mr. Dallas, in Congress, on this question. Here are abstracts
taken from the Journals of the Senate, which show that he acted with the friends of Distribution on
every test question ; and finally voted fob Mr. Clay's Bill! Read them, and let every candid Demo,
crat say what he thinks of leaders who call upon him to proclaim hostility to a policy which would be a
copious fountain of blessings to the State, and would have prevented the necessity of the taxation iecently
imposed upon the people—while, at the same time, they ask him to support the nomination of George
M. Dallas.
in senate of the united states-
April 16, 1832.—Mr. Clay, from the Committee on Manufactures, reported his bill for the distribution
among the States of the proceeds of the public lands.
May 9, 1832.—Mr. King, of Alabama, moved to refer Mr. Clay's bill to the Committee on Public
Lands, known to be hostile to the bill On this question there was a tie vote—22 to 22 ; Mr. Dallas
voting with Messrs. Clay, Webster, Frelinghuysen, &c., in the negative■ The Vice President, (Mr.
Calhoun,) gave the casting vote in the affirmative.
May 18, 1832.—Committee on Public Lands reported against Mr. Clay's bill, and in favor of reducing
the price of the lands to a minimum of one dollar per acre.
June 30, 1832.—A motion to postpone indefinitely Mr. Clay's distribution bill, after being opposed by
Mr. Clay and Mr. Ewing, and advocated by Mr. Benton, was lost, 17 to 25 ; Mr. Dallas voting in the
negative, with Messrs. Clay, Webster, Frelinghuysen, &c.
Same day.—Motion to lay Mr. Clay's bill on the table rejected, 15 to 27 ; Mr. Dallas voting against it.
July 2, 1832-—Amendment of Mr. Hayne, to allow the new States fifteen instead of ten per cent.; lost,
■21 to 26—Mr. Dallas dodged, but his brother in-law, Mr. Wilkins, voted in the negative.
Same day.—Amendment of Mr. King, of Alabama, to strike out the distribution clause, rejected, 21 to
26 ; Mr. Dallas dodged; Mr. Wilkins voted in the negative.
Same day.—Mr. Benton's amendment to reduce the price of the lands to one dollar per acre rejected,
21 to 27—Mr. Dallas voting in the negative.
Same day.—Mr. Benton's amendment to reduce to fifty cents per acre all lands which had been over
five years in market; rejected, 20 to 28—Mr. Dallas voting in the negative.
Same day.—Mr. Poindexter's amendment to allow the new States twelve and a half per cent, instead
often; agreed to, 27 to 20 ; Mr. Benton and Mr. Clay voting for it—Mr. Dallas voting against tt.
Same day.—Amendment of Mr. Hendricks to allow Mississippi, Louisiana, Missouri, Indiana, Ala¬
bama, and Illinois, 600,000 acres each ; agreed to, 28 to 16. Benton, Clay, and Frelinghuysen voting
for it. Mr. Dallas voting against it.
Same day.—Mr. Hayne's amendment to strike out the objects to which the States are to apply the land
fund, so as to allow them to use it as they please ; rejected, 20 to 27. Mr. Dallas voting against it.
Same day.—Mr. Robinson's amendment to reduce the price of lands over ten years in market to $1,
and to actual settlers 50 cents; rejected, 19 to 24. Mr. Dallas voting against it.
Same day.—Mr. Clay's land distribution bill ordered to a third reading, 24 to 18. Mr. Dallas voting
for it.
July 3, 1832.—Mr. Clay's land distribution bill finally passed the Senate, 26 to 18. Mr. Dallas voting
for it.
Yeas—Bell, Chambers, Clay, Clayton, Dallas, Dickerson, Dudley, Ewing, Foot, Frelinghuysen,
Hendricks, Holmes, Johnson, Knight, Naudain, Poindexter, Prentiss, Robbins, Ruggles, Seymour, Sils-
bee, Sprague, Tomlinson, Waggaman, Webster, Wilkins.
Nays—Benton, Brown, Ellis, Forsyth, Grundy, Hayne, Hill, Kane, King, Mangum, Marcy, Miller,
Robinson, Smith, Tazewell, Troop, Tyler, White.
On this subject of distribution Mr. Dallas was not instructed.
mr. dallas and internal improvement.
Resolution at the Baltimore Convention that nominated Messrs. Polk and Wright:
" Resolved, That the Constitution does not confer upon the General Government the power to com¬
mence and carry on a system of internal improvements."
2y
In the Senate of the United States.
May 25, 1832.—Mr. Chambers's motion to consider a bill to subscribe, on the part of the United States,
to the stock of the Baltimore and Ohio railroad—rejected 18 to 21. Messrs. Benton, Marcy, &c., voting
against it—Mr. Dallas voting for it.
May 29, 1832.—Motion to consider the Baltimore and Ohio railroad bill. Mr. Miller, of South Caro¬
lina, (Democrat,) said he had viewed the vote of the other day as indicating a determination not to go
any further into these expenditures for internal improvements. If taken up, it would be considered that
the administration was not disposed to cut down these wasteful expenditures. Rejected, 18 to 23. Mr.
Dallas voting for it—Benton, Marcy, &c., against it.
June 22, 1832.—Senate considered the bill making appropriations for internal improvements by the
General Government. Mr. Forsyth's amendment to strike out appropriation for the Cumberland river,
which, he said, he meant to be a test question, as it was an appropriation for a new work. Mr. Hayne
also said " that he was glad this question was now solemnly and fairly raised. If this work was to" be
authorized, every outlet and river in the Union could be. If this were done, the Government would be
called on to make roads from one water-course to another." Mr. Webster opposed the amendment-
Rejected—15 to 29. Mr. Dallas voting against it.
Sanie day.—Internal improvement bill ordered to a third reading and passed—26 to 13. Mr. Dallas
voting for it, with Messrs. Clay, Webster, Frelinghuysen, &c —Forsyth, Grundy, &c., against it.
MR. DALLAS AND THE OBLIGATIONS OF CONTRACTS, &C. &C.
In 1836, the "Democratic corresponding committee of Smithfield, Bradford county, Pa.," addressed a
letter to Mr. Dallas upon the subject of annulling the charter which had been recently granted to the
Bank of the United States. The letter assumes the ground, that this can be dnee by a convention of
the people of Pennsylvania.
Extract from the letter. 1
He says, "the convention may reorganize an entire system of social intercourse, terminating and pre¬
scribing what is deemed injurious, and establishing what is preferred. It might restore the institution of
slavery among us ; it might make our penal code as bloody as that of Draco; it might withdraiu the
charters of the cities; it might supercede a standing judiciary by a scheme of occasional arbitration and
umpirage; it might prohibit particular professions and trades ; it might permanently suspend the privi¬
lege of the writ of habeas corpus, and take from us the trial by jury."
EXTRACT FROM THE SPEECH OF GEORGE M. DALLAS ON THE BANK OF THE UNITED STATES.
" It was often difficult to determine the precise period to which legislation should extend. That we
•often do legislate for an indefinite period, and deprive subsequent legislatures from reviewing our
acts, is beyond all question. Congress had formed new States, and agreed with them on the terms and
conditions upon which they should enter into the Union, to last as long as the Union itself. Every day's
practice in legislation presented contracts entered into to endure for an indefinite period. There is a
proposition before Congress for such a contract, that will, if adopted, operate to the exclusion of future
legislation."
Mr. Dallas has endeavored to establish, as the basis of American legislation, that a charter or other en¬
gagement made by any legislature, was liable to be annulled by any subsequent legislature—and still
more effectually by any political meeting called a convention—which is only another form of extraordi¬
nary legislation. The power to annul charters, we apprehend, is a power to annihilate all vested rights.
If there be any exception, let the friends of "absolute power" point it out, and let them fix the limits
that shall circumscribe the omnipotency of the convention. No such limit can be assigned. The power
to annul charters is the power to annul patents for lands; so also to dissolve marital contracts, or con¬
tracts of any other description; and if either one or the other can be done by the convention, they may
destroy your property, and send you houseless through the country. The assertion of such a right by
the legislature to annul its engagements is well calculated to destroy all confidence in the integrity of our
k American institutions. Its obvious tendency is to unsettle every society by rendering the right of pro¬
perty insecure. It is calculated to overthrow the Government, and produce a revolution. These are the
dangerous doctrines inculcated into the public mind by the Locofoco candidate for the Vice Presidency.
In all these things we see a total unhingement of fixed opinions—an aversion to the existing order of
■ things, merely because it is so, and a strong propensity for movement and change.
CONCLUSION.
It may be remarked, that one of the deplorable effects of the Locofoco ascendancy of late years has
been to lower the people's estimate of qualifications for office, and to shake their confidence in the
political morality of public men. Among the considerations which make the Whig party congratulate
• themselves at the nomination made by the Democratic convention was the fact, that it made an issue
relating to the standard of high political morals, of proper qualifications, of the elements of character fit
to conduct the affairs of Government. What support will Mr. Polk's nomination receive ? It will re¬
ceive the support that party discipline and party dictation can be brought to give to a man of whom the
people know nothing. But there will not be one particle of generous enthusiasm—not one bosom in the
30
country will kindle at his name—not one heart will expand at the thought of his elevation. The pros-
pect ot his triumph brings no consolation to patriotic pride. No one in the country would feel lhat in
his elevation to consideration and power important services had received a just reward—transcendant
talent an appropriate theatre of action. Col. Polk, as a politician, has had no standing of his own. strictly
speaking, and is distinguished by absolute subserviency to the demagogues of the country, who have in¬
flicted upon it so much wretchedness and misery. If Mr. Van Buren's nomination astonished the country
originally,as a declension froth the revolutionary patriots, and the illustrious men who had preceded him,
is there not an impassable gulf between Col. Polk and Mr. Van Buren? He possesses none of those
grand qualities—like General Jackson—which commanded the admiration of all men—none of those
points of career and character like Harrison and Clay, which commanded the hearts of the people—none
of that comprehensive experience in national affairs and enlarged wisdom, which compel the respect of
enlightened statesmen. Col. Polk may be considered as a mere manager of party—his name is invested
with none ot the gorgeous habiliments of the orator, whose tongue has been nobly employed in the
▼indication of republican liberty and the rights of man—none of the attractive distinctions of the soldier
who has fought gallantly the battles of his country—none of the strong, full blown splendors of the
lofty patriot and enlightened statesman. A partizan of the lowest order, and whose achievements, either
in the State or National councils, has never commanded the homage or gratitude of the American people.
His renown has nothing of nationality encircling it. Col. Polk must consequently receive a mere party
vote. It is a well established fact, that his statesman-like qualities would not have accomplished for him
the distinction of receiving the nomination of Vice President on any ticket of his party—just so certain
is it that his nomination for the most exalted office in the gift of the American people is a poor exhibition
of political strength, and Col. Polk will fulfil his ill-gotten mission and the hopes of his party, in demon¬
strating how easy it is to play the pantomime hero of this political warfare, and meet with an unparalleled
repudiation bv the people of the United States.
In opposition to such pretensions, the Whig party have presented Henry Clay, of Kentucky. If know¬
ledge, judgment-, integrity, devotion of time and talents to the service of his country, ought to secure
the elevation to high political station, we feel assured that those high qualities will insure his elevation
to the Presidency.
i We will not descend here so low as to contrast the talents or illustrious services through which Mr.
Clay has adorned and illustrated the annals of his country, with those of Mr. Polk. But we have no
hesitation in saying, and saying with pride, that what gave to the roreign policy of Mr. Madison its great
strength and efficacy, was the noble and elevated conduct of Mr. Clay. Susceptible to all great and gen¬
erous emotions, boldly avowing the sympathy which he felt for hundreds of our naturalized fellow-citi¬
zens who had been dragged from their occupations, their country, and their families—scourged like
malefactors—chained like galley slaves to the masts of British ships—and their wives and children sub¬
jected to unnatural widowhood and orphanage, while these unfortunate victims themselves, by force of
British service and British law, were compelled to become denizens of that monarchy which prohibited
expatriation, and assumed to itself jurisdiction to reclaim wherever found the fugitives from its impress¬
ments, its taxation, and its injurious hardships of enlistments—adorning with all the charms of his en¬
chanting eloquence, the noble and exalted principles by which Mr. Madison's foreign policy was influ¬
enced and governed ; he infused a new spirit, and gave a higher and better influence to the councils of
the nation. Skilful and undismayed, he seemed to possess the peculiar art of controlling at once the
Congress of the United States and the people. Resistless in his powers over the deliberations ol Con¬
gress, he could excite that enthusiasm which he was afterwards competent to chasten and control; and in
explaining and justifying the measures of the administration, he expounded those great principles of
policy, on which the leading and prominent measures were based. His eloquence on these occasions
may have found its equal in some of those heated efforts which greet the ear in popular assemblies—but
where is to be found the moral courage, wholly unmingled with rashness—the judgment seconding the
ardor—the almost intuitive knowledge of the workings of the public mind—the combination of the
greatest coolness with the most inflexible opposition to every thing that was mean, double,and hypocriti¬
cal in party. Possessing an indominable spirit—a calm elevation of mind which could soar with the
highest—an ambition which spurned all things beneath the consummate glory of his country, and a heroic
devotion of heart, which, if the trial had come, at this crisis of imminent peril, would have mingled its
ashes with the ashes of her last altar, than have seen her dishonored—than have seen her splendid es¬
cutcheon blurred—he who, we say, would have done all these things, is now held up to the public gaze as
one unworthy of his country's honors, whilst the individual who never opened his mouth in support of
the measures of Mr. Madison's administration, is confidently spoken of by his friends, as a sounder re¬
publican, and as the only man worthy of the highest office in the gift of the people.
But the Locofoco party contend that he has changed his principles—wherein has he changed ? What
single opinion does he entertain now, what measures does he advocate, inconsistent with his opinions at
that day? Search the annals of his life, and, with the exception of a United States Bank, the incorpora¬
tion of which he opposed in 1811, there is no great subject upon which he has ever changed an opinion,
since his first entrance into public life, down to this day—not one. In thus supporting the incorporation
of this bank, we discover the most splendid triumph of patriotism over the pride of opinion—it was the
substitution of a wholesome practice for brilliant, but deceptive theory—it was the magnanimous con
cession of genius to experience. We ask the question : Is he inferior, in any single qualification of the
head or of the heart, to any individual standing prominent in the estimation of the nation? Let the voice
of the nation and of the world answer. He was an early, an ardent, and an undeviating friend of Jeffer¬
son and Madison, and of the Constitution ; and it may be added, that, in every sentiment he has uttered
31
in every principle he has recorded, in every act he has ever done, we may find at once an evidence and
an example of republican purity that would have done honor to the best days of Grecian or Roman virtue.
It is known full well, that Mr. Clay has stood conspicuously before the country and the world as one of
the best parliamentary orators of the age. The splendor of his character has left him without a rival in
the admiration and in the affections of his adopted State. He has been for more than twenty years iden¬
tified with every important measure of policy in the councils of the nation. His fame has gone forth to
other countries, and has been proclaimed in other languages, as that of the philanthropist and statesman,
whose eloquence enlisted the sympathies of his countrymen in behalf of South American independence,
and terminated the hesitation of the Executive in recommending its recognition. He has been known as
the prominent champion of his country's honor in the hour of insult, injury, and war, and the able nego
tiator who prepared for her the path of peace. He has been hailed as the great friend of the American
system, the adoption of which consummated the prosperity of the country, and as the pacificator of ten
millions of freemen in a difficult domestic question, the agitation of which had raised a fearful storm that
every voice but his had failed to subdue. This man. whom every nation on earth would be proud to call
her own—whose glory was thus assimilated into the glory of his country—whom two Presidents had
sought to introduce into their respective Cabinets, and into the highest departments of the foreign service
of the Union, and who was nominated by the great Whig party of the Union as pre-eminently fitted for
the Presidency—this man, thus known and thus honored, is designated as the victim of the vilest persecu¬
tion, so remorseless and so unrelenting, that history scarcely present us with a parallel case. He had the
firmness to maintain his principles, and disdained to bow and worship the counterfeit images which have
been raised by his adversaries. It is for this independence of action that he has been calumniated—it is
for this he has been attacked by base insinuations and wilful misrepresentations—whatever be the extent
or the effect of the clamor which has been excited against him, though he will always lament the dis¬
pleasure of his fellow-citizens, yet he derives everlasting consolation from the reflection that his con¬
duct has been actuated by the purest motives of patriotism and duty, and from a sincere conviction that it
was perfectly consistent with the warmest regard for the public weal. This consolation is not a little
enhanced by a firm persuasion that his sentiments will stand the test of the strictest scrutiny, and that
even those who, in the present moment of heat and ferment, criminate him, will hereafter, in calmer and
cooler moments, do justice, if not to his principles, at least to the motives which suggested them. If he
could have been so insensible to that pride of country which animates even the lowest of mankind—if he
could have been so unmindful of the ardent instigations of sentiment and patriotism, and that lofty hope
which springs forward to the future, and so forgetful of his brilliant career as a statesman, as to have sup¬
ported the principles of his political adversaries, the name of H. Clay would have been indeed dishonored,
and the republican historian would have handed down his name to posterity as one recreant to his long
cherished principles and splendid celebrity. But rather than Mr. Clay should degrade himself with any
participation in the destructive projects of the two late administrations, we had rather behold him scpul
•shered in that mute scene where Cato reposes—defeated indeed in his noble designs, but consecrated by
unsullied honor to the admiration of after ages.
INDEX.
Page.
Opinions of James K. Polk on internal improvements - - . - - -2
Polk's votes in Congress on appropriations for internal improvements - - - - 3
Polk's hostility to the tariff policy ------- --3
The expenditure, appropriations, revenue, and liquidation of the public debt - - - 3
Polk on wool - 5
Prosperous condition of the finances under a whig tariff and the measures of a whig Congress - 5
Who is for and who is against the tariff --------7
H. Clay's letter on the tariff ....-----7
Polk supports the propositions to impose a duty of twenty-five per cent, on cotton fabrics, and a duty
on tea and coffee and salt ---------8
Locofoco party in favor of raising revenue for the support of the Federal Government by direct tax¬
ation, &c. ----------- 8
Locofoco principles defined in relation to the tariff - - - - - - - 8
Members opposed to the purchase of American manufacture - - - - - 10
The whig tariff of 1842, remarks thereupon - - - - - - -10
Polk and distribution of the proceeds of the sales of the public lands - - - -11
Opinions of the locofoco party in relation to distribution - - - - - -11
of Ritchie - - - - - - - - - 11,12
of General Jackson - - - - - - - - -12
of Hon. W. R. King 13
of Themas H. Benton - - - - - - - - -13
of Calhoun - - - - - - - - - -13
Amount distributable among the several States of the Union - - - - - 13
Polk in favor of State banks - - - - - - - - -13
Polk in favor of establishing the sub-Treasury - - - - - - -20
Polk's speech on the sub-Treasury ....... 18-19
Polk against the old patriots of the Revolution - - - - - -17
Polk against abolishing the slave trade - - - - - - - -17
Polk on Oregon -----------17
Polk on Texas - - - - - - - - - - -17
Polk on sterling bonds - - - - - - - - - -18
Opinions of the locofoco party in relation to the sub-Treasury - - - - - 18
Gordon's sub-Treasury - - - - - - - - - -19
Polk's speech in favor of State banks - - - - - - - -19
Polk against banks - 19-23
Locofoco party in favor of reducing wages, &c , &c. - - - - - - 22
Woodbury's late speech on the tariff in favor of the reduction of wages - - - - 22
Buchanan on same subject - - - - - - - - -23
Wages in France, Getmany and other countries - - - - - - -23
Polk and the investigating committee on defalcations - - - - - - 23
Votes of the democracy on the tariff bills of 1824 and 1828 - - - - . 24
Opinions of George M. Dallas on the Bank of the United States - - - - - 26
Dallas and distribution -------..-27
Dallas and internal improvements - - - - - - - - .28
Dallas on the obligations of contracts, &e. ....... 29
Published by order of Hon. Willis Green, Chairman of the Whig Congressional
Executive Committee, at Washington.
SPEECH
OF
MR. J. J. HARDIN, OF ILLINOIS,
REVIEWING THE
PUBLIC LIFE & POLITICAL PRINCIPLES OF MR. VAN BUREN.
DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, MARCH 21, 1844.
Mr. Speaker : The precedent which was set on yesterday by the honorable gentle¬
man from New York, (Mr. Stetson,) in confining his remarks to a defence of Mr. Van
Buren, and not alluding to the question before the House, I consider worthy of all imi¬
tation ; and as the same course was pursued a few days since by a member from Ohio,
(Dr. Duncan,) I shall " follow in the footsteps of my illustrious predecessors," without
once referring to the mock Dorr trial which some warm-blooded and light-headed gentle¬
men are endeavoring to get up in this House, further than to say, that as the illustrious
hero of Chepachet, who is equally celebrated for his mighty feats, in issuing grandilo¬
quent proclamations, and swift running, is now on trial in Rhode Island for offences
alleged to have been committed against that State, I am not willing to grant him a change
of venue to this House, as I know we have enough other business before us, without
sending for Governor Dorr and trying to discover whether he is more hero than racer.
With this summary disposition of the Dorrite question, I will read the following reso¬
lution, which will be found in a recent number of the Albany Argus, (Mr. Van Buren's
New York organ,) which was recently passed at a meeting of " The Young Men's Van
Buren Association of Troy," New York.
" Resolved, That in Martin Van Buren we recognise a faithful manifestation of Democracy, and an
exemplar of ouii pin ye i ples, in and through whom there has been a mutuality of benefits. Demo¬
cracy has made him what he is, and he in turn has reflected an added lustre upon Democracy."
Taking this as my text, I shall proceed to examine the public life of this " manifesta¬
tion of Democracy," and shall illustrate the invaluable public services of this " exemplar
of Democratic principles" by a reference to facts and to authenticated and indisputable
documents, which will perfectly dazzle his friends and the nation with the " added lustre
he has reflected upon Democracy."
CONGRESSIONAL CAUCUS OF 1824.
I shall begin by calling attention to the course pursued by Mr. Van Buren in the Con¬
gressional caucus of 1824, which nominated Mr. Crawford for President.
It is well known that the Congressional caucus of 1816 had created much heart-burning
in the Republican ranks, although there was a very general concurrence in the party in
supporting President Munroe. In 1824 this feeling had gained strength very generally
in the Republican party, and throughout the Union; and some of the State Legislatures,
as in Tennessee, had passed resolutions condemning it. Several most distinguished men
were then presented by their friends for the Presidential chair, amongst whom were Mr.
Adams, Mr. Crawford, General Jackson, and Mr. Clay. It was generally known and
admitted at Washington, that two-thirds of the members of Congress of the Republican
party were opposed to any Congressional caucus. Notwithstanding this diversity of
opinion, a portion of the members of Congress friendly to Mr. Crawford determined to
hold a caucus, and this caused a remonstrance against their proceedings bv other mem¬
bers. The result of this state of things was, that two notices were published on the
same day in the National Intelligencer, (which will be found in Niles' Register of Feb¬
ruary 14, 1824,)—one calling a meeting of the members of Congress to nominate a can¬
didate for President, and the other being a remonstrance against any such meeting. This
last paper, which is signed by twenty-four members, amongst whom are R. M. Johnson,
J. H. Eaton, R. Y. Hayne, S. D. Ingham, Thomas Metcalfe, and J. R. Poinsett, after
Printed at Gideon's, Ninth street, Washington.
stating that they had been requested to ascertain the wishes of their fellow members of
Congress on this subject, concludes as follows :
"111 compliance with this request, they have obtained from gentlemen representing the several States
satisfactory information, that of two hundred and sixty one, the whole number ot members composing the
present Congress, there are one hundred and eighty-one who deem it inexpedient, under existing circum¬
stances, to meet in caucus for the purpose of nominating candidates for President and Vice President of
the United States, and they have good reason to believe that a portion of the remainder will be found un¬
willing to attend such a meeting."
According to the National Intelligencer and Niles' Register, February 21 st, 1824,
there were at this time two hundred and sixteen Republican members in Congress. Not¬
withstanding this remonstrance, the friends of Mr. Crawford met in solemn caucus on
the 14t'n of February, 1824, and, after being organised, were found to number only sixty-
six. Mr. Markley, of Pennsylvania, offered a preamble and resolution to adjourn the
meeting to a subsequent day, on account of the absence of so many Republican mem¬
bers ; and he further stated, that there was shortly to be a convention in Pennsylvania,
from which he desired to hear, before making any nomination. This course would ap¬
pear both just and Democratic, inasmuch as there were less than a third of the Repub¬
lican members of Congress present, and less than a fourth of the whole number. But,
sir, this fair proposition was opposed and voted down; and who should take the lead in
this course, hut that " exemplar of Democratic principles," Mr. Van Buren. He made
a speecli against the resolution, (which will be found in Niles' Register, February 21st,
1824,) from which I will read a few extracts :
" But believing that the adoption of the resolution would be injurious, he was constrained to oppose
it."
" Nothing certainly could be more desirable or important than the approving voice of the great and
patriotic State of Pennsylvania; but their approbation could be expressed as well and as efficiently after
as before the meeting here. * * * lie could not think that the judgment on the question they were
about submitting to the people would or ought to be injluenccd materially by the number of which this
meeting teas composed."
Now, sir, these sentiments of Mr. Van Buren may be a "faithful manifestation of
Democracy," as the Troy Democrats understand it; but if they are, it must he of the
modern patent Van Buren school. Mr. V. B. earnestly contends that the number
of the meeting icould not and ought riot to make any material difference, and in effect
asserts that less than a third of the Republican members of Congress had a right to make
a nomination of President, which would be binding on the party ; and as a salvo adds,
that if the people were not represented by their members then, '• their approbation could
be expressed as ivell and as efficiently after as before the meeting
This, sir, would be considered a most arrogant assumption of the right to dictate to
the people in any other man ; but as they are the avowed sentiments of the " exemplar
of Democratic principles," it is fair to presume that this is one of his acts which, in the
opinion of his friends, has " reflected an added lustre upon Democracy."
The caucus proceeded, under the lead of Mr. Van Buren, who took the most active
part in its proceedings, to nominate Mr. Crawford; and the result was, that instead of
the people expressing their approbation after the nomination, Mr. Crawford received
less than a fourth of the electoral votes, and his utter defeat was partly owing to this
attempt at dictation by Mr. Van Buren and his other friends.
The excuse which is made for Mr. Van Buren for his course in 1824, in support of
Mr. Crawford, is, that it was the usage of the Republican party thus to bring out their
candidates, and that he was too good a Democrat ever to break through the established
usages of the party. Supposing this to be as his friends insist, yet what excuse will
they give for his voting in the caucus for Mr. Crawford, instead of voting for General
Jackson? There is none whatever, except that he, in common with other friends of
Mr. Crawford, thought this to be a good opportunity of stilling General Jackson's pre¬
hensions, and of putting the General under the ban of party proscription.
But as the excuse is the usage of the party, it may be well to inquire whether Mr.
Van Buren has always bowed implicitly to the dictation of Congressional Caucusses. I
will briefly refresh tlie recollection of same gentlemen on this point.
OPPOSITION TO MADISON.
1
When Mr. Madison's first term of service was about expiring, and our difficulties wit
Great Britain were evidently approaching a crisis, the large majority of the Republics
members of Congiess met in caucus at Washington, on the 18th day of May, 1811
(see Niles' Register, May 23, 1812,) and unanimously nominated James Madison ft
re-election. Among those who participated in the proceedings of that meeting, will b
found the names of R. M. Johnson, Crawford, Calhoun, Clay, Troup, and Grund]
The nomination being thus fairly made, the question as to the candidate of the Republ
can party was settled authoritatively, according to the usages of the party. Did M
Van Buren support Mr. Madison then? If he was a Republican, and acknowledged tl
efficacy of the caucus nominations, and the party usages, he was bound to do so'. W
will see : On the 29th day of May, after a sufficient time had elapsed for the result i
the Congressional caucus to be known throughout the East, a caucus was held by son
of the members of the Legislature of New York, and De Witt Clinton was nominate
for President. Mr. Van Buren was not then in the Legislature of New York. II
was then a candidate for the Senate, and a few days afterwards was elected over til
sterling Republican, Edward F. Livingston. Mr. V. B. did not take his seat until tl
Legislature was convened in November, 1812, to elect Presidential electors. In tl
mean time, events of the utmost importance had transpired. War had been declar*
against Great Britain on the 13th day of June, 1812, and parties had organized ther
selves with reference to being for the war, and against the war—the Federalists gen
rally taking sides against the war, and the Republicans for it. The Republicans rallii
around Mr. Madison, and the whole energy of the party was necessary for his suppo
in that trying hour when the disasters of the commencement of that campaign we
lowering over the horizon, and were used as bitter subjects of reproach to Mr. Madisc
and his friends. The Federalists and the Peace party united to a man in support of I
Witt Clinton, hoping to draw off some " disaffected Republicans." Just at this crisi
Mr. Van Buren first took his seat as a Senator in New York, and one of the first acts ]
was called on to perform, was to vote for Presidential electors. Remember, sir, IV]
Van Buren had not participated in the caucus nomination of Mr. Clinton, and was n
bound by the action of the caucus which nominated him, but was at liberty to follow b
own prepossessions. Remember, also, that James Madison was the regularly nomin;
ed and acknowledged candidate of the Republican party. Well, sir, where do you fh
this stickler for party usages—this devoted Republican, as his friends term him—in tl
crisis of the Republican party? Why, sir, you find him giving his vote, as a Senat
of New York, (the legislature then having the appointment of electors,) for President
electors, favorable to Clinton, and opposed to Madison. (See Holland's Life of V
Buren, page 119.) You find him supporting this nomination, and standing shoulder
shoulder with Federalists and Peace party men ; with members of the Hartford Cc'
vention; with those who denounced the war as unjust and immoral, and who sadden
at the news of our victories, and rejoiced over our defeats ; with those who burnt blr
lights on our seaboard, as signals to British ships ; and with a few, who claiming to call thei
selves " disaffected Republicans," were doing Mr. Madison and the Republican pai
more damage in public estimation than all the avowed Federalists in the nation. It w
with this motley crew of
" Black spirits and white, blue spirits and grey
—this conglomeration of all the elements of opposition, disaffection, and treason.—tl
you find Mr. Van Buren acting a prominent part in supporting Mr. Clinton, and endt
voring to overthrow the administration of the Republican party under Mr. Madison.
