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to carry it on, perhaps I might give it: but my rights and liberties are involved in the grant, and I will never surrender them whilst I have life. The gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Crowninshield), is for sponging the debt. I can never consent to it. I will never bring the ways and means of fraudulent bankruptcy into your committee of supply. Confiscation and swindling shall never be found among my estimates, to meet the current expenditure of peace or war. No, sir. I have said with the doors closed, and I say so when they are open, "pay the public debt." Get rid of that dead weight upon your Government, that cramp upon all your measures, and then you may put the world at defiance. So long as it hangs upon you, you must have revenue, and to have revenue, you must have commerce-commerce, peace. And shall these nefarious schemes be advised for lightening the public burthens? will you resort to these low and pitiful shifts? will you dare even to mention these dishonest artifices, to eke out your expenses, when the public treasure is lavished on Turks and infidels; on singing boys, and dancing girls; to furnish the means of bestiality to an African barbarian ?

Gentlemen say, that Great Britain will count upon our divisions. How! What does she know of them? Can they ever expect greater unanimity than prevailed at the last Presidential election? No, sir, 'tis the gentleman's own conscience that sqeaks. But if she cannot calculate upon your divisions, at least she may reckon upon your pusillanimity. She may well despise the resentment that cannot be excited to honorable battle on its own ground-the mere effusion of mercantile cupidity. Gentlemen talk of repealing the British treaty. The gentleman from Pennsylvania should have thought of that before he voted to carry it into effect. And what is all this for? A point which Great Britain will not abandon to Russia, you expect her to yield to you. Russia indisputably the second power of continental Europe, with half a million of hardy troops, with sixty sail of the line, thirty millions of subjects, a territory more extensive even than our ownRussia, sir, the store-house of the British navy -whom it is not more the policy and the interest, than the sentiment of that Government, to soothe and to conciliate; her sole hope of a diversion on the continent-her only efficient ally. What this formidable power cannot obtain with fleets and armies, you will command by writ-with pot-hooks and hangers. I am for no such policy. True honor is always the same. Before you enter into a contest, public or private, be sure you have fortitude enough to go through with it. If you mean war, say so, and prepare for it. Look on the other side -behold the respect in which France holds neutral rights on land-observe her conduct in regard to the Franconian estates of the King of Prussia: I say nothing of the petty powersof the Elector of Baden, or of the Swiss: I speak of a first-rate monarchy of Europe, and

at a momeut too, when its neutrality was the object of all others nearest to the heart of the French Emperor. If you make him monarch of the ocean, you may bid adieu to it for ever. You may take your leave, sir, of navigationeven of the Mississippi. What is the situation of New Orleans, if attacked to-morrow? Filled with a discontented and repining people, whose language, manners, and religion, all incline them to the invader-a dissatisfied people, who despise the miserable governor you have set over them-whose honest prejudices, and basest passions alike take part against you. I draw my information from no dubious source-from a native American, an enlightened member of that odious and imbecile government. You have official information that the town and its dependencies are utterly defenceless and untenable-a firm belief, that apprised of this, Government would do something to put the place in a state of security, alone has kept the American portion of that community quiet. You have held that post-you now hold it by the tenure of the naval predominance of England, and yet you are for a British naval war.

There are now two great commercial nations. Great Britain is one-we are the other. When you consider the many points of contact between our interests, you may be surprised that there has been so little collision. Sir, to the other belligerent nations of Europe your navigation is a convenience, I might say, a necessary. If you do not carry for them they must starve, at least for the luxuries of life, which custom has rendered almost indispensable. And, if you cannot act with some degree of spirit towards those who are dependent upon you, as carriers, do you reckon to browbeat a jealous rival, who, the moment she lets slip the dogs of war, sweeps you, at a blow, from the ocean? And, cui bono? for whose benefit?The planter? Nothing like it. The fair, honest, real American merchant? No, sir-for renegadoes; to-day American-to-morrow, Danes. Go to war when you will, the property, now covered by the American, will then pass under the Danish, or some other neutral flag. Gentlemen say, that one English ship is worth three of ours: we shall therefore have the advantage in privateering. Did they ever know a nation get rich by privateering? This is stuff for the nursery. Remember that your products are bulky-as has been stated-that they require a vast tonnage. Take these carriers out of the market-what is the result? The manufactures of England, which (to use a finishing touch of the gentleman's rhetoric) have received the finishing stroke of art, lie in a small comparative compass. The neutral trade can carry them. Your produce rots in the warehouse-you go to Statia or St. Thomas's, and get a striped blanket for a joe, if you can raise one-double freight, charges, and commissions. Who receives the profit ?-The carrier. Who pays it?-The consumer. All your produce that finds its way to England must bear the

