had to beg, entreat, supplicate you, session after session, to grant the necessary appropriations to complete the road. I have myself toiled until my powers have been exhausted and prostrated, to prevail on you to make the grant. We were actuated to make these exertions for the sake of the collateral benefit only to the west; that we might have a way by which we should be able to continue and maintain an affectionate intercourse with our friends and brethren; that we might have a way to reach the capital of our country, and to bring our counsels, humble as they may be, to consult and mingle with yours in the advancement of the national prosperity. Yes, sir, the Cumberland road has only reached the margin of a western State; and, from some indications which have been given during this session, I should apprehend it would there pause for ever, if my confidence in youl were not unbounded, if I had not before wi nessed that appeals were never unsuccessful your justice, to your magnanimity, to yourra ternal affection. But, sir, the bill on your table is no western bill. It is emphatically a national bill, comprehending all, looking to the interests of the whole. The people of the West never thought of, never desired, never asked, for a system exclusively for their benefit. The system contemplated by this bill looks to great national objects, and proposes the ultimate application to their accomplishment of the only means by which they can be effected, the means of the nation-means which, if they be withheld from such objects, the Union, I do most solemnly believe, of these now happy and promising States, may, at some distant (I trust a far, far distant) day, be endangered and shaken at its centre. SPEECH ON THE TARIFF. * This speech, on a bill proposing to increase the duties on various articles imported from foreign countries, was delivered in the House of Representatives of the United States, on the thirtieth and thirty-first days of March, 1824: The gentlemen from Virginia, Mr. Barbour, has embraced the occasion produced by the proposition of the gentleman from Tennessee to strike out the minimum price in the bill on cotton fabrics, to express his sentiments at large on the policy of the pending measure; and it is scarcely necessary for me to say he has evinced his usual good temper, ability, and decorum. The parts of the bill are so intermingled and interwoven together, that there can be no doubt of the fitness of this occasion to exhibit its merits or its defects. It is my intention, with the permission of the committee, to avail myself also of this opportunity, to present to its consideration those general views, as they appear to me, of the true policy of this country, which imperiously demand the passage of this bill. I am deeply sensible, Mr. Chairman, of the high responsibility of my present situation. But that responsibility inspires me with no other apprehension than that I shall be unable to fulfil my duty; with no other solicitude than that I may, at least, in some small degree, contribute to recall my country from the pursuit of a fatal policy, which appears to me inevitably to lead to its impoverishment and ruin. I do feel most awfully this responsibility. And, if it were allowable for us, at the present day, to imitate * See the Speech of John Randolph, on the same subject, at page 169-ante. | ancient examples, I would invoke the aid of the Most High. I would anxiously and fervently implore His divine assistance; that He would be graciously pleased to shower on my country His richest blessings; and that He would sustain, on this interesting occasion, the humble individual who stands before Him, and lend him the power, moral and physical, to perform the solemn duties which now belong to his public station. Two classes of politicians divide the people of the United States. According to the system of one, the produce of foreign industry should be subjected to no other impost than such as may be necessary to provide a public revenue; and the produce of American industry should be left to sustain itself, if it can, with no other than that incidental protection, in its competition, at home as well as abroad, with rival foreign arti cles. According to the system of the other class, while they agree that the imposts should be mainly, and may under any modification be safely relied on as a fit and convenient source of public revenue, they would so adjust and arrange the duties on foreign fabrics as to afford a gradual but adequate protection to American industry, and lessen our dependence on foreign nations, by securing a certain and ultimately a cheaper and better supply of our own wants from our own abundant resources. Both classes are equally sincere in their respective opinions, equally honest, equally patriotic, and desirous of advancing the prosperity of the country. In the discussion and consideration of these opposite opinions, for the purpose of ascertaining which has the support of truth and reason, we should, therefore, exercise every indulgence, and the greatest spirit of mutual moderation and forbearance. And, in our deliberations on this great question, we should look fearlessly and truly at the actual condition of the country, retrace the causes which have brought us into it, and snatch, if possible, a view of the future. We should, above all, consult experience-the experience of other nations, as well as our own —as our truest and most unerring guide. the keenest distress, to which we may be exposed. Moral and pecuniary suffering is, if possible, more poignant. It plunges its victim into hopeless despair. It poisons, it paralyzes, the spring and source of all useful exertion. Its unsparing action is collateral as well as direct. It falls with inexorable force at the same time upon the wretched family of embarrassment and insolvency, and upon its head. They are a