It is true, sir, that after the war was evidently becoming popular, when it w
seen that our Government could sustain itself, and when the peals of victory w<
beginning to reverberate through the land, that Mr. Van Buren suddenly grew valiant
the fight, supported measures favorable to the war, and made an able speech in its 1
half, as he is very able to do, whenever he is altogether sure that there is no further ne
of equivocating, and that he is speaking on the popular side.
It is apparent, therefore, from this sketch of Mr. Van Buren's course in supporti ,.
regular nominations, that he considers them very essential whenever they can be made to
answer his own views—as to sustain his friend, Mr. Crawford, at the expense of Gene¬
ral Jackson—but that they ought to be wholly disregarded, when they thwart his wishes,
and are arrayed in sustaining such an incompetent man as James Madison, in opposition
to Mr. Clinton, the distinguished candidate of the Federalists and Peace party.
MR. VAN BUREN ON BANKS AND CURRENCY.
It is the boast of Mr. Van Buren's admirers that he is particularly orthodox cm
the subject of banking and currency. And as all of this House may not be apprised of
die grounds on which this admiration of Mr. Van Buren's policy is based, I will
proceed to refresh the recollection of gentlemen by a recurrence to the record of the facts.
Whether Mr. Van Buren was for or against the charter of the late Bank of the United
States, I have not been able to ascertain with certainty. If he was then acting pro tem.
i with the Republican party, it is highly probable he was for it, as it is not a disputed fact,
.hat two-thirds of the members of Congress who voted for the charter of that institu-
;ion were Republicans, while two-thirds of the Federalists voted against it. If, how-
;ver, as is now contended by his friends, he was always opposed to that institution, we
nust admit, that there is nothing in his past conduct or opinions to militate against his
aeing on either or both sides of this question; and it is the more probable that he was
igainst it, as its creation was recommended by Mr. Madison, to whose re-election we
lave seen Mr. Van Buren was opposed, as were likewise all the Federalists, who dis—
iked both the U. S. Bank and James Madison.
But, if Mr. V. B. was opposed to the Bank, we find him soon forgetting all his oppo-
ition, and signing a petition to extend the arms and influences of this " British monster"
imong the people of New York, so that his friends and neighbors in Albany, where he
hen resided, might participate in its advantages or poison.
The memorial will be found at large, with all the signatures, in Niles' Register of
kpril 19, 1834. Here are some extracts.
"The capital of the banks located here, under State corporations, is entirely insufficient to afford those
icilities to commercial enterprise, which the business of the place would warrant, and which the most
autious prudence would justify. * « *
" These considerations have induced the citizens of Albany once more to ask for the establishment of a
ranch, or o ffice of discount and deposite, of the Bank of the United States in this city. * *
* * * the nature of the trade which would be prosecuted here, would, in a great measure,
ender the bills of a branch established at this place, the circulating medium of the extensive regions
those produce would be brought to this market.
" Inasmuch, therefore, as the establishment of a branch here would not only be highly advantageous to
his city, but be a source of profit to the parent institution, we hope that the directors of the United States
tank will establish an office of discount and deposite at this place.
Albany, July 10, 1826. "M. VAN BUREN,
"B. F. BUTLER,
"J. J. HAMILTON,
" W. L. MARCY, and others."
And, ill accordance with this urgent prayer of Mr. Van Buren, the ex-Attorney Gen-
j ral Butler, Gov. Marcy, and the other signers of the memorial and friends of the'Bank,
branch was located at Albany.
! Now, sir, when Mr. V. B. signed this petition, one of two things was true. He
ither believed the United States Bank to be a constitutional, useful and beneficial insti-
jtion, or else he was petitioning f r the extension of the branches and circulation of a
ank which he believed to be an unconstitutional, corrupt and dangerous institution. His
•iends are at liberty to place him on either horn of the dilemma. °It does, however, ap-
ear to me that no true friend of Mr. Van Buren will contend that, when he signed that
etition, he believed the Bank to be either unconstitutional, or opposed to the interests
f the people or the well being of the Government. On the contrary, if he was at all
V onest, he must have believed, that the establishment of a branch of that Bank in Albany
'as legal and proper, and would be advantageous to the community. To believe other-
'ise, is to make him out too great a knave and demagogue to be worthy the support of
ay respectable citizen.
Having thus shown, that in 1820, Mr. Van Buren was in favor of the, late United
States Bank, the attention of the House is requested to his views on the subject of
STATE BANKS.
Many patent Democrats, especially those who are just beginning to cultivate their first
Democratic whiskers, as well as those who are blessed with conveniently forgetful
memories, now insist, that all true Democrats always were opposed to State Banks. And
it is now understood to be one of the fundamental articles of Democracy, (at least in
those regions where it is popular,) that the private property of stockholders in banks
should be made responsible for the notes-of the banks. Mr. V. B. was elected Governor
of New York in 1828, when the charters of most of the banks in that State were about
expiring. He then had a most favorable opportunity of presenting his views on that
subject, as well as of having them carried out by his political friends, who were largely
in the majority in the Legislature of the State. Well, sir, did Mr. Van Buren advise the
winding up of these banks ? Did he advise that the property of the stockholders be
made responsible for the issues of the banks ? No, sir, not a word of it. On the con¬
trary, he advises and urges the recharter of those same banks—insists that there was no
body who was in favor of dispensing with banks, and argues that it is improper to make
the property of stockholders liable for the debts of the bank. But, that gentleman may
not be incredulous, I will read to them from the message of Gov. Van Buren to the Legis¬
lature of New York, delivered January 6, 1829. See page 6 of the Journal.
" To dispense with banks altogether is an idea, which seems to have no advocate, and to make our¬
selves wholly dependent upon those established by federal authority, deserves none. If these are correct
views the only alternative would seem to be, between the renewal of the charters of the sound part of the
existing banks, or to anticipate the winding up of their concerns by the incorporation of new institu¬
tions." * * *
" But we cannot close our eyes to the difficulties and pecuniary embarrassments that must result from
suddenly stopping the operations of so many, and so long established institutions. * # *
" The importance of some more efficient safeguard has been felt by former legislatures, and they have
endeavored to obtain it through the medium of a personal responsibility of the stockholders. But it is
objected, that the practical operation of such a provision would be to defeat the object in view by throwing
this species of propeity, and of course its management, into the hands of irresponsible men. When it is
considered that the dividends do not always, and seldom much, exceed the lawful interest—that the re¬
sponsibility which the stockholders would necessarily have to place in others, would be disproportionate to
the advantages secured, aud that it is rarely, if ever, possible to reach the property of those who fail through,
such means, it is greatly to be feared that the experiment if tried, would be unsuccessful. The disas
trous consequences necessarily flowing from such a result need not be stated."
Here, sir, we find Mr. Van Buren is the advocate of State Banks, and urging strongly,
arguments in favor of their recharter. In the same message from which the above ex¬
tracts are taken, he suggests the propriety of adopting the safety fund system, and in
accordance with his views, the Legislature rechartered all the banks, and adopted " the
safety fund systemd' From this combination of the banks, the safest possible results
were predicted by its friends ; but from the reports made recently by the Comptroller of
New York, as well as from facts now universally known, it has been ascertained, that
the " safety fund system," like all Mr. Van Buren's financial projects, was but a splendid
scheme to dazzle with its plausibility, but which could not continue to realize the bene¬
fits predicted from it.
" private banking."
Having found Mr. Van Buren the warm friend of State and National Banks, and using
his influence to extend both, there remains but one other description of banks to refer to,
and that is Private Banking. To explain his views on this subject, I will ask your
attention to the following extract taken from a note, appended by Mr. V. B. to his letter
to Sherrod Williams, dated August 8, 1836. Speaking of his course when a member of
the New York Legislature, he says :
u Finding it impossible to prevent the undue increase of banks, I introduced a proposition to repeal the
restraining law, AND REGULATE PRIVATE BANKING; and in co-cperation with Mr. Van Vech-
tin, a distinguished citizen of this State, and others, succeeded in getting it through the Senate, but was
lost in the House."
Here we find Mr. Van Buren boasting that he had introduced a proposition " to repeal
the restraining lawwhich prevents private individuals from issuing their own notes
to be used as a currency, and also proposing to " regulate private banking"—which
means, to authorize every individual who would comply with a few forms and ceremonies,
to flood the whole country with his individual tickets, which are better known by the-
appropriate title of shin plasters. It was just such a system as was tried some years
since in Kentucky, when I was a boy, when every tavern-keeper, grocer, and barber
issued his individual tiekets, which answered for a short time very well, as long as the
holder of their paper eat his dinner, drank his liquor, or got himself shaved in the taverns
and shops of these Private Bankers ; but they would neither get him a dinner, quench
his thirst, or get his face shaved, if he travelled thirty miles from where they were issued.
Following the inevitable tendency of all such experiments, these notes soon became de¬
preciated to such a degree, that it required a pocket full to buy a dozen apples, and a hat
full to pay for a night's lodging. Such was Private Banking in Kentucky.
We have had a more recent experiment of " Private Banking" in New York and
Michigan, which no doubt were predicated upon the principle proposed by Mr. Van
Buren. The short period which has elapsed since this " experiment" was tried, has
been sufficient to mark the creation of hundreds of private banks, the flooding of the
country with their issues, and the explosion of this bantling of the Great Magician.
Of all the systems of banking which have ever been devised in the United States, this-
has been the most disastrous to the community, as far as it was attempted to be put into
operation. Ii even verged from the disastrous to the ridiculous. In Michigan, the specie
capital of some of the Red Dog and Wild Cat " Private Banks," was composed of boxes
of Collins' axes, which were counted, by weight, as so much silver. And when that
famous Private Banking institution, after the Van Buren model, " The Sandstone BankT
had issued immense amounts from its quarries, it is said it gave notice, that it would re¬
deem its five dollar bills in whetstones, its tens in grindstones, its twenties in millstones,.
, and all its notes above that denomination in an order on the quarry. Such, sir, was the
result of Mr. Van Buren's favorite plan of Private Banking.
AOAINST THE UNITED STATES BANK.
Thus far we have seen Mr. Van Buren advocating all sorts of Banks. Asking for the
extension of the United States Bank, recommending the recharter of State Banks, and
proposing to adopt Private Banking. We now approach the period when the United
i States Bank Bill was vetoed, and the various experiments were commenced on the cur-
> rency of the country ; and we shall find Mr. Van Buren's opinions undergoing every
variety of change, and varying from the strongest expressions of regard and confidence in
; Banks, to the extreme of distrust and denunciation.
After Gen. Jackson vetoed the Bank Bill, Mr. Van Buren took strong ground against:
that institution. In October, 1832, in his letter to the Shocco Springs Committee, he says :
" I am unreservedly opposed to a renewal of the charter of the United States Bank, and approve of the
refusal of the President to sign tho bill passed for that purpose, as well on account of the unconstitution¬
ality, as tho impolicy of its provisions." (Holland's life of V. B. page 300.}
POH THE PET BANK STSTEM.
When this avowal was made, Gen. Jackson had taken strong ground against the V.
S. Bank, and Mr. Van Buren, who was then seeking to " follow in his footsteps," was-
but re-echoing the opinions of the President. After the removal of the deposites, (which.
Mr. Van Buren of course approved, as he did of every thing Gen. Jackson did,) the Pet
Bank deposite system was adopted. Mr. Van Buren being then Vice President, we
have no opportunity of hearing from him until his famous letter to Sherrod Williams ap¬
peared in August, 1836. We then find him strongly eulogising the State Banks, for
giving us a good currency and for regulating exchanges, and confidently predicting their
success. lie contended that the Deposite Banks performed a much greater amount of
'domestic exchanges than the United States Bank, and says :
I
" It further appears that these exchanges have in many cases been effected at lower rates by the Deposite
Banks, than by the United States Bank."
In speaking of the currency, he says :
• \
" It will not even now, I think, be seriously denied, that the increase of the gold coinage and the facili¬
ties of getting that species of coin, together with the larger denomination of notes issued by the leading
State Banks, are abundantly sufficient for those purposes, and that they can be quite as conveniently
employed in them."
In speaking of the safe keeping and transfer of the public money, he says :
" The official reports of the Secretary of the Treasury show, first, that the average amount of money
annually transferred by the Bank of the United States from 1820 to 1823, was from ten to fifteen millions
of dollars; and the amount transferred by the Deposite Banks from June 1835 to April 1836, or about tea
months, over seventeen millions of dollars. In both cases, the operation has been without loss, failure, or
expense. And it further appears from the same source, that at no previous period has the safety of the
public moneys been more carefully or securely provided for. An examination of official documents will,
1 am well satisfied, fully sustain these positions. What foundation, then, was there for the assumptions
upon this part of the subject which were put forth with so much solemnity, and insisted on with so much
earnestness, in the early discussions upon the subject of the bank ! If so much has been done in this
respect, whilst the substituted agency has had to contend with the most powerful opposition that was ever
made upon any branch of the public service, what may we not expect from it now when it has received
the legislative sanction ; and if there be not gross dereliction of faith and duty, when it must also receive
the support of all parties."
Here we find Mr. Van Buren contending that the State Banks answered all the requi¬
site purposes of safekeeping and transferring the public moneys, as well as of regulating
the exchanges and supplying a currency.
TURNS AGAINST THE PET BANK SYSTEM.
Mr. Van Buren was elected to the Presidency, but scarcely had he got comfortably
seated in the chair of State, before those very Deposite Banks, which he had so much
bespattered with his praises, when he was seeking to render them popular with the peo¬
ple, exploded with a tremendous crash, fully verifying by so doing, all that had been pre¬
dicted of them by the Whigs ; while at the same time they made the Government unable
to meet its engagements, and covered with confusion and disgrace, those who had recom¬
mended them to the favor of the public. Mr. Van Buren finding himself unable to row
the Government along with his broken oared Pet Bank system, convened an extra session
of Congress on the 5th September, 1837, and recommended the Sub-Treasury as a
panacea for the evils he and his friends had brought upon the country by his Pet Banks,
and put up most lugubrious complaints against the very scheme which the year before he
had so zealously lauded—hear him ;
" Local banks have been employed for the deposite and distribution of the revenue, at all times partially,,
and on three different occasions exclusively ; first, anterior to the establishment of the first Bank of the
United States; secondly, in the interval between the termination of that institution and the charter of its
successor; and thirdly, during the limited period which has now so abiuptly closed. The connexion thus
repeatedly attempted, proved unsatisfactory on each successive occasion, notwithstanding the vaiious mea¬
sures which were adopted to facilitate or insure success." « * *
" Already are the bank notes now in circulation greatly depreciated, and they fluctuate in value between
one place and another, thus diminishing and making uncertain the worth of property and the value of
labor, and failing to subserve, except at a heavy loss, the purposes of business. With each succeeding
day the metallic currency decreases."
NETEH DOUBTED THE UTILITY Or STATE BANKS.
We have seen Mr. Van Buren opening his batteries against the State Banks, but the
elections of 1837 and 1838, led him to believe that his popularity was not increased by
this course. We therefore find him in his message of December, 1838, taking another
tack—rather disposed to praise the State Banks again—disclaiming any hostility to them,
and by all means endeavoring to make fair weather with them and their friends. lie says :
"It will not, I am sure, be deemed out of place for me here to remark, that the declaration of my views
in opposition to the policy of employing banks as the depositories of the Government funds, cannot justly
be construed as indicative of hostility, oficiul or personal to those institutions, or to repeat in this form,
and in connexion with this subject, opinions which I have uniformly entertained, and on all proper occa¬
sions expressed. Though always opposed to their creation in the form of exclusive privileges, and as a
State magistrate aiming by appiopriate legislation to secure the community against the consequences of
8
their occasional mismanagement, I have yet ever wished to see them protected in the exercise of rights con¬
ferred by law, and have never dochted their utility, when properly managed, in promoting the
interests of trade, and through that channel the other interests of the community." # • *
denounces ale banks.
During the progress of events, Mr. Van Buren was hoisted out of the presidential
mansion in 1840 by an overwhelming majority of the people. Attributing, as no doubt
he did, his humiliating defeat to his financial experiments, and to his indirect hostility to
the State banks, he now casts off all reserve, and again, chamelion-like, comes out in
another color. This time he runs up the red flag of extermination to all banks, as at
present organized, and tries to avert against them that mighty torrent of public indigna¬
tion which had so thoroughly swept him and his partisans from office, and which was
fast covering them beneath the sands of popular contempt. In his letter, dated 15th
February, 1843, to the Indiana committee, he indulges in no measured strains of denun¬
ciation. Listen to the awful thunders of his pen :
" I am opposed to the establishment of a National Bank in any form, or under any disguise, both on
constitutional grounds, and grounds of expediency." * * *
" The manufacture of paper money has been attempted in every form, it has been tried by individuals,
been transferred to corporations by the States, then to corporations by Congress, engaged in by the States
themselves, and has signally failed in all. It has in general, proved not the handmaid of honest industry
and well regulated enterprise, but the pampered menial of speculation, idleness, and fraud. It has cor.
rupted men of the highest standing, almost destroyed the confidence of mankind in each other, and dark¬
ened our criminal calendar with names that might otherwise have conferred honor and benefit on the
country. There is strong ground for believing, that such a system must have some innate incurable
defect, of which no legislation can divest it, and against which no human wisdom can guard, or
human integrity sustain itself."
DECLARES BANKS ALWAYS WILL EXIST.
Terms of reproach against banks, whether State, national, or individual, of a stronger
character than those just quoted, could scarcely be used. To an ordinary mind it would
appear that the next remark which Mr. Van Buren would make, would be to declare himself
opposed to banks and paper money of all sorts and discriptions. Does he do it ? Has
he ever done it? No, sir, he has studiously avoided expressing any such opinion. On
the contrary, the very next sentence following the one last quoted, is the following:
" The history of the past, hovjever, leaves little room for doubt, that paper money in some form will,.
notwithstanding, continue to fobx a paiit of the circulating medium of the country."
Nor is this a casual or merely incidental remark, for he had previously expressed
the same opinion. Here are extracts from his messages:
"The Constitution, however, contains no such prohibition, and since the States have exercised for
nearly half a century the power to regulate the business of banking, it is not to be expected that it wilt"
be abandoned."—Message, Sept. 5, 1837.
" In a country so commercial as ours, banks in some form will probably always exist."—Message, 2<i
Dec., 1839.
WHAT KIND OF A CURRENCY IS MR. VAN BUREN FOR?
Now, sir, with all these views of Mr. Van Buren before us, can any one tell what
kind of a currency he is now in favor of? He abuses all banks as at present organized,
yet tell3 us that we always will have banks in some form. He deprecates a paper cur¬
rency, but does not declare himself opposed to it altogether, or in favor of an exclusive
metallic currency. Perhaps this course is pursued on account of the high regard Mr..
V. B. entertains for the opinions of his friends. In some parts of the west, as in Illinois,
-the State banks (which a Democratic legislature created to supply the place of the United
States Bank) have exploded, and left the people without any sound local banks; there it
Is Democratic to advocate the exclusive metallic currency. In New York, Connecticut,
New Hampshire, V irginia, South Carolina, and other States where they have solvent
State banks, which have been fostered and protected by Democratic legislatures, it is
considered a political heresy to advocate the exclusive hard money currency. And as
Mr. Van Buren truly says, "the history of the past leaves no room for doubt that
hanks in some form will always exist.,, Whilst, therefore, he consulted his feelings,
9
and probably his spite, in denouncing the banks, he was careful to consult policy in not
going so far but that he left a loop-hole to dodge out, if he should desire to take a new
position.
A query ? Let me here pause and make an inquiry which is naturally suggested in
this connexion. If Mr. Van Buren's favorite system of individual banking has been
found to be a failure; if State banks will not answer the purposes of the people, if left
to their own action, as experience shows to be the fact; if, as is certainly true, a United
States bank, during the forty years of its existence, did answer all the purposes of the
Government and people, in providing a uniform currency, regulating exchanges, and
transferring the public moneys; and if we are never to be without banks of some sort—it
is respectfully asked what kind of banks had we better have? Would it not be much
wiser and safer to follow in the footsteps of General Washington, and the framers of the
Constitution, who created the first United States Bank; and of James Madison, and the
republican party of 1816, who established the last United States Bank, than to place
Mr. V. B. and his followers in power again, to try some more unheard of experiments
on the currency and prosperity of the people, which would again inevitably produce the
same spasms, dyspepsia, and prostration in the body politic, as were produced by their
quack nostrums during his administration ?
a bundle of inconsistencies.
But, sir, let us turn back and look over the extracts I have given from Mr. Van
Buren's writings on the subject of banks and currency, and see whether such a bundle
of inconsistencies was ever heaped together by any one man in the world upon a single
subject. He was for extending the branches of the United States Bank, because it was
a useful institution. He avows himself opposed to this same Dank on grounds of con¬
stitutionality as well as of expediency. He recommends the recharter of thirty State
banks—eulogises the deposit banks for their keeping safely the public moneys, and for
regulating the exchanges and currency—then proclaims them unsafe depositories of pub¬
lic moneys, and not worthy to be trusted. He is the advocate and proposerof individual
banking, yet places this system by the side of State and national banks, and denounces
the whole system as the " pampered menial of speculation, idleness, and fraud." With
the next breath he proclaims that we are never to be without some system of banking
and paper money; and after writing letters and messages without number, leaves us al¬
together in the dark on the important question, whether he is in favor of any kind of
banking, or whether he goes for the exclusive hard money. Can any gentleman con¬
ceive of any system of tergiversations, inconsistencies, and contradictions to exceed this ?
On this subject Mr. V. B. has turned more somersets than any proficient in " the divine
art" of ground and lofty tumbling. If you, Mr. Speaker, had stood still whilst he was
performing his gyrations around you, you would have seen him, in turns, on your right
hand and your left—before you and behind you; sometimes on his heels and sometimes
on his head. And if you would now endeavor to put your finger on him, you would
find him not there, but in the act of performing some surprising evolution, and whether
he would light on your right hand or left—on his head or his heels—you could not pos¬
sibly tell. In his political life, he has " boxed the compass." And this, sir, is
the man that, in the present emergency of the Government, it is sought to place at the
helm of State! When we inquire what course he will steer, we are referred to the tor¬
tuous course of his past life; and whether he would steer the ship of State a straight¬
forward, an angular or circuitous route, no man can predict. But yet, all will agree
that he would adopt the " Ericsson propeller principle," which screws itself forward, or by
reversing its motion, screws itself backwards, according as the winds and tides of popular
opinion might seem to require, in order to keep himself within the channel of public favor.
THE SUB-TREASURY.
Shortly after Mr. V. B. came into power, the pet banks, which he had previously
eu'ogized, failed. He had committed himself against the constitutionality of a national
bank, and he therefore seems to have felt bound to recommend some untried experiment.
This he found prepared to his hand in the sub-treasury project proposed by Mr. Gordon,
of Virginia. It is true, that when it was first offered by that gentleman, in 1834, the
whole loco party in Congress, with a solitary exception, voted against it. It was
10
denounced in the Richmond Enquirer and the Globe in the following unmeasured terms.
"The proposition is disorganizing and revolutionary, subversive of tho fundamental principles of our
Government, and its entire practice from 1789 down to this day. It is as palpable as tbe sun that the
effect of the scheme would be to bring the public treasure much nearer the actual custody and control of
the President than it is now, and expose it to be plundered by a hundred hands, where one cannot now
reach it! 1"
Notwithstanding his party were thus committed against this scheme, Mr. V. B., pre¬
suming he had no other alternative, in his first message to Congress, and in three suc¬
ceeding ones, presses upon it the adoption of this system. If some of his arguments are
not very forcible, they, at least, deserve credit for great originality as recommendations
to the favor of the American people. For instance, in his message of December 24,
1839, he says:
" From tho results of inquiries made by the Secretary of the Treasury, in regard to the practice among
them, I am enabled to state, that in twenty-two, out of twenty-seven foreign governments, from which
undoubted information has been obtained, the public moneys are kept in charge of public officers. This
concurrence of opinion in favor of that system, is, perhaps, as great as exists on any question of internal
administration."
By urging this and similar arguments upon his friends, the sub-treasury bill was finally
passed in the winter of 1839-'40. Although then for the first time adopted by law, it
had been in practical effect during nearly all of his administration. From the adoption
of the system, his friends predicted the most salutary results to the Government and
people. But if any good, either to the community or Government, did result from the
adoption of this system, the history of it is to be found in the Apocryphal accounts of
the Globe and Expositor. It is evident that tbe office holders under the Government
would be benefitted by it, as their salaries were not curtailed, and the value of their pay
was greatly enhanced by the agitation of this subject. They naturally supported it.
But the most searching scrutiny has never yet been able to show the working and trading
masses of the people how they were benefitted by it. The doctrine was distinctly ad¬
vocated, in substance, that there should be one currency for the Government, and
another for the people. And, in the emphatic language of a distinguished friend of
Mr. V. 15., it was said, that " the Government should take care of itself, and the people
of themselves.'''' My limits will not permit me to enlarge upon this subject. Before
leaving it altogether, I will quote Mr. V. B.'s opinions on the duty of the Government
to create a currency of general circulation, and provide a plan to regulate the exchanges
of the country. In his message of 5th September, 1837, in writing on the subject of the-
currency, he says:
" All communities are apt to look to the Government for too much.'' » ♦ »
" If, therefore, I refrain frsm suggesting to Congress any specific plan for regulating the exchanges of
the country, relieving mercantile embarrassments, or interfering with the ordinary operations of foreign or
domestic commerce, it is from a conviction that such measures are not within the constitutional province
of the General Government; and that their adoption would not promote the real and permanent welfare-
of those they might be designed to aid."
It will be recollected that this was said at the time that the State banks had suspended1
specie payment; and from this, and other expressions of Mr. Van Buren, it is manifest
that he holds that it is not within the province of the Government to make a bank, or
adopt any other means of regulating tho exchanges, or creating a national currency to be
used in the operations of foreign or domestic commerce.
MB. MAnisov's OPINIONS.
In contrast with these views of Mr. V. B. I will ask attention to the opinions of Pres¬
ident Madison.
In 1815 the State banks had suspended specie payments, as in 1837, and the experi¬
ment of using them as the fiscal agents of the Government had failed, as it always has
done. James Madison was then President. Did he tell Congress that they had nothing
to do with these subjects? Far from it; he entertained no such opinion. And it may¬
be well worthy of the consideration of gentlemen to inquire, who is most likely to un¬
derstand the intention and meaning of the Constitution, James Madison, who did more in
11
creating that instrument, and in obtaining its adoption, than any other man, and who has
justly been styled "the father of the Constitution," or Martin Van Buren, the sage of
Linden wald?
But let Mr. Madison speak for himself. In his message of December 5, 1815, he says :
" It is, however, essential to every modification of the finances, that the benefits of an uniform national
currency should be restored to the community. The absence of the precious metals will, it is believed, be
a temporary evil; but until they can be rendered the general medium of exchange, it devolves on the wis¬
dom of Congress to provide a substitute, which shall equally engage the confidence, and accommodate
the wants, of the citizens throughout the Union. If the operation of the State banks cannot produce this
•result, the probable operation of a national bank will merit consideration."
Mr. Madison, in his message of the 3d December, 1816, says :
" But for the interests of the community at large, as well as for the purposes of the Treasury, it is es¬
sential that the nation should possess a currency of equal value, credit, and use wherever it may circulate.
The Constitution has entrusted Congress, exclusively, with the power of CREATING AND REGU¬
LATING a currency of that discription; and the measures which were taken during the last session, in
execution of this power, give every promise of success. The Bank of the United States has been organ¬
ized under auspices the most favorable, and cannot fail to be an important auxiliary to those measures."
THE ELECTIVE FRANCHISE.
In 1821 a convention was called to amend the constitution of the State of New York^
<of which Mr. Van Buren was a member. The subject of the Elective Franchise came
up for consideration, and I will give some of Mr. Van Buren's votes and speeches on
this subject, taken from "the Debates of the New York Convention," which I have
found in the Congressional library, and the correctness of which no one disputes. I
will begin with the
fVhites, first.—A proposition being under consideration, that every male citizen aged
twenty-one, &c., who " shall have been for the year next preceding assessed, and shall
have paid a tax either to the State, county, or on the highways," shall be entitled to
vote, (see page 202)—
General Talmadge moved to strike out "or on the highways," which would have
excluded from voting those persons who worked on the highways, but who had not paid
a tax. The vote stood—ayes 68, nays 48, (see page 283.) Mr. Van Buren voted in
the affirmative.
Mr. Wheeler offered this proposition, (see page 276):
" And also every other male citizen of the age of twenty-one years, who shall have been three years art
inhabitant of the State, and for one year a resident of the town or city where he may offer his vote, (pau¬
pers and persons under guardianship excepted.) "
The vote on this amendment stood—ayes 63, nays 55 ; Mr. Van Buren voting in the
negative, (see page 287.)
The above two propositions were under consideration at the same time. General Root
•opposed the first amendment, and advocated the last. In the course of his remarks,
(page 277,)
" He (General Root) enlarged upon the remarks of the gentleman from Niagara, (Mr. Russell,) what
mentioned two instances in his town where two revolutionary soldiers and patriots, one of whom fought
•with Montgomery under the walls of Quebec, and the other under Wayne at Stony Point, would be dis¬
franchised if this provision were stricken out."
Mr. Van Buren was net satisfied with voting against Mr. Wheeler's proposition, and
for General Talmadge's, but he also made a speech on the occasion in answer to General
Root—all of which I will now read, (see page 277.)
" Mr. Van Buren observed, that it was evident, and indeed some gentlemen did not seem disposed to
disguise it, that the amendment proposed by the honorable gentleman from Delaware, (Gen. Root,) con¬
templated nothing short of universal suffrage. Mr. Van Bua en did not believe there were twenty mem¬
bers of that committee, who, were the naked question of universal suffrage put to them, would vote in its
favor ; and he was sure its adoption was not expected, and would not meet the viewsof their constituents."
