on again this duty on molasses-not at this daythis is not the last tariff measure; for in less than five years, I would, if I were a betting man, wager any odds that we have another tariff proposition, worse by far than that, amendments to which gentlemen had strangled yesterday by the bowstring of the previous question. Fair dealing leads to safe counsels and safe issues. There is a certain left-handed wisdom, that often overreaches its own objects, which grasps at the shadow, and lets go the substance. We shall not only have this duty on molasses, I can tell the gentleman from Connecticut, but we shall have, moreover, an additional bounty on intoxication by whiskey, in the shape of an additional duty on foreign distilled spirits.

long to be exempt from the demands of these sturdy beggars who will take no denial. Every concession does but render every fresh demand and new concession more easy. It is like those dastard nations who vainly think to buy peace. When I look back to what the country of which I am a representative was, and when I see what she is when I recollect the expression of Lord Cornwallis, applied to Virginia, "that great and unterrified colony," which he was about to enter, not without some misgivings of his mind as to the result of the invasion-when I compare what she was when this House of Representatives first assembled in the city of New York, and what she now is, I know, by the disastrous contrast, that her councils have not been governed by statesmen. They might be admirable professors of a university, powerful dialecticians "ex cathedra," but no sound counsels of wise statesmen could ever lead to such practical ill results as are exhibited by a comparison of the past and present condition of the ancient colony and dominion of Virginia.

In the course of this discussion, I have heard, I will not say with surprise, because "nil admirari" is my motto-no doctrine that can be broached on this floor, can ever, hereafter, excite surprise in my mind-I have heard the names of Say, Ganilh, Adam Smith, and Ricardo, pronounced not only in terms, but in a tone of sneering contempt, visionary theorists, destitute of practical wisdom, and the whole clan of Scotch and Quarterly reviewers lugged in to boot. This, sir, is a sweeping clause of proscription. With the names of Say, Smith, and Ganilh, I profess to be acquainted, for I, too, am versed in title-pages; but I did not expect to hear, in this House, a name, with which I am a little further acquainted, treated with so little ceremony; and by whom? I leave Adam Smith to the simplicity, and majesty, and strength of his own native genius, which has canonized his name-a name which will be pronounced with veneration, when not one in this House will be remembered. But one word as to Ricardo, the last mentioned of these writers

The ancient commonwealth of Virginia, one of whose unworthy sons, and more unworthy representatives, I am, must now begin to open her eyes to the fatal policy which she has pursued for the last forty years. I have not a doubt, that they who were the agents for transferring her vast, and boundless, and fertile country to the United States, with an express stipulation, in effect, that not an acre of it should ever enure to the benefit of any man from Virginia, were as respectable, and kind-hearted, and hospitable, and polished, and guileless Virginia gentlemen, as ever were cheated out of their estates by their overseers; men who, as long as they could command the means, by sale of their last acre, or last negro, would have a good dinner, and give a hearty welcome to whomsoever chose to drop in to eat, friend or stranger, bidden or unbidden. What will be the effect of this bill on the Southern States? The effect of this policy is, what I shudder to look at; the more because the next census is held up "in terrorem over us. We are told, you had better consent to this-we are not threatened exactly with general Gage and the Boston port bill; but we are told by gentlemen, we shall, after the next census, so saddle, and bridle, and martingale you, that you will be easily regulated by any bit, or whip, however severe, or spurs, however rank, of domestic manufacture that we choose to use. But this argument, sir, has a new authority, though the grave has alno weight in it with me. I do not choose to ready closed upon him, and set its seal upon his be robbed now, because, after I am once robbed, reputation. I shall speak of him in the language it will be easier to rob me again. "Obsta of a man of as great a genius as this, or perhaps principiis " is my maxim-because every act of any, age has ever produced; a man remarkable extension of the system operates in a twofold for the depth of his reflections and the acumen way, decreasing the strength and means of the of his penetration. "I had been led," says this robbed, and increasing those of the robber. | man, to look into loads of books-my underThis is as true as any proposition in mathe-standing had for too many years been intimate matics. Gentlemen need not tell us, we had better give in at once. No, sir, we shall not give in; no, we shall hold out-we shall not give in. We do not mean to be threatened out of our rights by the menace of another census. We are aware of our folly, and it is our business to provide against the consequences of it; but not in this way. When I recollect that the tariff of 1816 was followed by that of 181920, and that by this measure of 1823-4, I cannot believe that we are, at any time hereafter, VOL. II.-12

