tion and high tariff? Has the price of cotton increased, as we were told it would, by the talented South Carolinian? It has happened that during the nine tariff years the average price of cotton was, from 1824 to 1833, higher than during the nine years of descending Tariff and Free Trade; and at the instant I am speaking, I understand that cotton is selling at lower rates than have ever been realized since the war with Great Britain. I know with what tenacity theorists adhere to a favorite theory, and search out for imaginary causes of results before their eyes and deny the true. I am not going into the land of abstractions and of metaphysics. There are two great, leading, incontestible facts, which gentlemen must admit: first, that a high tariff did not put down the prices of staple commodities; and, second, that a low Tariff and Free Trade have not been able to save them from depression. These are the facts, let casuists and theorists, and the advocates of a one-sided paralytic Free Trade, in which we turn our sound side to the world, and our blighted and paralyzed and dead side toward our own people, make of them what they can. At the very moment that England is pushing the resources of Asia, cultivating the fields of India, and even contemplating the subsidizing of Africa, for the supply of her factories with cotton, and when the importations from India have swelled from 200,000 bales to 580,000, we are told that there are to be no restrictions on Free Trade.

Let me not be misunderstood, and let me entreat that I may not be misrepresented. I am not advocating the revival of a high protective tariff. I am for abiding by the principles of the compromise act; I am for doing what no Southern man of a fair or candid mind has ever yet denied-giving to the country a revenue which may provide for the economical wants of the Government, and at the same time give an incidental protection to our home industry. If there be here a single gentleman who will deny the fairness and propriety of this, I shall be glad to see and hear who he is.

The check on the flow of specie abroad, to pay either a commer cial or a public debt, will operate by the imposition of duties to meet the wants of the government-will keep the precious metals at home to a much greater extent than is now possible. I hope that we shall learn to live within our own means, and not remain so dependent as we now are on the mere good pleasure and domestic policy of foreign governments. We go for revenue-for an amount of revenue ade

quate to an economical administration of the Government. We can get such revenue nowhere else than from a tariff on importations. No man in his senses will propose a resort to direct or internal taxes. And this arrangement of the tariff, while it answers this end will at the same time operate as a check on the efflux of the precious metals, and retain what is necessary for the purpose of exchange and circulation.

The fourth advantage attending the adoption of the system proposed will be, that the States will be left in the undisturbed possession of the land fund secured to them by the act of the last session, and which was intended to aid them in the embarrassment under which some of them are now laboring.

And the last is that to which I have already adverted, viz. that it will afford, indirectly, protection to the interests of American Industry. And the most bitter and persevering opponent to the protective policy I ever met with, has never denied that it is both the right and the duty of Government to lay the taxes necessary to the public service so as to afford incidental protection to our own home industry.

But it is said that, by the adoption of one fixed arbitrary maximum of ad valorem duty, we shall not derive that measure of protection which is expected; and I admit that there may be certain articles, the product of the mechanic arts-such, for example, as shoes, hats, and ready-made clothing, and sugar, iron, and pepper-some or all of which may not derive the protection which they need under the plan I propose. On that subject I can only say, what I said at the time of the passage of the compromise act, if some few articles shall not prove to be sufficiently protected beneath the established maximum rate, I should hope that in the spirit of harmony and compromise, additional duties above that rate, sufficient to afford reasonable protection to those few articles, by general consent would be imposed. I am not at present prepared to say whether the rule I have suggested will afford adequate protection to these particular interests or not; I fear it may not. But if the subject shall be looked at in this spirit of patriotism, without party bias or local influences, it will be found that the few articles alluded to are so distributed, or are of such a nature as to furnish the grounds of a friendly adjustment. The interests of the sugar of the South may then be set against the iron of

*KK

the centre and the productions of the mechanic arts, which, although prevailing every where, are most concentrated at the North. With respect to these, without reference to any general system of protection, they have been at all times protected. And who that has a heart, or the sympathies of a man, can say or feel that our hatters, tailors, and shoemakers, should not be protected against the rival productions of other countries? Who would say that the shoemaker, who makes the shoes of his wife-his own wife, according to the proverb, being the last woman in the parish that is supplied with hers-shall not be protected? That the tailor, who furnishes him with a new coat, or the hatter, that makes him a new hat, to go to church, to attend a wedding or christening, or to visit his neighbor, shall not be adequately protected?