" Mr Van. Buren then replied to a statement made yesterday by his bonorable and venerable friend
•from Erie, (Mr. Russell,) in relation to the exclusion of soldiers who had fought at Quebec and Stoney
Point, under the banners of Montgomery and Wayne. And he felt the necessity of doing this because
12
such cases, urged by such gentlemen as his honorable friend, were calculated to make a deep and lasting
impression. But, although a regard for them did honor to that gentleman, yet it was the duty of the con¬
vention to guard against the admission of those impressions which sympathy, in individual cases, may
excite. It was always dangerous to legislate upon the impulses of individual cases, where the law about
to be enacted i3 to have a general operation. With reference to the case of our soldiers, the people of
this State, and country, had certainly redeemed themselves from the imputation that republics are
ungrateful. With an honorable liberality, they had bestowed the military lands upon them ; and to
gladden the evening of their days, bad provided them with pensions. Few of those patriots were now
living, and, of that few, that number was yearly diminishing. In fifteen years the grave will have coveted
all those who now survive. Was it not then unwise to hazard a wholesome restrictive provision, lest in
its operation it might affect these few individuals for a very short time ! He would add no more. His
duty would not permit him to say less."
" One word on the main question before the committee. We have already reached the verge of uni¬
versal suffrage. There was but one step beyond. And are gentlemen prepared to take that step ? We
were cheapening this invaluable right. He was disposed to go as far a3 any man in the extension of
rational liberty ; but he could not consent to undervalue this precious privilege so far as to confer it,
with an undiscriminating hand upon every one, black or white, who would be kind enough to condescend
to accept it."
Again, on page 284, Mr. Wheeler made a speech " in favor of universal suffrage."
" Mr. Van Buren occupied the floor some time in expressing his sentiments decidedly against the
amendment, and agaitist universal suffrage. We are hazarding every thing by going to such lengths in
the amendments, the people would never sanction them."
It is proper to remark, that there were three parties in the convention on the subject
of the right of suffrage. One was for requiring a voter to possess a freehold qualifica¬
tion, another for universal suffrage, as it is now enjoyed in nearly all the States, whilst a
third was opposed to both, and required that a man should pay taxes, or be a house¬
holder, to be entitled to a vote. Mr. Van Buren belonged to this last class. He explained
his views and principles again in a speech to be found on pages 367 and 368, in which
it will be seen he changed some of his ground, as usual. Here are some extracts :
"Mr. Van Buren said, that as the vote he should now give on what was called the highway qualification-
would be different from what it had been on a former occasion, he felt it a duty to make a brief explana¬
tion of the motives which governed him. The qualifications reported by the first committee, were of
three kinds, viz : The payment of a money tax—the performance of military duty, and working on the
highway. The two former had met with his decided approbation ; to the latter he wished to add the
additional qualification, that the elector should, if he paid no tax, performed no militia duty, but offered
his vote on the sole ground that he had labored on the highway, also be a householder. And that was the
only point in which he dissented from the report of the committee. To effect this object, he supported
a motion made by the gentleman from Duchess, to strike out the highway qualification, with a view of
adding " householder."
****«••**«**
" At this moment, he would only say, that among the many evils which would flow from an unrestricted
suffrage, the following would be the most injurious, viz :
" First, it would give to the city of New York, about twenty-five thousand votes, whilst under the
liberal extension of the right or the choice of delegates to this convention, she had but about thirteen or
fourteen thousand. That THE CHARACTER of the increased number of voters would be such as
would render their elections RATHER A CURSE THAN A BLESSING, w hich w ould drive
VROM THE POLLS ALL SOBER MINDED PEOPLE; Slid SUCll HE WAS HAPPY TO TlXD, WJS the
united opinion, or nearly so, of the delegation from that city."
Mr. Van Buren, it will be seen, was not only opposed to universal suffrage, which
would have added 12,000 voters in the city of New York, but this " exemplar of Demo¬
cratic principles" says, that the character of these poor voters was such—so abomina¬
ble, so disgusting, forsooth—as would render their elections rather a curse than a bless¬
ing, and would drive from the polls all sober-minded people. A beautiful and exalted
opinion, indeed, has he of that great mass of our population which abounds every
where, and which he estimates in the cities at nearly half its adults ! The character of
this population he considers such, that the fear of contact with them at the elections
would drive this " exemplification of Democracy" from the polls, and all other sober-
minded people, who, like himself, consider themselves degraded by coming into contact
with the vulgar poor. So very degrading does lie appear to deem it, that even a rich,
negro would not lower himself by associating with this vulgar herd at an election.
It is apparent that Mr. V. B. did not consider any man qualified to vote, unless he
had some property on which to pay a tax, or was strong enough to muster and to work
on the highway; and that he thought a man should have property sufficient to be a house-
13
holder, also, if he offered to vote because he worked on the roads. Physical strength,
and the possession of property or money to pay taxes, were evidently his criterion of
qualifications. And the idea which we in the West consider as the true tests of qualifi¬
cation, is scouted throughout all his speeches : that services rendered in defence of the
country, intellect, and virtue, with the fact that a man may at any time be called upon
and forced to defend the country, work on the roads, and act as jurors, justly entitle
every white freeman to vote.
Having examined Mr. Van Buren's views on the right of white citizens to vote, Ave
now turn our attention to the
Negroes, last.—The committee proposed to confine the right of voting " to every
Avhite male citizen," <fcc. (see page 134.) Mr. Jay moved to strike out the word
" white," which would permit negroes to vote. The question was decided in favor of
the negroes: ayes 63, nays 59; Mr. Van Buren voting in the affirmative, and in favor
of the negroes having a vote. (See page 202.)
Subsequently Mr. Briggs moved to insert the word "white" as a qualification. (See
page 3454.)
"Mr. Van Buren was in favor of the plan proposed by the select committee, and opposed to the
amendment."
To show that this question was fully presented before the convention, an extract or
two is given.
Colonel Young said:
" No white man will stand shoulder to shoulder with a negro in the train band or jury room He will
not invite him to a seat at his table, nor in his pew in the church. And yet he must be placed on a
footing of equality in the right of voting, and on no other occasion whatever, either civil or social."
(Page 191.'
Mr. Briggs, in reply to Mr. Jay, said:
" That gentleman had remarked, we must all ultimately lie down in the same bed together. But he
would ask that honorable gentleman, whether he would consent to lie down, in life, in the same feather
bed with a negro ? But it was said the right of suffrage would elevate them. He would ask whether
it would elevate a monkey or baboon, to allow them to vote." (See page 365.)
Notwithstanding these appeals, Mr. Van Buren, being " a northern man ivith south¬
ern principles," stuck to the negroes. The only difference bettveen Mr. Van Buren
and his southern friends being, that they are for keeping negroes slaves, whilst he was
for making them voters. This is but a slight Democratic difference of opinion, easily
settled by the Baltimore convention.
In fixing the qualifications of voters, it was proposed that all blacks should vote who
possessed a freehold estate of $250, and they were exempted from taxation to that
extent. This provision was supported by Mr. Van Buren in a speech to be found on
page 376.
" Mr. Van Buren said he had voted against a total and unqualified exclusion, for he would not draw a
revenue from them, (the negroes,) and yet deny to them the right of suffrage This provision met his
approbation. They were exempted from taxation until they had qualified themselves to vote. The right
has Hot denied to exclude any portion of the community, who will not exercise the right of suffrage in
its purity. This held out inducements to industry and would receive his support." (See also Holland's
life of Van Buren, 183.)
Its operation.—We have examined the views and principles of Mr. Van Buren on
the right of suffrage, and let us now see how it would operate in practice. We will
suppose an old soldier who had served under Wayne at Stony Point, or been wounded
under Montgomery at Quebec, who was unable to work on the highways, too poor to
pay a tax, too old to muster, and, residing with his children, he would not be a house¬
holder;—suppose that such a man should apply to vote at a poll where Mr. Van Buren.
should be a judge of the election. He would urge that he had fought the battles and
suffered in defence of his country; he could say that he had once owned property, but
the wants of old age had caused him to expend it, and he was now too old to work, but
he knew he ought to have a right to vote. Mr. Van Buren would reply, with that suavity
of manner for which he is so distinguished: " My good sir, '/n fifteen years the grave
rfill have covered (you and) all those (patriots of the Revolution) who now survive.''
It is unwise to hazard a wholesome restrictive provision, lest in its operation it might
fleet (you and) these few individuals for a very short time.'—(See page 277.) So please
•et out of the way, my good old soldier, for this respectable gentleman of color, with
'he gold guard-chain, satin stock, and handsome dancing pumps. He is a man of sub-
tance and a good Democrat; and although he has made his money by playing the fiddle,
!-et I know he possesses a freehold estate worth $250, which abundantly qualifies him
o vote." The old soldier would have to hobble out of the way, whilst the Democratic
■ gentleman of color gave in his vote. ..
1' Such would be the operation of Mr. Van Buren s Democratic opinions of the qualifi-
' ' ations of voters. And as the gentleman from Ohio_(Dr. Duncan) seems to have a great
benchant for pictures, I would advise him to have a sketch of this scene executed, to
ccomnany the next edition of his speech, as this "exemplification of Democracy" will
doubtless add greatly to the popularity of the " examplar of his principles," and will
xhibit to the eye how successfully Mr. Van Buren has " reflected added lustre upon
I Democracy " And lest the honorable gentleman should omit it, I will have one exe-
' uted to accompany his pretended coon on its travels through the country.
DEMOCRATIC HEAD-QUARTERS.
"EQUAL RIGHTS."
,vl My good sirs, you will both be dead in fifteen
years, and are not qualified to vote. So get
^ out of the way for this lespectable gentleman
of color to vote.
|| ^' Git out ob de way, poor white folks,
^ I and let a gemman of 'sponsibility aad
^ J qualifikashuns vote.
You can't come it over little Matty 1 y
—I lost my leg at Stoney Point, under I
Wayne, and do you let a rich negro vote, |
and refuse me because I'm poor? ^
I fought under Montgomery, and do you
say an old Soldier is not untitled to vote?
15
Election of Justices of the Peace by the People.—In many of the States it is held to
be anti-Democratic to be opposed to the election of justices of the peace by the people.
This question was brought before the New York convention. Mr. Van Buren made a
speech against this proposition, and said:
" It was not to be disguised that that part of the report before the committee, relating to the appoint¬
ment of justices of the peace, was by far the most important feature in the report—if that was settled,
the remaining part would be got along with very easily. Some had thought that these magistrates ought
to be elected, but he had at all times been opposed to their election."
" He did not believe it would be benefitting the people to extinguish one great fire, and enkindle fifty-
two smaller ones. The farther this power could be removed from the people the better. He could
not. therefore, consent to the proposition ot the gentleman from Oneida, (Mr. Piatt.") (Pages 321 and
322, Debates New York Convention.)
THE MISSOURI QUESTION.
It is well remembered that the question of the admission of Missouri into the Union,
as a slave State, shook this whole nation to its centre. Rufus King, a distinguished
Federal Senator from New York, took a most decided stand against its admission. Dur¬
ing the agitation of this question, Mr. Van Buren took a most active part in favor of the
re-election of Mr. King, and he was accordingly elected. In January, 1820, the Legis¬
lature of New York passed a resolution instructing their Senators, and requesting their
Representatives in Congress,
"To oppose the admission, as a State in the Union, of any territory not comprised within the original
boundary of the United States, without making the prohibition of slavery therein an indispensable con¬
dition of admission."
This resolution passed the Senate (of which Mr. V. B. was a member) unanimously.
Mr. Holland, in his Life of Mr. Van Buren, page 144, says:
"The Senate concurred in this resolution without division or debate, and among them Mr. Van
Buren; though it was not brought before the Legislature by his agency. Still he must be regarded as
having concurred, at that time, in the sentiment of the resolution thus adopted by the Legislature."
Abolition of Slavery in the District of Columbia.
In his letter to Junius Amis and others, dated 6th March, 1836, in writing upon this
subject, Mr. Van Buren says :
" I owe it, however, to candor to say to you, that I have not been able to satisfy myself that the grant
to Congress in the Constitution, of the power of ' exclusive legislation in all cases whatever' over the
Federal district, does not confer on that body the same authority over the subject that would otherwise
have been possessed by the States of Maryland and Virginia, or that Congress might not, in virtue there¬
of, take such steps upon the subject in this District as those States might themselves take within their
own limits, and consistently with their rights of sovereignty.
" Thus viewing the matter, I would not, from the lights now before me, feel myself safe in
pronouncing that Congress does not possess the power of interfering with or abolishing slavery in the
District of Columbia." * * * *
" I do not hesitate to give it to you as my deliberate and well considered opinion, that there are objec¬
tions to the exercise of this power against the wishes of the slave-holding States, as imperative in their
nature and obligations, in regulating the conduct of public men, as the most palpable want of constitu¬
tional power would be."—Holland's Life of V. B., 360.
Although this opinion of Air. Van Buren has been well known for years, yet I am not
aware that any man knows what are his opinions upon the right and duty of Congress
to receive and consider petitions for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia
and the Territories. His zealous friends from the North are the advocates of their re¬
ception and consideration, whilst his warm friends at the South are as violent against
their reception. Perhaps the difficulty is easily reconciled from the fact that he is said
to be " a Northern man with Southern principles," to which might well be added, uand
of colored opinions
Mr. Van Buren's position on this subject was well illustrated by a Tennessee stump-
speaker, who tells this story: A farmer had missed a number of his hogs, and suspect¬
ed an idle fellow, who was magician enough to keep a plenty of meat, without working
any. So he watched one day, and followed him into the woods, and saw him raise his
gun, and shoot down one of the farmer's finest hogs. As the rogue ran up, and was
16
just stooping down to cut the hog's throat, the farmer stept up to him and laid his hand
on him, remarking, " Well, my good fellow, I have caught you killing my hogs this
time." "Yes," said the rogue, jumping up with a look of terror, " and I will kill
every one of your fighting hogs, if they come a boo-hooing at me !" Mr. V. B. acts
with just the same tact. Whilst he was leaning forward, whispering to the North that,
from the lights now before me, I believe Congress has a right to abolish slavery
in the District of Columbia, the South stepped up and touched his shoulder, and in¬
quired, "What is that you say ?" " Oh !" said Mr. Van Buren, turning around with
the politest bow imaginable, " I'll veto it—I assure you, I will veto any Abolition bill
they may bring to bamboozle me!"
INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS.
Attention is now requested to Mr. Van Buren's theory on the subject of Internal Im-
i provements, and afterwards we will turn our attention to some of his practices.
On the 19th December, 1825, Mr. Van Buren offered the following resolution in the
I Senate :
! " Resolved, That Congress does not possess the power to make roads and canals within the respec¬
tive States."
At the same time he offered an amendment to the Constitution, prescribing and defining
the power Congress shall have over the subject of Internal Improvements.
On the 21st April, 1826, Mr. Van Buren, in making a speech against an appropria¬
tion to the Louisville Canal, said:
" The aid of this Government can only be afforded to these objects of improvements in three ways :
by making a road or canal, and assuming jurisdiction ; by making a road or canal without assuming juris¬
diction, leaving it to the States ; or by making an appropriation, without doing either. In his opinion,
the General Government had no right to do either; and at some future time he should offer his reasons
in support of this opinion."—Holland's Life of Ir. £., 263.
In making a speech against the Dismal Swamp Canal, on the 15th May, 1825, Mr.
Van Buren said :
" He would not vote for the bill, for he did not believe that this Government possessed the constitu¬
tional power to make these canals, or to grant money to make them."
" As to the question (of constitutionality) being settled, he should protest against the admission of
such a doctrine ; and he should resist, to all intents and purposes, the idea that the acts of this Congress
wer e to bind him and his constituents hereafter."—Holland's Life ofV. B., 264.
Mr. Holland, in his life of his friend, Mr. Van Buren, page 268, after giving the above
extracts, and also Air. V. B.'s Letter to the Shocco Springs Committee, closes the chap¬
ter with these remarks :
" These extracts, it will be noticed, go further than the veto message on the Maysville road, and as¬
sumes the ground afterwards adopted by the President, that, even for purposes which might be deemed
of a national character, no appropriation ought to be made without a previous amendment of the Con¬
stitution."
We have thus seen that Mr. Van Buren, in his theory, is a strict constructionist, and
assumes to belong to the " straight-jacket school." Yet, true to his chameleon charac¬
ter, he cannot act this out even in the Senate. On the 3d May, 1822, on the passage of
a bill to authorize the Government to put up toll-gates on the National Road, without
the assent of the States through which it passed, he voted for it. This has always been
considered one of the boldest assumptions of power by Congress, and it was considered
so ultra by President Monroe, that he vetoed it.
The work of Mr. Holland, from which I have "quoted the constitutional objections
of Mr. Van Buren to all Internal Improvements, was published by his particular perso¬
nal and political friend, for the purpose of aiding his election, by giving a history of his
life, and its truth and accuracy were endorsed by the Globe, Albany Argus, Baltimore
Republican, Pennsylvanian, and other leading locofoco papers.
When Mr. Van Buren came into power, there was a majority of his friends in both
branches of Congress, and of course we might expect to see this system of Internal
Improvements put down. But this was far from taking place immediately. The sys-
17
tem had too strong hold on public confidence to be attacked boldly and manfully.
Accordingly, we find the first Congress under Mr. Van Buren, in 1838, making the large
appropriation of $2,099,618, for works of Internal Improvement, all which were sanc¬
tioned by Mr. Van Buren. (See Doc. 31, 1st Sess. 27 Congress.) Here is a list of
some of the appropriations, and it is not a little curious to see how they compare with
others which he and his friends had so bitterly opposed on grounds of both unconstitu¬
tionality and inexpediency. (See Laws U. S., 1838.)
" For the continuation of the Cumberland road in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois - - $450,000
•" For the improvement of the navigation of the Hudson river, above and below Albany - 100,000
For the Cumberland river ________ 20,000
" For the Ohio, Mississippi, and Missouri rivers _____ 140,000
For the improvement of Arkansas river, (Arkansas then being a State) - - 40,000
" For improving the natural channels at the northern and southern entrances of the Dis¬
mal Swamp Canal ________ 10,000"
It is beyond the ingenuity of man to reconcile Mr. Van Buren's approval of these
appropriations, with his previous constitutional objections. There is one way of ac¬
counting for it satisfactorily, and those who have studied Mr. Van Buren's political his¬
tory will be at no loss to appreciate the suggestion, that his constitutional scruples were
never known to interfere with his action, when policy forbade it. The truth is, there is
no reason to believe that Mr. Van Buren ever was friendly to any of these improve¬
ments, upon which his partisans were then bestowing so much money. But he was al¬
ready looking forward to a re-election, and to veto these appropriations would have in¬
jured his political prospects in the West. He therefore quieted his constitutional qualm-
lsnness, Dy considering that " the end to be effected justified the means." As an evi¬
dence that Mr. V. B. was actuated by no friendly feelings for these works, we find
that subsequently, during his administration, all further appropriations for these purposes
were stopped; and what gave evidence of a hostility to the whole system, and an inten¬
tion to abandon it altogether, were the orders which were issued by the Departments,
under which the dredging machines in the harbors and rivers, and the carts, spades, and
other implements of the Government, on the Cumberland Road, were sold by the offi¬
cers of the Government for a mere trifle. Such is a specimen of Mr. Van Buren's love
for the West. And such has been his course upon the subject of Internal Improvement,
that, were he again elected, no man can tell whether his constitutional scruples, or
policy would have the ascendancy in his action. Would it not be well for his friends,
who call him " a Northern man with Southern principles," to add the additional soubri¬
quet, that " he is a strict constructionist with latitudinarianpractices."
PUBLIC LANDS.
In his letter to Sherrod Williams, Mr. Van Buren repeats what he had written to some
of his friends in New York, a year before:
" In respect to the Public Lands I need only observe, that I regard the public domain a3 a trust fund
belonging to all the States, to be disposed of for their common benefit. Ample authority is for that
purpose conferred on Congress, by an express provision of the Constitution."
After thus admitting, in the broadest terms, that the Public Lands are a trust fund held
by Congress, as a trustee, to be disposed of for the benefit of all the States, it would be
considered surprising and inconsistent in any body else, to hear him expressing the fol¬
lowing opinions in the same letter :
" The disposition of the public lands proposed by the bill to which General Jackson refused his as¬
sent, (the land bill to distribute the proceeds amongst the States,) was, in my opinion, highly objec¬
tionable." *
" I am of opinion that the avails of the public lands will be more faithfully and equitably applied
< to the common nenefit of the United States,- by their contmuea application to the general wants of the
Treasury, than by any other mode that has yet been suggested; and that such an appropriation is, in
every respect, preferable to the distribution thereof among the States, in the manner your question pro¬
poses- Entertaining these views, I cannot give you any encouragement that I will, in the event of my
election to the Presidency, favor that policy."
This hostility to the distribution of the proceeds of the Public Lands, is reiterated by
18
Mr. Van Buren, in his letter of February, 1843, to the Indiana Committee. And his
views evince the gross injustice, not to say the absurdity, of permitting a trustee, after
the payment of the trust debt, (the Revolutionary debt,) for the liquidation of which
the fund had been placed in the trustee's hands, to use the trust funds for his own pecu¬
liar benefit, instead of distributing it amongst those to whom it is admitted it rightfully
belongs.
Pre-emption Laws.
This is a subject of some interest to us in the West. Mr. Van Buren, in speaking
upon this subject, in his message of December 5th, 1837, says:
" If the public lands are to be considered as open to be occupied by any, they should, by law, be
thrown open to all. That which is intended, in all instances, to be legalized, should at once be made
legal, that those who are disposed to conform to the laws may enjoy at least equal privileges with those
who are not. But it is not believed to be the disposition of Congress to open the public lands to occu¬
pancy, without regular entries and payment of the Government price; as such a course must tend to
worse evils than the credit system, which it was found necessary to abolish. It would seem, therefore,
to be the part of wisdom and sound policy to remove, as far as practicable, the causes which produce
intrusions upon the public lands, and then take efficient steps to prevent them in future." * * * *
" Entertaining these views, I recommend the passage of a pre-emption law for their beneht, in con¬
nexion with the preparatory steps toward the graduation of the price of the public lands, and further and
more effectual provisions to prevent intrusions hereafter."
Now, if this language has any meaning, it is that as the settlers on the public lands,
at that time, had reason to believe they would be permitted to have pre-emptions—that
Congress should pass a law for their benefit; but as the entry upon the public lands was
illegal, and could not be intended to be countenanced by Congress, further provision
should be made to prevent settlers from " intrusions" thereafter. This recommenda¬
tion was not intended for the general benefit of settlers, who might settle on the public
lands thereafter, but it was intended to keep them off the public lands, whilst a single
law was to be passed for those then residing on them.
It is nothing more than justice to the last Whig Congress to say, that the first pros¬
pective pre-emption law (as it is believed) which ever was enacted, was passed by that
body; which, whilst it regards the interests of the Government, at the same time protects
and does justice to the hardy pioneer of the West.
Mr. 1 an Buren's friendship for the West.
It is claimed for Mr. Van Buren that he is peculiarly friendly to the people of the
West. If it had not been said so, every man would conclude, from his letters and writ¬
ings, that he is filled with most bitter hostility to the West. Here are some of his votes,
while Mr. Van Buren was a Senator, taken from the journals of the Senate ;
" April 22, 1828. On the third reading of the bill ' to graduate the price of the public lands, to
make donations thereof to actual settlers, and to cede the refuse thereof to the States in which they lie,*
the vote stood—ayes 21, nays 25—Mr. Van Buren voting in the negative.
" May 24, 1828. On the third reading of a bill, entitled ' An act to aid the State of Ohio in extend¬
ing the Miami canal from Dayton to Lake Erie'—yeas 25, nays 13—Mr. Van Buren voted in the negative.
" May 10, 1826. On the third reading of a bill 'to grant a certain quantity of land to the State ol
Illinois, for the purpose of aiding in opening a canal to connect the waters of the Illinois river with
those of Lake Michigan'—yeas 17, nays 17. Mr. Van Buren voted in the negative, and the bill was re¬
jected by the casting vote of the Vice President John C. Calhoun.
" May 19, 1824. On the third reading of ' An act to improve the navigation of the Ohio and Missis¬
sippi rivers'—yeas 25, nays 20—Mr. Van Buren voted in the negative.
" March 20, 1826. On motion of Mr. Cobb to strike cut the appropriation of S50,000, ' for defray¬
ing the expenses incidental to making examinations, surveys, &.c., preparatory, and in aid of the forma¬
tion of roads and canals'—ayes 13, nays 19—Mr. Van Buren voted in the affirmative.
" April 22, 1826. On the passage of the ' bill to authorize a subscription for stock, on the part of
the United States, in the Louisvilla and Portland Canal Company'—ayes 20, nays 15—Mr. Van Buren
voted in the negative.
" May 15, 1826. Mr. Van Buren made a speech against the bill to authorize the United States to
subscribe stock in the Dismal Swamp Canal Company.—Holland's Lffe of Van Buren, 263.
" May 12, 1826. On the postponement, beyond the session, of a bill ' to establish collection districts
in the States of Kentucky, Ohio, Illinois, and Missouri,' (which bill would have had the effect of making
ports of entry high up on navigable streams,)—ayes 21, nays 12—Mr. Van Buren voted in the negative.
19
"July 30, 1327. On the third reading of ' a bill to authorize the President of the United States to
cause a road to be opened from Fort Smith, in Arkansas, (then a Territory,) to Natchitoches, in Louisi-
ana'—yeas 17, nays 20—Mr. Van Buren voted in the negative.
" March 1, 1827. On laying on the table the bill' to authorize the laying out and opening of certain
roads in the Territory of Michigan'—yeas 23, nays 14—Mr. Van Buren voted in the affirmative.
" July 17, 1827. On the third reading of a bill ' to authorize a subscription of stock, on the part of
the United States, in the Columbus and Sandusky Turnpike Company'—yeas 27, nays 18—Mr. Van
Buren voted in the negative.
" March 1, 1825. At the close of the session, on the motion to lay on the table (which was the test
vote) the bill 'TO AUTHORIZE THE OCCUPATION OF THE OREGON TERRITORY'—
yeas 25, nays 14—Mr. Van Buren voted in the affirmative. This bill was the same, in substance, as the
bill now before Congress, and directed the taking possession of the territory ot Oregon, and building forts
therein. «
" February 21, 1824, and March 20, 1826 ; also on 23d January, 1828 ; also on 2'2d April, 1828,
Mr. Van Buren voted against bills 'for the continuation of the Cumberland road.'
" May 18, 1826, and March 1, 1827, Mr. Van Buren voted against bills making appropriations ' for
the preservation of the Cumberland road.'
" March 1, 1827. Being at the close of the session, Mr. Van Buren voted to lay on the table a reso¬
lution submitted by Mr. Benton, directing the survey and examination of the route of the National road
to the seat of Government of Missouri."
In these, and it might be added, in almost every other vote affecting Western interests
peculiarly, whilst Mr. Van Buren was in the Senate, it will be found that he voted
against the West. With truth and earnestness may the people of the West exclaim :
*'Save me from such a friend!"
EXPENDITURES DURING MR. VAN BUREN'S ADMINISTRATION.
The administration of the finances of the Government has always properly been a
subject of deep interest to the American people. As it is proposed to run Mr. V. B.
again, we will turn our attention to his financial management. To avoid any question
as to the correctness of the statements which will be presented, all the facts and figures
below are taken from the official statements of officers of the Treasury Department. To
enable every one to understand the beauty of the financiering of Mr. V. B.'s adminis¬
tration, 1 will ask attention to the following statement, made out by T. L. Smith, Reg¬
ister of the Treasury, dated May 25, 1841, and appended to the report of the Secretary
of the Treasury, made to the 1st session 27th Congress :
" Receipts and expenditures of the Government, exclusive of trust funds, and funds arising from loans
aud Treasury notes, from 1st January, 1816, to 31st December, 1836, inclusive."
After giving all the figures, it concludes thus :
" Average annual receipts ........ $26,734,273
" Average annual expenditures for current expenses, as above .... 15,270,046
K Excess of average annual receipts over expenditures for current expenses - • $11,464,226
"T. L. SMITH, Register."
It will thus be seen, that during the period of twenty years, embracing the administra¬
tions of Monroe, Adams, and Jackson, there was an annual surplus of $11,464,046.
This was expended in paying the public debt, as long as any existed, and after it was
extinguished formed the surplus revenue which was deposited with the States.
General Jackson, in his farewell address, said: " I leave this great people prosper¬
ous and happy."
Mr. Van Buren came into office, promising to " follow in his footsteps." The balance
In the Treasury on the 1st of January, 1837, (see report of the Secretary of the Treas¬
ury, 3d June, 1841,) was $17,109,573. Mr. V. B. had this amount in the Treasury
to begin on.
There were other funds, also, not arising from the ordinary sources of revenue, which
Mr. Van Buren appropriated to the payment of the debts of his most extravagant admin¬
istration. Here is a statement (marked D) appended to the report of the Secretary of
the Treasury, from which it will be seen, that the balance in the Treasury, the amount
20
of stock held by the Government in the United States Bank, and the amount due from
other banks, were all eaten up by this spendthrift administration.
" Outstanding, and falling due to the Treasury, arising from other sources than that of ordinary revenue,
which were paid between the 1st of January, 1837, and the 4th of March, 1841 :
" Bonds of the Bank of the United States $8,211,630
" Interest on public deposites ....... 532,967
" Debts due from banks ........ 380,148
" Total
9,124,747"
Nor was this all. A report was made by the Register of the Treasury, dated Decem¬
ber 28, 1841, which contains a " statement of the public debt on the 3d of March, 1841,"
which is there stated to be $8,379,059 88. This official statement does not include the
large appropriations which were then outstanding, to meet which there were no funds in
the Treasury. Nor does it include the large amount of liabilities of the Government,
for which no appropriations had been made, and which had to be provided for by subse¬
quent legislation. It is not my purpose to go into a calculation to show what this sum
was, as it would take up more time and room than I have at command. It could easily
be shown that many millions more would have to be added to the public debt. The
amount admitted, however, is sufficient to prove the extravagance and improvidence of that
administration.