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with severe thinkers, with logic, and the great masters of knowledge, not to be aware of the utter feebleness of the herd of modern economists. I sometimes read chapters from more recent works, or part of parliamentary debates. I saw that these "[ominous words!] "were generally the very dregs and rinsings of the human intellect." [I am very glad, sir, he did not read our debates. What would he have said of ours?] "At length a friend sent me Mr. Ricardo's book, and, recurring to my own pro

phetic anticipation of the advent of some legislator on this science, I said, Thou art the man. Wonder and curiosity had long been dead in me; yet I wondered once more. Had this profound work been really written in England during the 19th century? Could it be that an Englishman, and he not in academic bowers, but oppressed by mercantile and senatorial cares, had accomplished what all the universities and a century of thought had failed to advance by one hair's breadth? All other writers had been crushed and overlaid by the enormous weight of facts and documents: Mr. Ricardo had deduced, "a priori," from the understanding itself, laws which first gave a ray of light into the unwieldy chaos of materials, and had constructed what had been but a collection of tentitive discussions, into a science of regular proportions, now first standing on an eternal basis."

We have been told that the economists are right in theory and wrong in practice; which is as much as to say, that two bodies occupy at the same time the same space; for it is equally impracticable to be right in theory and wrong in practice. It is easy to be wrong in practice; but if our practice corresponds with our theory, it is a solecism to say that we can be right in the one and wrong in the other. As for Alexander and Cæsar, I have as little respect for their memory as is consistent with that involuntary homage which all must pay to men of their prowess and abilities; and if Alexander had suffered himself to be led by the nose out of Babylon and banished to Sinope, or if Cæsar had suffered himself to be deprived of his imperial sway, not by the dagger of the assassin, but by his own slavish fears, I should have as little respect for their memory as for that of him whose example has on this occasion been I pronounce no opinion of my own on Ri- held up to us for admiration. Speaking of that cardo; I recur rather to the opinion of a man man who has kept me awake night after night, inferior, in point of original and native genius, and has been to me an incubus by day, for fear and that highly cultivated, too, to none of the of the vastness of his designs, I cannot conceive moderns, and few of the ancients. Upon this of a spectacle so pitiful, so despicable, as that subject, what shall we say to the following fact? man, under those circumstances; and if the Butler, who is known to gentlemen of the pro- work dictated by him at St. Helena be read fession of the law, as the annotator, with Har- with the slightest attention, no forsworn witgrave, on Lord Coke, speaking with Fox as ness at the Old Bailey was ever detected in so to political economy-that most extraordinary many contradictions as he has been guilty of. man, unrivalled for his powers of debate, ex- No, sir, the Jupiter from whose reluctant hand celled by no man that ever lived, or probably the thunderbolt is wrung, is not the one at ever will live, as a public debater, and of the whose shrine I worship-not that I think that deepest political erudition, fairly confessed that the true Amphytrion is always him with whom he had never read Adam Smith. Butler said we dine. Napoleon is not the political econoto Mr. Fox, "that he had never read Adam mist who is to take place of Smith and Ricardo. Smith's work on the Wealth of Nations." "To Will any man make me believe that he undertell you the truth," replied Mr. Fox, "nor I stood the theory or the practice of political neither. There is something in all these sub-economy better than these men, or than Charles jects that passes my comprehension-something Fox? Impossible. When I recollect what that so wide that I could never embrace them my-man might have done for liberty, and what he self, or find any one who did." And yet we did; when I recollect that to him we owe this see how we, with our little dividers, undertake to lay off the scale, and with our pack-thread to take the soundings, and speak with a confidence peculiar to quacks (in which the regularbred professor never indulges) on this abstruse and perplexing subject. Confidence is one thing, knowledge another; of the want of which, overweening confidence is notoriously the indication. What of that? Let Ganilh, Say, Ricardo, Smith, all Greek and Roman fame be against us; we appeal to Dionysius in support of our doctrines; and to him, not on the throne of Syracuse, but at Corinth-not in absolute possession of the most wonderful and enigmatical city, as difficult to comprehend as the abstrusest problem of political economy, which furnished not only the means but the men for supporting the greatest wars-a kingdom within itself, under whose ascendant the genius of Athens, in her most high and palmy state, quailed, and stood rebuked. No; we follow the pedagogue to the schools-dictating in the classic shades of Longwood--("lucus a non lucendo ")-to his disciples.

