of legislative warfare which was then beginning to be distinctly developed. Yet he was the youngest man that had ever represented South Carolina in the Senate of the United States, being barely qualified, in point of age, to take his scat in that body. His time, having been almost exclusively devoted to the labors of his profession from the moment he entered upon the stage of active life, he felt that he was not sufficiently prepared for those great questions, which would come before the Senate; and with that high sense of duty, and resolute purpose to perform it, which were his leading characteristics as a public man, he devoted one whole summer immediately after his election, to the examination of the various manufacturing establishments at the North, and to the acquisition of that practical knowledge, which he never failed to exhibit in all the discussions connected with that subject.

On the new and more extended theatre on which he was now acting, he exhibited all those high qualities as a legislator, by which he had been distinguished while confined to a more limited sphere of action. To say that he very soon rose to a distinguished rank in one of the most august assemblies in the world, where the representatives of twenty-four sovereign States were sitting in council to discuss and decide the gravest questions of foreign and domestic policy, is no common praise for so young a man, just transferred from the judicial forum to the senatorial hall. His eminent talents for business, his indefatigable industry, and his peculiar powers of prompt and lucid explanation, could not but indicate him to the presiding officer of the Senate, as the chairman of one of its most important committees. During the greater part of his course of service in that body, he was

་

Chairman of the Committee on Naval Affairs, and performed the various and responsible duties of the station with such uniform industry, zeal and ability, as to secure the universal confidence of the Senate, and the general esteem and admiration of the officers of the Navy. I believe no chairman that ever presided over a committee in Congress, discharged his duties with more habitual promptitude, presented measures to the house in a more perfect state of preparation, or came more fully prepared to support and defend them.

One of the maxims of that system in business by which he accomplished so much with so little embarrassment—a maxim as important in council as in the field-was "never to postpone till to-morrow." No confused piles of neglected documents—no such annoying monuments of procrastinating indolencewere found upon his table. He was always prepared. The encomium passed upon him by our distinguished fellow citizen, who then presided over the Senate, would, I doubt not, be ratified by the general concurrence of that body:-"I have often said, while I presided in the Senate, that he was the best Chairman of a Committee I ever saw in any deliberative body."

So complete was his mastery of our whole system of Naval defences, and so signal his display of practical administrative talents, that it became a very general wish among the officers of the Navy, and of others who felt a strong interest in its welfare, that he should be placed at the head of the Naval Depart

ment.

I now propose to speak of his more public exhibitions of talent in the Senate, as a parliamentary speak, er. Making it a matter of conscientious duty to

investigate thoroughly every question of importance upon which he might be called upon to vote, he seldom failed to bear a conspicuous part in the discussion of such questions; and one cannot but be struck, in reviewing the congressional debates, with the minuteness of his information on every subject he discusses, and the uniform ability with which he maintains his opinions. He exhibits the peculiar and rare excellence as a public speaker, founded upon good sense and good taste, of never rising above or falling below his subject, saying just enough and no more, and just as it ought to be said.

I cannot even make a passing allusion to his various speeches, on the numerous and important subjects brought before the Senate, while he was a member of that body. But his memory and his fame are so closely and, inseparably identified with the opposition made to the protecting system by himself in Congress, and by South Carolina in the character of a sovereign party to the federal compact, that I should violate the most sacred obligations of friendship and of duty, if I did not exhibit, with all the fidelity of history, the part he acted on that memorable question, in Congress, in the State Convention, and finally as the Chief Magistrate of the State.

In every stage of its progress in the federal legislature, he was the able, vigilant, eloquent and uncompromising opponent of that system. When the tariff of 1824 came before the Senate, he made one of his earliest and most successful efforts as a debater in that body, in opposition to it, exhibiting at the same time a comprehensive knowledge of the true principles of political economy and a thorough and minute knowledge of facts and details, which enabled him to demonstrate how grossly those principles were

violated by that measure. He replied, I think most triumphantly, to the speech made by Mr. CLAY in the House of Representatives, during the same session, exposing the shallow plausibilities, and overturning the lumbering piles of misapplied statistics, upon which the great author of that system of injustice, error and delusion, had been obliged to rest it. In that speech he distinctly denied the constitutional power of Congress to imposc duties upon imports, for the purpose of protecting domestic manufactures -being among the first, if not the very first, who had ever taken that ground in Congress. His efforts in opposition to the tariff of 1828-the fatal consummation of that climax of unequal and oppressive measures, which threatened absolute destruction to the great agricultural interests of the exporting States, were in all respects equal to the momentous occasion. Ever at his post, and on all occasions prepared to meet and to drive back the strongest champions of this "mammoth of injustice and oppression," as he most appropriately styled it, he did every thing that human reasoning and human eloquence could do, to save the rights and interests of South Carolina, and the other planting States, from this crowning measure of legislative despotism. But what could human reason and human cloquence avail against a predetermined and infatuated majority, composed of various interests, bound together by a mercenary league to plunder the exporting States of the Union, through the perverted forms of federal legislation? These were no weapons to use in such a contest, as the course of events too soon and too fatally demonstrated. Accordingly this odious and oppressive measure passed through all the solemn mockery of legislative forms; and in the name

and by the authority of a government claiming to be "paternal," one third of the annual income which South Carolina derived from the export of her great staples, was confiscated, for the use of the northern manufacturers. The annals of legislation furnish no parallel example of outrage upon every principle of freedom, consecrated by the sacrifices and the blood of our common ancestors in the Revolution, and upon every guarantee for the enjoyment of that freedom provided by the wisdom of those who formed the, compact of our federal union. The flame of popular indignation and excitement burst forth simultaneously in every planting State with irrepressible violence, and this measure was universally denounced by the people in their primary assemblies, without distinction of party, as unconstitutional, unjust, and oppressive. In none of these States did this flame of indignant feeling burn with so great intensity, as in South Carolina; and the mind of every reflecting citizen was naturally led to the inquiry, whether there was any remedy in the reserved sovereignty of the State, by which the progress of this insufferable evil could be arrested, without resorting to the last painful remedy of withdrawing from the confederacy. But as one ray of hope yet remained, that on the extinguishment of the public debt, an event then rapidly approaching, Congress would be constrained by the public voice to relieve us from our oppressive burthens, the people of South Carolina, actuated by a long cherished and disinterested attachment to the Union, determined to acquiesce in the wrongs they suffered, until that last hope should be extinguished.

In the year 1832, the payment of the public debt having been nearly completed, all parties in Congress