We will now examine the expenditures and appropriations during Mr. V. B.'s reign,
whose frugality and financial management "reflected added lustre upon Democracy."
The following tables are taken from a statement made by T. L. Smith, Register of the
Treasury, on the 26th February, 1844, giving the whole amount of receipts and expen¬
ditures from 1789 to 1842, and will be found on pages 253 and 255 of the printed report
which has been submitted to the present Congress:
1837
1838
1839
1840
' expenditures.
$37,265,037
39,455,438
37,614,936
28,226,533
' appropriations.
1837
1838
1839
1840
$39,756,698
40,905,431
30,078,051
26,449,926
Here is another table, the counterpart of the first one presented, prepared by the
Register of the Treasury, and to be found appended to the report of the Secretary of the
Treasury, 1st session 27th Congress, headed as follows :
"Receipts and expenditures of the Government, exclusive of trust funds, and funds arising from
loans and Treasury notes, and from other sources of income, from 1st of January, 1837, to 31st Decem¬
ber, 1840."
After stating the different items, it concludes—
" Average annual expenditures for current expenses, as above ...
" Average annual receipts .......
" Excess of average annual expenditures over receipts ....
- $28,098,965
21,125,998
$6,972,967
" T. L. SMITH, Register.
"Treasury Department, Register's Office, May 25, 1841."
This last statement is also substantially corroborated by the report of the Secretary
of the Treasury made to this Congress at its present session.
It is thus proven by documents which do not admit of question, that Mr. Van Buren
expended nearly TWENTY-EIGHT MILLIONS OF DOLLARS during his four
years of spendthrift economy, over and above the ordinary revenue of the Government.
And if it had not have been for the fourth instalment of the surplus revenue, the United
States Bank stock, and other little "pickings and stealings " gathered up from all im¬
aginable quarters, he would have left a debt of that amount to be added to the debt and
deficit of eight millions of dollars ivhich he did leave, which shows an acknowledged
excess of expenditure, debt, and deficit, above the ordinary revenue during that adminis¬
tration, amounting to more than thirty-four millions of dollars.
21
The facts and figures show that Mr. Van Buren spent nearly thirteen millions of dol¬
lars annually more than the average annual expenditure of the twenty preceding years.
And if the debt and deficit he left had been paid, or is added in, it will be seen that his
annual expenditure MORE THAN DOUBLED that of the administrations of Monroe,
Adams and Jackson. One of two things is certain; either the revenue was not
sufficient to defray the ordinary expenses of Government, in which case it was the duty
of the administration to provide means to increase the revenue, which they did not do ;
or the immense amounts of money which were received were extravagantly spent, or
stolen. Take which horn of the dilemma they may, that administration cannot escape
deserved censure.
It is wonderful, indeed, if the people of the United States are not captivated with such
specimens of administrative economy!! And it will be still more wonderful and aston¬
ishing, if the people, now that they have ascertained the amounts expended, shall not
call again to preside over the Government that man whose short administration caused
such astounding results!!!
THE TARIFF.
Salt.—February 2d, 1827, a bill to repeal the duty on imported salt being under con¬
sideration, Mj; Van Buren made a speech against it. (See 3 Register Debates, 245.)
On the 5th of Feoruary, 1827, the bill passed the Senate—ayes 24, nays 21 ; Mr. Van
Buren and R. M. Johnson voting in the negative.
April 7th, 1828, General Harrison moved to take up the bill to reduce the duty on
imported salt. The bill being taken up, Mr. Van Buren moved its indefinite postpone¬
ment. (4 Register Debates, 591.) On considering this bill on the 18th of April, 1828—
ayes 21, nays 25—Mr. Van Buren in the negative.
It will thus be seen that Mr. Van Buren, on all occasions, voted against a repeal or
reduction of the duty on salt. Salt being produced in New York, he was careful to
have it protected; and although " a northern man with southern principles," he has
always been particularly careful to salt down his southern and western friends, for the
benefit of his northern constituents, whenever an opportunity occurred.
The tariff of 1824 was avowedly a protective tariff. It passed the Senate May 13th,
1824. Mr. Van Buren voted for it, as did also R. M. Johnson, Andrew Jackson, and
Thomas H. Benton.
The tariff of 1828 was the highest tariff we ever had in the United States, and its
avowed object was more effectually to protect American manufactures and industry. So
bitterly has it been denounced by anti-tariff men, that it has been styled by them " the
bill of abominations." It passed the Senate May 13th, 1828. Mr. Van Buren voted
for it, as did also Mahlon Dickerson, Louis McLane, R. M. Johnson, J. II. Eaton, and
Thomas II. Benton. (See Journal of the Senate, 1st session 20th Congress, 410.)
It has been declared repeatedly by Mr. Van Buren's anti-tariff friends, that he was in
feeling opposed to this tariff, and that the only reason why he voted for it was in obe¬
dience to instructions. Mr. Van Buren himself has never said so; but there is every
reason to believe that Mr. Van Buren was voting his own sentiments, as well as comply¬
ing with the wishes of his constituents. Here is the proof of it. The advocates of .a
protective tariff got up " the Harrisburg convention," the object of which was to devise
means to obtain more efficient protection for all branches of American industry. The
result of this movement was the passage of the tariff bill of 1828. A meeting was held
in Albany on the 10th day of July, 1827, to send delegates to this convention. Mr. Van
Buren, attended and addressed the meeting. One account says:
"Mr. Van Buren said, that having now stated, as fully as the time would admit, his general views upon
the subject, his opinion of the settled policy of the State as to the propriety and expediency of affording
legislative protection to the manufacturing interests of the country, by temperate and wise, and therefore
salutary laws, and his readiness to aid in the passage of all such laws, he would trespass for a few
moments, &c. * * * * "He owed many thanks to the meeting for the very kind atten.
tion with which he had been listened to by gentlemen, between many of whom and himself there had,
upon public matters, been differences of opinion of long standing. His situation in reference to the wool
growing interest, was well known to most of them. He had at present invested more than $20,000 in
SHEEP, and farms, devoted, and which he meant to devote to that business. He fell all proper concern
22
FOR HIS OWN INTEREST, and would, of course, cheerfully unite in all suitable measures for its
advantage
Another account says :
" The Hon. Martin Van Buren (says the Argus,) rose and addressed the meeting in a speech of about
an hour. In the course of his remarks, Mr. Van Buren alluded to and fully explained his course in
relation to the woollens bill; the character and effect of that bill, as well as of various measures adopted
and discussed from time to time for the protection of our home industry ; the magnitude and vital
importance of that subject in reference to every section of the Union, and every part and every citizen of
the State ; the obvious necessity of extending to the wool grower and manufacturer, and to every branch
of domestic production and industry that may require it, AMPLE AND LIBERAL ENCOURAGE¬
MENT, &c." (See Nilos Register, July 21 st, 1827.)
The following are some of the resolutions passed at the Albany meeting :
"" Resolved, That the laws of Congress from the first assumed the principle that revenue is to be so levied
as shall most encocrabe, or least impede, the various branches of commerce and of internal industry ;
that this principle may be and ought to be carried to a more full and extended application, and that to enact
laws in disregard of it, would be an undue exercise of power."
" Resolved, That the laws of the United States which have tended to protect our interests of navigation,
manufactures, farming, and planting, against the exclusions, monopolies, restrictions, and bounties of other-
nations, have been one main source of whatever prosperity this country has enjoyed ; and that in every
instance where the protection has been efficient and complete, the result has been beneficial, not to a
part only, but to the whole community." (Niles' Register, July 21, 1827.)
The speech of Mr. Van Buren, and the resolutions, assume as broad ground as was
ever occupied by the most zealous friends of a high protective tariff. No one acquainted
with Mr. Van Buren will doubt that " he felt all proper regard for his own interest;"
and it is not credible, therefore, that when he was so warm a protective tariff adv oeate
in July, 1827, he should be opposed to it in May, 1828, when the whole North and
West were nearly unanimous for it. If Mr. Van Buren did not speak, but gave a silent
vote for that tariff, it was perhaps owing to the fact that he then had " more than twenty
thousand dollars invested in farms and sheep;" and when the question was up before
the Senate, it is not surprising that he was a silent voter.
Mr. Van Buren is said to be very wealthy, and history gives no account of his having
sold his farms and sheep ; and busy curiosity, which is always prying into the affairs
of "fallen greatness," says that since "his retiraey" to private life, when he was not
engaged in political manoeuvres, he has not only devoted his farms, but himself also, to
the cultivation of sheep and cabbage
We will now invite attention to the more recent opinions of Mr. Van Buren on the
tariff: and here, if we are not able to explain his present views satisfactorily, we must
be permitted to say the fault is his, not ours. In his letter of 15th February, 1843, to
the Indiana committee, Air. V. B. writes page after page and column after column, and
yet what he is for or what against,, in that letter, is a mystery. The tariff men give it
one construction—the anti-tariff men another. Some of his friends understand him to
be in favor of direct taxation—others, that he is utterly opposed to it. It seems to have
been his object to make it "all things to all men;" not that he might " do good to all,"
but that he might catch votes from all. That celebrated diplomatist, Talleyrand, when
asked what he considered was the design of language, answered, " It was to conceal
one's thoughts when they did not wish them hioivn.''' This seems to have been the
principle of diplomacy and explanation pursued by Air. Van Buren ; and I will proceed
to give some extracts, which squint in all directions.
Rather a little for the Tariff.—" My views in relation to the protective 6vstem, were also called for by
the Shocco Springs meeting in 1832, and freely given. A conviction that the establishment of commercial
regulations with a view to the encouragement of domestic interests, is within the constitutional power of
Congress was on that occasion distinctly avowed."
"Of the constitutional power to make discriminations, I have no doubt; equally clear it is, that the
practice of making them has existed from the commencement of the Government, and constitutes a feature
in everv principal tariff bill which is to be found upon our statute book."
" If it be at any time deemed necessary or conducive to the safety of the country to encourage the manu¬
facturer at home of the articles necessary to its defence in war Mothing can be more proper than to do so
by a discrimination in favor of their domestic manufactures, inasmuch as the object in view is to promote
-Jhe safety of all at the expenso of all."
23
Apparently against the Tariff.—" That the gTeal body of the mechanics and laborers of every branch
of business, whose welfare should be an object of unceasing solicitude on the part of every public man,,
have been the greatest sufferers by our high protective tariff, and would continue so to be, if that policy
ie persisted in, is to my mind too clear to require further elucidation." * *
* " A protection, the indirect advantages of which to their (the manufacturers) interests, even under a
tariff for protection, are as much the subject of doubt and disputation as they ever were, but for which those
concerned in other pursuits have for a long series of years paid in advance, and received their equivalent
in promises, of the performance of which they are not and do not seem likely to be soon satisfied." * *
Almost entirely against Direct Taxes.—" These, and other considerations, have given to the impost a
preference in the public mind which would render the imposition of direct taxes in time of peace exceed¬
ingly odious, and have produced as great a degree of unanimity in favor of a tariff for revenue as ever
can be expected upon a public question." * *
Squinting in favor of Direct Taxation.—Speaking of collecting revenue by impost
duties, he says :
" It cannot, however, have escaped the attention of the manufacturers, that although no State or district
of country may yet have taken ground against this mode of raising revenue for the support of Govern¬
ment, there are not wanting thousands of vigorous intellects, in every section of our extended country
who, penetrated by a deep sense of the inequality and consequent injustice of its operation, are applying
all the energies of their minds to the overthrow of the system itself'
These extracts, which might be indefinitely extended, show that Mr. Van Buren was
endeavoring to curry favor with all parties. Whilst he was evidently seeking to please
the advocates of free trade, he takes care not to break altogether with the protective
tariff men; and whilst he decidedly encourages the advocates of direct taxation, yet he
quiets those opposed to it by saying there is no danger of its being adopted. He is prac¬
tising his old game : running with the hare, yet following the hounds.
The course of Mr. Van Buren reminds me of one of our western hunting stories:
A couple of gentlemen by name of Hoffman and Cowan, both of whom were good shots, and not a
little given to boasting of their skill, went out deer hunting. After getting into the woods where they
expected to find deer, they separated. Shortly afterwards, Hoffman heard Cowan's gun fire, when he
immediately went over to the place he heard the shot, expecting to have to help Cowan hang up a deer.
He found Cowan very busy loading his gun, and shouted out—
" Hallo, Cowan, what did you shoot at!"
" It is none of your business Hoffman, go along over the bill."
Hoffman was surprised at this sh irt answer, and in looking around, discovered a calf amongst the
bushes, he again cried out—
"I say Cowan, did you shoot at that calf!"
"Yes, I did, but it is none of your business."
" Why, what made you shoot at it!"
" Why I took it for a deer."
" Well did you hit it!"
"No, I missed it."
" How came you to miss it!"
" Why I was'nt sure but what it was a calf."
" Well,' said Hoffman bursting into a laugh, " you are a pretty hunter to shoot at a calf for a deer, and
hen miss it."
" ®ee here, Hoffman," said Cowan, losing his temper, " I say, don't make a blamed fool of yourself, I shot,
at it just so as to hit it if it was a deer, and miss it if it was a calf."
It is just so with Mr. Van Buren. He so aimed his Indiana letter, that if it was a
free trade man, he hit him plump ; but if it was a protective tariff man, he just missed
him : if it was an advocate of direct taxation, he struck him fair; but if it was such a
call as to oppose that system, then his gun was crooked just enough to shoot around
him. r.
Opposed to the present Tariff.—Although Mr. Vah Buren's Indiana letter was like
the prophecies of the ancient oracles, which could be made to mean any thing, as cir¬
cumstances might require ; yet there has been anotherkffetter of his, of a "later date, pub¬
lished, which certainly was not written by him for that purpose, and which clearly shows
that he is hostile to the present tariff, both in principle and details. Here it is :
Albany, February 28, 1843.
" My Deaii Sin : I thank you kindly for your friendly letter. I have at no time, or any where, hesilat
to express my decided disapprobation of the Tariff Act of last session, as well in respect to the princ
24
upon which it is founded, as to its details. In good time, you will have my views in respect to that and
other subjects before the people. In the meantimo, believe me to be, very sincerely, your friend and obe¬
dient servant, MARTIN VAN BUREN.
It is worthy of remark, that Mr. Van Buren does not state what principle in the tariff
bill he is opposed to, or how he would have the details altered. Does he find fault with
the principle of collecting revenue by a tariff law, and prefer direct taxation? Or does
he want the duty on wool and salt increased? No one can tell; and although he
promised to give his views "in good time" on this subject, yet that good time has
never come ; and if such a letter has been written, his kind friends have discovered that
it will not do to expose it to the public eye.
I now call on the friends of Mr. Van Buren in this House, to say whether he is in
favor of the "British Tariff Bill" which has been reported by the Committee of Ways
and Means, and which ought to be entitled " An act to support foreign paupers and
enrich foreign manufacturers; and to beggar American farmers, mechanics, and
manufacturers.,, If he is for this bill, the sooner the country knows it the better. His
friends here are all-powerful. They can pass this bill as they did the " Bill to repeal
the Distribution law," under the gag law, without permitting amendment, examination,
or debate. But let them beware ! There is a point of endurance beyond which the
people will not permit their rights to be trampled on ; and when they become convinced
of the game which politicians are playing here, which would sacrifice the agricultural,
mechanical, and manufacturing interests of the country, for the purpose of bolstering up
the pretensions of Mr. Van Buren, and to secure to him the vote of the South and a
re-election to the Presidency—they will rise with the majesty of an insulted people, and
sweep from office, here and elsewhere, every vestige of Van Burenism.
But, Mr. Speaker, I must admit that I feel confident that all these free trade, tariff,
and other political stratagems which are gotten up by his friends to deceive and mislead
the people, will be perfectly powerless to revive the fallen fortunes of " the little Magi¬
cian." His wand is broken-fhis race is run. It is sometimes ridiculous, and some¬
times piteous, to listen to the lamentations of his admirers over his decaying prospects.
On both sides of the ocean, we hear these lugubrious complaints ; for it seems that even
in England he has his advocates, who might almost vie in their admiration with the Troy
Van Buren association. They feel a deep interest in his success. His election will in¬
spirit their hopes—his defeat will be the downfall of their schemes to make this nation
the mere tributary of Great Britain.
It may be consoling to Mr. Van Buren's friends here to learn, that his friends in Eng¬
land deeply sympathize with them in their lamentations over his waning prospects of
success. The London Sun of February last says :
" There seems to be a growing impression that nothing will be done relative to the Tariff until the new
President is elected; and as Mr. Van Buren is understood to be favorable to a low tariff, we see with
regret that his prospects are becoming "small by degrees and beautifully less."
Defaulting Sub-Treasurers.
In document 122, 3d session 25th Congress, is a list of defaulting land officers,
is too long for insertion, but a few items will be given as a specimen of economica ad¬
ministration and safekeeping of the public moneys by " Leg-Treasurers."
Receivers.
John H. Owens,
Wm. Linn,
M. J. Allen,
Littlebury Hawkins,
Wiley P. Harris.
Gordon D. Boyd,
J. W. Stephenson,
Mr. Swartwout's defalcation is stated by Mr. Woodbury, in a report dated 6th Decem¬
ber, 1838, at $1,374,119
Some of these defalcations occured prior to Mr. V. B.'s administration, but all of them
Land,Districts.
Date.
Balances due.
St. Stephens, Ala.,
1838
-
$30,611
Vandalia,' 111.,
1838
-
55,962
Tallahasse, Fla.,
1839
-
26,691
Helena, Ark.,
1835
-
100,000
Columbus. Miss..
1836
-
109.178
Columbus .Miss.,
1837
-
50.937
Galena, 111.,
1837
-
43,294
25
occurred during the administration of the Treasury Department by Levi Woodbury,
"whom Mr, V. B. retained in office, on account of his superior financial ability and
success in managing the Leg-Treasury system.
This list might be indiscriminately extended, but it is sufficient to remind the people
of what would again occur if they restore Mr. Van Buren and his sub-Treasurers to office.
Mr. Van Buren's Popularity,
When Mr. Van Buren was elected, in 1836, with the aid of all the officers of the
Government, together with all the influence which General Jackson possessed, and which
was exerted in his behalf—
He received 764,747 votes.
His opponents received ..... 736,172 "
His majority only - - 26,575
This was at a time when there was no united organized opposition throughout tho
Union, as has taken place since.
At the election in 1840, when he had the patronage of the Government, and the whole
army of Government officers and dependants, to aid his election—
General Harrison received .... 1,269,626 votes.
Mr. Van Buren received ..... 1,126,137 "
Gen. Harrison's majority - 143,626
Of the electoral votes, Mr. Van Buren received sixty, and Gen. Harrison two hun¬
dred and thirty-four. Of the States, Mr. Van Buren had seven, and General Harrison,
nineteen.
He was beaten in every division of the Union ; in the Northern, Middle, Southern,
and Western States. And in New York, his own State, he was beaten 13,293.
It is not wonderful that such overwhelming popularity, accompanied with so unpar¬
alleled a defeat, should endear him to the old officers, and leeches, and rats, who have
been pensioned upon the Government, by whom he had been sustained, and for whose
benefit he had administered the Government. They naturally wish to fatten once more
on the public crib. They desire a restoration, and expect to be restored to the fat of¬
fices and jobs from which they were driven, if the defeated Administration is restored to
power; for the victory will not be complete, unless these same Treasury leeches are
replaced at their old Treasury teats ; and what instrument is so suitable for their pur¬
poses as " The Great Rejected" ?
MR. VAN BUREN'S RESPECT FOR THE PEOPLE.
It has always been claimed for Mr. Van Buren that he had great regard for the peo¬
ple. And although he has shown as little regard for them as any other public man, yet
he has never lost an opportunity of courting and flattering the people, as long as there
was a probability of their being induced to sustain himself and his projects.
In his massage of 9th December, 1837, he says :
" The national will is the supreme law of the Republic ; and, on all subjects within the limits of his-
constitutional power, should be obeyed by the public servant."
Again : " The sober second thought of the people is seldom wrong, and is always efficient."
Such expressions were formerly lavished in profusion. But after his disastrous de¬
feat by such an enormous majority, in 1840, his views of popular intelligence underwent
a material change : "The case being altered, it altered the case." Formerly, his own
friends adopted and used banners, hickory brooms, &c.; then it was all right. In 1840,
the Whigs amused themselves, and annoyed their opponents, with emblems also. The
Van Burenites finding, after various trials, that there was neither hurrah nor music in his
name, suddenly assumed to be the exclusive decency and dignity party. Consequently,
they denounced cider barrels, as though they were kegs of powder ; and log cabins, as,
if they were baronial castles ; and Whig songs, as treason to the Government.
26
Mr. Van Buren has become emboldened by the assumption of extra decency and dig¬
nity by his friends, and has recently, in a letter in answer to a Ilarrisburg Committee,
exhibited his true feelings towards the people. The Committee, in speaking of the
canvass of 1840, says:
" Then reason was dethroned, and a whirlwind or passion, folly, and madness, swept
through the land. The deceived votary, like the wanderer in the desert led by the mirage, pressed on
to grasp the delusive representation." ,
In this libel on the people, Mr. Van Buren, in his response, thus acquiesces :
" I cannot, I am confident, add any thing to the masterly and eloquent description which you have
given of the national struggle."
" Singular as it may seem to those who are not in a situation to judge correctly of the circumstances,
it is nevertheless true, that a condemnation by the people of the United States, of many of the means to
which our opponents had recourse in that canvass, is not less important to the permanent welfare of our
country, and its political institutions, than the over-throw of the principles they labored to establish.
While the effects of the success of the latter were in a measure limited and temporary, the employment
of the former, struck at the very foundation upon which our political edifice was based.
* * * Without more particularly noticing the humiliating details to which you
allude in your communication, can it be pretended that there could be any expectation of success for such
efforts, unless founded upon the assumption that the popular voice was not ' under the guidance of reason
and virtue,' or upon the supposition, that the moral principles of the people to whom those degrading
appeals were made, might be corrupted by a resort to such practices."
" Can we expect the people of this country to maintain the elevated standing in the eyes of the world,
which they have hitherto enjoyed, if, after the lapse of years, and the fullest opportunity for reflection,
they suffer themselves to be a second time operated upon by appliances, from the use of which every
friend to free government must turn with mortification and disgust ?"
Mr. Van Buren, in his whole letter, lays down no political principle, and gives his opinion
upon no political question whatever ; but he gives the people who voted against him in
1840, very distinctly to understand, that he considers that at that time their "reasonioas
dethronedand they were swept into the_Whig ranks, by " passion, folly, and mad¬
ness.'''' He very condescendingly lets them know that Whig Convantions, Log Cabins,
and Whig Songs, are " humiliating details," and " degrading appeals," from which
his democratic soul " turns with mortification and disgust." How very consistent
and complimentary are these remarks, to come from a professed Democrat, and great
lover of the dear People, because the People, in their " sober second thought," had
seen proper to dispense with his services !
Surely, those persons who voted against Mr. Van Buren in 1840, and the people at
large, will have too great respect for the squeamish stomach of the " Little Magician,"
to again excite his " mortification and disgust" by voting against him in 1844 !!!
I must beg permission to tell Mr. Van Buren that he underrates the intelligence of the
people, and overrates his own importance and influence, if he thinks, by such a tirade as
this, to regain an influence over public opinion. No defeat was ever more overwhelm¬
ing—none more deserved. And I will commend to his attention, as peculiarly applica¬
ble to the election of General Harrison in 1840, the concluding sentence of his message
to the Legislature of New York, in 1829, on the election of General Jackson. It may
call up some reflections, which are not the less true, because they are unpalatable.
<■ I beg leave to congratulate you, and through you, our constituents, on the result of the late election
'for President and Vice President of the United States ; a result which, while it infuses fresh vigor into
our political system, and adds new beauties to the Republican character, once more refutes the odious
imputation that Republics are ungrateful; dissipates the rain hope that our citizens can be influenced
by aught save appeals to their understanding and love of country; and finally, exhibits in bold relief,
the omnipotence of publ e opinion, and the futility of all attempts to overawe it by the denunciations of
power, or to seduce it by tiie allurements of patronage."
M. VAN BUREN.
Albany, January 6, 1829.
Just Sentiments.
On the 6th March, 1841, two days after Mr. V. B. had retired from the Presidential
chair, having grown sick of politics, he wrote the following just sentiment in his letter
to the General Assembly of Missouri:
" No one can expect or should desire to be always in office under a government and institutions like
ours ; and I have enjoyed this privilege long enough to satisfy my utmost ambition. '
It is to be regretted that the short respite Mr. V. B. has had from political life, has
again enkindled his lust for power, and indomitable thirst for office; for he is doomed to
be a disappointed man.
When Mr. Van Buren was on his tour to the West, in 1842, he crossed the Missis¬
sippi, and was welcomed by a leading Democrat, now an M. C. In his address he said :
" You, sir, are the first President that ever crossed the Rubicon. You retired, in 1840, from the Pre¬
sidential chair with the unanimous approbation of the American people."
There is every reason to believe, that the American people heartily coincide with the
sentiments contained in the extract from the Missouri letter, as well as in those uttered
by the Missouri orator. Why, then, should politicians seek to drag him from the classic
shades of " Lindenwald?"
SONGS, BANNERS, &c.
Although I am aware that the bare mention of Songs and Banners will affect some
gentlemen like the showing of water to a mad dog, and may cause them to rave some¬
what out of time and tune, I must invite their attention to this subject. Permit me here
to remark, that although the Whigs do use Songs and Banners, they do not pretend that
such things can change votes. They have too high a regard for the sense and intelligence
of voters to believe so. But when a man has read or listened until he has become con¬
vinced, it is as natural for him to sing a song, or make a banner expressive of his feel¬
ings, as it is for a man with a clear conscience, to have his face lit up with a smile, or as
it is natural and appropriate in a handsome woman, to decorate herself with becoming;
apparel.
But it is not to Whig, but Locofoco Songs and Banners that I desire to invite attention-
Do gentlemen suppose the people have forgotten the hickory poles, hickory brooms, and
hickory bushes, which they formerly paraded on all occasions, and the pictures of a hog
with which they headed their tickets, to influence their party to " go the whole hog" irr
elections ? And even now, whenever one of their party is suspected of disaffection, do
you not see him fasten himself on to a hickory stick, and tote it about as an emblem of
his faithfulness? Why, sir, in 1840, those men who stand highest in the party of these
fault finding gentry, resorted to the very same things which they now condemn. In Ten¬
nessee, they had their hickory bushes^and polk stalks. During the canvass, and shortly
preceding the election in 1840, Gen. Jackson was invited to a political meeting in Jack¬
son, Tennessee, where he attended and made an address. Several thousand persons were
present. A public dinner was also given. Well, sir, at this dinner, a large ash-cake
was baked, containing about three bushels of corn meal. This ivas put on the table,,
and a hickory bush stuck in the centre of it, and three plates pat on the ash-cake, and
out of these plates ate Gen. JACKSON, FELIX GRUNDY, and JAMES K. POLK-
Should this be questioned, I am authorized to refer to honorable gentlemen from Ten¬
nessee for its accuracy. These squeamish gentlemen must not understand me as finding
fault with this arrangement. Whether a man prefers to eat off a table or an ash-cake, is
altogether a matter of taste, and I am willing every man should consult his own. Yet,,
when any of these gentlemen again find fault with Whig banners and Whig ash-poles,
I do hope they will remember this Jackson ash-cake, with the hickory bush stuck in it-
These gentlemen also seem to have forgotten the songs they used to sing in the halcyon
days of Jacksonism. This is one of the secrets of their downfall. People that can't
sing and rejoice, are already on the downward road to defeat. I have one of these old
Jackson songs now before me, beginning " Jackson's a coming, oho, oho," which I used
to hear the girls sing to the tune of " the Campbells are coming".—and a downright good
song it is. But now, since the ladies, nearly to a man, have turned to be Clay-men, it is
not surprising that those persons, who are so intent after " the loaves and fishes," should
feel a holy horror at hearing a Whig song. These men who are hankering after the
"spoils of office," had just as well prepare themselves for " one of the tallest falls" they
ever got in their lives, for we have the songs written, the music set, and pretty girls
enough on our side to sing the last hope out of Van Burenism.
Occasionally, of late, these song-haters have endeavored to indulge in a locofoco song
themselves, But whenever they have done so, it is both pitiful and sorrowful to hear the
miserable doggerel they have to sing. There is neither sense, metre, or music in it. A
specimen of this occurred at " the great Jackson jubilee at FaneuilHall," Boston, on the
15th of March inst. A copy of the proceedings has been sent to each of the Members
of Congress in the " Boston Times," a Democratic paper, Mr Rantoul, Mr. Ilenshaw,
Mr. Brownson, and the other leading locos participated in the meeting. After giving
their speeches, the Times says :
" Mr. Butler was here called upon to sing the following song, which he did with inimitable effect,
accompanied by the band, and the whole company joining in chorus. The political allusions were very
heartily cheered, and none more so than that in reference to ' Honest John Tyler.' "
The song is to long too give it all, but here is enough for a specimen of the poetry,
which seems to have delighted the fancy arid pleased the taste of the locos of Boston—
that American Athens of music, literature, and refinement.
Tune—" Old
" Oh, den dey've got a mighty hos,
Some want to put him on de course,
He man wat killed old red Tecumseh—
An den 'twill be with a rumsey, dumsey.
Get out the way ole Kentucky!
You're too late to come de suckv.
"An den dere's Cass, whose up to snuff,
I guess he gib de British 'nough,
He'll win de race like a young grey hound,
An you'll hear him snort at ebery bound.
Get out the way, &c.
"Now, uncle Pete, as you is from de Souf, and is
-consid'ble out ob bref, s'pose you lemonade on a
varse 'bout de Soudern hos !
A varse 'bout de Soudern hos ?
Yes-s-s-s, a varse 'bout de Soudern hos.
Berry well, here's um.