in well-selected phrases, doctrines too deformed and detestable to bear exposure in naked words;

by a judicious choice of epithets, to draw the attention from the lurking principle beneath, and perpetuate delusion. But a little while ago, and any man might be proud to be considered as the head of the republican party. Now, it seems, 'tis reproachful to be deemed the chief of a dominant faction. Mark the magic words! Head, chief. Republican party, dominant faction. But as to these Saxon manufactures. What became of their Dresden china? Why, the Prussian bayonets have broken all the pots, and you are content with Worcestershire or Staffordshire ware. There are some other fine manufactures on the continent, but no supply, except, perhaps, of linens, the article we can best dispense with. A few individuals, sir, may have a coat of Louviers cloth, or a service of Sevres china-but there is too little, and that little too dear, to furnish the nation. You must depend on the fur trade in earnest, and wear buffalo hides and bear-skins.

same accumulated charges, with this difference: | ness of cunning people to wrap up and disguise that there the burthen falls on the home price. I appeal to the experience of the last war, which has been so often cited. What, then, was the price of produce, and of broadcloth? But you are told England will not make war -she has her hands full. Holland calculated in the same way, in 1781. How did it turn out? You stand now in the place of Holland, then-without her navy, unaided by the preponderating fleets of France and Spain-to say nothing of the Baltic powers. Do you want to take up the cudgels where these great mari- | time powers have been forced to drop them? to meet Great Britain on the ocean, and drive her off its face? If you are so far gone as this, every capital measure of your policy has hitherto been wrong. You should have nurtured the old, and devised new systems of taxation-have cherished your navy. Begin this business when you may, land-taxes, stamp-acts, window-taxes, hearth-money, excise, in all its modifications of vexation and oppression, must precede, or follow after. But, sir, as French is the fashion of the day, I may be asked for my projet. I can readily tell gentlemen what I will not do. I will not propitiate any foreign nation with money. I will not launch into a naval war with Great Britain, although I am ready to meet her at the Cow-pens, or Bunker's Hill. And for this plain reason. We are a great land animal, and our business is on shore. I will send her no money, sir, on any pretext whatsoever, much less on pretence of buying Labrador, or Botany Bay, when my real object was to secure limits, which she formally acknowledged at the peace of 1783. I go further-I would (if any thing) have laid an embargo. This would have got our own property home, and our adversary's into our power. If there is any wisdom left among us, the first step towards hostility will always be an embargo. In six months all your mercantile megrims would vanish. As to us, although it would cut deep, we can stand it. Without such a precaution, go to war when you will, you go to the wall. As to debts, strike the balance tomorrow, and England is, I believe, in our debt. I hope, sir, to be excused for proceeding in this desultory course. I flatter myself I shall not have occasion again to trouble you-I know not that I shall be able-certainly not willing, unless provoked in self-defence. I ask your attention to the character of the inhabitants of that southern country, on whom gentlemen rely for the support of their measure. Who and what are they? A simple agricultural people, accustomed to travel in peace to market, with the produce of their labor. Who takes it from us? Another people devoted to manufactures -our sole source of supply. I have seen some stuff in the newspapers about manufactures in Saxony, and about a man who is no longer the chief of a dominant faction. The greatest man whom I ever knew-the immortal author of the letters of Curtius-has remarked the prone.

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Can any man, who understands Europe, pretend to say that a particular foreign policy is now right, because it would have been expedient twenty, or even ten years ago, without abandoning all regard for common sense? Sir, it is the statesman's province to be guided by circumstances, to anticipate, to foresee themto give them a course and a direction-to mould them to his purpose. It is the business of a counting-house clerk to peer into the day-book and ledger, to see no further than the spectacles on his nose, to feel not beyond the pen behind his ear-to chatter in coffee-houses, and be the oracle of clubs. From 1783 to 1793, and even later (I don't stickle for dates), France had a formidable marine-so had Holland-so had Spain. The two first possessed thriving manufactures and a flourishing commerce. Great Britain, tremblingly alive to her manufacturing interests and carrying-trade, would have felt to the heart any measure calculated to favor her rivals in these pursuits-she would have yielded then to her fears and her jealousy alone. What is the case now? She lays an export duty on her manufactures, and there ends the question. If Georgia shall (from whatever cause) so completely monopolize the culture of cotton as to be able to lay an export duty of three per cent. upon it, besides taxing its cultivators, in every other shape that human or infernal ingenuity can devise, is Pennsylvania likely to rival her, or take away the trade?