faithful mirror, reflecting back upon him, at once, his own frightful image, and that, no less appalling, of the dearest objects of his affection. What is the CAUSE of this wide-spreading disstamped on the public countenance? We are the same people. We have the same country. We cannot arraign the bounty of Providence. The showers still fall in the same grateful abundance. The sun still casts its genial and vivifying influence upon the land; and the land, fertile and diversified in its soils as ever, yields to the industrious cultivator, in boundless profusion, its accustomed fruits, its richest treasures. Our vigor is unimpaired. Our industry has ot relaxed. If ever the accusation of wasteful extravagance could be made against our people, it cannot now be justly preferred. They, on the contrary, for the few last years, at least, have been practising the most rigid economy, The causes, then, of our present affliction, whatever they may be, are human causes, and human causes not chargeable upon the people, in their private and individual relations. In casting our eyes around us, the most prominent circumstance which fixes our attention, and challenges our deepest regret, is the general distress which pervades the whole country. It is forced upon us by numerous facts of the most incontestable character. It is indica-tress, of this deep depression, which we behold ted by the diminished exports of native produce; by the depressed and reduced state of our foreign navigation; by our diminished commerce; by successive unthreshed crops of grain, perishing in our barns and barn-yards for the want of a market; by the alarming diminution of the circulating medium; by the numerous bankruptcies, not limited to the trading classes, but extending to all orders of society; by a universal complaint of the want of employment, and a consequent reduction of the wages of labor; by the ravenous pursuit after public situations, not for the sake of their honors and the performance of their public duties, but as a means of private subsistence; by the reluctant resort to the perilous use of paper money; by the intervention of legislation in the delicate relation between debtor and creditor; and, above all, by the low and depressed state of the value of almost every description of the whole mass of the property of the nation, which has, on an average, sunk not less than about fifty per centum within a few years. This distress pervades every part of the Union, every class of society; all feel it, though it may be felt, at different places, in different degrees. It is like the atmosphere which surrounds us all must inhale it, and none can escape it. In some places it has burst upon our people, without a single mitigating circumstance to temper its severity. In others, more fortunate, slight alleviations have been experienced in the expenditure of the public revenue, and in other favoring causes. A few years ago, the planting interest consoled itself with its happy exemptions, but it has now reached this interest also, which experiences, though with less severity, the general suffering. It is most painful to me to attempt to sketch or to dwell on the gloom of this picture. But I have exaggerated nothing. Perfect fidelity to the original would have authorized me to have thrown on deeper and darker hues. And it is the duty of the statesman, no less than that of the physician, to survey, with a penetrating, steady, and undismayed eye, the actual condition of the subject on which he would operate; to probe to the bottom the diseases of the body politic, if he would apply efficacious remedies. We have not, thank God, suffered in any great degree for food. But distress, resulting from the absence of a supply of the mere physical wants of our nature, is not the only nor perhaps What, again I would ask, is the CAUSE of the unhappy condition of our country, which I have faintly depicted? It is to be found in the fact, that during almost the whole existence of this government, we have shaped our industry, our navigation, and our commerce, in reference to an extraordinary war in Europe, and to foreign markets, which no longer exist; in the fact, that we have depended too much upon foreign sources of supply, and excited too little the native; in the fact that, while we have cultivated, with assiduous care, our foreign resources, we have suffered those at home to wither, in a state of neglect and abandonment. The consequence of the termination of the war of Europe has been, the resumption of European commerce, European navigation, and the extension of European agriculture and European industry, in all its branches. Europe, therefore, has no longer occasion, to any thing like the same extent as that she had during her wars, for American commerce, American navigation, the produce of American industry. Europe, in commotion, and convulsed throughout all her members, is to America no longer the same Europe as she is now, tranquil, and watching with the most vigilant attention all her own peculiar interests, without regard to the operation of her policy upon us. The effect of this altered state of Europe upon us has been to circumscribe the employment of our marine, and greatly to reduce the value of the produce of our territorial labor. The further effect of this twofold reduction has been, to decrease the value of all property, whether on the land or on the ocean, and which I suppose to be about fifty per centum. And the still further effect has been, to diminish the amount of our circulating medium, in a proportion not less, by its transmission abroad, or its withdrawal by the banking institutions, from a necessity which they could not control. The quantity of money, in whatever form it may be, which a nation wants, is in proportion to the total mass of its wealth, and to the activity of that wealth. A nation that has but