"Oh, den dere's the Soudern hos Calhoun,
Who eat ebery day some fifteen coon—
"To lick Kentuck dat hos is able,
An nebber take he hind foot out de stable.
So get out the way, &c.
"He-ah! he-ah! Hear him nigger! Eat ebery day
some fifteen coon! Best to suck all dat ?
Dan Tucker."
" Guess he got some fur in he mouf, any way.
Nebber mind dat—eat fifteen coon—ebber day,
you say, uncle Pete .'
Eberry day.
"Now Sam, as you is a real Wirginny nigger, you
go ahead on a varse 'bout John Tyler. I shall hope
to 'cover my bref by dat time.
Well, well, Is'e accommodate, seia its you.
"Dere's a 'ginny hos dey call John Tyler,
Who bust, one day, ole Harry's biler ;
An true as I sing dis same ole tune,
He is de chap to whip de coon.
—An den, you see, while poor ole Kentuck was
coffin' like de berry ole scratch, dem Lokies—
chaw! chaw!—dey sing,
Get out de way, &.c.
"Now stand back, coon! I hab perfectly'cover
myself, and dis exhibition will be close by dis
nigger, indiwidoolv ; come, den!
"Dere's Van—who's most as good as new—
We've tried him once, and found him true—
But who's de chap to whip ole Clay,
We'll show de world dis coming May.
Get out the way," &e.
Although the Bostonian locos appear to have been delighted with this song, it is not
surprizing if they should become disgusted with hearing such miserable doggerel re¬
peated. More especially as it seems they have to get a "nigger" to lead the tune, while
they " join in the chorus."
It is to be presumed, however, that as this was a very genteel collection of the choicest
spirits of Bostonian Democracy, that the " gemman of color," who figured 011 that occa¬
sion, belonged to that class of colored gentlemen of " elegant leisure and refined accom¬
plishments," to whom Mr. Van Buren extended the right of voting in New York. I
would respectfully suggest to the gentleman from Ohio, (Dr. Duncan,) whether this
scene in Faneuil Hall, would not make another excellent picture for the third edition of
his speech.
This reminds me of the fascinating picture exhibited by the gentleman from Ohio, (Dr.
Duncan,) of what he termed a dissected coon, which threw into convulsive ecstacies, so
many of his loco friends. I am surprised that he tried to pass that dead animal off for
a coon. Calling it a coon don't make it so. If you were to call its tail a leg, it would
not make it have five legs. No, sir, that dead animal was the " Red Fox of Kinder-
hook.'''' It could not have been " that same old coon," for he is alive and playing his
pranks as briskly as ever. We have already ascertained, that since the commencement
of this Congress he has stretched out thirteen Locofoco Roosters, who were endeavoring
•to fly up into this Hall, And from the continued cackling and squawking we hear from
these fowls all over the country, it is very evident that " the same old coon" is the living
terror of all locofoco dunghill chickens.
The learned Doctor spoke of the " disordered state of the various organs," exhibited
on dissection of the dead animal. I had supposed the gentleman was backwoodsman
enough to know, that symptom is always exhibited in animals that are smoked to death.
And it is proof positive, that the animal he exhibited was the Red Fox which was
smoked out of his hole in the White House in 1840, by the smoke from the "Log
Cabins" of the country.
The gentleman and other learned doctors are trying to " restore'" their patient. The
very character of their prescriptions exhibits the desperate nature of the disease. They
are giving local applications of " Garbled accounts of duelling." " Kendall's Henbane—
being the Distilled Essence of locofoco malignity." "The Compound and Corrupt Extract
of Providential dispensations." These violent poisons may produce both action and
motion, yet the clenched fist, the distorted countenance, and spasmodic struggles of the
patient, give conclusive proof that it is not the easy and natural effort of returning life,
but a vain attempt to resuscitate " a galvanized corpse."
Ttie Last Sketch.
Every man, by the time he reaches years of maturity, has adopted a character which
lie acts out in after life. The one which Mr. V. B. has assumed, is that of being con¬
sistent in inconsistencies. The fabulous characters of Ancient History are invested
with various attributes to show their power or their versatility. Briarius is said to have
had a hundred arms—Argus a hundred eyes—Janus two faces, and Proteus to have as¬
sumed every imaginable shape at will. It was reserved to Mr. V. B. to excel them all.
For, having but a single face, and one pair of arms, he can so control the expression of
his countenance, and so manage his pen, that he looks and writes all ways at once—•
shakes hands with a hundred men at the same time, on different sides of him ; and his
countenance seems to smile, at the same instant, sentiments of approbation on men of
every shade of character and opinion. He can glide through a crowd, and shake hands
with every man in it, and " leave less sign" and more doubt in the minds of the people
whether they have actually taken him by the hand, than any other man in the world,
i Though studiously polite, no one ever knows whether he is in earnest, or what are his
opinions, from his ordinary conversation. All other prominent political men of our
country have pursued such a system of policy during their political career, that when a
new question was broached, it was generally easy to foresee, on which side they would
be found. Not so with Mr. Van Buren. Should he be re-elected, and any new question
i of importance should arise, neither friend nor foe could more than guess what course he
would pursue. Even now, upon the subjects which are agitating the country, no man
can feel authorized to say what are his opinions upon the Tariff—what kind of a cur-
yencv he is for—or what should be done with the reception and reference of abolition
petitions.
If there is any thing of which Mr. V. B. can be strictly said to be the author, it is of
the system of party drill which was begun in New York, and which has been adopted
by his party throughout the Union. It is as perfect a system of organization as our army,
„ extending its influence from Presidential conventions, to the smallest town meeting.
By it, orders issued from the higher committees are conveyed to, and carried out, in the
county and town conventions ; and for this implicit obedience to orders, the " Old
Hunkers," as the drill sergeants of the party are styled, expect to be, and are, rewarded
with appointments to office. It is by this system, that Mr. V. B. expects to be re-elected.
It is well known that a large majority of his own party are opposed to his renomination.
But what will that avail ? It has already been decreed that he must be nominated. And
although the mass of the party are against him, the leaders and managers are for him.
The reason is obvious. They know that if he is re-elected, that appointments will be
, made after the old order of succession. The " Old Hunkers" will be first provided for,
* and the power will be given to these managers and leaders to fill all the offices in their
districts. And the " Young Democracy" which is seeking to participate in public life,
is to be put down or thrust out of the Party,
1
But, sir, will all this manoeuvring and party drill avail to effect its purpose T Answe
me first, whether the people have forgotten the profligate waste of public money whic
took place during his administration ? Have they forgotten the thousands and tens <
thousands of dollars which were stolen by his defaulting sub-Treasurers? Can the
forget the systematic efforts which were persisted in, to concentrate all power over th
purse and sword of the nation, in the hands of the President and his subordinate exect
live officers ? Have they forgotten, nay, can they ever forget, the universal dismay an
ruin, resulting from the disastrous experiments of Mr. V. B. and his party, which swe]
away the fortunes and hopes of the people, as the growing grain is destroyed by th
blight and mildew of Heaven ? Have they yet forgotten how he mocked them in th
midst of their calamities, and tauntingly told them, " That all communities are apt t
look to the Government for too much" ? Nay, sir, can the American people ever forge
that he has since added insult to injury, by telling them that, in displacing him froi
power in 1840, their "reason was dethroned," and they were led astray by a "whir
wind of passion, folly, and madness because, in the exercise of one of their invaluab]
rights, they dared to remove him from office, and exalt in his stead an honest and wa
worn soldier? Are the people ready to revoke the verdict they gave in 1840, and ai
they now prepared to write down in the poll books the evidence of their own stidti/icc
tion ? When all these questions are answered in the affirmative, then, and not until thei
will Martin Van Buren be restored to power.
APPENDIX.
THE FIRST UNITED STATES BANK.
The following statement shows how many and who of the framers of the Constitution participated i
the establishment of the first United States Bank—and the manner of their participation :
For it—George Washington, President; Alexander Hamilton, Sec'ry Treasury ; Jolvi Langdoi
John Dickinson, Rufus King, Robert Morris, Richard Bassett, ffm. Sml. Johnson, Senators; Georg
Clymer, Nicholas Gilman, Roger Sherman, Thomas Fitzsimons, Representatives—12.
Against it—Pierce Butler, William Few, Senators; Abraham Baldwin, Daniel Carroll, Hugh Wi
liamson, James Madison, Representatives—6.
The bill passed the House of Representatives—yeas 39, nays 20 ; do. the Senate—yeas 18, nays a.
Thus it will be seen, that, of the thirty-nine persons who framed the Constitution of the United State
eighteen participated in official capacities in the establishment of the first United States Bank. An
James Madison, who Was against the first Bank, afterwards sanctioned the second U. S. Bank, whic
jnakes thirteen of the framers of the Constitution for the constitutionality and expediency of a U. '
Bank, and only five against it, on either constitutional or other grounds.
THE SECOND UNITED STATES BANK, CHARTERED IN 1816.
The following statement shows the number and names of all the Senators and Representatives wh
voted for and against the second U. S. Bank, in 1816—the names of the Federalists being in italics.
SENATE.—Ayes.—Messrs. Barbour, Barry, Brown, Campbell, Chace, Condict, Daggett, Fromer
tine, Harper, Horsey, Howell, Hunter, Lacock, Mason, Va., Morrow, Roberts, Talbot, Tait, Taylor, Tu;
ner, Varnum, Williams.—22.
Nays.—Dana, Galliard, Gvldsborough, Gore, King, Macon, Mason, N. H., Ruggles, Sanford, Tichenoi
Wells, Wilson —12.
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.—Those who voted in the affirmative, are—
Messrs. Adgate, of N. Y., Alexander, Ohio, Atherton, N. H., Baer, Md., Betts, N. Y., Boss, R. I,
Bradbury, Mass., Brown, Mass , Calhoun, S. C., Cannon, Tenn., Champion, Conn., Chappell, S. C
Clark, N. C., Clark, Ken., Clendenin, Ohio, Comstock, N. J., Condict, N. J., Conner, Mass., Creigh
ton, Ohio, Crocheron,N.Y., Cuthbert, Geo., Edwards, N. C., Forney, N. C., Forsyth, Geo., Gholsor
Va., Griffin, Penn., Qrosvenor, N. Y., Hawes, Va., Henderson, Tenn., Huger, S. C., Hulbert,Mass.
Hungerford, Va., Ingham, Penn., Irving, N. Y., Jackson, Va., Jewett,\'t., Kerr, Va., King, N. C., Love
N. C., Lowndes, S. C., Lumpkin, Geo., Maclay, Penn., Mason, R. I., McCoy, Va.,McKee, Ken., Mid
dleton, S. C., Moore, Moseley, Conn., Murfree, N. C., We/son, Mass., Parrls, Mass., Pickens, N. C.
Pinkney, Md., Piper, Penn., Robertson, Lou., Sharpe, Ken., Smith, Md , Smith, Va., Southard, N. J.
Taul, Ken., Taylor, N. Y., Taylor, S. C., Telfair, Geo., Thomas, Tenn., Throop, N. Y., Townsend
N. Y., Tucker, Va., Ward, N. J., Wendover, N. Y., Wheat on, Mass., Wilde, Geo., Wilkin, N A".
Williams, N. C., Willoughby, N. Y., Thos. Wilson, Penn., Wm. Wilson, Penn., Woodward, S. C.
Wright, Md., Yancey, N. C., Yates, N. A".—80.
Those who voted in the negative, are—
Messrs. Baker, of N. J., Barbour, Va., Bassett, \"a., Bennett, N. J., Birdsadl, N. Y., Blount, Tenn.
Brackenridge, Va., Burnside, Penn., Burwell,Va., Cady, N.Y., Caldwell, Ohio, Cil/ey, N. H., Clay
ton, Del., Clopton, Va., Cooper, Del., Crawford, Penn., Gulptper, N. C., Darlington, Penn., Daven
port, Conn, Desha, Ken-, Gaston, N, C., Gold, N. Y., Goldsborough, Md., Goodwin, Va., Hahn
31
Penn., Hale, N. H., Hall, Geo., Hanson, Md., Hardin, Ken , Herbert, Md., Hopkinson, Penn., John¬
son,Va., Kent, N. Y., Langdon,Yt., Law, Conn., Lewis, Va., Lovett, N. Y., Lyle, Penn., Lyon, VL,
Marsh, Vt., Mayrant, S. C., McLean, Ken , McLean, Ohio, Mil nor, Penn., Newton, Va., JVoyes, Vt.,
Ormsby, Ken., Pickering, Mass., Pitkin, Conn., Randolph, Va., Reed, Mass., Root, N. Y., Ross, Penn.,
Ruggles, Mass., Savage, N.Y., Sergeant, Penn., Sheffey, Va., Smith, Penn., Stanford, N. C., Steams,
Mass , Strong, Mass., Sturges, Conn., Taggart, Mass., Tallmaage, Conn., Vose, N. H., Wallace,
Penn., Ward, Mass., Ward, N. Y., Webster, N. H , Whiteside, Penn., Wilcox, N. H.—71.
The foregoing designation of the politics of the members of the Congress of 1816, is taken from a
table in Niles' Register, taken while that Congress was in session, and is believed to be correct.
It will thus be seen that 19 Senators and 67 Representatives, making 86 of the Republican party, voted
for the Bank. And 5 Senators and 30 Representatives, making 35 of the Republican party, voted against
it. Whilst only 3 Senators and 13 Representatives, making 16 Federalists, voted for the Bank. And
7 Senators and 41 Representatives, making 48 Federalists, voted against it.
The above compilation has been carefully prepared by a friend and constituent of Mr. H., and corres¬
ponds substantially with the classification of the same vote made out by the Editors of the National Intel¬
ligencer, in their paper of August 8th, 1840.
In 1832, the bill to recharter the United States Bank passed the Senate by a vote of 28 to 14, and the
House by a vote of 107 to 85. This bill was vetoed by President Jackson.
TARIFF OF MAY 22, 1824.
April 16, 1824, passed the House of Representatives: yeas 107, nays 102. (See Journal 18th Con¬
gress, 1st session, page 428.)
Yf.as : Maine—David Kidder; New Hampshire—Aaron Matson; Massachusetts—Henry W. Dwight;
Rhode Island—Job Durfee, Samuel Eddy; Connecticut—Noyes Barber, Ansel Sterling, Ebenezer Stod¬
dard, Gideon Tomlinson, Lemuel Whitman; Vermont—William C. Bradley, Daniel A. A. Buck, Sam¬
uel C. Crafts, Rollin C. Mallary, Charles Rich; Nevj York—Parmenio Adams, John W. Cady, Lot
Clark, Ela Collins, Hector Craig, Lewis Eaton, John Herkimer, Moses Hayden, Lemuel Jenkins, Samuel
Lawrence, Dudley Marvin, Henry C. Martindale, John Richards, Robert K. Rose, Peter Sharpe, Henry
R. Storrs, James Strong, John W. Taylor, Egbert Ten Eyck, Albert H. Tracy, Jacob Tyson, William
Van Wyck, Stephen Van Rensselaer, Silas Wood, William Woods, Jno. J. Morgan ; New Jersey—George
Cassedy, Lewis Condict, Daniel Garrison, George Holcombe, James Matlack, Samuel Swan; Pennsylva-
nia—James Allison, John Brown, James Buchanan, Samuel Edwards, William Cox Ellis, Patrick Far-
jelly, Jno. Findlay, Walter Forward, Robert Harris, George Kremer, Joseph Hemphill, Philip S. Markeley,
Samuel McKean, Daniel H. Miller, James S. Mitchell, Thomas Patterson, George Plumer, Thomas J.
Rogers, Andrew Stewart, Jno. Tod, Daniel Udree, Isaac Wayne, James Wilson, Henry Wilson; Dela¬
ware—Louis McLane; Maryland—Peter Little, Isaac McKira, George E. Mitchell; Virginia—Joseph
Johnson; Kentucky—Richard A. Buckner, Robert P. Henry, Francis Johnson, Jno. T. Johnson, Robert
P. Letcher, Thomas P.Moore, Thomas Metcalfe, Philip Thompson, David Trimble, David White, Charles
A. Wickliffe; Tennessee—Adam R. Alexander, Samuel Houston; Ohio—Mordecai Bartley, Philemon
Beecher, Jno. W. Campbell, James W. Gazlay, Duncan McArthur, William McLean, Jno. Patterson,
Jno. Sloane, Thomas R. Ross, Joseph Vance, Samuel F. Vinton, E. Whittlesey, William Wilson, John
C. Wright; Indiana—William Prince, Jno.Test; Illinois—Daniel P. Cook; Missouri—Jno. Scott.—107.
Nats: Maine—William Burleigh, Joshua Cushman, Ebenezer Herrick, Enoch Lincoln, Stephen
Longfellow, Jeremiah O'Brien; New Hampshire—Ichabod Bartlett, Matthew Harvey, Arthur Livermore,
William Plumer, Thomas Whipple, jr.; Massachusetts—Samuel C. Allen, Francis Baylies, Timothy
Fuller, Aaron Hobart, Samuel Lathrop, Jno. Locke, Jeremiah Nelson, John Reed, Jonas Sibley, Daniel
Webster, Benjamin W. Crowninshield; Connecticut—Samuel A. Foot; New York—C. C. Cambreleng,
Rowland Day, Justin Dwinell, Charles A. Foot, Joel Frost, James L. Hogeboom, Elisha Litchfield, Isaac
Williams; Pennsylvania—Samuel Brock; Maryland—William ILayward, jr., Joseph Kent, John Lee,
Raphael Neale, Jno. S. Spence, Henry R. Warfield; Virginia—Mark Alexander, William S. Archer,
P. P. Barbour, Jno. S. Barbour, Burwell Bassett, Jno. Floyd, Robert G. Garnett, Jabez Leftwich, Wil¬
liam McCoy, Charles F. Mercer, Thomas Newton, Jno. Randolph, William C. Rives, Arthur Smith,
William Smith, Alexander Smythe, Andrew Stevenson, J. Stephenson, Jno. Taliaferro, George Tncker,
Jared Williams; North Carolina—Hutchins G. Burton, Henry W. Connor, Jno. Culpeper, W. N. Ed¬
wards, Alfred M. Gatlin, Thomas H. Hall, Jno. Long, W. P. Mangum, R. M. Saunders, Richard D.
Spaight, Robert B. Vance, Charles Hooks, Lewis Williams ; South Carolina—Jno. Carter, Robert Camp¬
bell, Joseph Gist, A. R. Govan, James Hamilton, George McDuffie, J. R. Poinsett, Starling Tucker, Jno.
Wilson, Joel Abbot, George Cary, Thomas W. Cobb, Alfred Cuthbert, Jno. Forsyth, Ed. F. Tattnall,
Wiley Thompson ; Tennessee—Robert Allen, Jno. Blair, Jno. Cocke, Jacob C. Isacks, James B. Reynolds,
J. T. Stanford, James Standefer; Louisiana—William L. Brent, Henry H. Gurley, Edw. Livingston;
Alabama—Jno. McKoe, Gabriel Moore, George W. Owen; Mississippi—Christopher Rankin.—102.
May 13, 1824, passed the Senate : yeas 25, nays 21. (See Journal of Senate, 1st session 18th Con¬
gress, page 401.)
Y'eas: Maine—Jno. Chandler, Jno. Holmes ; New Hampshire—Samuel Bell; Rhode Island—James
D'Wolf, Nehemiah R. Knight; Connecticut—Henry W. Edwards, James Lanman ; Vermont—William
A. Palmer, Horatio Seymour; New York—Martin Van Ruren,- New Jersey—Mahlon Dickerson, Joseph
Mcllvaine; Pennsylvania—William Findlay, Walter Lowrie; Kentucky—Richard H, John-son, Isham
32
Talbot; Tennessee—John H. Eaton, Andrew Jackson; Ohio—Ethan Allen Brown, Benjamin Ruggles;
Indiana—James Noble, Waller Taylor; Illinois—Jesse B.Thomas; Missouri—David Barton, Thomas
H. Benton—25.
Nats: New Hampshire—John F. Parrott; Massachusetts—James Lloyd, Elijah Mills; New York—
Rufus King; Delaware—Thomas Clayton, Nicholas Van Dyke; Marylandr—Samuel Smith; Virginia—
James Barbour, Jno. Taylor ; North Carolina—Jno. Branch, Nathaniel Macon; South Carolina—John
Gaillard, Robert Y. Hayne; Georgia—Jno. Elliott, Nicholas Ware; Louisiana—Henry Johnson, Josiah
S. Johnston; Alabama—William Kelly, William R. King; Mississippi—David Holmes, Thomas H>
Williams—21.
TARIFF OF MAY 19, 1828.
April 22, 1828, passed the House of Representatives: yeas 105, nays 94. (See Journal 1st session
20th Congress, page 607.)
Yeas: New Hampshire—Titus Brown, Jonathan Harvey, Joseph Healy, Thomas Whipple, jr.; Mas¬
sachusetts—Benjamin W. Crowninsfield, Henry W. Dwight; Rhode Island—Tristam Burges; Connec¬
ticut—John Baldwin, Noyes Barber, Orange Merwin, Elisha Phelps; Vermont—Daniel A. A. Buck,
Jonathan Hunt, Rollin C. Mallary, Benjamin Swift, George E. Wales; New York—Daniel D. Barnard,
George O. Belden, Rudolph Banner, Samuel Chase, John C. Clark, John J. De Graff, Jonas Earll, jr.,
Daniel G. Garnsey, Nathaniel Garrow, S. R. Hobbie, Michael Hoffman, Richard Keese, John Magee,
Henry Marked, Henry C. Martindale, Dudley Marvin, Henry R. Storrs, John (1. Stowcr, Jamos Strong-, ■
John W. Taylor, Phincas L. Tracy, Stephen Van Rensselaer, John J. Wood, Silas Wood, John D.
Dickinson. David Woodcock, Silas Wright, jr.; Nevj Jersey—Lewis Condict, Isaac Pierson, Samuel
Swan, Hedge Thompson, Ebenczer Tucker; Pennsylvania—Samuel Anderson, Stephen Barlow, James
Buchanan, Richard Coulter, Chaunccy Forward, Joseph Fry, Innis Green, Adam King, Joseph Law¬
rence, S. McKean, Daniel H. Miller, Charles Miner, John Mitchell, Robert Orr, jr., William Ramsey,
John Sergeant, James S. Stevenson, John B. Sterigere, Andrew Stewart, Joel B. Sutherland, Espy Van
Horn, James Wilson, George Wolf; Delaware—Kenscy Johns, jr.; Maryland—Peter Little; Virginia—
William Armstrong, Isaac Leffler, Lewis Maxwell; Kentucky—Richard A. Buckner, Thomas Chilton,
James Clark, Henry Daniel, Joseph Lecompte, Robert P. Letcher, Chittenden Lyon, Robert M. Hatton,
Thomas Metcalfe, Thomas P. Moore, Charles A. Wickliffe, Joel Yancey; Ohio—Philemon Beecher,
William Creighton, jr., John Davenport, James Findlay, William McLean, William Russell, John
Sloane, William Stanberry, Joseph Vance, Samuel F. Vinton, Elisha Whittlesey, John Woods, John C.
Wright; Indiana—Thomas H. Blake, Jona. Jennings, Oliver H. Smith; Illinois—Joseph Duncan—105.
Nats: Maine—John Anderson, Samuel Butman, Rufus Mclntire, Jeremiah O'Brien, James W. Ripley,
Peleg Sprague, Joseph F. Wingate; New Hampshire—David Barker, jr., Ichabod Bartlett; Massachu¬
setts—Samuel C. Allen, John Bailey, Isaac C. Bates, John Davis, Edward Everett, Benjamin Gorham,
James L. Hodges, John Locke, John Reed, Joseph Richardson, John Varnum ; Rhode Island—Dutee J-
Pearce; Connecticut—R. I. Ingersoll, David Plant; New York—C. C. Cambreleng, John Hallock, jr.,
Jeromus Johnson, Thomas J. Oakley, G. G. Verplanck, Aaron Ward; Maryland—Clement Dorsny,
Levin Gale, John Leeds Kerr, George C. Washington, John C. Weems; Virginia—Mark Alexander,
Robert Allen, William S. Archer, P. P. Barbour, N. H. Claiborne, Thomas Davenport, William McCoy,
Charles F. Mercer, Thomas Newton, John Randolph, William C. Rives, John Roane, Alexander Smythe,
John Taliaferro, James Trezvant; North Carolina—Willis Alston, Daniel L. Barringer, John H. Bryan,
Samuel P. Carson, Henry W. Conner, John Culpeper, Thomas H. Hall, Gabriel Holmes, John Long,
Lemuel Sawyer, Augustine H. Shepperd, Daniel Turner, Lewis Williams; South Carolina—John Car¬
ter, Warren R. Davis, William Drayton, James Hamilton, jr., William D. Martin, George McDuffie,
William T. Nuckolls, Starling Tucker; Georgia—John Floyd, Tomlinson Fort, Charles E. Haynes,
Wilson Lumpkin, Wiley Thompson, Richard H. Wilde, George K. Gilmer; Tennessee—John Bell,
John Blair, David Crockett, Robert Deshs, Jacob C. Isacks, Pryor Lea, John H. Marable, James C. Mit¬
chell, James K. Polk; Louisiana—William L. Brent, Henry H. Gurley, Edward Livingston; Alabai:a—
John McKee, Gabriel Moore, George W. Owen; Missouri—Edward Bates; Mississippi—William
Haile—94.
May 13, 1828, passed the Senate by the following vote; yeas 26, nays 21. (See Journal of the
Senate, 1st session 20th Congress, page 410.)
Yeas: Massachusetts—Daniel Webster; Rhode Island—Nehemiah R. Knight; Connecticut—Samuel
A. Foot, Calvin Willey; Vermont—Dudley Chase, Horatio Seymour; New York—Nathan Sandford,
Martin Van Buren.- New Jersey—Mahlon Dickerson, Ephraim Bateman ; Pennsylvania—Isaac D.
Barnard, William Marks ; Delaware—Louis McLane, Henry M. Ridgley; Kentucky—Richard M.
Johnson, John Rowan ; Tennessee—John H. Eaton; Ohio—William H. Harrison, Benjamin Ruggles;
Louisiana—Dominique Bouligny ; Indiana—William Hendricks, James Noble ; Illinois—Elias K. Kane,
Jesse B.Thomas; Missouri—David Barton, Thomas H. Benton—26.
Nats: Maine—John Chandler, Albion K. Parris; New Hampshire—Levi Woodbury; Massachusetts
—Nathaniel Silsbee ; Rhode Island—Asher Robbins ; Maryland—Ezekiel F. Chambers, Samuel Smith ;
Virginia—Littleton W. Tazewell, John Tyler; North Carolina—John Branch, Nathaniel Macon;.
South Carolina—Robert Y. Hayne, William Smith; Georgia—John M. Berrien, Thomas W. Cobb;
Tennessee—Hugh L. White ; Louisiana—Josiah S. Johnston ; Alabama—William R. King, John,
McKinley; Mississippi—Powhatan Ellis; Thomas H, Williams—21.
SPEECn OF THE HON. JOHN WHITE, OF KENTUCKY,
IN DEFENCE OF MR. CLAY,
UPON THE CHARGE OF BARGAIN AND SALE."
DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, U. S., APRIL 23, 1844.
The House being in Committee of (he Whole on the Tariff bill, Mr. Hopkins, of Virginia, in
the Chair,
Mr. White said, if, on the present occasion, he should deviate from
his uniform practice of confining himself strictly to the subject matter
under debate, and occupy the attention of the Committee upon other
topics, instead of the merits of the bill under consideration, he hoped
he would be excused—referring, as an apology therefor, to the course
of debate upon several previous bills, on which political speeches had
been made by gentlemen on the other side of the House—and he hav¬
ing once or twice obtained the floor in reply to them, but having as
often yielded to accommodate others, and deferred his privilege from
time to time, he now felt called upon, by an imperative sense of pub¬
lic duly, to engage in this debate. The extraordinary course of
gentlemen on the other side, and the repeated assaults and slanders ut¬
tered in debate on this floor, and libels published over the signature of
members of (his body against a distinguished citizen of his own State,
left him no alternative.
Mr. W. said, he was not one of those who denied the privilege or
propriety of fair and just criticism upon the political principles and
services of public men. In his judgment, no higher duly devolved on
a member of Congress than, upon fit occasions, to discuss the public
conduct and'character of aspirants to the Presidency of the nation—of
men looking to the highest stations in this great Republic. At the
same time he was one of those, who, neither here or elsewhere, would
at any time assail the private reputation of any public man, to secure
any party or political advantage. He cherished and honored the sen¬
timent of the nolle Spaniard, who said, "write the private faults of
men in sand—their public virtues on brass." He was not one of those
who, after the example of the boasting Pharisee, " thanked his God
he was better than other men." He contented himself to prefer the
character of the humble Publican, whose constant and fervent prayer
was, " Lord be merciful to me a sinner!" He said lie had been nau¬
seated willi the exhibitions of mock morality and religion on this floor.
Day after day, he had been compelled to listen to tirades of defama¬
tion upon the greatest and best men of the age—uttered by canting
hypocrites—whited sepulchres—interlarding self-praise and glorifica¬
tion—sickening to the heart of every generous and patriotic man. It
has been truly said by an able divine, " were the faults of the best
man that lives written upon his forehead, he would not dare show him¬
self in society." Were the sins of the purest man in this body, among
those who have dealt most lavishly in their slanders upon good men's
names, written upon his forehead, Mr.W. said, he doubted not it would
be as black as Lucifer. He abhorred and despised the hypocrite
who "stole the livety of the court of Heaven to serve the Devil in.
Of all the reprobates, none seemed maturer for the flames of Hell."
He regretted the necessity of these remarks. The conduct of others
compelled theiri. It was no part of his nature to assail any one. His
Rented at Gideon's Office, Ninth street, Washington.
o
purpose in addressing the committee was not to attack, but to defend.
It was not his ambition to fill the character of a Thersites at any time.
