the events of the later fifties and the great act of secession in 1861.

From what has been said it will be seen that the MaconRandolph principle of the twenties came to be a paramount question in the next decade, was accepted fully by one party and partially by the other until the eve of the Civil War. Since the war resignations of senators because of any such, or similar scruples, have become rare indeed. The idea of personal loss seems to have grown on our public men enormously. They seem to believe in the doctrine of Hoke vs. Henderson, that an officer has a property right in his office.

The most significant purpose of the followers of this movement was their determination to steer clear of nullification and to profess the greatest devotion to the Union. Macon, its founder, never tired of condemning the South Carolina "heresy." The organ of the democratic party recommended the coldest kind of treatment for Poinsett and Huger, the South Carolina agents sent to Raleigh to influence the legislature of 1832 to send delegates to a convention of all the slave-holding and anti-tariff states.* Calhoun was as unpopular with the instructionists of the South as he was with the abolitionists of the North; he was repeatedly branded by the North Carolina democracy as the arch enemy of the country. One of the most effective charges which the democrats brought against the whigs in 1836 was that Mangum was in secret alliance with Calhoun.† The whig papers were forced to take up a defensive attitude on this point. Both whigs and democrats vied with each other in rejecting the South Carolina proposals. Prominent democrats who were appealed to privately in favor of a Southern convention by a Georgia vigilance committee exposed the work of the Southern nullifiers and called on the people to beware of the enemies of the Union.‡ When Virginia appeared to favor South Carolina and sent. Leigh, already mentioned in another connection, to Charleston, as it was thought, to arrange terms for concerted action, the North Carolina papers of all shades of political complexion ridiculed the move. When even Ritchie's paper, the great democratic

*Raleigh Standard of November, 1832. Raleigh Standard, September 15, 1836.

Raleigh Register, repeatedly during January, 1833.

organ, appeared favorable to South Carolina rather than to the Union (which it was not in reality), the instructionists in North Carolina held aloof. They actually held public indignation meetings against Calhoun and his policy.

In 1836, when South Carolina, in accordance with some understanding between Calhoun and Mangum, cast its electoral vote for the latter for President, the democrats were jubilant. The whigs felt the sting of the charge which could no longer be denied.* This, it was said, was evidence of a bargain and it did the whigs much harm during the succeeding years. The instruction democrats were unionists, even to the extent of refusing to protest against Jackson's threat to send an armed force to South Carolina in 1833.

Parallel then with nullification there grew up in Virginia and North Carolina a movement looking towards the same final result as nullification, but inimicably opposed to it. This doctrine became so acceptable that both Virginia and North Carolina adopted it for a long period; it influenced senators to such an extent that they resigned their seats rather than oppose the popular view; it decided the great expunging resolution according to Benton's wish; and it continued a vital force in the politics of North Carolina till the very eve of the Civil War. The so-called right of instruction originated in the intense Southern opposition to the principal measures of the Clay policy and it was regarded by the democrats of a large section of the South as a remedy for all the ills under which its people labored. The doctrine which found universal acceptance in secession was swallowed up in the catastrophe of 1861 and has never been brought to life again.

*Raleigh Standard, December 14, 1836.

On Manitoulin

BY BERNARD C. STEINER, PH. D.,

Lecturer in the Johns Hopkins University.

If you have traveled along the North Channel in the "City of Midland," coming east from the Sault Ste. Marie, the chances are that you do not remember Little Current. The whistling of the steamer, which announced the approach to Picnic Island, may have aroused you; but, probably, you slept in your state-room until the town was left far behind. If you awoke and peered out through the intense darkness of the early hours of the day, you saw, by the light of the steamer's search-light, the cars of fish brought on the vessel, the dim outlines of the lumber yard, and the light-house, which marks the town, half a mile further on. When the steamer moves from the island, even the blackness of the night is not so great as to prevent you from seeing how near the shores are on either side and admiring the skill of the helmsman who guides the boat through the narrow passage. A few houses are seen clustering on the hill above the wharf, a few sleepy passengers disembark, are met by lantern-bearing friends, and disappear in the night, one or two persons come on board, the whistle blows, the bell rings, the propeller moves, and you are gone. Such was the writer's experience on a recent vacation trip.