little wealth, has but a limited want of money. In stating the fact, therefore, that the total wealth of the country has diminished, within a few years, in a ratio of about fifty per centum, we shall, at once, fully comprehend the inevitable reduction which must have ensued, in the total quantity of the circulating medium of the country. A nation is most prosperous when there is a gradual and untempting addition to the aggregate of its circulating medium. It is in a condition the most adverse, when there is a rapid diminution in the quantity of the circulating medium, and a consequent depression in the value of property. In the former case, the wealth of individuals insensibly increases, and income keeps ahead of expenditure. But in the latter instance, debts have been contracted, engagements made, and habits of expense established, in reference to the existing state of wealth and of its representative. When these come to be greatly reduced, individuals find their debts still existing, their engagements unexecuted, and their habits inveterate. They see themselves in the possession of the same property, on which, in good faith, they had bound themselves. But that property, without their fault, possesses no longer the same value; and hence discontent, impoverishment, and ruin, arise. Let us suppose, Mr. Chairman, that Europe was again the theatre of such a general war as recently raged throughout all her dominions such a state of the war as existed in her greatest exertions and in our greatest prosperity; instantly there would arise a greedy demand for the surplus produce of our industry, for our commerce, for our navigation. The languor which now prevails in our cities, and in our seaports, would give way to an animated activity. Our roads and rivers would be crowded with the produce of the interior. Every where we should witness excited industry. The precious metals would reflow from abroad upon us. Banks, which have maintained their credit, would revive their business; and new banks would be established to take the place of those which have sunk beneath the general pressure. For it is a mistake to suppose that they have produced our present adversity; they may have somewhat aggravated it, but they were the effect and the evidence of our prosperity. Prices would again get up; the former value of property would be restored. And those embarrassed persons who have not been already overwhelmed by the times, would suddenly find, in | the augmented value of their property, and the renewal of their business, ample means to extricate themselves from all their difficulties. Th greatest want of civilized society is, a market for the sale and exchange of the surplus of the produce of the labor of its members. This market may exist at home or abroad, or both; but it must exist somewhere, if society prospers; and, wherever it does exist, it should be competent to the absorption of the entire surplus of production. It is most desirable that there should be both a home and a foreign market. But, with respect to their relative superiority, I cannot entertain a doubt. The home market is first in order, and paramount in importance. The object of the bill under consideration, is, to create this home market, and to lay the foundations of a genuine American policy. It is opposed; and it is incumbent upon the partisans of the foreign policy (terms which I shall use without any invidious intent) to demonstrate that the foreign market is an adequate vent for the surplus produce of our labor. But is it so? First, foreign nations cannot, if they would, take our surplus produce. If the source of supply, no matter of what, increases in a greater ratio than the demand for that supply, a glut of the market is inevitable, even if we suppose both to remain perfectly unobstructed. The duplication of our population takes place in terms of about twenty-five years. The term will be more and more extended as our numbers multiply. But it will be a sufficient approximation to assume this ratio for the present. We increase, therefore, in population, at the rate of about four per centum per annum. Suppos ing the increase of our production to be in the same ratio, we should, every succeeding year, have of surplus produce, four per centum more than that of the preceding year, without taking into the account the differences of seasons which neutralize each other. If, therefore, we are to rely upon the foreign market exclusively, foreign consumption ought to be shown to be increasing in the same ratio of four per centum per annum, if it be an adequate vent for our surplus produce. But, as I have supposed the measure of our increasing production to be furnished by that of our increasing population, so the measure of their power of consumption must be determined by that of the increase of their population. Now, the total foreign population, who consume our surplus produce, upon an average, do not double their aggregate number in a shorter term than that of about one hundred years. Our powers of production increases then, in a ratio four times greater than their powers of consump tion. And hence their utter inability to receive from us our surplus produce. But, secondly, if they could, they will not. The policy of all Europe is adverse to the recep tion of our agricultural produce, so far as it comes into collision with its own; and under that limitation we are absolutely forbid to enter their ports, except under circumstances which deprive them of all value as a steady market. The policy of all Europe rejects those great | the amount of the exports of the same produce, staples of our country which consist of objects in the year ending on the thirtieth of September of human subsistence. The policy of all Europe last, ought to have been eighty-five millions four refuses to receive from us any thing but those hundred and twenty