It was not his purpose on the present occasion to assail the public con¬
duct, even, of any man in this House, or out of it, except so far as it
may be indispensably necessary in the defence of the great Whig lea¬
der. If ever there should be a time when he might feel himself cal¬
led upon to " carry the war into Africa," now was not the time, al¬
though provocation had been heaped upon provocation. Without any
spirit of idle boasting, he told his political opponents that he consider¬
ed them a doomed party. Feeling so, feeling that yon, sir, (said Mr.
W., addressing the Chairman,) that the party advocating the princi¬
ples you advocate, are doomed, it is in no vindictive spirit that I make
the remarks I am about to address to the committee. The adage,
" He whom the Lord intends to destroy, he fir3t makes mad,"
was never more forcibly illustrated than by you and your party. Go
back, said Mr. W., (o the opening of this Congress; look upon your
Journal; see what you have done. Go trace the desecration of thatmstru-
ment, which the Constitution of your country (that you have solemn¬
ly sworn you would support) requires to be kept sacred ; go and con¬
template the destructive spirit of nullification in that act; go and lead
the record of a law of the land, enacted in conformity with all the
requirements of the Constitution, trodden under foot by an arbitrary
and ruthless act of a majority of this body. Go read your doom in your
conduct on the repeal, and in the manner of the repeal, of that most just
and beneficent act passed for the distribution of the proceeds of the public
lands. Go read it in your bill, repoited by your Committee of Ways and
Means, for the restoration of that odious, monarchical, condemned, four
times condemned, sub-Treasury measure. Then come, said he, and read
your fate in this monger now under consideration before this committee,
which you offer as a substitute for the Tariff act of 1842, whose beneficial
influences the whole people see and feel in the restored credit, public and
private, the revived trade, and confirmed piosperity of the country.
All these acts are your political whiding-sheets. You have prepared
them for yourselves, and the American people are ready, by an over¬
whelming voice, to pronounce your doom.
Mr. W. said, without detaining the committee any longer with pre¬
liminary remarks, he would proceed to notice the charges of bargain
and sale revived against the distinguished leader of the Whig party.
In the execution of this task, it became his painful duty to notice a let¬
ter of his colleague, (Mr. Boyd.) It was the first time in his service
on this floor that it had fallen to his lot to be engaged in political argu¬
ment or collision with any of his colleagues. Nothing could be more
unpleasant to him. He now asked the attention of his colleague, the
Chairman of the Committee, (Mr. Hopkins,) and of his colleague,
(Mr. Coles,) whilst he read a document to which their names were at¬
tached.
[Mr. W. then read a letter (written by his colleague, Mr. Bovm, to
Messrs. Hopkins and Coles, of Virginia,) published in the Richmond
Enquirer, reviving the " charge of bargain and sale," between Mr.
Clay and Mr. Adams, growing out of the Presidential election of 1824.]
He wished the calm attention of these gentlemen and the commit¬
tee, whilst he examined into and exposed the infamy of this foul libel.
He would say a word as to the time and circumstances of writing that
letter. It was written and published, and that too, be it remembered,
3
by a Kerttuckian, when it was known that the distinguished man on
whom it bore, was on the borders of an ad joining State, travelling as a
private citizen, and was to pass into the "Old Dominion," within a
few days—at a time when it would naturally be supposed that all ma¬
lignity and ascerbity of party feeling would be laid aside, and that all
the hospitalities of his native State would be extended to him without
distinction of party—just at that particular moment his colleague and
his partners had chosen to revive, revamp, and republish this old and
exploded charge of " baigain and sale."
Mr. W. said, he would now proceed to the consideration of this charge
of" bargain and sale." He would not stop to demand proof, as he
might do, or take judgment by default, against the accusers, and of
acquittal for the accused; but he would assume to prove a negative—
the most difficult of all things to do ; yet, he flattered himself in this
instance he could do it inost successfully ; and he would do it, not
simply from the declarations of Mr. Clay, and those connected with
him in the imputed guilt, but out of the mouths of his enemies he would
xefute, this base slander. In order to a proper understanding of the case,
and an intelligible application of the proof, it is necessary to begin
with the origin of the charge, and trace its histoiy down to the docu¬
ment, now, the subject of my remarks. The following is the first re¬
sponsible publication of the charge:
"A CARD.—George Krkmer, of the House of Representatives, tenders his respects to the
Hon. " H. Clay," and informs him, that by reference to the Editor of the Columbian Observer,
he may ascertain the name of the writer of a letter of the 2fith ultimo, which it seems has af¬
forded so much concern to "H. Clay." In the mean time, George Kremer holds himself ready
to prove, to the satisfaction of unprejudiced minds, enough to satisfy them of the accuracy of
the statements which are contained in that letter, to the extent that they concern the course and
conduct of " H. Clay." Being a representative of the people, he will not fear to " cry aloud
and spare not," when their rights and privileges are at stake."
Mr. W. then rend an extract from the proceedings of the House of
Representatives, 3d February, 1825, as follows:
" After the usual business of the morning was transacted, the Speaker (Mr. Cr. ay) rose from
his place and requested the indulgence of the House for a few moments, whilst he asked its
attention to a subject in which he felt himself deeply concerned. A note had appeared this
morning in the National Intelligencer, under the name and with the authority, as he presumed,
of a member of this House from Pennsylvania, (Mr. Kremkr,) which adopted as his own a
previous letter, published in another print, containing serious and injurious imputations against
him, and which the author avowed his readiness to prove. These charges implicated his con¬
duct in regard to the pending Presidential election ; and the respectability of the station which
the member holds, who thus openly prefers them, and that of the people whom he represents,
entitles them to your consideration. It might, indeed, be worthy of consideration, whether the
character and dignity of the House itself did not require a full investigation of them, and an
impartial decision on their truth. For if they were true—if he were capable and base enough
to betray the solemn trust which the Constitution has confided to nim—if, yielding to personal
views and considerations, he could compromit the highest interests of his country, the House
would'be scandalized by his continuing to occupy the chair with which he had been so long
honored in presiding at its deliberations, and he merited instantaneous expulsion. Without,
however, presuming to indicate what the House might conceive it ought to do, on account ot
its own purity and honor, he hoped he should be allowed respectfully to solicit, in behalf of
himself, an inquiry into the truth of the charges to which he referred. Standing in the relation
to the House which, both the member from Pennsylvania and himself did, it appeared to him
here was the proper place to institute the inquiry, in order that, if guilty, here the proper pun¬
ishment might be applied ; and if innocent, here his character and conduct might be vindicated.
He anxiously hoped, therefore, that the House would be pleased to direct an investigation to
be made into the truth of the charges. Emanating from the source they did, this was the only
notice which he could take of them. If the House should think proper to raise a committee,
he trusted some other than the ordinary mode pursued by the rules and the practice of the
House, would be adopted to appoint the committee."
" On the conclusion of his address, the Speaker left the Chair, which was taken by Mr.
T ayi.or.
"Mr. Forsyth, (of Georgia,) then moved that the communication, which had been just
made to the House by the Speaker, be entered on the Journals; that a select committee be ap¬
pointed to investigate the business, and that that committee be chosen by ballot.
4
" Mr. Kremer, (of Pennsylvania,) rose to express his entire acquiescence in, the course
taken by the Speaker. He was not disposed to shrink from the consequences of his communi¬
cations. He wished the inquiry to be made; and he was prepared to meet it, let the stroke fall
where it may."
Mr. W. the 11 rend from the proceedings of the House Representa-
tatives, February 7, 1825.
"A committee of seven was chosen, by ballot, on the appeal of the Speaker, (Mr. Clay,)
to the House. It consists of—
"P. P. Barbour, of Virginia, Mr. Webster, of Massachusetts, Mr. McClarv, of Delaware,
Mr. Taylor, of New York, Mr. F'orsyth, of Georgia, Mr Saundeis, of North Carolina, Mr.
Rankin of Misssissippi.
" On the 9th of February, 1825, Mr. P. P. Barbour, from the select committee, made the
following report, which was laid on the .table and ordered to be printed :
" The select committee, to whom was referred the communication of the Speaker of the 3d
instant, report: That, upon the first meeting, with a view to execute the duty imposed upon
them by the House, they directed their chairman to address a letter to the Hon. George
Kremer, informing him that they would be ready, at a particular time therein stated, to re¬
ceive any evidence or explanation he might have to offer, touching the charges referred to in
the communication of the Speaker of the 3d instant. Their chairman, in conformity with this
instruction, did address such a letter to Mr. Kremer, who replied that he would make a com¬
munication to the committee. Accordingly he did send to them a communication, which ac¬
companies this report, marked A, in which he declines to appear before them, for either of the
purposes mentioned in their letter, alleging that he could not do so, without appearing either as
an accuser, or as a witness, both of which he protests against. In this posture of the case, the
committee can take no further steps They are aware it is competent for the House to invest
them with powers to send for persons and papers, and by that means to enable them to make an
investigation, which might be thought necessary ; and if they knew any reason for such investi¬
gation, they would have asked to be clothed with the proper power; but not having, themselves,
any such knowledge, they have felt it to be their only duty to lay before the House the com¬
munication which they have received."
Mr. W. said tb'ts it appears that, at the moment the charge was
made, Mr. Clay demanded and challenged an investigation. Conscious
of his innocence, he sought to show to the world he was guiltless. The
record I have read speaks for itself, it needs no comment from me.
Now, Mr. W. said, he would proceed with other testimony bearing
upon the subject. And the first witness he would introduce should be
the veteran Editor of the Richmond Encpiirer, (Thomas Ritchie, Esq.)
From the Richmond Enquirer of February 10, 1826.
" As to the other questions upon which we publish this day such copious debates, we do not
hesitate to say that Mr. Clay has met the charge as a man ought to meet it. His fearless
promptitude and open defiance are the surest indications of his innocence. This, combined
with avowals from almost all quarters of the House, and the uniform information in the last let¬
ters Horn that city, can leave no doubt of the result of the investigation, nor docs Mr. Kremer
shrink, but we suspect he will seek' to escape by a sort of special pleading, such as Mr. McDur-
fie has thrown into his amendment. Be it as it may, the inquiry is begun and it ought to be
prosecuted with energy ; the whole matter should be probed to the bottom ; no loop hole ought
to be left to hang a single doubt on, for in times like these the people will expect their Repre¬
sentatives not only to be chaste, but free from all suspicion. Mr. Clay is innocent of this
charge. We are fully prepared to see the committee acquit him of this imputation of bartering
his vote for an office."
Mr. Ritchie, continued Air. W., with all these facts before him, pro¬
nounces " fir. Clay innocent of this chargeAnd yet, at this late day,
with accumulated evidence of his innocence, with a full knowledge of
all the facts of the case, Mr. Ritchie repeats and reiterates this btanded
libel. How condemned must he stand before the civilized world. Na¬
ture's Poet has well said —
" Who steals mv purse, steals trash ; and 'tis something, nothing ;
'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands ;
But, he that filches from me my good name,
Robs me of that which not enriches him,
And makes me poor, indeed."
Yes, Mr. Chairman, said Mr. W., the robber of character is the vilest
thief that lives. He has not the apology of the burglar, he may have a«
starving wife and children appealing to him for bread.
5
Well and truly, Mr. Chairman, has the eloquent poet expressed it,
when he says—
" Slander, the foulest whelp of sin. The man in
Whom the spirit enters, is undone.
His tongue is set on tire of Hell, his heart is black as Death."
Mr. W. said he would forbear any comment of his own upon the
conduct of this veteran witness. He delivered him over to the gnaw-
ings of a guilty conscience,-and the punishment of a just God.; who
has said "vengeance is mine, and I will surely repay."
He would now call the attention of the committee to a letter written
by the Hon. Thomas H. Benton.
" Washington, December 7, 1827.
" Sir : Your letter of the 19th ultimo, covering the Lexington Virginia Intelligencer of that
date, has been duly received, and in answer to the inquiries you put to me, I have to state that
the article to which you invite my attention is substantially, not verbally, correct, so far as it
represents me as saying that I was informed by Mr. Clay, in the fore part of December, 1824,
that he intended to vote for Mr. Adams. There is no mistake in the date, as a visit which I
made to your part of Virginia about that time enables me to fix it with certainty. I left Wash¬
ington, on that visit, about the 15th of December, and had received the information of Mr.
Clay before 1 sat out, and told it, while absent, in the family of my father-in-law, Colonel
McDowel, of your county. But the inference so much insisted upon, that I must have told the
same thing to Mr. Eaton and other of his political friends, is wholly erroneous ; for, having no
authority from Mr. Clay to promulgate his intentions, I only spoke of them in the bosom of a
private family at two hundred miles distance from Washington. Since that period, and especi¬
ally during the present summer, I have, on several occasions, and sometimes in the presence
of political opponents, when the course of conversation led me to it, mentioned what I knew of
Mr. Clay's early intention to vote for Mr. Adams; and in this way I came to speak of it again,
some two or three weeks since, in the house of my father-in-law, where I had first spoke of it
near three years ago, and whence, with some additions and variations, without the privity of
any one present at the conversation, it has crept into the paper which you have 9ent me. No
one ever asked my leave to publish what I said; if any one had, the authors of the publication
in the Lexington paper might have been spared, an office which must have been inexpressibly
painful to their honorable feelings, as I should not have refused to the administration any testi¬
mony in my favor to give, notwithstanding the character of the war which the great body of their
forces are carrying on against me.
" Yours, respectfully,
THOMAS H. BENTON."
This letter, said Mr. W., not only proved that, two years after this
charge had been made, one of Mr. Clay's bitterest enemies, (who was
an eye witness to the whole transaction,) considered him innocent of
the charge. But it established another important fact. That, some¬
time before the Presidential election came off in the House, Mr. Clay
disclosed his purpose to vote for Mr. Adams. Mr. Clay had disclosed
this determination to Mr. Crittenden, and many others in Kentucky,,
in the fall before he left home, and long before Congress convened.
He had no secrets, no disguise, in all his conversations upon this subject.
Mr. W., now, would offer the testimony of another political oppo¬
nent. He read an extract from a letter written by the Hon. James
Buchanan, dated August 8, 1827.
" I called upon General Jackson on the occasion which I have mentioned, solely as his
friend, upon my own individual responsibility, and not as the agent of Mr. Clay or any other
person. I never haoe been the political friend of Mr. Clay, since he became a candidate for
the office of President, as you very well know. Until /saw General Jackson's letter to Mr.
Beverley of the 5th ultimo, and at the same time was informed by a letter from the Editor of
the United States Telegraph, that I was the person to whom he alluded, the conception never
once entered my mind that he believed me to have been the agent of Mr. Clay and his friends,
or that I intended to propose terms of any kind lor them, or that he could have supposed me
•capable of expressing an 'opinion that it was right to fight such intriguers with their own
weapons.'
" I had no authority from Mr. Clay or his friends to propose any terms to General Jackson
in relation to their votes. NOR DID I EVER MAKE ANY SUCH PROPOSITION ; and I
trust I would be as incapable of becoming a messenger upon such an occasion, as it was known
General Jackson would be to receive such message."
6
It will be recollected (said Mr. W.) that this was the witness with
whom this foul charge of slander and defamation had its origin. Gen.
Jackson had repeated the slander on the testimony of Mr. Buchanan,
and from him this individual, Carter Beverly, had received the charge,
which he had made public. Carter Beverly at that time had been an
enemy of Mr. Clay ; he had lived long enough to come to his senses.
Before his death, although he had slept over this charge for years, per¬
haps in view of the grave, he had been prompted to .award justice to
an injured and innocent man ; he had come out with his unqualified
denial and refutation of the charge. And (said Mr. W., addressing the
chairman,) I predict that, before you and some other gentlemen shall
have descended to the tomb—when the violence of party feelings shall
have had time to subside, and party blinds shall have fallen from your
eyes and the eyes of others, and all those prejudices which are calcu¬
lated to delude and bewilder the human mind and lead to false conclu¬
sions shall have been dissipated—that you and others will write, de¬
claring the innocence of this man. Now hear what this dying man
said. Mr. W. read from a letter of Carter Beverly to Mr. Clay as fol¬
lows :
" It will be no doubt matter of some astonishment to you in receiving from me the present
address. I will not preface it with any kind of apology, because, in doing it, I justify my mind
in the discharge of an act of conscience, and aduty that I feel the utmost pleasure in performing.
" Although the time is quite far gone since I became, very innocently, instrumental in cir¬
culating throughout the country a very great attack on your character and virtue as a gentleman,
and certainly a very heavy one as a public man, I feel exceedingly desirous to relieve you, as
far as I can, from the slander, and my own feelings from the severe compunction that is within
me, on having been, though neither directly nor indirectly, your personal accuser, yet that I
was drawn directly into the representation of an attack upon you. *
" I again say, that I am most thoroughly convinced that you were most untruthfully, and,
therefore, unjustly treated; for I have never seen any evidence to substantiate at all the charge.
" CARTER BEVERLY."
Now, (Mr. W. continued,) while this old charge of slander bad been
so fully refuted by the testimony of the very enemies of Mr. Clay, they
found it revived, not only in the Richmond papers, but in every
paper in this District claiming to be Democratic or official. Mr.
Ritchie had repeated this charge, and the Presidential organ here,
" The Madisonian," had copied it w ithout any comment, save at the
close the words, " True, oh King !" taking from Holy M rit this expres¬
sion to pervert it to the sanctioning of this most infamous and unfounded
libel. Now, what had this man, the present Executive, under whose
eye and under whose hand this charge was now being repeated, said,
in other days, when he had some little regard to truth and justice?
Mr. W. read from a letter of Mr. Tyler of the 14th February, 1827,
as follows:
" In adverting to that letter, I shall content myself with stating its substance ; but if Mr.
■Clay shall see cause to gratify the appetites of newspaper editors, he is at liberty to publish it.
I shall have no cause to complain of it. It is, then, perfectly true that I wrote to Mr- Clay in
the spring of 1825. It is also true that I approved of his course growing out of the Presidential
election, and concurred with him most emphatically in the result of his vote. It is equally so,
that I esteemed Mr. Adams as decidedly better qualified for the Presidency than Gen. Jackson,
and that I would have voted for him after Mr. Crawford's chance of success was over. To this
effect I wrote to Mr. Clay in terms of perfect frankness. * * * * * Or is it
because I do not believe Henry Clay, along with the western delegation who sided with him,
to have been bought and sold, for which, if guilty, he and they deserve to be gibbeted, that I
am therefore bound to support an administration which may oppose all my convictions of proper
policy?"
Now, he asked his colleague, as a candid and fair man, whilst he was
permitting garbled statements of the testimony taken in the Kentucky
Legislature in the investigation of this foul charge of bargain and sale,
why it was that he had suppressed the testimony of Jepthah Dudley,
one of his own political friends? And why he had suppressed various
7
depositions that had been elicited in vindication of the character of
this man? Here was testimony, and testimony of his colleague's own
particular friends, which it would make him blush to read, and then to
read his own remarks on the subject.
Now Mr. W. had done with the testimony of Mr. Clay's political
enemies, and he thought that any set of men, that any tribunal, would
be compelled, fiom this evidence, to pronounce him innocent of this
foul charge.
He would now read the testimony of some distinguished gentlemen,
who alone could speak, because they had been part and parcel—one
or two of them—of the transaction itself; and he would submit their
testimony, making all due allowance for. men speaking of affairs in
which they themselves had been participators. Before he presented
this proof, he would read a short extract from a distinguished foreigner,
whose testimony could not be questioned, by any man on this floor; who
had no interest under heaven, either in vindicating or in condemning-
this man. He would read from the statement of General Lafayette:
" My remembrance concurs with your own on this point: that in the latter end of Decem¬
ber, either before or after my visit to Annapolis, you being out of the presidential candidature*
and after having expressed my above mentioned motives of forbearance, I, by way of confiden¬
tial exception, allowed myself to put a simple, unqualified question respecting your election¬
eering guess and your intended vote. Your answer was, that in your opinion, the actual state
of health of Mr. Crawford had limited the contest to a choice between Mr. Adams and Gen¬
eral Jackson; that a claim founded on military achievements did nut meet your preference>
AND THAT YOU HAD CONCLUDED TO VOTE FOR MR. ADA.MS."
He would now offer the testimony of the distinguished gentleman
from Massachusetts, (Mr. Adams,) who had been a part and parcel in
the transaction, and to whose testimony the present generation and
posterity would give that weight it was entitled to. He would first
read from his letter to the New Jersey committee, after he had retired
from the presidential chair:
"Upon him (Mr. Clay) the foulest slanders have been showered. Long known and appre¬
ciated, as successively a member of both Houses of your National Legislature, as the unrivalled
speaker, and at the same time most efficient leader of debates in one of them ; as an able and
successful negotiator for your interests, in war and in peace, with foreign Powers, and as a pow¬
erful candidate for the highest of your trusts—the Department of State itself was a station which*
by its bestowal, could confer neither profit nor honor upon him, but upon which he has shed
unfading honor by the manner in which he discharged its duties. Prejudice and passion have
charged him with obtaining that office by bargain and corruption. Before you, fellow citizens*
in the presence of our country andof Heaven, I pronounce that charge totally un¬
founded. This tribute of justice is due from me to him, and I seize with pleasure the oppor¬
tunity afforded me by your letter of discharging the obligation."
This distinguished patriot and statesman, (continued Mr. W.,) on a
more recent occasion, not having sought the opportunity himself, but
having been called on during his Western tour this fall by a commit¬
tee, responded in this language to this same charge:
" I thank you, sir, for the opportunity you have given me of speaking of the great statesman
who was associated with me in the administration of the General Government, at my earnest
solicitation—who belongs not to Kentucky alone, but to the whole Union; and is not only an
honor to this State and this Nation, but to mankind. The charges to which you refer, I have*
after my term of service had expired, and it was proper for me to speak, denied before the
whole country ; and I here reiterate and re-affirm that denial; and as I expect shortly to ap¬
pear before my God, to answer for the conduct of my whole life, should those charges have
found their way to the throne of Eternal Justice, I will, in the presence of Omnipo¬
TENCE, PRONOUNCE THEM FALSE.."
Was that the language (asked Mr. W.) of a man declaring falsehood
and untruth ? Did it appear that a declaration of this character, if
false, would be made by a man solemnly appealing to that God in
whose presence he was conscious he was soon to appear, either for ap¬
probation or for condemnation ? What man is there in this country
so base as now to repeat this foul, this malicious, this branded libel ?
8
NOTES.
Extract from Cot. Drayton's speech..
" I will here, sir, said (Col. Dravtos,) avail myself of the occasion to disclaim, on my part,
in what I have said, or in what I may hereafter say, all allusion to individuals. Allusions of
this nature may sometimes he unavoidable; it may sometimes be excusable, and sometimes
even a duty to make them ; hit, unless under peculiar circumstances, they should be avoided.
Personality is not argument; nor is it manly to attack the character of those who are not pre¬
sent to defend them. I will not say that I have not heard reports injurious to some who are,
and to some who are not, now members of Congress, as connected with the late presidential
election; but I know, sir, and I often painfully witnessed the effects of party feelings,
even upon the virtuous and enlightened. The representations of those who are under such an
influence, must be cautiously received. They cannot retrain from mingling their passions
with their judgments; their disappointments with their statements: and it has always been
my habit to believe slowly and reluctantly, that any one who has been long distinguished for
high-mindedness and talent, and who has long enjoyed the confidence of his country, would
descend so low as to bartei• away the jewel, reputation, for the paltry emoluments, or the tran¬
sient honors of office." See 2 Vol. Congressional Register, pp. 15, 61.
Osiuchee Bend, Russell County, Ala., May 26, 1844.
Dear Sir,—I have had the honor to receive your favor of the 17th inst. There is nothing
in the nature of your communication which requires an apology for your addressing me.
If I had in my possession such a letter from General Jackson, as has been most erroneously
supposed, I should, under his very emphatic card of the 3d inst, in the Nashville Union, have
felt myself released from all reserve as to its publication. You will have perceived, ere this
reaches you, from my reply to that gentleman, that he never, in the confidence which once
subsisted between us, transmitted me such a paper.
Indeed, I have very frequently heard him express opinions altogether at variance with the
alleged retraction. His belief, and that generally of the party to which I was then attached, I
did not share, in reference to the charge of " bargain and corruption," which, in 1825, was so
freely preferred against Mr. Clay and Mr. Adams, and which constituted the electioneering
staple of our party, during the four years' war which ended in our triumph, in 1829.
It would, in my humble opinion, have been an act of supererogation on the part of Mr. Clay,
to have made a bargain for what, by the force and gravity of political causes and geographical
considerations, was inevitable, without either his crime or his participation—an offer of a seat
in Mr. Adams's cabinet. In accepting it, I have always understood he acted in conformity with
the advice of some of the most influential supporters of Mr. Crawford, whose friends then occu¬
pied a position of neutrality between the two great parties of Gen. Jackson and Mr. Adams,
although they soon after, it is true, became belligerents on our side. I sincerely believe that Mr.
Clay's acceptance of the office, that subjected him to such obloquy, was the result of a sense of the
duty which he owed to the country, to aid by his counsels, him whom he had assisted to place
in power. He certainly relinquished, for the department of State, a position in the House of
Representatives, far more desirable, and of more influence and authority, which was much bet¬
ter adapted to the peculiar and transcendant vein of his signal ability for distinction in a popu¬
lar assembly.
I know that this view of the case runs counter to the opinions of my old chief (who, if he
puts himself at the head of the annexation movement, will be my chief again) and to those of
many esteemed friends, with whom I was proudly and victoriously associated in the struggle of
1828 and '29. But they must pardon me for adhering to opinions (however valueless) long
since entertained and frequently expressed. And now, when I have no sort of connexion with
any party in the country, (except on one isolated question, associated, as I believe, with the
best interests of the whole Union, and thevital security of the South,) I hope I may be allowed,
without an impeachment of my own motives, and certainly with no adhesion, either expressed
or implied, to the politics of Mr. Clay, to do justice, as far as my humble opinions can afford it,
to his public reputation and his unsullied personal honor.
I remain, dear sir, with esteem, very respectfully, vour obedient servant,
J. HAMILTON.
Hon John White, House of Representatives.
A RESOLUTION relating to certain resolutions adopted by the General Assembly of the
State ot Tennessee at the session of 1827, condemnatory of John Q,. Adams and Henry Clay,
referred to in said resolutions :
Resolved by the General Assembly of the State of Tennessee, That so much of the proceed¬
ings adopted by the Legislature of Tennessee in 1827 as sustains the allegations, either expres¬
sed or impiled, of an improper and corrupt combination, or, as it has been more generally de¬
nominated, " Corruption, Bargain, and Intrigue," between John Q. Adams and Henry
Clay, is, in the opinion of this General Assembly, unsupported by proof, and not believed.
Adopted, January 27, 1844.
D. L. BARRINGER,
Speaker of the House of Representatives.
J M. ANDERSON,
Speaker of the Senate.
A true copy: Jno. S. Young, Secretary of State.
//.
EXTRACT FROM THE
SPEECH OF MR. GARRET DAVIS, OF KENTUCKY,
Exhibiting the Expenditures of Mr. Van Buren's Administration, the Public
Debt, and the condition of the Treasury at its close, etc.
DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES, APRIL 5, 1844.
There has been so much said recently of the expenditures of the Govern¬
ment under Mr. Van Buren's Administration, of the conditions and resources
of the Treasury, and of the amount of public debt when his term closed, and also of
the necessity of the present amount of debt, both in this House and the newspapers,
that I propose to present a statement of these matters. It is due as well to the coun¬
try as to the party to which I am attached. I will endeavor to compress the state¬
ment within reasonable limits, and I will compile it from, and attach to it, the official
Treasury documents, and refer to so much of the laws as form the sources from which
it is drawn.
On the 4th day of March, 1837, President Jackson said in his valedictory on re--
tiring from office, " I leave this great nation prosperous and happy." On that day
Mr. Van Buren assumed the reins as his successor, and what was the then condition
of the Treasury ? Excluding the three instalments of the surplus revenue which
w ere deposited among the States, there was the fourth instalment, the payment of
which was suspended, upon his recommendation, by his friends in Congress, and a
further surplus amounting, with it, to ... - $17,109,472 26
There was also Government stock in U. S. Bank, which produced 9,124,749 00
Making - - - $26,234,221 26
That large sum, Mr. Van Buren and his friends, who constituted a majority in both
Houses of Congress, had at the beginning of their career; and, in addition, they re¬
ceived regularly and without interruption, all the avails of the customs, the sales of
the public lands, and of every other source of revenue. I will now proceed to state
the general account of receipts and disbursements during Mr. Van Buren's Adminis¬
tration, and the amount of public debt and liabilities at its close. I will not charge
him with the small balance of the old public debt, as it was not incurred by him ; nor
for Treasury notes beyond the amount he left outstanding, as the redemption of all
others settled the account for their issue. He, and his friends will be held responsible
for the interest upon Treasury notes paid during his Administration, and also the
amount which had accrued when Gen. Harrison went into office. In the amount of
revenue, I will exclude all under the head "miscellaneous," because the whole of
this class resulted from the sale of the Government stock in the late U. S. Bank, and
was means in the Treasury at the beginning of Mr. Van Buren's term.
Expenditures for 1837 $31,793,287 00
Receipts " - - - - - 17,952,708 00
Excess of expenditures
Expenditures for 1838
Receipts " "
Receipts for 1839
Expenditures "
Excess of expenditures
$13,640,578 00
$31,593,791 71
19,243,207 10
$12,350,584 61
$30,217,680 70
25,886,259 33
Excess of receipts
$4,331,521 37
2
Expenditures for 1840 ...... $23,502,370 37
Receipts " " - - - - 16,793,867 71
Excess of expenditures - - $6,708,562 66
Expenditures for Mr. Van Buren's 4 years - - - $112,775,707 41
Excess of expenditures for 1837, '38, and '40 ... $32,908,966 85
Excess of revenue for 1839 ..... 4,331,421 37
Excess of expenditures during Mr. Van Buren's term - - $28,577,545 48
(See Appendix, Nos.\&l2.)
