be to draw the resources from one part of the Union, and to expand them in the improvements of another; and that the spirit, at least, of the constitutional equality, would be thus violated. From the nature of things, the constitution could not specify the theatre of the expenditure of the public treasure. That expenditure, guided by and looking to the public good, must be made, necessarily, where it will most subserve the interests of the whole Union. The argument is, that the locale of the collection of the public contributions, and the locale of their disbursement, should be the same. Now, sir, let us carry this argument out: and no man is more capable than the ingenious gentleman from Virginia, of tracing an argument to its utmost consequences. The locale of the collection of the public revenue is the pocket of the regulate the distribution of its commerce; and | tion of a system of internal improvements would to regulate the distribution of the physical force of the Union. In the execution of the high and solemn trust which these beneficial powers imply, we must look to the great ends which the framers of our admirable constitution had in view. We must reject as wholly incompatible with their enlightened and beneficent intentions that construction of these powers which would resuscitate all the debility and inefficiency of the ancient confederacy. In the vicissitudes of human affairs who can foresee all the possible cases in which it may be necessary to apply the public force, within or without the Union? This government is charged with the use of it to repel invasions, to suppress insurrections, to enforce the laws of the Union; in short for all the unknown and undefinable purposes of war, foreign or intestine, wherever and however it may rage. During its existence may not gov-citizen; and, to abstain from the violation of ernment, for its effectual prosecution, order a road to be made, or a canal to be cut, to relieve for example, an exposed point of the Union? If, when the emergency comes, there is a power to provide for it, that power must exist in the constitution, and not in the emergency. A wise, precautionary, and parental policy, anticipating danger, will beforehand provide for the hour of need. Roads and canals are in the nature of fortifications, since, if not the deposits of military resources, they enable you to bring into rapid action the military resources of the country, whatever they may be. They are better than any fortifications, because they serve the double purposes of peace and war. They dispense, in a great degree, with fortifications, since they have all the effect of that concentration at which fortifications aim. I appeal from the precepts of the President to the practice of the President. While he denies to Congress the power in question, he does not scruple, upon his sole authority, as numerous instances in the statute book will testify, to order at pleasure, the opening of roads by the military, and then come here to ask us to pay for them. Nay, more, sir; a subordinate, but highly respectable officer of the executive government, I believe, would not hesitate to provide a boat or cause a bridge to be erected over an inconsiderable stream, to insure the regular transportation of the mail. And it happens to be within my personal knowledge that the head of the post office department, as a prompt and vigilant officer should do, has recently despatched an agent to ascertain the causes of the late frequent vexatious failures of the great northern mail, and to inquire if a provision of a boat or bridge over certain small streams in Maryland, which have produced them, would not prevent their recur the principle of equality adverted to by the gentleman, we should restore back to each man's pocket precisely what was taken from it. If the principle contended for be true, we are habitually violating it. We raise about twenty millions of dollars, a very large revenue, considering the actual distresses of the country. And, sir, notwithstanding all the puffing, flourishing statements of its prosperity, emanating from printers who are fed upon the pap of the public treasury, the whole country is in a condition of very great distress. Where is this vast revenue expended? Boston, New York, the great capitals of the north, are the theatres of its disbursement. There the interest upon the public debt is paid. There the expenditure in the building, equipment, and repair of the national vessels takes place. There all the great expenditures of the government necessarily concentrate. This is no cause of just complaint. It is inevitable, resulting from the accumulation of capital, the state of the arts, and other circumstances belonging to our great cities. But, sir, if there be a section of this Union having more right than any other to complain of this transfer of the circulating medium from one quarter of the Union to another, the west, the poor west-[Here Mr. Barbour explained. He had meant that the constitution limited Congress as to the proportions of revenue to be drawn from the several States; but the principle of this provision would be vacated by internal improvements of immense expense, and yet of a local character. Our public ships, to be sure, are built at the seaports, but they do not remain there. Their home is the mountain wave; but internal improvements are essentially local; they touch the soil of the States, and their benefits, at least the largest part of them, are confined to the States where I was much surprised at one argument of the they exist.] The explanation of the gentleman honorable gentleman. He told the House, that has not materially varied the argument. He the constitution had carefully guarded against says that the home of our ships is the mountain inequality, among the several States, in the wave. Sir, if