thousand eight hundred raw materials of smaller value, essential to their and sixty-one. It was, in fact, only forty-seven manufactures, to which they can give a higher millions one hundred and fifty-five thousand value, with the exception of tobacco and rice, four hundred and eight. Taking the average of which they cannot produce. Even Great Brit- five years, from 1803 to 1807, inclusive, the ain, to which we are its best customer, and amount of native produce exported, was fortyfrom which we receive nearly one half in value three millions two hundred and two thousand of our whole imports, will not take from us seven hundred and fifty-one for each of those articles of subsistence produced in our country years. Estimating what it ought to have been, cheaper than can be produced in Great Britain. during the last year, applying the principle sugIn adopting this exclusive policy, the States of gested to that amount, there should have been Europe do not inquire what is best for us, but exported seventy-seven millions seven hundred what suits themselves respectively; they do not and sixty-six thousand seven hundred and fiftytake jurisdiction of the question of our interests, one, instead of forty-seven millions one hundred but limit the object of their legislation to that and fifty-five thousand four hundred and eight. of the conservation of their own peculiar inter- If these comparative amounts of the aggregate ests, leaving us free to prosecute ours as we actual exports, and what they ought to have please. They do not guide themselves by that been, be discouraging, we shall find, on descendromantic philanthropy, which we see displayed ing into particulars, still less cause of satisfaction. here, and which invokes us to continue to pur- The export of tobacco in 1791, was one hundred chase the produce of foreign industry, without and twelve thousand four hundred and twentyregard to the state of prosperity of our own, eight hogsheads. That was the year of the that foreigners may be pleased to purchase the largest exportation of that article; but it is the few remaining articles of ours, which their only instance in which I have selected the maxirestricted policy has not yet absolutely excluded mum of exportation. The amount of what we from their consumption. What sort of a figure ought to have exported last year, estimated would a member of the British Parliament have according to the scale of increase which I have made, what sort of a reception would his oppo- used, is two hundred and sixty-six thousand sition have obtained, if he had remonstrated three hundred and thirty-two hogsheads. The against the passage of the corn-law, by which actual export was ninety-nine thousand and British consumption is limited to the bread-stuffs nine hogsheads. We exported, in 1803, the of British production, to the entire exclusion of quantity of one million three hundred and eleven American, and stated, that America could not thousand eight hundred and fifty-three barrels and would not buy British manufactures, if of flour; and ought to have exported last year, Britain did not buy American flour? two millions three hundred and sixty-one thousand three hundred and thirty-three barrels. We, in fact, exported only seven hundred and fifty-six thousand seven hundred and two barrels. Of that quantity, we sent to South America one hundred and fifty thousand barrels, according to a statement furnished me by the diligence of a friend near me (Mr. Poinsett), to whose valuable mass of accurate information, in regard to that interesting quarter of the world, I have had occasion frequently to apply. But that demand is temporary, growing out of the existing state of war. Whenever peace is restored to it, and I now hope that the day is not distant when its independence will be generally acknowledged, there cannot be a doubt that it will supply its own consumption. In all parts of it, the soil, either from climate or from elevation, is well adapted to the culture of wheat; and nowhere can better wheat be produced, than in some portions of Mexico and Chili. Still the market of South America is one which, on other accounts, deserves the greatest consideration. And I congratulate you, the committee, and the country, on the recent adoption of a more auspicious policy toward it. Both the inability and the policy of foreign powers, then, forbid us to rely upon the foreign market, as being an adequate vent for the surplus produce of American labor. Now let us see if this general reasoning is not fortified and confirmed by the actual experience of this country. If the foreign market may be safely relied upon, as furnishing an adequate demand for our surplus produce, then the official documents will show a progressive increase, from year to year, in the exports of our native produce, in a proportion equal to that which I have suggested. If, on the contrary, we shall find from them that, for a long term of past years, some of our most valuable staples have retrograded, some remained stationary, and others advanced but little, if any, in amount, with the exception of cotton, the deductions of reason and the lessons of experience will alike command us to withdraw our confidence in the competency of the foreign market. The total amount of all our exports of domestic produce for the year, beginning in 1795, and ending on the thirtieth of September, 1796, was forty millions seven hundred and sixty-four thousand and ninety-seven. Estimating the increase according to the ratio of the increase of our population, that is, at four per centum per annum, We exported, in 1803, Indian corn to the amount of two millions seventy-four thousand six hundred and eight bushels. The quantity more and more enter into competition with us in the supply of the West India market. That of South America, for articles of subsistence, will probably soon vanish. The