But this expose does not yet fully exhibit the prodigality of Mr. Van Buren's Ad¬
ministration. When the people deposed him from office, he left to his successor a
large amount of debt and liabilities. There were—
Outstanding Treasury notes ..... $5,680,831 40
Interest then due ...... 150,000 00
Debt due by Post Office Department -
Arrearages for Florida and Georgia militia, and on account of the
Navy pension fund, appropriated at Extra Session, 1841
Appropriations at 2d Session of 21tli Congress :
Arrearages to Florida militia .....
Do to Georgia militia .....
Do appropriated and paid for militia of Alabama,Tennessee,
Missouri, and Louisiana -
For printing returns of 6th census ....
For arrearages for printing ordered by both Houses of Congress,
for works on rivers and harbors, for expenses of legislative coun¬
cil of Iowa, contingent expenses of U. S. courts, Post Office
building, Greenough's statue -----
Due the State of Maine for the services of her militia and civil
posse, on the Northeastern boundary ....
$5,830,831
40
497,657
00
534,764
52
166,242
00
175,000
00
117,694
35
137,316
14
251,000
00
505,000
00
3,215,504 41
Here is an actual amount of existing debt of ... $8,215,504 41
To which add the expenditures of .... 112,775,708 41
$120,991,212 82
Credit him with balance in Treasury, 4th March, 1841, of - 572,718 46
Aggregate expenditures of Mr. Van Buren's Administration - 120,418,494 36
Being an annual average of - - - . $30,104,623 59
If he had found no surplus in the Treasury, the expenditures of Mr. Van Buren's
Administration would have left a debt against the Government, equal to $26,234,221
26 cents, the amount of that surplus, (all of which he exhausted,) and $8,215,504
41 cents, the amount of actual debt at the close of his term, making together
$34,449,725 68 cents, excluding all outstanding appropriations.
But it was the duty of Mr. Van Buren and his friends, who were the majority in
both houses of Congress, to make provision for the public service in all its branches
for the year ensuing their retirement. This was done by leaving specific appropri-
3
ations of all kinds undrawn, 4th March, 1841 ... $27,134,721 30
Indefinite appro'ns drawn between 4th March and 1st Dec., 1841 1,771,269 46
To which add for outstanding Treasury notes and other debts - 8,215,504 41
Making the whole liabilities upon the Treasury, when he retired $37,121,495 17
These appropriations comprehended the sums which Congress had by law voted
for the maintenances of the army and navy, and every other branch of the public
service ; and as it is the duty of the President to see that the laws be executed, they
were to be expended under his discretionary control. It is true, he was not bound to
disburse every dollar within the year, unless the public exigencies required it; but
the extent of the just demands of the service, increased by the insufficient provision
which had been made for it during the two last years of Mr. Van Buren's Adminis¬
tration, rendered necessary at least as large a disbursement as was made for 1841.
The expenditures for 1841, were .... $25,874,577 65
Add the debt for which no provision was made ... 8,215,504 41
And it makes .... $34,090,082 06
(See Appendix, No. 2.)
Then, on the 4th of March, 1841, the Van Buren party left claims against the
Treasury which were bound to be, or in justice and good faith ought to be, satisfied
within the ensuing year, amounting to $34,090,082 06. That party having exhaust-
ed the whole of the $26,234,220 26 cents, which was surplus when they went into
power, and having had the aid of upwards of $25,000,000 of Treasury notes,
justice, patriotism, and honor, as well as the pressing claims of the public
service, required them to leave the Treasury with ample resources to meet the heavy
sum with which they had, in addition, charged it. There is a separate and distinct
responsibility resting upon it, and upon the succeeding Administration: to mete out
this responsibility justly to each, it is necessary to know, not only the expenditures
of the Government, but its revenues and means. What were the resources of the
Treasury which the Van Buren Congress left to mest the year 1841 ?
Produce of the customs ..... $14,487,216 74
Do of sales of public lands .... 1,365,627 42
Total - - - $15,852,844 16
Being less than the demands upon that year by ... $18,237,137 90
And less than the debt and outstanding appropriations by - 21,268,657 01
(See Appendix, No. I.)
Without an extra session of Congress, so far as the resources of the Treasury, and
the appropriation of money to public purposes were involved, the administration of
Mr. Van Buren was practically to continue for about twelve months after Gen. Harri¬
son's inauguration. The obligations that he and his friends left upon the Treasury,
which the public service, the faith of the nation, and common honesty required to be
discharged, amounted to $34,090,089 06 ; and the means to meet them in the aggre¬
gate only to $15,852,844 16. It is true, that late in the last session of Congress
of Mr. Van Buren's term, his friends passed a law authorizing President Harrison to
issue five millions of Treasury notes, which was nothing more or less than to confer
upon him the power to give the promissory note of the Government to pay so much
of the debt which they had_ created, with interest, and which they would not them¬
selves do.
But I have said that there was not adequate provision made for the public service
for the latter part of Mr. Van Buren's term. He abandoned during his last two years
wholly the improvement of the western rivers, the lake harbors, the continuation of the
Cumberland road, and the ocean harbors and roads. He caused all the tools and imple¬
ments of conducting these works to be sold, and the proceeds to be applied towards his
unparalleled extravagancies. The General Government has the same power, and it is as
4
much its duty to foster the internal as the foreign trade of the country. In maintaining
navies, buildinglight-houses, improving ocean harbors, and various other works, Govern-
menthas expended more than $200,000,000 for the benefitof our commerce with other
nations. Add to this the costof thelastwar, which was waged solely for the protection
of that commerce, and it will make more than four hundred millions of dollars, with which
the people have been taxed to give to it stimulus and security. This was all right.
But the internal trade of the United States is more than five fold greater than its ex¬
ternal, and in that degree, at least, it is more important. Comparatively little, indeed,
had been expended previously to facilitate and promote commerce among the States,
and Mr. Van Buren became so absorbed in his mousing schemes to secure his re¬
election, as to give up wholly this great end of our Government and social system.
But this was in keeping with his repudiation of the obligation of the General Govern¬
ment to regulate the currency., accompanied by his haughty reproof that "the people
expected too much from the Government," and his sub-treasury scheme, to give to
the office holders gold and silver, and leave to the country a fluctuating and unsound
State bank paper medium. The story of the culpable abandonment by Mr. Van
Buren and his friends of their duty is not half told. When all the ordinary appro¬
priation bills were before Congress, in July, 1840, Mr. Van Buren, knowing there
would be a deficit in the revenue for the year, asked his "faithful Congress" to give
him the power to suspend certain appropriations; and, with indecent haste, sections
were attached to the army, fortification, and naval bills, authorizing him to suspend
about two millions and a half of the appropriations made by them. This arbitrary-
power, which had been usurped in England by the tyrant Tudors and Stewarts,
and which had contributed so much to render them hateful to British subjects, was
conferred upon Mr. Van Buren by an American Congress. The object was to con¬
ceal from the people the true and degraded condition to which they had brought the
finances of the country, from an apprehension that it would operate to defeat his re¬
election. At the ensuing session of Congress, in reply to a resolution of the House,
calling upon him for information on the subject, he stated in his message that he had
suspended appropriations amounting to $1,638,317.
The next session of the Van Buren Congress was held after the people had pro¬
nounced their judgment against him. His friends still continued to play on the figure
of economy, and as a Whig administration was to take the reigns, for which it was
their business to provide for the year, they determined to put it on short allowance.
The appropriations, therefore, at this session were less in the aggregate than they had
been for many years. The total amount for fortifications, armament of fortifications,
and ordinance was about a half million of dollars, when ordinarily there is given to
those three heads about two millions of dollars. Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Maine,
&c., clamored in this hall for the payment of what was due them for the services of
their militia; but that party, under whose rule these debts had been created, sternly
voted down every proposition to pay them. In December, 1840, your Secretary of
War, Mr. Poinsett, sent into his friends, the majority of Congress, an earnest appeal
for $2,385,329 75, to pay arrearages due on account, and to prosecute more vigor¬
ously the war in Florida ; but they were going out of office, and they- heeded him not.
The biennial reduction of duties on imports, by the operation of the compromise,
was rapidly reducing the revenue to about half the wants of the public service. Mr.
Woodbury, in his Treasury report of December 30th, 1839, says: " A further reduc¬
tion of certain duties, amounting to nearly $800,000, will take place after the close of
the present year." In his report of December 10th, 1840, the same secretary in¬
forms us: "Thus the progressive reduction of the present tariff, which has been
going on since 1833, will, after Dec., 1841, take effect to a much larger amount than
heretofore. Nearly two millions and a half of dollars will then be deducted at once."
" On the 1st of July, afterwards, at least two millions and a half more of duties
will be removed; making an aggregate, in six months, of quite five millions. If the
imports then should not differ much from those in 1838, there would be an income
from them not probably exceeding ten or eleven millions yearly-. It will, therefore,
be necessary to make corresponding reductions in the expenditures of 1842, or sea-
5
sonably provide otherwise, in some permanent manner, to supply any wants likely
to happen from this cause."
Some two or three years before, when Mr. Woodbury felt secure that his party
would be continued in the possession of the Government, its offices and its patronage,
he, knowing then that the revenue was insufficient, and would soon become greatly
so, recommended a tax upon tea and coffee to increase it; but now he modestly urges
his successors to retrench, until they should bring down the expenses of the Govern¬
ment to about one-third of what he and his President had required, or seasonably
provide for a permanent and adequate revenue. Would it not have been more befit¬
ting him to have urged upon his own friends to furnish the means necessary both to
discharge the debt which they had created, and to support properly every branch of
the public service? When the party in power were thus making debts and refusing
to pay them ; when they were living from hand to mouth by the issue of Treasury
notes and selling them at a discount; when the public creditors were going from the
Treasury with the broken obligations and violated faith of the Government, and the
revenues were sinking to one-half of the necessary supply, what was the ability of
the country to furnish more ? Above half the imports into the country were duty
free. During Mr. Van Buren's four years $263,708,033 of imports were admitted
free; and the amount paying duties was $260,232,240. In 1841, for which year
his friends also legislated, the free articles amounted to $66,019,732; those dutiable
to $61,926,446. (See appendix No. 4.) Those free articles comprehended nearly
all the luxuries brought from foreign countries; and a duty of twenty per cent, on
luxuries alone would have produced ample means to have paid off the debt of Mr.
Van Buren as it arose, to have preserved untarnished the public credit, and to pay
for the future all the necessary expenses of the Government. These considerations
would have appealed with resistless force to men of honor—to statesmen and patri¬
ots—to come up and do their duty; but they reached not Mr. Van Buren and his
friends in Congress. The Government, of which they had had charge, was as a
ship, which, by the incapacity and misconduct of its captain and crew, had been
stranded, and there left by them to be dashed to pieces upon the breakers.
Such was the state of things when President Harrison was inaugurated, and it was
too urgent to await twelve months for the ordinary session of Congress to give the
remedy. An extra session of Congress was necessary ; it had been rendered so by
the misconduct of Mr. Van Buren and his party ; had they performed their duty, it
never would have taken place; they, and they only, are responsible for it. The
principal objects of this session were to supply the pressing wants of the Treasury,
and to repeal the odious sub-treasury. The nation was in debt, and no subterfuge
was resorted to to disguise it. The supplies of the Treasury were greatly deficient,
and the demands upon it large and pressing. The Whigs tore the treasury note veil
from such transactions, and introduced a bill to authorize the President to borrow
twelve millions of dollars after the old fashion. Every Democrat in the House voted
against this measure. To effect as much as possible, at that short session, towards
the permanent restoration of the revenue, they introduced another bill to impose a
duty of 20 percent, on many free articles, and to bring up to that rate certain duties which
were below it. They estimated this tariff to produce $4,000,000 ; it went into opera¬
tion the 1st day of Oct., 1841, and, for the last quarter of that year, netted $910,224 20.
(See App. No. 3.) Every Democrat of the House, including the present Hon. Speaker,
the chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, Mr. McKay, Mr.cave Johnson,
Mr. Dromgoole, and many other gentlemen of the present House voted against it.
The navy pension fund had been squandered by Mr. Van Buren's friends, and at the
last session of the 26th Congress they neglected to appropriate the money to meet
the pensions of the poor and decrepid charged upon it. At the extra session the
Whigs passed a bill appropriating $139,666 66 for this purpose, which was opposed
by many of the Van Buren party. The Whigs appropriated a fraction under a mil¬
lion and a half for fortifications, for arming them, and for ordinance, to correct the
neglect and misconduct of this party at the two preceding sessions; and this measure
met the same opposition. The Whig Congress resolved to do its whole du-
6
ty and passed bills to pay the Post Offiee debt of $497,657, and arrearages
to the Georgia and Florida militia amounting to $395,097 81; and they were
also resisted by the Van Buren democracy, They would not themselves replenish a
treasury which they had exhausted; they would not pay the debts of their own crea¬
tion ; they would make no ell'ort to repair the public faith and credit which they had
subverted; and with a perverse diabolical spirit they thwarted and did their utmost
to defeat the Whigs in all their attempts to effect this patriotic work. It was true
that the Whigs abhorred the bloodhound tactics, that was resorted to by Mr. Van
Bnren as a sort of last means to close the Florida war. They despised the ineffici¬
ency of that military folly, his sedentary militia, who received strict orders not to
move more than twenty miles from their residence, and diligently to pursue their ag¬
ricultural and other business pursuits. They condemned the extravagance of con¬
ducting this war, as manifested by hiring steamboats at $450 and more per day, until
the debt against the Government for a single one was $72,000; by getting
a wagon made at the cost of $3,000, and shipping wood from New Orleans to Florida
at the price of $20 per cord.
These and a thousand other forms of reckless prodigality, which run the expenses
of this war above $30,000,000, received their deepest reprobation. But, whatever of
incompetence and crime there might have been in these matters, so far as arrearages
existed, they were debts contracted by the agents of Government according to law;
and both national character and common honesty required them to be paid. If the
refusal of the party which contracted them had resulted from shame and contrition
for their own conduct, it would be some palliative. But then, as now, it had a kind
of fever or ague-fit of economy coming over it, superinduced by a strong appetite for
the spoils, and an appalling apprehension of losing them. But the disease is
now more spasmodic and distressing than it then was, and threatens, indeed, to kill
the patient outright.
The measures and course of the Whigs in the last Congress have received the
wholesale condemnation of their opponents ; yet, without those, measures, the con¬
dition of the Government and country would have indeed been deplorable. Mr.
Woodbury has informed us that, if the imports of 1842 should prove to be equal to
those of 1838, the amount of customs for that year would, under the operation of the
compromise law, be reduced to between ten and eleven millions of dollars. In 1838
the dutiable articles amount to $61,385,173 ; in 1842 to $62,002,325. Exclusive of
payments on account of the public debt, &c., the total expenditures of the Govern¬
ment were—
In 1841 ......... $25,874,577 65
In 1842 ......... 24,044,419 73
(See Appendix, No. 2.) =====
The Whigs are not entirely responsible for these expenditures, as they were under the control of
President Tyler, and the amount, to some extent, was regulated by his discretion. Considering the
manner in which the Van Buren party have neglected the public service, and the circumstances of the
country, the expenditures of these two years are probably not much out of the way ; although it is very
certain that, when the Government is put in good trim, the ordinary annual expenses should be below
$20,000,000. How would the account have stood at the close of the last year, under the system of laws
which the Van Buren party would neither reform themselves, nor agree that it be done by the Whigs.
Debt left by Mr. Van Buren ....... $8,215,504 41
Expenditures of 1841 - - - - - - 25,874,577 65
Expenditures of 1842 - - . k . . . . 24,044,419 74
Total
$49,918,997 38
Aggregate
To meet this, there was a balance in the Treasury on the 4th of March, 1841, of
$58,134,501 79
572,718 46
13,576,992 54
1,365,627 42
10,500,000 00
1,335,797 52
Produce of tariff of 1833 for 1841
Produce of public lands for 1841
Produce of same tariff for 1842, estimated by Mr. Woodbury
Produce of public lands for 1842 ...
$27,351,135 94
7
See Appendix No. 1.
It thus appears that the debts left by Mr. Van Buren, and the sums required for the
necessary service of the country during the two first years of the present admin¬
istration, together amounted to ----- - 134,501 79
And the means which he and his friends left to meet them, amounted to - - 27,351,135 94
Leaving a deficit of 30,783,365 85
If the expenses of this administration had equalled the average .of Mr. Van Bu-
ren's, it would have added to this deficit ..... 11,789,997 38
And have made an aggregate of ...... §42,573,363 23
of deficit at the close of 1842.
But the Whig Congress provided for a permanent and sufficient revenue at the first regular session
of the last Congress, by the passage of the existing tarifflaw. This measure, too, was obstinately re¬
sisted by the great body of the Van Buren party in Congress. A few of them voted for it, under the
doubt that then existed, whether there was any law in force to authorize the collection of customs.
They accompanied their votes with an avowal of determined hostility to the measure, and their firm
purpose to repeal it, or reduce the rates, when they acquired the power. This tariff netted, for 1842,
$18,187,908 76, and "thus prevented $7,687,908 76 from being added to the public debt. The duties
collected for the months of January, February, and March last, exceed $8,000,000, and must produce,
for the entire year, more than twenty-five millions. The results of this measure have exceeded the
expectations of its most confident friends. It is raising the country from the paralysis and ruin, down
to which Van Burenism had struck it; it has put into active operation all our mills and manufacto¬
ries ; it has munificently ministered to the great want of our people—the want of employment—and
it is now stimulating and rewarding their industry in every department—agricultural, mechanical, and
manufacturing. It is replenishing the Treasury, by giving the people at home the ability to purchase
and consume foreign imports; and, with economy in the administration of the Government, will soon
afford the means of paying off the existing debt. It is restoring confidence, regenerating the country,
and establishing its wealth and independence on a permanent basis. This is the great and beneficial
measure against which our adversaries are waging an exterminating war; and, with its overthrow,
they ask the American people to restore to power Mr. Van Buren and his party, not only with all their
enumerated delinquencies, but with their sub-treasury, with their Poinsett re-organization of the mili¬
tia, their horizontal tariff and low wages, their systematic increase of executive power, their plundering
principle, " to the conquerors belong the spoils of victory," their deep, rankling resentments, and fierce
appetite for vengeance. But no, this dreadful restoration will never be made; Mr. Van Buren's po¬
litical race is run, and for ever.
APPENDIX.
No. 1.—Statement of the receipts into the Treasury from 1837 to 1842 inclusive, from Customs, Sales of
Public Lands, Treasury Notes, Loans, Internal Revenue and Direct Tax, and miscellaneous sources.
Year.
Customs.
Public
Lands.
Treasury
Notes.
Loans.
Direct tax
& Int. rev.
Miscella¬
neous.
Total.
1837
1838
1839
1840
1841
1842
Dollars.
11,169,290 39
16,158.800 36
23.137.924 81
13,499,502 17
14.487.216 74
18,187,908 76
Dollars.
6,776,236 52
3,081.939 47
7,076,447 35
3.292.683 29
1,365,627 42
1,335,797 52
Dollars.
2,992,989 15
12,716,820 86
3,857,276 21
5.589,547 51
7.993,560 50
11,383,405 77
Dollars.1
5,665,756 88
3,425,329 87
Dollars.
7,181 54
2,467 27
3,308 54
1,682 25
3,261 36
495 00
Dollars.
1,903,682 75
4,909,448 24
244,200 56
2,018,222 82
781,568 89
119,765 12
Dollars.
22,819,380 35
36,869,476 20
34,319,157 47
21,401,638 04
30,296,991 79
31,452,702 04
96,640,643 23
22,928,731 57
44,533,600 00
^9,091,086 75
18,395 96
9,976,888 38
182,189,345 89
Note.—The receipts on account of trust funds, are omitted in the above statement.
No. 2.—Statement of the Expenditures of the Government from 1837 to 1842.
Year.
Expenditures ex¬
clusive of Public
Debt, &c.
Public Debt,
(old.)
Reimbursement
of Treas'y Notes.
Int'st on Trea¬
sury Notes &
Loans.
Cost of issuing
Treas'y Notes
and incident
to Loans.
Total.
1837
1S38
1839
1840
1841
1842
531,793,287 00
31,567,346 67
25,485,684 42
23,327,272 29
25,874,577 65
24,044,419 73
$21,822 91
2,217 08
16,876 40
11,982 60
7,277 94
5,165 25
$5,588,506 71
10,701,277 13
3,900,033 02
5,308,434 25
7,796,824 84
$14,996 48
399,833 89
174,598 08
284,977 55
773,549 85
$300 00
11,438 56
741 02
500 00
7,695 17
8.018 38
$31,815,409 91
37,184,505 50
36,604,412 86
27,414,385 99
31,482,962 56
32,627,978 06
162,092,587 76
65,342 18
33,295,075 95
1,647,955 85
28,693 13
197,129,654 87
Note.—The expenditures on account of trust funds are omitted In the above statement.
8
No- 3.—H statement exhibiting the value of met ehandise imported during the quarter ending on the
31.*< of December, 1841, on which a duty of 20 per cent, ad valorem was imposed by the act of
September 11, 1841.
On worsted stuffs -
silks ....
silk and worsted goods
linens ....
sheeting, brown and white
ticklenburgs, osnaburgs, &c.
$402,1 >-8
1,838,877
247,358
738,493
34,254
26,892
3,288,062
cocoa ... $28,198
almonds ... 63,508
currants ... 40,765
prunes ... 31,489
'figs - - 31,614
Duties on articles above enumerated, viz : -
Duties on articles not enumerated
On raisins
nutmegs -
cinnamon
cloves
pepper
pimento -
ginger -
camphor -
620,S06
7,657
1,274
12,611
28,918
44,646
140
1,434
$4,201,121 at 20 p. c.
2,459,790
913,059-
$4,201,121
5,660,911
840,224 20
491,958 00
1,332,182 20
Duties assessed on articles free previous to the 1st of October, 1841 ... $840,224 20
Estimated increased duties on articles paying specific rates less than a duty of 20 p. c. 70,000 00
Treasury Department,
Register's Office, March 30, 1844.
$910,224 20
T. L. SMITH, Register.
No. 4.
A statement exhibiting the value of Merchandise paying duties, and the
amount of duties which accrued annually from 1834 to 1843, inclusive.
Years.
imports.
Average rate
per centum
ad valorem.
Value
paying duty.
Duties.
To 31st Dec. 1834
1835
1836
1837
1838
1839
1840
1841
1842
To 30th Sept. 1843
$55,676,524
75,839,838
101,783,389
60,689,479
61,385,173
82,6-27,020
47,551,628
65,533,304
62,002,325
41,576,116
$18,960,705 95
25,890,726 66
30,818,327 67
18,134,131 01
19,702,825 45
25,554,533 96
15,104,790 63
19,919,492 17
16,622,766 34
14,637,053 82
34 per cent.
33 "
3U* "
30 «
30* "
31 "
31 7-10 "
32 1-10 «
26 8-10 «
Treasury Department, Register's Office, March 25, 1844,
T. L. SMITH, Register.
A statement exhibiting the value of Merchandise
imported paying, duty, and the amount of duties
which accrued annually thereon during the years
ending Dec. 31, 1841,1842, and to Sept. 30,1&43.
Years.
1841—1st qr.
2d "
3d "
4th «
1842—1st qr.
2d "
3d "
4th «
1843—1st qr.
2d "
' 3d "
imports.
Dutiable value.
Duties.
$17,626,103
14,380,295
18,877,598
14,649,308
$5,506,378 41
4,555,472 83
5,922,218 46
*3,935,424 47
$65,533,304
$19,919,492 17
$24,476,310
' 17,990,185
12,307,328
7,228,502
$6,060,557 48
4,681,054 42
+3.314,715 94
2,566,438 50
$62,002,325
$16,622,766 34
$10,441,567
11,509,046
19,625,503
$3,391,754 55
4,585,942 20
6,659,357 07
*Act September 11, 1841,
t Act August 30, 1842.
No. 5.—Some of the Expenses of Florida War.
For charter of steamboat Watchman, $450 per day, or $164,250 per year.
For charter of steamboat Mobile, $465 per day, or $169,725 per year.
For charter of steamboat Anna Calhoun and two barges, $400 per day, $146,000 per year.
For charter of steamboat Henry Cromwell, $300 per day, or $109,500 per year.
For charier of steamboat Le Flore, $200 per day, $73,000 per annum.
For charter of steamboat Florida, $3,000 per month, $116,000 per annum.
For charter of steamboat John McLean, $4,000 per month, or $48,000 per annum.
For charter of steamboat John Adams, $4,000 per month, or $48,000 per annum.
For charter of steamboat Attawaba, $5,000 per month, or $60,000 per year.
There were chartered, during the year 1837, thirty steamboats, forty-three schooners, two sloops, twenty-five
brigs, and six ships, making in all one hundred and eleven vessels.
Vol. 3, Sen. Doc., 2d Sess. 25th Congress, report by T. Cross, Acting Quartermaster General.
PRINTED AT GIDEON'S NINTH STREET, WASHINGTON.
LETTER OF HON. D. D. BARNARD, OF NEW YORK.
IN REVIEW
OF THE REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF WAYS AND MEANS ON THE
FINANCES AND THE PUBLIC DEBT.
Having failed, notwithstanding the most strenuous efforts, to obtain a hearing in the House of Repre¬
sentatives when the civ il and diplomatic appropriation bill was under consideration, I feel constrained,
by the interest felt in the subject on which I wished to have been heard, to ask for a place in your paper
for this communication to the public.
The report made to the House of Representatives on the 11th of March last, by the majority of the
Committee of Ways and Means, contains a statement in regard to the public debt which is so put forth
as to cast the responsibility of creating a very large proportion of that debt on the 27th Congress. This
1 hold to be unjust; and, as a member of that committee, as well as of the 27th Congress, dissenting
from that report, 1 wish to be allowed to present a statement which may serve to correct the very flag¬
rant error and injustice, as I conceive, which have thus been committed. 1 shall do this in the briefest
possible form.
The whole debt of the United States, as it stood on the 1st of December, 1813, was $26,742,949 99,
according to the statement of the Secretary of the Treasury in his annual report at the commencement
of the present session. This does not include, however, by a great deal, all the actual indebtedness of
the Government. (Vide statement A annexed.) It is the formal public debt only that is here exhibited.
(Vide statement B annexed.)
The portion of this debt which is of recent date, consisting of loans and Treasury
notes, amounted on the 1st of December last to ----- $25,182,088 83
The true amount of Treasury notes outstanding on the 4th of March, 1841, (vide
statement C annexed) was -------- 6,103,519 28
Leaving the sum of-------- $19,078,569 55
as the amount of the debt on the 1st December last, exclusive of Treasury notes outstanding on the 4th
March, 1841.
Now, it is in reference to this portion of the recent debt that the majority of the committee have
made the statement which I propose to consider and correct.
I quote from the report : "In this way a debt, in the shape of Treasury notes outstanding, to an
amount not probably varying very materially from $6,000,00(1, had been contracted at the time when
the present Administration came into power, on the 4th of March, 1841; and that debt, thus commenced,
has, since that time, and up to the 1st day of December last, been swelled to the startling amount of
more than $25,000,000—more than $21,000,000 of which has been made to assume the permanent form
of loans for a term of years, and the residue yet retains the form of Treasury notes outstanding. De¬
ficiencies in the current and accruing revenue, to meet the annual appropriations, have accumulated
this amount of debt in this short period, and more than $19,000,000 of it within two and three-quarter
years—being from March 4, 1841, to December 1, 1843, anil all within the life of this Administration—•
next preceding the 1st day of December last."
The substance of what is here stated is this :
First. That a debt of more than $19,000,000 had been accumulated, in other words, created, since
the 4th March, 1841, and up to the 1st of December, 1813; and
Next, That this debt had been accumulated by deficiencies in the current and accruing revenues to
meet the annual appropriations, or the current and ordinary expenses of the Government, the respon¬
sibility for which rested on some body "within the life of this Administration"—of course, on the27lh
Congress.
How just and true all this is I propose now to show. The country will judge what authority or pre¬
tence the committee had for this official statement, involving the 27th Congress in the charge of having
created a debt of nineteen millions of dollars. I will undertake to show that no part of this debt has
been accumulated or created since the 4th of March, 1841—at any rate, that the 27th Congress is not
justly responsible for one dollar of it. The body of this debt has shown itself, and been formally assum¬
ed, since that period—not created. To make this clear, I will show the sources of the debt:
First. In the heavy charges on the Treasury, in the shape of appropriations, created by (he legisla¬
tion of Congress before the 4th of March, 1841, and then outstanding, without any adequate provision
for revenue to meet them.
Next: In a heavy amount of arrearages and liabilities, of a date prior to the 4th March, 1841, for
which the 27th Congress made the necessary provision ; and—
Finally : For the expenses (as the payment of interest) accruing in the time of the 27th Congress,
and necessarily consequent on the existence o'f the debt, charges, liabilities, and arrearages prior to the
4th March, 1841, and the neglect of the preceding Administration to provide lor them.
I take the debt (I mean that portion of it now charged to have been created by the 27th Congress)
at the nominal amount already stated, viz. $19,078,569 55, because it so stood on the books of the
Treasury on the 1st December last, though there was then on hand some two millions and a qilotter in
cash, the proceeds of one of the very loans which went to make up the debt, and which might, and
should in all fairness, have been noticed w hen the honorable Chairman of the Committee of Ways and
Means was making up his charge. Nevertheless, let the debt stand at the nominal sum just stated, viz.
$19,078,569 5A
Primed at Gideon's Office, Ninth street, Washington.
Now, in the firsf place, the charges on the Treasuiy, in the shape of appropriations made by Coa-
fress prior to the 4tri March, 1841, and then outstanding, according to the report of the Secretary of the
'reasury of June 2, 1811, (House Document No. 2, 1st session, 27th Congress,) the particulars of
which are given in statement A, accompanying the report, were ... $28,139,398 13
But from this sum should be deducted the amount which was subsequently carried
to the surplus fund, as not required for the objects for which appropriations had been
made. This amount was ........ 138,877 99
Leaving the amount to stand at ...... $28,000,520 13
This sum is the true amount of the whole of the charges resting on the Treasury, under existing ap¬
propriations, on the 4th of March, 1841. Every dollar of this amount was a charge which the Treasury,
at some rate, and at some time, must meet and pay—just as much as if it had stood in the shape of stock,
or of Treasury notes.