the ships go to sea, the money public burdens, by certain restrictions upon the with which they were built, or refitted, remains power of taxation; that the effect of the adop-on shore, and the cities where the equipment rence. takes place derive the benefit of the expendi- | mistakes of your policy, and you cannot drive ture. It requires no stretch of the imagination them from you. They do not complain of the to conceive the profitable industry-the axes, the hammers, the saws the mechanic arts, which are put in motion by this expenditure. And all these, and other collateral advantages, are enjoyed by the seaports. The navy is built for the interest of the whole. Internal improvements, of that general, federative character, for which we contend, would also be for the interest of the whole. And, I should think their abiding with us, and not going abroad on the vast deep, was rather cause of recommendation than objection. But, Mr. Chairman, if there be any part of this Union more likely than all others to be benefited by the adoption of the gentleman's principle, regulating the public expenditure, it is the west. There is a perpetual drain from that embarrassed and highly distressed portion of our country, of its circulating medium to the east. There, but few and inconsiderable expenditures of the public money take place. There we have none of those public works, no magnificent edifices, forts, armories, arsenals, dockyards, &c., which more or less are to be found in every Atlantic State. In at least seven States beyond the Alleghany, not one solitary public work of this government is to be found. If, by one of those awful and terrible dispensations of Providence, which sometimes occur, this government should be unhappily annihilated, every where on the seaboard traces of its former existence would be found; whilst we should not have, in the west, a single monument remaining on which to pour out our affections and our regrets. Yet, sir, we do not complain. No portion of your population is more loyal to the Union, than the hardy freemen of the west. Nothing can weaken or eradicate their ardent desire for its lasting preservation. None are more prompt to vindicate the interests and rights of the nation from all foreign aggression. Need I remind you of the glorious scenes in which they participated, during the late war-a war in which they had no peculiar or direct interest, waged for no commerce, no seamen of theirs. But it was enough for them that it was a war demanded by the character and the honor of the nation. They did not stop to calculate its cost of blood, or of treasure. They flew to arms; they rushed down the valley of the Mississippi, with all the impetuosity of that noble river. They sought the enemy. They found him at the beach. They fought; they bled; they covered themselves and their country with immortal glory. They enthusiastically shared in all the transports occasioned by our victories, whether won on the ocean or on the land. They felt, with the keenest distress, whatever disaster befell us. No, sir, I repeat it, neglect, injury itself, cannot alienate the affections of the West from this government. They cling to it, as to their best, their greatest, their last hope. You may impoverish them, reduce them to ruin, by the expenditure of the public money, where the public exigencies require its disbursement. But, I put it to your candor, if you ought not, by a generous and national policy, to mitigate, if not prevent, the evils resulting from the perpetual transfer of the circulating medium from the west to the east. One million and a half of dollars annually, is transferred for the public lands alone; and almost every dollar goes, like him who goes to death—to a bourne from which no traveller returns. In ten years it will amount to fifteen millions; in twenty to-but I will not pursue the appalling results of arithmetic. Gentlemen who believe that these vast sums are supplied by emigrants from the east, labor under great error. There was a time when the tide of emigration from the east bore along with it the means to effect the purchase of the public domain. But that tide has, in a great measure, now stopped. And as population advances farther and farther west, it will entirely cease. The greatest migrating States in the Union, at this time, are Kentucky first, Ohio next, and Tennessee. The emigrants from those States carry with them, to the States and territories lying beyond them, the circulating medium, which, being invested in the purchase of the public land, is transmitted to the points where the wants of government require it. If this debilitating and exhausting process were inevitable, it must be borne with manly fortitude. But we think that a fit exertion of the powers of this government would mitigate the evil. We believe that the government incontestably possesses the constitutional power to execute such internal improvements as called for by the good of the whole. And we appeal to your equity, to your parental regard, to your enlightened policy, to perform the high and beneficial trust thus sacredly reposed. I am sensible of the delicacy of the topic to which I have reluctantly adverted, in consequence of the observations of the honorable gentleman from Virginia. And I hope there will be no misconception of my motives in dwelling upon it. A wise and considerate government should anticipate and prevent, rather than wait for the operation of causes of discontent. are Let me ask, Mr. Chairman, what has this government done on the great subject of internal improvements, after so many years of its existence, and with such an inviting field before it? You have made the Cumberland road, only. Gentlemen appear to have considered that a western road. They ought to recollect that not one stone has yet been broken, not one spade of earth has been yet removed in any western State. The road begins in Maryland and it terminates at Wheeling. It passes through the States of Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia. All the direct benefit of the expenditure of the public money on that road, has accrued to those three States. Not one cent in any western State. And yet we have 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 witnessed that appeals were never unsuccessful to your justice, to your magnanimity, to your fraternal 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 articles. 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. 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 indicated 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 | 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 distress, of this deep depression, which we behold stamped 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. 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. Our 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 the augmented value of their property, and the value of all property, whether on the land or on renewal of their business, ample means to extrithe ocean, and which I suppose to be about fifty cate themselves from all their difficulties. The per centum. And the still further effect has greatest want of civilized society is, a market been, to diminish the amount of our circulating for the sale and exchange of the surplus of the medium, in a proportion not less, by its trans-produce of the labor of its members. This mission abroad, or its withdrawal by the banking market may exist at home or abroad, or both; institutions, from a necessity which they could but it must exist somewhere, if society prospers; not control. The quantity of money, in what- and, wherever it does exist, it should be comever form it may be, which a nation wants, is petent to the absorption of the entire surplus of in proportion to the total mass of its wealth, production. It is most desirable that there and to the activity of that wealth. A nation should be both a home and a foreign market. that has but little wealth, has but a limited want But, with respect to their relative superiority, I of money. In stating the fact, therefore, that cannot entertain a doubt. The home market the total wealth of the country has diminished, is first in order, and paramount in importance. within a few years, in a ratio of about fifty per The object of the bill under consideration, is, to centum, we shall, at once, fully comprehend create this home market, and to lay the foundathe inevitable reduction which must have en- tions of a genuine American policy. It is sued, in the total quantity of the circulating opposed; and it is incumbent upon the partisans medium of the country. A nation is most of the foreign policy (terms which I shall use prosperous when there is a gradual and un- without any invidious intent) to demonstrate tempting addition to the aggregate of its circu- that the foreign market is an adequate vent for lating medium. It is in a condition the most the surplus produce of our labor. But is it so! adverse, when there is a rapid diminution in First, foreign nations cannot, if they would, the quantity of the circulating medium, and a take our surplus produce. If the source of consequent depression in the value of property. supply, no matter of what, increases in a greater In the former case, the wealth of individuals ratio than the demand for that supply, a glut of insensibly increases, and income keeps ahead of the market is inevitable, even if we suppose expenditure. But in the latter instance, debts both to remain perfectly unobstructed. The have been contracted, engagements made, and duplication of our population takes place in habits of expense established, in reference to the terms of about twenty-five years. The term existing state of wealth and of its representative. will be more and more extended as our numbers When these come to be greatly reduced, indi- multiply. But it will be a sufficient approxividuals find their debts still existing, their mation to assume this ratio for the present. engagements unexecuted, and their habits in- We increase, therefore, in population, at the rate veterate. They see themselves in the possession of about four per centum per annum. Supposof the same property, on which, in good faith, ing the increase of our production to be in the they had bound themselves. But that property, same ratio, we should, every succeeding year, without their fault, possesses no longer the same have of surplus produce, four per centum more value; and hence discontent, impoverishment, than that of the preceding year, without taking and ruin, arise. Let us suppose, Mr. Chairman, into the account the differences of seasons which that Europe was again the theatre of such a neutralize each other. If, therefore, we are to general war as recently raged throughout all her rely upon the foreign market exclusively, foreign dominions such a state of the war as existed in consumption ought to be shown to be increasing her greatest exertions and in our greatest pros- in the same ratio of four per centum per annum, perity; instantly there would arise a greedy if it be an adequate vent for our surplus produce. demand for the surplus produce of our industry, But, as I have supposed the measure of our for our commerce, for our navigation. The increasing production to be furnished by that languor which now prevails in our cities, and in of our increasing population, so the measure of our seaports, would give way to an animated their power of consumption must be determined activity. Our roads and rivers would be crowd-by that of the increase of their population. ed 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 | 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. |