Holy Alliance-this fearful power of Russiaof Russia, where I should advise persons to go who desire to be instructed in petty treason by the murder of a husband, or in parricide by the murder of a father, but from whom I should never think of taking a lesson in political economy-to whom I say rather, pay your debts, not in depreciated paper; do not commit daily acts of bankruptcy; restore your currency; practise on the principles of liberality and justice, and then I will listen to you. No, sir, Russia may, if she pleases, not only lay heavy duties on imports; she may prohibit them if she pleases; she has nothing to export but what some inland countries have, political powerphysical, to be sure, as well as intellectual power-but she does not even dare to attack the Turk: she cannot stir: she is something like some of our interior people of the South, who have plenty of land, plenty of serfs, smokehouses filled with meat, and very fine horses to ride, but who, when they go abroad, have not one shilling to bless themselves with: and so long as she is at peace, and does not trouble the

rest of the world, so long she may be suffered | now propose to exercise; for, if we are now to remain: but, if she should continue to act passing a revenue bill-a bill the object of hereafter as she has done heretofore, it will be which were to raise revenue-however much the interest of the civilized world to procure I should deny the policy, and however I could her dismemberment, "per fas aut nefas." demonstrate the futility of the plan, I still should deem it to be a constitutional bill-a bill passed to carry, "bona fide," into effect, a provision of the constitution, but a bill passed with shortsighted views. But this is no such bill. It is a bill, under pretence of regulating commerce, to take money from the pockets of a very large, and, I thank God, contiguous territory, and to put it into other pockets. One word, sir, on that point;-I can assure the gentlemen whose appetites are so keenly whetted for our money I trust, at least, if this bill passes, there will

But it is said, a measure of this sort is necessary to create employment for the people. Why, sir, where are the handles of the plough? Are they unfit for young gentlemen to touch? Or will they rather choose to enter your military academies, where the sons of the rich are educated at the expense of the poor, and where so many political janissaries are every year turned out, always ready for war, and to support the powers that be-equal to the strelitzes of Moscow or St. Petersburg. I do not speak now of individuals, of course, but of the ten-be a meeting of the members opposed to it, and dency of the system-the hounds follow the huntsman because he feeds them, and bears the whip. I speak of the system. I concur most heartily, sir, in the censure which has been passed upon the greediness of office, which stands a stigma on the present generation. | Men from whom we might expect, and from whom I did expect, better things, crowd the antechamber of the palace, for every vacant office; nay, even before men are dead, their shoes are wanted for some barefooted officeseeker. How mistaken was the old Roman, the old consul, who, whilst he held the plough by one hand, and death held the other, exclaimed, "Diis immortalibus sero!"