We have a system of annual appropriations for the public service ; and these annual appropriations,
according to our mode of conducting the fiscal operations of the Government, are to be met by annual
revenues, deiived almost wholly from two sources—customs and lands ; and if they are not thus met,
the appropriations lor any year exceed the proper revenues of tlqrt year, the excess is a public debt,
created, in fact, when the appropriations are made, though it does not lormally appear, until the amount
Stands as a deficit on the books of the Treasury.
The appropriations for the year 1341 were made, of course, by the 26th Congress—in the-short session
of 1840-'41 ; and they should have been met and covered by the revenues derived from ordinary sources
accruing in the year 184!, as provided by the legislation of the preceding period. If they were not,
the excess was a debt created in that preceding period.
I proceed now to ascertain what this excess was, accruing within the period from the 4th of March,
1841, to 31st December of that year. And, to find this, we want the two elements, or data, already
suggested :
First. The true amount of proper appropriations for that period which were outstanding on the 4th
of March, 1811.
Next. The true amount of revenue from ordinary sources, applicable to the appropi iations for the
same period, accruing after the 4th of March, 1841. under the legislation of the preceding time.
In regard to the appropriations outstanding on the 4th of March, 1841, they were considerably more
than the appropriations actually made for the year 1841. There was included in them a considerable
sum, which were the balances of appropriations unexpended, made for the preceding and former years.
These amounted on the 4th of March to $8,430,301 50. (Vide Table A, House Doc. No. 2, 1st Sess.
27th Congress.)
Ordinarily, these balances of old appropriations have not been taken into the account as a part of the
current charge on the Treasury for the year, because it has been supposed that at the end of the year
an equal, or nearly equal, amount of the current annual appropriations will be found standing over
to the next year, and so on from year to year. However true this may have been in former times, it will
be found, in the sequel, that these old balances, which have heretolore been very heavy, and were so in
the beginning of the year 1841, have now been greatly reduced. The reduction will be more than five
and a half millions by the close of the present fiscal year; and this will be so much paid beyond the
proper yearly appropriations for the time. But I shall recur to this matter shortly. At present, in
order to disembarrass and simplify the financial statement I am making, I shall deduct from the aggregate
of the appropriations outstanding on the 4th of March, 1841, as already found, viz. - $23.000^520 13
The full amount of the old balances outstanding on the same day, viz. - - 8,430,301 50
The amount remaining, is ...... $19,570,218 63
And this is the true amount of proper appropriations for the year 1841, reinaining-as a charge on the
Treasury to be met and paid between the 4th of March and the 31st of December, 1341. It includes
not only the specific appropriations for the year, but also what are usually called the "indefinite and
permanent" appropriations falling on the same period.
The next thing is to find the amount of levenue applicable to this amount of appropriations, accru¬
ing or coming into the Treasury from the 4tll of March, and up to the end of the year, as provided by
preceding legislation.
The aggregate receipts of revenue from ordinary sources in the year 1841—that is, from all sources
except from loans and Treasury notes, but including $630,162 55 from funds existing before 1841, ac¬
cording to the report of the Secretary of the Treasury at the commencement of this session, (vide tabla
C, House document No. 7, 1st session, 28th Congress,) were - $16,632,455 55
Of which amount there ha t been received before the 4th of March, (vide House doc.
No. 2, 1st ses., 27th Cong.,) the sum of ----- - 2,428,217 67
Showing the amount of receipts from the 4th of March to have been - - - $14,204,207 83
But to this amount must be added the sum standing as a balance in the Treasury on
the 4th of March, 1841, (vide same doc. No. 2,) which was - - - 572,718 48
Making together - - - - - - - $14,776,926 34
And this sum shows the full amount which came into the Treasury, or was available from ordinary
sources, for the service of the period between the 4th of March and the 1st of December, 1841. It in¬
cudes, however, a considerable sum which was brought into the Treasury by legislation had subse-
3
quentto the 4th of March, and is more, therefore, than should go to the credit of the legislation of the
preceding period. The 26th Congress must be charged with the proper appropriations for the period
1 am considering, and should be credited with all the receipts of revenue proper within that period,
which were the fruits of its own revenue policy, and no more.
Customs and lands were the sources of revenue—of all of it, except some inconsiderable sums from
miscellaneous sources. The land sales were running low, and so were duties. The country was
under the compromise act. Duties were sinking, and more than half of all the imports were free of
duty. In 1640 the imports paying duty were $40,945,315, the imports free of duty were $57,196,204,
and the nett revenue from duties was only $10,159,339 44. This is the exhibit of 1he principal
source—the main reliance for revenue, in the year preceding the accession of the 27th Congress; and
the 26th Congress rnade.no effort to improve the finances. The Secretary of the Treasury, (Mr.
Woodbury,) proposed a modification of the tariff, but the 26th Congress would not touch it. The Sec¬
retary's alternative was "to push reductions vigorously," that is, to endeavor to bring down expen¬
ditures to the condition of the Treasury when the supply from its main source had shrunk to ten mil¬
lions. That was a task beyond the thrift of the 26tn -Congress. That Congress served an Adminis¬
tration which had expended, on an average, $27,926,630 97 a year, for ordinary service only; and
which in four years had expended, for ordinary service, $30,194,777 over and above all the receipts
into the Treasury from ordinary sources of revenue. (Vide table C annexed.) It was rather late, in
the last hours of that Administration, to talk to that Congress about "pushing reductions vigorously."
And the 26th Congress went out, leaving appropriations behind it vastly greater than the revenues
could possibly meet, arid leaving more than $6,000,000 of Treasury notes outstanding, and without any
attempt to improve the finances. A new loan of $5,000,000, in the shape of Treasury nofes, was
authorized.
The 27th Congress, which came together in extra session, passed an act subjecting several important
articles then free to duties, and raising duties on other articles. This act was passed on the 11th
September, 1841, and went into effect on the 1st of October. It produced, according to a statement
mads at the Register's office, within the remainder of the year 1S41, $910,224 20.
Tlie whole receipts in 1341, from the 4th of March, as I have stated before, were - $14,776,926 34
From this deduct the extra amount received under the duties act of 1341, which was 910,224 20
Leaving the sum of ........ $13,866,702 14
■which was the actual amount of revenue received in 1841, after the 4th of March, from ordinary sources,
and which was the fruit of the financial policy which existed when the appropriations for that period
were made. The difference between this sum and the amount, which we have already ascertained as
the proper appropriations for the same period, will be the excess we have been looking for, and will
show the actual debt on this account, created by the legislation of ttie 26th. Congress in providing in¬
adequately for the service of the year 1341, following the close of that Congress.
The proper appropriations for 1841, outstanding on the 4th of March, as already as¬
certained, were ......... $19,570,216 63
The receipts, as above stated, were ....... 13,866,702 14
The difference is ........ $5,703,514 49
And this sum—an unliquidated charge on (he Treasury, created, not in 1341, and by the 27tii Con¬
gress, but created prior to the 4th of March, and by the 25th Congress—is one important item in the
debt of $19,078,569 55, which I am endeavoring to account for.
I proceed now to look after the balances of old appropriations outstanding on the 4th of March, 1841.
The whole amount of these old balances was a charge left by the Administration which went out on
the 4th of March, to fall on the Treasury in the year 1841, or, at any rate " in the life" of the next
Congress. They might, however, and 3hould be, left entirely out of our calculation in the inquiry we
are now pursuing, if the like amount of the proper appropriations for the year 1841, or the like amount
of old balances at the close of the year 1841, were lound standing over to the'year 1842, and so on from
year to year. But it is evident that if these old balancps'have come to be materially lessened in amount,
just to that extent should this charge on the Treasury, left outstanding on the 4th of March, be passed
to the credit of the Treasury since that period, as so much paid over and above all payments on ac¬
count of current annual appropriations.
Now, we have, in the annual report of the Secretary of the Treasury at the commencement of this
session, a statement by which it appears that at the close of the present fiscal year, that is to say, on
the 30th of June, now just at hand, the balances of appropriations standing over to the next fiscal year
will be only $2,608,026 06. In another communication, as late as the 1st of April, lie states them a
little higher, viz: at $2,710,400 73. And if we suppose this result attained without a deficit at the
Treasury at that period, and also without any further increase of debt in the shape of loans or Treas¬
ury notes, then it is clear that, besides paying all current annual appropriations, applicable to the pub¬
lic service, since the 4th of March, 1841, with the exception only of the sum of $2,608,026 06, or of
$2,710,400 73 ; besides all this, and in addition thereto, there will have been paid out of the Treasury,
with the aid of the very loans and Treasury notes which go to make up the existing public debt, the
whole amount of the old balances outstanding on the 4th of March, 1841, viz: $8,430,301 50. The
difference between this amount of old balances and the amount of the balances of appropriations made
since the 4:h of March, 1841, and outstanding at the end of the present fiscal year, w ill show the true
amount, which, on account of those old balances, has gone to swell the sum of the existing debt.
The old balances outstanding on the 4th of March, 1841, were ... $8,430,301 50
The balances of appropriations since 4th of March, 1841, and which will be outstand¬
ing on the 30th June, 1843, (I take the largest sum,) will be 2,710,400 73
The difference is - -- -- -- - 5,719,900 7?
4
But we must see that this result will be attained without increasing the public debt beyond what it
was on the 1st of December last, and without a deficit at the Treasury in the accounts of the present
fiscal year.
There can be no pretence that the debt will be increased ; that is, there will be no increase of loans
or Treasury notes, and there will be 110 accumulation of interest on those already existing. This is all
provided for.
And as to a deficit at the end of the present fiscal year, it is now certain that there will be none. It is
true that, the Secretary, in his annual report, shows a deficiency by the estimates then presented of
$'2,527,264 17. But we all know how vastly the importations and receipts from customs have been
swelled beyond the expectations at that time entertained. In a subsequent communication to this
House, dated the 1st of April, (Ho. doc. No. 222,) the Secretary sets down the receipts from customs
at upwards of three millions more than his estimate in his annual report. This, of itself, would dis¬
pose of the deficiency shown in that report, and leave a balance in the Treasury enough to cover any
additional appropriations, if there should be any beyond those already in the estimates, which may be
made at this session in aid of the service of the present fiscal year.
But this last amount of receipts from customs, as stated by the Secretary on the first of April, is still
below the mark. In this statement he gives the actual receipts up to the 29th of February—which he
could do perhaps by the first of April, with tolerable accuracy—and he submits an estimate of the re¬
ceipts for the four months, from 1st of March to 30th June, which he puts down at $5,600,000. This,
it is quite apparent now, is far below what the true amount will be.
Ttie gross receipts at the port of New York alone in two months out of the four, that is, in March
and April, have been $3,581,626. The usual estimate at the Treasury is, that half as much comes in
at all the other ports as at New Y'ork. By this estimate $1,790,813 must have been received in those
two months in all the other ports ; and the whole receipts would be $5,372,439. This for two months
only. And I know of no reason why the next two months, May and J une, should not produce as much
more, making altogether, in the four months, $10,700,000 gross receipts. The receipts in New York
for April were higher, by $"200,000, than in March. It will be deemed now a very moderate estimate,
if I set down ttie nett receipts from customs in these four months at $8,600,000, instead of the
$5,600,000, as set down in the Secretary's communication of the 1st of Apiil. This, with the actual
receipts from customs up to the 29th of February in the fiscal year, which were $15,102,688 26, will
make the total receipts from this source $23,702,688 26. The estimate in the annual report of the
Secretary, including the actual receipts for the first quarter, was $17,432,272 09. The difference is
$ ,270 416 17. And this amount woqld cover and cancel the estimated deficiency, as stated in the
annual report, of $2,527,264 17, and leave a balance in the Treasury, at the end of the present fiscal
year, of $3,743,152.
But the state of the Treasury at the close of the fiscal year, as shown in the Secretary's letter of the
1st of April, vaiies from that shown in the report, according as things had thus far actually disclosed
themselves. The deficiency is set down in this letterat $951,771 36. But in this statement his estimate
makes the receipts from customs still amount to only $20,702,688 26, and I have shown, I think, from
what we now know, that they will exceed that sum by at least $3,000,000. This amount will cover
and cancel the last estimated deficiency, and leave a balance in the Treasury of $2,048,228 64.
In any event, it is certain that the state of the Treasury at the close of the present fiscal year will
show no deficit. At that day the balances of unexpended appropriations, according to the Secretary,
will be only $2,710,400 73, instead of $8,430,301 50, which were the balances of old appropriations
standing over on the 4th of March, 1841. This latter sum, which was a charge on the Treasury—a
debt—created prior to that day, and then outstanding, has been fully paid off since that period ; and in
addition thereto, all the regular current appropriations for the whole time from the 4th ot March, 1841,
to the 30th of June, 1S44, have been, and will have been, paid on the day last named, except only the sum
of $2,710,400 73. The difference between these two sums, which ts $5,719,900 77, is exactly the
amount from this source, which now appears iu the formal debt of $19,078,569 55, which the report of
the majority of the Committee of Ways and Means accuses the 27th Congress with having created.
I proceed now to another considerable item which must be added to the sums already found, and with
them set down to the account of the 26th Congress, or the last Administration, though it is now includ¬
ed in this heavy amount of public debt with whicn the 27th Congress stands charged.
It is well known that the last Administration neglected to provide for very many cases of well-
ascertained indebtedness and liability. The 26th Congress refused to appropriate money to pay the
inilitia which had been employed in Florida, or to provide for the necessary expenses of the Q-.arter-
master General's Department of the army. The arrearages " for preventing and suppressing Indian
hostilities" alone, as presented in the estimates to that Congress at its second session, and for which
it refused to provide, were $825,637 86. There has since been ascertained and paid, as due for ser¬
vices prior to the 4th of March, 1841, to the militia of Georgia, Florida, Alabama, and Louisiana, the
sum of $650,000. The Post Office was indebted nearly half a million, which has since been paid.
And even the expenses of the 26th Congress* itself were left unpaid, and unappropriated for, to the
amount of $98,335. This we have paid. The Navy Pension Fund, too, had been completely exhausted.
I have looked with some care into the items of appropriation since the 4th of March, 1841, for arrear¬
ages and liabilities existing prior to that time, and I find them to amount to a very large sum—much
larger than the amount as it is stated in an official document. I make the sum nearly $4,000,000; and
this exclusive of near $3,500,000 appropriated for fulfilling Indian treaties, made before the 4th of
March, 1841, and under our Indian relations as they existed prior to that date. But I prefer to take
the official statement, in order to keep myself above all cavil in this matter.
In a letter from the Secretary of the Treasury, dated May 18, 1843, and which was received at the
office of the Clerk of the House of Representatives after the adjournment of Congress, (vide House
5
Doc. No. 185, 3d Sess., 27th Congress,) there is a "Statement of the amount of appropriations which
had been made since the 4th day of March, 1841, for arrearages or liabilities existing prior to that time,"
and the amount is set down at $3,289,534 89.
To this statement there is a note annexed, in which it is said that this sum is only an approximation
to the true amount; and reference is made particularly to some appropriations, indefinite in their
character, which are not included, because the amounts had not been, and could not yet be, ascertained.
But I adopt the amount as stated, and as being, at this day, quite within the amount actually paid out
of the Treasury for these old arrearages and liabilities. This sum, at least, wili not be deemed a debt
created by the 27th Congress, though it appears undoubtedly in the nineteen million debt which i3
charged to its account.
There is one other item which must be brought into this settlement of accounts between the 27th
Congress and the late Administration. The Treasury has been burdened with various and heavy ex¬
penditures necessarily incident to the insolvent condition in which it was left on the 4th of March,
1841. An extra session of Congress became indispensable. But I shall not enter into these extraordi¬
nary burdens. One item of expenditure, however, is too important to be passed over. I mpan the
interest account—this must be considered. It will appear conclusively, in the summing up of the
whole matter, that the nineteen million debt has not been created for the proper service of tne Govern¬
ment since the 4th of March, 1841, but that the whole of it, as it stands in the shape of loans and
Treasury notes—if we except an amount equal to that which has been paid for interest—was tor cash
raised to meet charges on the Treasury for which no provision had been" made, and arrearages and lia¬
bilities, all existing prior to the 4th of March. But the interest surely must be carried lo the same
quarter where the principal properly stands charged. The debt and the interest on it are inseparable.
They go together. All the interest which has been paid on loans and Treasury notes since the 4th of
March, 1841, and which shall be paid down to the close of the present fiscal year, to which period the
administration of the finances, under the legislation of the 27th Congress extends, should be credited
to that Congress, and charged to the preceding Administration, as a part of the burden of pecuniary debt
and obligation bequeathed by that Administration to the 27th Congress. In fact, existing loans and
Treasury notes have been swelled in amount by the necessity of meeting this very interest account,
inasmuch as the current revenues could not be depended on, by anticipation, up to the present time,
for more than to meet the current and ordinary expenses of Government.
I give the amount of interest from a statement which I have obtained from the office of the Register
•of the Treasury :
The interest paid on loans and-Treasury notes from the 4th of March, 1841, to the 23d
of May, 1844, when this account was obtained, was ----- $2,861,034 26
The interest that shall be paid on Treasury notes from the last date to the close of this
fiscal year cannot well be estimated, and is therefore wholly omitted; but the interest on
loans payable at the close of this fiscal year, and for which the warrants will issue be¬
fore the close of the year, will be------ - 506,473 37
Making the payments of interest, all together, amount to $3,367,507 63
I am now prepared to sum up my work and show results, only desiring that it shall be borne in mind
that I take the statement of the public debt as it was made on the 1st day of December last, and that
we know the amount is certainly not greater now than it was then, nor will it be at the end of the pre¬
sent fiscal year. Whether it is equal to what it then was, I shall inquire directly.
The debt charged by the majority of the Committee of Ways and Means to have been created "in the
life of this Administiation," that is, by the 27th Congress, stands at - - $19,078,569 55
The per contra account, as already ascertained, stands as follows :
1st. The excess of appropriations for the service of the year 1841,
and outstanding on the 4th of March, over and above the revenue
from ordinary sources, provided by previous legislation to meet
the appropriations ...... $5,703,514 49
2d The balances of old appropriations outstanding on the 4th of
March, 1841, and paid oft' since, taking only the amount remain¬
ing after deducting the unexpended balances of appropriations at
the close of the present fiscal year .... 5,719,900 77
3d. Amount paid since the 4th of March, 1841, for arrearages and
liabilities existing prior to that date .... 3,289,534 89
4th. Amount paid for interest on loans and Treasury notes - 3,367,507 63
Making the per contra account, all together, stand at - - - 18,080,457 78
And showing an apparent balance of debt against the 27th Congress of - - 998,111 77
instead of $19,078,569 55, with which it stands charged by the majority of the Committee of Ways and
Means.
But the balance just exhibited is only apparent, not real. In the first place, taking the debt at the
amount at which it has been-charged, arid as I have taken it all along, so that the balance against the
27th Congress would stand, as just stated, at - - - - - - $998,453 93
Yet, I have already showD, satisfactorily I trust, that there will be a balance in the
Treasury at the end "of the present fiscal year of ----- 2,048,228 64
The difference is 1,049,774 71
6
Showing an excess of means to pay the balance of debt against the 27th Congress by that sum.
The casli in the Treasury at this time must be much more than 1 have stated it would be at the end
of the fiscal year. It stood a few days ago, I believe, when there was a responsible Secretary in the
Department, at about $5,000,000.
But whether there shall be any balance in the Treasury at the close of this fiscal year or not, pro¬
vided only there be no deficit, of which there can be no doubt, no portion, however small, of the nine¬
teen million debt will stand chargeable to the account of the 27th Congress. In fact, the debt itself,
if we take it at the present date, oi at the close of this fiscal year, is set down at quite too high a sum.
It stood on the 1st of December last, nominally (for there was then a balance in the Treasury of two or
three millions) at the sum of $19,078,5£9 55, of which $1,165,225 92 were Treasury notes outstanding
on that day. But the published official statement of the Treasury notes outstanding on the 1st of June
(the present month,) shows that the amount has been reduced, since the 1st of December last, to
.$2,353,462 31. The difference is $1,811,743 61. No doubt, 1 suppose, the amount of Treasury notes
will be still further reduced by the close of the fiscal year.
The nominal debt, therefore, charged against the 27th Congress, of - - - $19,078,569 55
Has already been reduced by payments to the amount of - - - - . 1,811,743 61
And the debt now stands at the sum of ...... 17,266,825 66
The per contra account, however, is - - - - - - • 18,080,457 78
And the balance in/aror of 27th Congress is ..... 813,632 12
And now, after this showing, it can hardly be necessary that I should again formally deny the
charge made against the 27th Congress bythe majority of the Committee of Ways and Means. That
Congress created no public debt whatever—not a dollar. It took the charges, liabilities, and indebted¬
ness as they stood against the Treasury, unprovided for, on the 4th of March, 1S41 ; it assumed the
payment of them ; it borro wed money to meet these public engagements, and it has met and discharged
them. The proceeds of its loans and its Treasury notes have gone to make these paym -nts, and to
pay interest and meet the expenses necessarily attendant on the transaction. In the mean time, and
moreover, it has, by its financial policy and its economy, provided for the payment of all the current
and ordinary expenses of the Government, as regulated by its own appropriations, taking the whole
period together, with the revenues derived from ordinary sources only, and either it will leave, at the
close of this fiscal year, (to the end of which its appropriations and its policy extends,) a handsome
balance in the Treasury, or it will have paid off, by that time, with surplus revenues from ordinary
sources, a handsome portion of the public debt.
It should here be remarked that, possibly, the unexpended balances at the close of the present fiscal
year may be larger than the estimate of them by the Secretary. This, however, cannot vary the true
result of the calculalions in the statement 1 have made. For, just in proportion as these balances shaLi
be found to be larger than the estimate of the Secretary, (if larger at all,) will be the increase in the
amount of the surplus then in the Treasury over the amount at which I have stated it.
1 might well leave this matter where it now stands; but I cannot content myself without presenting
another view of the subject, which, in the briefest possible way, demonstrates, as I think, that the 27tn
Congress could not have created any public debt whatever. This is shown by comparing the appro¬
priations made by that Congress, (and it surely is not responsible for preceding appropriations, except
what are called the "permanent and indefinite appropriations," which I shall include) with the actual
receipts of revenue from ordinary sources under its own financial policy. I take the amounts, as I
here'set them down, from official documents, or from statements obtained at the Treasury Department.
The appropriations made by tile 27th Congress were as follows :
At the extra session, in aid of the service of the year 1841 .... $5,042,705 OS
For the year 1842 .... ..... 20,071,277 58
For the half calendar year in 1843, and for the fiscal yeai ending June 30, 1844 - 24,669,145 70
To these add the amount of" permanent and indefinite appropriations," viz :
For 1842 - - - - - - ... $932,000 00
For half calendar year in 1843 732,612 49
For the fiscal year ending on 30th June, 1844 .... 690,000 00
2,354,642 49
Total appropriations for the period ...... $52,137,770 79
The receipts of revenue from ordinary sources, exclusive of loans, Treasury notes, and trust funds,
in the same period, and applicable to these appropriations, have been as follows:
In 1841, the extra revenue received under the duties act of September 18, 1841 - $.910,224 20
In 1842, per table C, in rep. Ho. Doc. No. 7, 1st session, 2Sth Congress - - 19,643,966 40
In 1843, per same table, completed in manuscript from hooks of the Treasury - 19,257,833 10
In 1844, to the 30th June. This must be estimated. I refer to what I have before
said in regard to receipts from customs. The receipts from customs for the six
months cannot be less than - - - - - $12,900,000
Add from lands and miscellaneous sources .... 1,100,000
14,000,000 06
Total receipts for the period ....... 53,812,023 70
From this amount I deduct the sum paid over to the States, under the distribution act
7
of September 4, 1341, as withdrawn from receipts applicable to appropriations for
ordinary service, viz: - - - - - - . 616,987 IT
Total receipts applicable to ordinary service ..... 53,195,086 53
Excess of receipts over appropriations for the period .... $1,057,315 74
This exhibit must make it perfectly clear that the 27th Congress could not have created, as it had no
possible occasion to create, any amount of public debt whatever, to meet any plan of extravagant or
profuse expenditures of its own. The whole of its own appropriations, except for the public debt, for
the entire period, with the " permanent and indefinite" appropriations added, were only about fifty-two
millions ; and there have been available receipts, applicable to these appropriations, from ordinary
sources, without a shilling from loans or Treasury notes, to the amount of fifty-three millions—
enough to meet all the appropriations, and a million to spare. And these appropriations, too, included
more than three millions for arrearages and liabilities existing prior to March 4, 1841 ; so that, in
truth, the receipts of revenue proper, applicable to appropriations made by the 27th Congress for the
proper, current, and ordinary service of the period, would seem to have exceeded, or will do so by the
30th of June next, all those appropriations by more than four millions of dollars.
But I take leave of the subject, hoping and trusting sincerely that, from this time forward and for¬
ever, we shall hear no more, from any quarter, of the Administration of the 4th of March, 1841, or the
27th Congress, having created a debt of nineteen millions of dollars, or a debt of any other amount
whatever.
The truth is, that the whole debt belongs properly and righteously to the preceding tirre. The Ad¬
ministration of that time is properly chargeable with $'25,000,000 of existing public debt, added to
$24,000,000 received from extraordinary sources, and actually expended, over and above all sums re¬
ceived from ordinary sources of revenue. These two sums, making together $49,000,000—first, how¬
ever, reducing the amount by whatever sum ought fairly to stand to its credit on account of the burdens
thrown upon it by the Administration which went immediately before it—show truly, according to my
honest conviction, what that Administration actually cost the country, over and above the ordinary
revenues with which it was supplied. For this a just responsibility now rests upon it. There may¬
be some good way of accounting for this enormous expenditure—of explaining and justifying tha
heavy outlay of money and credit. Of that I say nothing. It is the fact only of this heavy outlay t®
which I advert, and that I believe to have been as I have stated it.
D. D. BARNARD.
Washington, June 10, 1844.
STATEMENT A.
Amount of public debt and liabilities existing on the 4th March, 1841, exclusive of all liabilities then existing
in the shape of appropriations outstanding for the current service of the Government, and for which no
adequate revenue was then provided. [In this statement no account is made of the ith instalment under
the deposite act, or the heavy amount claimed to be due for French spoliations on commerce prior to 1800.]
Debt of the cities of the District of Columbia, assumed by the United States, exclusive
of interest,
Old funded and unfunded debt, Stc., .......
Treasury notes outstanding ........
Amounts invested, or required to be invested, for Indians and Indian tribes, and on
which interest was payable annually, ......
Amount required to make good a deficit in the Navy pension fund, and for which the
Government is liable as a trustee, .......
Annuities due to Indians and Indian tribes, (amounting to $572,653 yearly,) the
purchase or value of which, estimated in a principal sum, is not less than -
Arrearages and liabilities on various accounts, other than on account of engagements
and stipulations with Indians, as now ascertained in payments and appropriations
already made since 4th March, 1841, -------
Arrearages and liabilities to Indians and Indian tribes, (exclusive of annuities and
interest,) as now ascertained by payments and appropriations made since the 4th of
March, 1841, -
$1,440,000
0*
331,698
27
6,103,519
28
2,580,000
00
1,200,000
00
5,000,000
00
3,933,613
0«
975,602
"9
$21,53-1,438 34
8
STATEMENT B.
Statement of the total debt of the United States according to the last account rendered by the Register of the
Treasury.
Total debt of the United States <yi the 1st of December, 1841, as shown in statement
F, accompanying the annual report of the Secretary of the Treasury, of December
6, 1843 .......... $26,742,949 9»
This sum of $26,742,949 99 being made up, according to the same statement F, as
follows :
1. Debts existing before 1841, viz: Old funded debt, old unfunded
debt, Treasury notes of the last war, certificates of Mississippi
stock, debts assumed for the corporate cities of the District of Co¬
lumbia—amounting in all to ..... $1,560,861 16
2. Loans under three several acts, passed since the 4th of March,
1841, amounting to ...... 21,016,862 91
3. Treasury notes outstanding on the 1st December, 1841 - - 4,165,225 92
$26,742,949 9g
STATEMENT C.
Treasury notes outstanding March 4th, 1841.
The Treasury notes outstanding on the 4th March, 1841, (vide statement No. 12, in Doc. No. 31, 1st
Bess., 27th Con., and the report, Doc. No. 2, of the Secretary of the Treasury at the commencement of
the same session,) are shown as follows:
Whole issue of Treasury notes, from October, 1837, when the issue began, to January
1, 1841, was ......... $25,156,633 73
Issued from January 1st, 1841, to March 4th, 1841 ..... 1,784,292 40
Whole issue to March 4, 1841 ....... $26,940,926 13
Whole redemption of Treasury notes from October, 1837, to 1st January, 1841,
was - $20,189,81£> 86
Redemption from January 1 to March 4, 1841 ... 647,590 09
20,837,406 95
Outstanding on 4th of March, 1841 ...... $6,103,519 28
STATEMENT D.
Taken from an official statement obtained at the Treasury Department.
Expenditures exclusive of payments on account of the public debt, trust fund, SfC.
From March 4, 1837, to March 3, 1838 - - - - $33,079,2S6 24
From March 4, 1838, to March 3, 1839 - - - 31,446,429 95
From March 4, 1839, to March 3, 1840 - - 24,266,817 58
From March 4, 1840, to March 3, 1841 ... - . - 22,921,990 11
Aggregate ......... 111,714,523 88
Average yearly ......... $27,928,630 97
Expenditures during four years, 1837 to 1840, or to 4th March, 1841, over and above receipts from ordinary
sources of revenue.
Available balance in the Treasury January 1, 1S37, (vide table C,
Ho. Doc. No. 7, 1st Sess., 2Sth Cong.) - - - $16,087,287 88 4.
From which deduct balance in Treasury 4th March, 1841 - - 572,718 46 '
$15,514,560 42
Received from debts and other funds which existed prior to 1837 - - 8,576,697 53
Treasury notes outstanding March 4, 1841 .... . 6,103,519 28
Total ........ . $30,194,777 23