But as we went westward, after we passed the narrows at Killarney and the lovely lake-like scenery there, we soon touched at Manitowaning. There we had pointed out in the distance the Jesuit mission of Wickwemiquong, where the fathers still teach the Hurons, as they did in the country further south, before the Iroquois drove them away, and we next came to Strawberry Island. Looking past its light-house, we saw, on a height at some distance, the spire of a church and below it three tall iron smokestacks. "That is the Roman Catholic Church, where the priest comes from Wick wemiquong to say mass, and those are the stacks of the mill on Picnic Island," cries one to whom Little Current is home and who returns there after a long absence. We come nearer and see the cupola of the Presbyterian

church, and the houses on the bluff, we turn the last point, and stop at the wharf at the east end of the town.

It is about three o'clock in the afternoon. A crowd is down to meet us and freight is rapidly transferred from our lower deck to the store house on the shore. If it be in the season, we receive in return large numbers of baskets of blueberries, which grow profusely everywhere. While the steamer waits, the adventurous passengers investigate the town and some even press up the hill to see the pleasant cottages which overlook the channel. It is a picturesque view which meets our eyes when we have climbed to the west end of Robinson street. The narrows cause the waters to run with that rapid current, whence the town takes its name. The hills of the North Shore rise in the distance. Nearer are the barren shores of La Cloche Island, the flat and stony acres of Goat Island, the higher and wooded land of Beauty Island, and the tiny Spider Islet in the west. In the near foreground and close to the shore are the low-lying Picnic and Mill Islands, whose names bear record to departed pleasure and industry. At some early period in the history of the town, people held picnics on the former island, then pleasant and well timbered. Although Little Current is only thirty years old, such a condition of things belongs to ancient history. There is hardly a tree left on Picnic Island and the great piles of lumber, the boarding houses for the mill hands, and the idle mill cover most of its surface. Mill Island is still more melancholy in its witness of bygone greatness. One can hardly believe that the mill was used only about three years or so ago, all is so desolate and ruinous. The tramway has fallen and the piles of lumber have gone, leaving only splinters and bits of bark behind them. The rusty and broken cars are piled up on one end of the island. The wooden walks are crazy and rotten. Many of the spikes which held in place the strap iron, on which the cars ran, have loosened and the rails have one end high in the air. A few cows with their mournful tinkling bells and two or three boys, fishing from the bridge by which the tramway crossed to the mainland, are the only inhabitants of this place, which was once so busy.

It may chance that, instead of heeding the captain's whistle, warning us that the "City of Midland" is about to start again on her voyage, we feel the fascination of the wild and new country

and determine to tarry at Little Current for a day or two. If we so decide, we shall do well, for Manitoulin Island is well worth study and nowhere can it be observed better than at this place, its chief settlement.

If we stay, we will climb the hill again and again to see the fine summer sunsets across the Channel and behind the hills of the North Shore. The bright hues linger long ere darkness comes, as if the day hated to leave the romantic country. We wander along the commons, past the long houses, whose windows, battened with wooden shutters, are silent witnesses to the past activity of the town. Little Current has a past. It is so young a country, that the man from whom we hire our horse and carriage, when we drive inland, is the first white child born on the island, yet it is so old that it can speak of past and vanished prosperity. In its hey-day, there were five saw mills at Little Current, beneath whose remorseless teeth the logs were speedily turned into boards. The town was full of life then. In expectation of growth, they built a large school house on the edge of the woods, the very last house in the place. The children complain of the bleak walk to school in the winter. Churches were quickly put up: Presbyterian, Methodist, Church of England, and Roman Catholic. The Baptists never gained strength enough to build, but met from the first, as they meet still, in the Music Hall, which is adorned by two gigantic moose heads and is frequented by secular dancers on the week day evenings. Then came the collapse of the boom. The geese that laid the golden eggs were being killed. The best timber was vanishing before the greedy teeth of the mill saws, when the Dingley bill was passed with its two-dollar duty on lumber and by that the ruin was made complete.

Of the five saw mills, three have been burnt and were not rebuilt. Only one is running and that is a small one on the mainland. When we cross from Mill Island to Picnic Island on the floating bridge, picking our way with care, lest the section on which we stand should have its floor submerged by some sudden motion, and when we finally come to the chain which holds the last section to the land, we are in a scene of desolation. It is more impressive in its loneliness than many an ancient ruin, because it speaks so plainly of the recent presence of man. Walk