value of our exports, for the future, may remain at about what it was last year. But, if we do not create some new market; if we persevere in the existing pursuits of agriculture, the inevitable consequence must be, to augment greatly the quantity of our produce, and to lessen its value in the foreign market. Can there be a doubt on this point? Take the article of cotton, for example, which is almost the only article that scription of labor is powerfully attracted toward the cotton-growing country. The cultivation will be greatly extended, the aggregate amount annually produced, will be vast.y augmented. The price will fall. The more unfavorable soils will then be gradually abandoned. And I have no doubt that, in a few years, it will cease to be profitably produced, any where north of the thirty-fourth degree of latitude. But, in the mean time, large numbers of the cotton-growers will suffer the greatest distress. And while this distress is brought upon our own country, foreign industry will be stimulated by the very cause which occasions our distress. For, by surcharging the markets abroad, the price of the raw material being reduced, the manufac turer will be able to supply cotton fabrics cheaper; and the consumption, in his own country, and in foreign nations, other than ours (where the value of the import must be limited to the value of the export, which I have sup posed to remain the same), being proportionably extended, there will be, consequently, an increased demand for the produce of his industry. should have been, in 1823, three millions seven | ours. We may even anticipate that she will hundred and thirty-four thousand two hundred and eighty-eight bushels. The actual quantity exported, was seven hundred and forty-nine thousand and thirty-four bushels, or about onefifth of what it should have been, and a little more than one-third of what it was more than twenty years ago. We ought not, then, to be surprised at the extreme depression of the price of that article, of which I have heard my honorable friend (Mr. Bassett) complain, nor of the distress of the corn-growing districts adjacent to the Chesapeake Bay. We exported seventyseven thousand nine hundred and thirty-four barrels of beef in 1803, and last year but sixty-now remunerates labor and capital. A certain deone thousand four hundred and eighteen, instead of one hundred and forty thousand two hundred and seventy-four barrels. In the same year (1803) we exported ninety-six thousand six hundred and two barrels of pork, and last year fifty-five thousand five hundred and twenty-nine, instead of one hundred and seventy-three thousand eight hundred and eighty-two barrels. Rice has not advanced, by any means, in the proportion, which it ought to have done. All the small articles, such as cheese, butter, candles, and so forth, too minute to detail, but important in their aggregate, have also materially diminished. Cotton alone has advanced. But, while the quantity of it is augmented, its actual value is considerably diminished. The total quantity last year, exceeded that of the preceding year, by nearly thirty millions of pounds. And yet the total value of the year of smaller exportation, exceeded that of the last year by upward of three and a half millions of dollars. If this article, the capacity of our country to produce which was scarcely known in 1790, were subtracted from the mass of our exports, the value of the residue would only be a little upward of twenty-seven millions during the last year. The distribution of the articles of our exports throughout the United States, cannot fail to fix the attention of the committee. Of the forty-seven millions one hundred and fifty-five thousand four hundred and eight, to which they amounted last year, three articles alone (cotton, rice, and tobacco) composed together twenty-eight millions five hundred and forty-nine thousand one hundred and seventyseven. Now these articles are chiefly produced at the South. And if we estimate that portion of our population who are actually engaged in their culture, it would probably not exceed two millions. Thus, then, less than one-fifth of the whole population of the United States produced upward of one-half, nearly two-thirds, of the entire value of the exports of the last year. Is this foreign market, so incompetent at present, and which, limited as its demands are, operates so unequally upon the productive labor of our country, likely to improve in future? If I am correct in the views which I have presented to the committee, it must become worse and worse. What can improve it? Europe will not abandon her own agriculture to foster All others Our agriculture is our greatest interest. It ought ever to be predominant. should bend to it. And, in considering what is for its advantage, we should contemplate it in all its varieties, of planting, farming, and graz ing. Can we do nothing to invigorate it; noth ing to correct the errors of the past, and to brighten the still more unpromising prospects which lie before us? We have seen, I think, the causes of the distresses of the country. We have seen, that an exclusive dependence upon the foreign market must lead to still severer distress, to impoverishment, to ruin. We must then change somewhat our course. We must give a new direction to some portion of our industry. We must speedily adopt a genuine American policy. Still cherishing the foreign market, let us create also a home market, to give further scope to the consumption of the produce of American industry. Let us counteract the policy of foreigners, and withdraw the support which we now give to their industry, and stimulate that of our own coun try. It should be a prominent object with wise legislators, to multiply the vocations and extend the business of society, as far as it can be done, by the protection of our interests at home, |