Then there is the essential article of iron-that is a great central interest. Whether it will require a higher degree of protection than it will derive from such a system as I have sketched, I have not sufficient information to decide; but this I am prepared to say, that, question will be with the Representatives of those States which are chiefly interested, and, if their iron is not sufficiently protected, they must take the matter up and make out their case to be an exception to the general arrangement. When I speak of the Representatives of these States, I mean their entire delegation without regard to political denominations or distinctions. They must look into the matter, and if they take it up and bring forward their propositions, and make out a clear case of exception to the general rule, I shall be an humble follower of their lead, but I will not myself take the lead in any such case. If these States want certain interests protected, they must send delegates here who are prepared to protect them. Such a State cannot reasonably expect Senators from other States, having no direct local, or particular concern in such interests, to force on her the protection of her own interests against her own will, as that will is officially expressed by her Representatives in Congress. I again say, I am ready to follow, but I will not lead.

With me, from the first moment I conceived the idea of creating, at home, a protection for the production of whatever is needed to supply the wants of man, up to this moment, it has always been purely a question of expediency. I never could comprehend the constitutional objection which to some gentlemen seem so extremely

obvious. I could comprehend, to be sure what these gentlemen mean to argue, but I never had the least relief in the constitutional objection which slept from 1789, (or rather, which reverses the doctrine of 1789,) till it suddenly walked up in 1820. Then, for the first time since the existence of the Constitution, was the doctrine advanced that we could not legitimately afford any protection to our own home industry against foreign and adverse industry. I say that with me it always was a question of expediency only. If the nation does not want protection I certainly never would vote to force it upon the nation; but, viewing it as a question of expediency wholly, I have not hesitated heretofore, on the broad and comprehensive ground of expediency, to give my assent to all suitable measures proposed with a view to that end. The Senate will perceive that I have. forborne to go into detail. I have presented to it a system of policy embodied in these resolutions containing those great principles in which I believe that the interest, prosperity and happiness of the country are deeply involved-principles, the adoption of which alone can place the finances of the Government upon a respectable footing, and free us from a condition of servile dependence on the legislation of foreign nations. I have persuaded myself that the system now brought forward will be met in a spirit of candor and of patriotism, and in the hope that, whatever may have been the differences in the Senate in days past, we have now reached a period in which we can forget our prejudices and agree to bury our transient animosities deep at the foot of the altar of our common country, and come together as an assemblage of friends and brothers and compatriots met in common consultation to devise the best mode of relieving the public distress. It is in this spirit, that I have brought forward my proposed plan; and I trust in God-invoking, as I humbly do, the aid and blessing of His providence-that the Senators, on all sides of the Chamber, will lay aside all party feelings, and more especially that habitual suspicion to which we are all more or less prone, (and from which I profess not to be exempted more than other men,) that impels us to reject without examination, and to distrust whatever proceeds from a quarter we have been in the habit of opposing. Let us lay aside prejudice; let us look at the distresses of the country, and those alone. I trust that in this spirit we shall examine these resolutions, and decide upon them according to the dictates of our own consciences, and in a pure and patriotic regard to the welfare of our country.

ON RETIRING FROM THE SENATE.

IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, MARCH 31, 1842.

[Mr. CLAY had intended to retire from the Senate at the close of the Extra Session, but was prevented by the entreaties of his friends, and the unsettled state of our Public Affairs. He early, however, gave notice to the Legislature of Kentucky, that he should resign by the end of March, in order that his successor might be chosen and in readiness to take his place. Mr. CRITTENDEN having been unanimously elected, and having arrived at Washington, Mr. CLAY was at length at liberty to withdraw, and on the 31st of March he addressed the Senate as follows:]

BEFORE proceeding to make the motion for which I have risen, I beg leave to submit, on the only occasion afforded me, an observation or two on a different subject. It will be remembered that I offered on a former day, some resolutions going to propose certain amendments to the Constitution of the United States. They have undergone some discussion, and I have been desirous of obtaining an expression of the sense of the Senate upon their adoption; but owing to the infirm state of my health, to the pressure of business in the Senate, and especially to the absence at this moment of several of my friends, I have concluded this to be unnecessary; nor should I deem myself called upon to reply to the arguments of such gentlemen as have considered it their duty to oppose the resolutions. I shall commit the subject, therefore, to the hands of the Senate, to be disposed of as their judgment shall dictate; concluding what I have to say in relation to them with the remark, that the convictions I have before entertained in regard to the several amendments, I still deliberately hold, after all that I have heard upon the subjects of them.

And now, allow me to announce, formally and officially, my retirement from the Senate of the United States, and to present the last motion I shall ever make in this body. But, before I make that motion, I trust I shall be pardoned if I avail myself of the occasion to make a few observations which are suggested to my mind by the present occasion.