But sir, it seems that we, who are opposed to this resolution, are men of no nerves-who trembled in the days of the British treatycowards (I presume) in the reign of terror! Is this true? Hunt up the journals; let our actions tell. We pursue our unshaken course. We care not for the nations of Europe, but make foreign relations bend to our political principles, and subserve our country's interest. We have no wish to see another Actium, or

Pharsalia, or the lieutenants of a modern Alexander, playing at piquet, or all-fours, for the empire of the world. 'Tis poor comfort to us, to be told that France has too decided a taste for luxurious things to meddle with us; that Egypt is her object, or the coast of Barbary, and at the worst we shall be the last devoured. We are enamored with neither nation-we would play their own game upon them, use them for our interest and convenience. But with all my abhorrence of the British government, I should not hesitate between Westminster-Hall and a Middlesex-jury, on the one hand, and the wood of Vincennes, and a file of Grenadiers, on the other. That jury-trial which walked with Horne Tooke, and Hardy, through the flames of ministerial persecution, is, I confess, more to my taste, than the trial of the Duke d' Enghien.

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the Union, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge expedient and necessary." Has he done it? I know, sir, that we may say, and do say, that we are independent (would it were true); as free to give a direction to the executive as to receive it from him. But do what you will, foreign relationsevery measure short of war, and even the course of hostilities, depend upon him. He stands at the helm, and must guide the vessel of State. You give him money to buy Florida, and he purchases Louisiana.-You may furnish means the application of those means rests with him. Let not the master and mate go below when the ship is in distress, and throw the responsibility upon the cook and the cabinboy. I said so when your doors were shut: I scorn to say less now that they are open. Gentlemen may say what they please. They may Mr. Chairman, I am sensible of having de- put an insignificant individual to the ban of the tained the committee longer than I ought-Republic; I shall not alter my course. I blush certainly much longer than I intended. I am with indignation at the misrepresentations equally sensible of their politeness, and not less which have gone forth in the public prints of so, sir, of your patient attention. It is your our proceedings, public and private. Are the own indulgence, sir, badly requited indeed, to people of the United States, the real sovereigns which you owe this persecution. I might offer of the country, unworthy of knowing what, another apology for these undigested, desultory there is too much reason to believe, has been remarks; my never having seen the treasury communicated to the privileged spies of foreign documents. Until I came into the House this governments? I think our citizens just as well morning, I have been stretched on a sick bed. entitled to know what has passed, as the MarBut when I behold the affairs of this nation, quis Yrujo, who has bearded your President to instead of being where I hoped, and the people his face, insulted your government within its believed they were, in the hands of responsible own peculiar jurisdiction, and outraged all men, committed to Tom, Dick, and Harry-to decency. Do you mistake this diplomatic pupthe refuse of the retail trade of politics-I do pet for an automaton? He has orders for all feel, I cannot help feeling, the most deep and he does. Take his instructions from his pocket serious concern. If the executive government to-morrow, they are signed "Charles Maurice would step forward and say, "such is our plan Talleyrand." Let the nation know what they -such is our opinion, and such are our reasons have to depend upon. Be true to them, and in support of it," I would meet it fairly, would (trust me) they will prove true to themselves openly oppose, or pledge myself to support it. and to you. The people are honest; now at But without compass or polar star, I will not home at their ploughs, not dreaming of what launch into an ocean of unexplored measures, you are about. But the spirit of inquiry, that which stand condemned by all the information has too long slept, will be, must be, awakened. to which I have access. The constitution of Let them begin to think; not to say such things the United States declares it to be the province are proper because they have been done-but and duty of the President "to give to Congress, what has been done? and wherefore?-and all from time to time, information of the state of will be right.

SPEECH ON THE TARIFF.

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upon myself, much less upon the House, when I say, that if I had consulted my own feelings the House exhausted as it is, and as I am, with and inclinations, I should not have troubled any further remarks upon this subject. I come to the discharge of this task, not merely with reluctance, but with disgust; jaded, worn down, abraded I may say, as I am by long attendance upon this body, and continued stretch of the attention upon this subject. I come to it, however, at the suggestion, and in pursuance of the

wishes of those whose wishes are to me, in all matters touching my public duty, paramount law; I speak with those reservations of course, which every moral agent must be supposed to make to himself.

It was not more to my surprise, than to my disappointment, that on my return to the House, after a necessary absence of a few days, on indispensable business, I found it engaged in discussing the general principle of the bill, when its details were under consideration. If I had expected such a turn in the debate, I would, at any private sacrifice, however great, have remained a spectator and auditor of that discussion. With the exception of the speech, already published, of my worthy colleague on my right, Mr. P. P. Barbour, I have been nearly deprived of the benefit of the discussion which has taken place. Many weeks have been occupied with this bill (I hope the House will pardon me for saying so) before I took the slightest part in the deliberations of the details; and I now sincerely regret that I had not firmness enough to adhere to the resolution which I had laid down to myself, in the early stage of the debate, not to take any part in the discussion of the details of the measure. But, as I trust, what I now have to say upon this subject, although more and better things have been said by others, may not be the same that they have said, or may not be said in the same manner; I here borrow the language of a man who has been heretofore conspicuous in the councils of the country; of one who was unrivalled for readiness and dexterity in debate; who was long without an equal on the floor of this body; who contributed as much to the revolution of 1801, as any man in this nation, and derived as little benefit from it; as, to use the words of that celebrated man, what I have to say is not that which has been said by others, and will not be said in their manner, the House will, I trust, have patience with me during the time that my strength will allow me to occupy their attention. And I beg them to understand, that the notes which I hold in my hand are not the notes on which I mean to speak, but of what others have spoken, and from which I will make the smallest selection in my power.

Here permit me to say, that I am obliged and with great reluctance, to differ from my worthy colleague, who has taken so conspicuous a part in this debate, about one fact, which I will call to his recollection, for I am sure it was in his memory, though sleeping. He has undertaken to state the causes by which the difference in the relative condition of various parts of the Union has been produced; but my worthy colleague has omitted to state the "primum mobile" of the commerce and manufactures to which a portion of the country that I need not name, owes its present prosperity and wealth. That "primum mobile" was southern capital. I speak not now of transactions "quorum pars minima fui," but of things which, nevertheless, I have a contemporaneous recollection. I say, without the fear of contradiction, then, that in

consequence of the enormous depreciation of the evidences of the public debt of this country the debt proper of the United States, (to which must be added an item of not less than twenty millions of dollars for the State debts assumed by the United States), being bought up and almost engrossed by the people of what were then called the Northern States-a measure which nobody dreamt any thing about, of which nobody had the slightest suspicionI mean the assumption of the State debts by the federal government-these debts being bought up for a mere song, a capital of eighty millions of dollars, or, in other words, a credit to that amount, bearing an interest of six per cent. per annum (with the exception of nineteen millions, the interest of that debt which bore an interest of three per cent.)—a capital of eighty millions of dollars was poured in a single day into the coffers of the North; and to that cause we may mainly ascribe the difference so disastrous to the South, between that country and the other portion of this Union, to which I have alluded. When we, roused by the sufferings of our brethren of Boston, entered into the contest with the mother country, and when we came out of it-when this constitution was adopted, we were comparatively rich; they were positively poor. What is now our relative situation? They are flourishing and rich; we are tributary to them, not only through the medium of the public debt of which I may have spoken, but also through the medium of the pension list, nearly the whole amount of which is disbursed in the Eastern States-and to this creation of a day is to be ascribed the difference of our relative situation (I hope my worthy colleague will not consider any thing that I say as conflicting with his general principles, to which I heartily subscribe). Yes, sir, and the price paid for the creation of all that portion of this capital, which consisted of the assumed debts of the States, was the immense boon of fixing the seat of government where it now is. And I advert to this bargain, because I wish to show to every member of this House, and, if it were possible, to every individual of this nation, the most tremendous and calamitous results of political bargaining.

Sir, when are we to have enough of this tariff question? In 1816 it was supposed to be settled. Only three years thereafter, another proposition for increasing it was sent from this House to the Senate, baited with a tax of four cents per pound on brown sugar. It was fortunately rejected in that body. In what manner this bill is baited, it does not become me to say; but I have too distinct a recollection of the vote in committee of the whole, on the duty upon molasses, and afterwards of the vote in the House on the same question; of the votes of more than one of the States on that question, not to mark it well. I do not say that the change of the vote on that question was effected by any man's voting against his own motion; but I do not hesitate to say that it was effected

by one man's electioneering against his own region, we are, as to our counsels in regard to motion. I am very glad, Mr. Speaker, that old this measure, but as one man; that there exists Massachusetts Bay and the province of Maine on the subject but one feeling and one interest. and Sagadahock, by whom we stood in the days We are proscribed and put to the bar; and if of the Revolution, now stand by the South, and we do not feel, and, feeling, do not act, we are will not aid in fixing on us this system of taxa- bastards to those fathers who achieved the revotion, compared with which the taxation of Mr. | lution: then shall we deserve to make our bricks Grenville and Lord North was as nothing. I without straw. There is no case on record, in speak with knowledge of what I say, when I which a proposition like this, suddenly changing declare, that this bill is an attempt to reduce the whole frame of a country's polity, tearing the country south of Mason and Dixon's line, asunder every ligature of the body politic, was and east of the Alleghany mountains, to a state ever carried by a lean majority of two or three of worse than colonial bondage; a state to votes, unless it be the usurpation of the septenwhich the domination of Great Britain was, in nial act, which passed the British parliament by, my judgment, far preferable; and I trust I shall I think, a majority of one vote, the same that always have the fearless integrity to utter any laid the tax on cotton bagging. I do not stop political sentiment which the head sanctions here, sir, to argue about the constitutionality of and the heart ratifies; for the British Parliament this bill; I consider the constitution a dead letnever would have dared to lay such duties on ter. I consider it to consist, at this time, of our imports, or their exports to us, either "at the power of the General Government and the home" or here, as is now proposed to be laid upon power of the States: that is the constitution. the imports from abroad. At that time we had You may entrench yourself in parchment to the the command of the market of the vast do- teeth, says lord Chatham, the sword will find minions then subject, and we should have had its way to the vitals of the constitution. I have those which have since been subjected to the no faith in parchment, sir; I have no faith in British empire; we enjoyed a free trade emi- the "abracadabra" of the constitution; I have nently superior to any thing that we can enjoy, faith in the power of that commonwealth of if this bill shall go into operation. It is a sac- which I am an unworthy son; in the power of rifice of the interests of a part of this nation to those Carolinas, and of that Georgia, in her anthe ideal benefit of the rest. It marks us out cient and utmost extent, to the Mississippi, as the victims of a worse than Egyptian bond- which went with us through the valley of the age. It is a barter of so much of our rights, of shadow of death in the war of our independence. so much of the fruits of our labor, for political I have said that I shall not stop to discuss the power to be transferred to other hands. It constitutionality of this question, for that reaought to be met, and I trust it will be met, in son and for a better; that there never was a the southern country, as was the stamp act, and constitution under the sun in which, by an unby all those measures, which I will not detain wise exercise of the powers of the government, the House by recapitulating, which succeeded the people may not be driven to the extremity the stamp act, and produced the final breach of resistance by force. "For it is not, perhaps, with the mother country, which it took about so much by the assumption of unlawful powers ten years to bring about, as I trust, in my con- as by the unwise or unwarrantable use of those science, it will not take as long to bring about which are most legal, that governments oppose similar results from this measure, should it be- their true end and object; for there is such a come a law. thing as tyranny as well as usurpation." If, under a power to regulate trade, you prevent exportation; if with the most approved spring lancets, you draw the last drop of blood from our veins; if, “secundum artem," you draw the last shilling from our pockets, what are the checks of the constitution to us? A fig for the constitution! When the scorpion's sting is probing us to the quick, shall we stop to chop logic? Shall we get some learned and cunning clerk to say whether the power to do this is to be found in the constitution, and then if he, from whatever motive, shall maintain the affirmative, like the animal whose fleece forms so material a portion of this bill, quietly lie down and be shorn?

All policy is very suspicious, says an eminent statesman, that sacrifices the interest of any part of a community to the ideal good of the whole; and those governments only are tolerable, where, by the necessary construction of the political machine, the interests of all the parts are obliged to be protected by it. Here is a district of country extending from the Patapsco to the Gulf of Mexico, from the Alleghany to the Atlantic; a district which, taking in all that part of Maryland lying south of the Patapsco and east of Elk river, raises five sixths of all the exports of this country that are of home growth. I have in my hand the official statements which prove it, but which I will not weary the House by reading-in all this country -yes, sir, and I bless God for it; for with all the fantastical and preposterous theories about the rights of man (the theories, not the rights themselves, I speak of), there is nothing but power that can restrain power. I bless God, that, in this insulted, oppressed, and outraged

Sir, events now passing elsewhere which plant a thorn in my pillow and a dagger in my heart, admonish me of the difficulty of governing with sobriety any people who are over head and ears in debt. That state of things begets a temper which sets at nought every thing like reason and common sense. This country is unques

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