Our fathers, how did they acquire their property? By straightforward industry, rectitude, and frugality. How did they become dispossessed of their property? By indulging in speculative hopes and designs, seeking the shadow whilst they lost the substance; and now, instead of being, as they were, men of respectability, men of substance, men capable and willing to live independently and honestly, and hospitably too-for who so parsimonious as the prodigal who has nothing to give?-what have we become? A nation of sharks, preying on one another through the instrumentality of this paper system, which, if Lycurgus had known of it, he would unquestionably have adopted, in preference to his iron money, if his object had been to make the Spartans the most accomplished knaves as well as to keep them poor.

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a general and consentaneous resistance to its operation throughout the whole southern country-and we shall make it by lawful means; quant à nous," the law will be a dead letter. It shall be to me, at least, as innocuous as the pill of the empiric which I am determined rút to swallow. The manufacturer of the east may carry his wollens, or his cottons, or his, coffins, to what market he pleases-I do not buy of him. Self-defence is the first law of nature. You drive us into it. You create heats and animosities among this great family, who ought to live like brothers; and, after you have got this temper of mind roused among the southern people, do you expect to come among us to trade, and expect us to buy your wares? Sir, not only shall we not buy them, but we shall take such measures (I will not enter into the detail of them now) as shall render it impossible for you to sell them. Whatever may be said here of the "misguided counsels" as they have been termed, "of the theorists of Virginia,' they have, so far as regards this question, the confidence of united Virginia. We are askedDoes the South lose any thing by this bill-why do yo cry out? I put it, sir, to any man from any part of the country, from the Gulf of Mexico, from the Balize, to the eastern shore of Maryland-which, I thank Heaven, is not yet under the government of Baltimore, and will not be, unless certain theories should come into play in that state, which we have lately heard of, and a majority of men, told by the head, should govern-whether the whole counBut we are told this is a curious constitution try between the points I have named, is not of ours: it is made for foreigners, and not for unanimous in opposition to this bill. Would it ourselves for the protection of foreign, and not be unexampled, that we should thus comnot of American industry. Sir, this is a curi- plain, protest, resist, and that all the while ous constitution of ours, and if I were disposed nothing should be the matter? Are our underto deny it, I could not succeed. It is an anomaly standings (however low mine may be rated, in itself. It is that supposed impossibility of much sounder than mine are engaged in this all writers, from Aristotle to the present day, resistance), to be rated so low, as that we are an "imperium in imperio." Nothing like it to be made to believe that we are children afever did exist, or possibly ever will, under simi- frighted by a bugbear? We are asked, howlar circumstances. It is a constitution consist-ever, why do you cry out? it is all for your ing of confederated bodies, for certain exterior good. Sir, this reminds me of the mistresses purposes, and also for some interior purposes, of George II., who, when they were insulted but leaving to the state authorities, among a by the populace on arriving in London (as all great many powers, the very one which we such creatures deserve to be, by every mob),

put their heads out of the window, and said to them in their broken English, "Goot people, we be come for your goots;" to which one of the mob rejoined "Yes, and for our chattels too, I fancy." Just so it is with the oppressive exactions proposed and advocated by the supporters of this bill, on the plea of the good of those who are its victims.

There is not a member in this House, sir, more deeply penetrated than the one who is endeavoring to address you, with the inadequate manner in which he has discharged the task imposed upon him; in this instance, he will say, on his part, most reluctantly. But, as I have been all my life a smatterer in history, I cannot fail to be struck with the fitness of the comparison instituted by a historian of this country with the Roman republic, just as it was in a state of preparation for a master.

"Sed, postquam luxu, atque desidia civitas corrupta est; rursus respublica, magnitudine sua, imperatorum atque magistratuum vitia sustentabat; ac veluti effoeta parentum, multis tempestatibus, haud sane quisquam Romæ virtute magnus fuit."

Give gentle way when there's too great a press;

And for your conscience, only learn to nerve it,For like a racer, or a boxer, training, "Twill make, if proved, vast efforts without paining."

I had more to say, Mr. Speaker, could I have said it, on this subject. But I cannot sit down without asking those, who were once my brethren of the church, the elders of the young family of this good old republic of the thirteen States, if they can consent to rivet upon us this system, from which no benefit can possibly result to themselves. I put it to them as descendants of the renowned colony of Virginia: as children sprung from her loins; if for the sake of all the benefits, with which this bill is pretended to be freighted to them, granting such to be the fact for argument's sake, they could consent to do such an act of violence to

the unanimous opinion, feelings, prejudices, if you will of the whole Southern States, as to pass it? I go farther. I ask of them what is there in the condition of the nation, at this time, that calls for the immediate adoption of this measure? Are the Gauls at the gates of Of this quotation, I will, as they sometimes the Capitol? If they are, the cacklings of the say in parliament, for the benefit of the country- Capitoline geese will hardly save it. What is gentlemen, attempt a translation. But, after there to induce us to plunge into the vortex of the state had become corrupted by luxury and those evils so severely felt in Europe from this sloth "—in the Arabian Nights' Entertainments, very manufacturing and paper policy? For it we are told of one who laid by his sequins in is evident that, if we go into this system of good money, and when he afterwards came to policy, we must adopt the European institutions use them, he found them to be bits of paper, not also. We have very good materials to work worth more than old continental (or Kentucky) with; we have only to make our elective king money-"by luxury and sloth, again the re- president for life, in the first place, and then to public," "-and here I press the comparison-make the succession hereditary in the family "by dint of its own magnitude, its own great- of the first that shall happen to have a promisFor a king we can be at no loss-" ex ness, its own vastness, bore up under the faults, ing son. the vices of its generals, magistrates, and that, quovis ligno"-any block will do for him. The too, as if effete (past bearing), since for a long Senate may, perhaps, be transmuted into a while "-I hope the comparison will not hold house of peers, although we should meet with here "for a long time scarcely any man had more difficulty than in the other case; Bonabecome great at Rome by his merit." So, parte himself was not more hardly put to it, to sir, it is with this republic. It does sustain by recruit the ranks of his mushroom nobility, its greatness and growing magnitude, the follies than we should be to furnish a house of peers. and vices of its magistracy. Had this govern- As for us, we are the faithful commons, ready ment been stationary like any of the old govern-made to hand; but with all our loyalty, I conments of Europe, of the second class, Prussia gratulate the House-I congratulate the nation for instance, or Holland, by the political evolu-that, although this body is daily degraded tions of the last thirty years, I might say the last twelve years, it would have sunk into insignificance and debility; and it is only upon this resourse, the increasing greatness of this republic, that the blunderers who plunge blindfold into schemes like this, can rely for any possibility of salvation from the effects of their own rash, undigested measures. It is true that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong; and elsewhere than in the republic of Rome, and of other times than the days of Catiline, it may be said, "Haud sane quisque virtute magnus est."

"Tis not in mortals to command success!

But do you more, Sempronius!-don't deserve it,
And take my word you won't have any less;
Be wary, watch the time, and always serve it:

by the sight of members of Congress manufactured into placemen, we have not yet reached such a point of degradation as to suffer executive minions to be manufactured into members of Congress. We have shut that door; I wish we could shut the other also. I wish we could have a perpetual call of the House in this view, and suffer no one to get out from its closed doors. The time is peculiarly inauspicious for the change in our policy which is proposed by this bill. We are on the eve of an election that promises to be the most distracted that this nation has ever yet undergone. It may turn out to be a Polish election. At such a time, ought any measure to be brought forward which is supposed to be capable of being demonstrated to be extremely injurious to one great portion

INCREASE OF THE ARMY.

The following speech, on the second resolu- | ocean of our foreign concerns, involving every tion reported by the Committee of Foreign Relations: "That an additional force of ten thousand regular troops ought to be immediately raised to serve for three years; and that a bounty in lands ought to be given to encourage enlistments,' ," was delivered by Mr. Randolph in the House of Representatives of the United States, on the tenth of December, 1811: