tection, over the currency, and over internal improvements, and, when they assert any thing, assert only the power of nullification.

I desire, however, to consider their principles with all candor and fairness. And our opponents tell us, in the first place, that they are not all nullifiers. I am glad of it. But who are the leaders? Who speak for them? Whose standard do

they follow? Whose words do they echo? Whose sympathy and support do they seek? That's the question. A party speaks through its organs, its leaders. What folly it is to say, "That's not my opinion." Suppose it is not: your influence goes to maintain it, and it is idle to profess that the party goes farther than you wish to go, if all the time you contribute your power to sustain them. You must not give them the power, if you do not mean to have it exercised.

And so it is said, that all are not against protection. Who are not against it? Or if any are not against it, do they not follow the lead of those who are? Justice requires us to say, that there are those of that party in favor of protection in this and other Northern States. But those whom we feel obliged to oppose have chosen a leader; they have presented to us a candidate for our support. How is he on the subject of protection? In other words, what is Mr. Polk's opinion of the subject? Mr. Polk says he is in favor of a judicious tariff. But what sort of a tariff is a judicious tariff in his opinion? His brethren of Carolina say it is a horizontal tariff, one which makes no discriminations, but rejects all protection. That is the judgment of Mr. Polk's Carolinian friends on a judicious tariff; and I am strongly of the opinion that it is his judgment also.

Again, he says he is in favor of "incidental protection." What is incidental protection? Does it mean accidental, casual? I suppose, if a duty of ten per cent. was imposed upon all articles without any discrimination whatever, it would accidentally give some such incidental protection. If that is the meaning of incidental protection, I eschew the word altogether. No, no. The true principle is this. You lay a duty to raise a necessary amount of revenue; in laying it you discriminate, not accidentally, but studiously, cautiously, designedly, discreetly; and in raising a dollar of revenue, you consider upon what article you can collect that dollar so as best to advance the industry of the

nation. That's the question, and that 's all of it. If you look only to the revenue in laying the duty, and say you are in favor of the protection which that duty will incidentally allow, you may as well say you are in favor of a rain, or a fog, or a thunderstorm. You are in favor of an accident. It is something which you cannot control. It will take place against your volition, or without it; whether you are in favor of it or not. This, certainly, is not a statesmanlike view of the subject.

The great principle is this. One of you has to contribute five dollars a year to maintain the government; and you pay it in the form of duties on what you consume. Now, if you hap

pen to be a consumer mainly, it is of very little consequence to you on what particular articles this duty is imposed. But it makes the greatest difference in the world to your neighbor, whether it is laid on such articles as he produces, or whether it is so laid as to keep him down and subservient to the labor of other countries. I say again, there must be an intended, designed, discreet discrimination, for real, efficient, substantial protection; and the man who is not for that, is for nothing but incidents, and accidents, and casualties.

We hear much of reciprocity, and I take the rule upon this subject to be well laid down by a distinguished gentleman from another section of the United States," whom you will probably have the pleasure of hearing when I shall have relieved your patience, that reciprocity is a matter to be secured with foreign nations when it is evidently a true reciprocity. But I have yet to learn, from some new dictionary, that a system of reciprocity is a system with advantages only on one side. I am for reciprocity treaties. No, I will not say treaties, but arrangements; for the whole power over the subject lies with Congress, and not with the treaty-making power. But I am for a real reciprocity; not such as was provided by the treaty arrangement lately negotiated, and which the Senate, greatly to their honor, in my judgment, rejected.† I am not for giving away substantial rights, and, without ascribing blame to any party, I must say, not that we were overreached, but that the arrangement of this kind, commonly called Mr. McLane's arrangement of 1831, has turned out greatly to our disadvantage,

and that all our reciprocity treaties, as they are called, with the North of Europe, have been, and are, manifestly injurious to American navigation. It will, in my judgment, be one of the first duties of the new administration (if we get one), to revise the whole of that matter, to take care that we protect ourselves, and not to rely on the good-will of our national competitors.

Now, Gentlemen, having detained you so long on the history of the government, to show that protection has been one of its objects from the beginning, I will consider for a moment the reasons, the theory of the matter. Why is protection to domestic labor useful and necessary to the country? It comes to this. We have a variety of occupations, and allow me to say that this variety of employments is a matter of great importance to society, for it gives scope to every degree of ingenuity and talent. I admit freely, notwithstanding the multitude of avocations in life, that the culture of the soil is the great leading interest of the country. I admit this freely, and am willing, if you choose, that trade and manufactures should be regarded as subordinate, as auxiliary to it. I am willing to admit, that, if the theory and practice of protection can be shown distinctly and clearly to militate against the great agricultural interest of the country, it ought to be given up.

But consider the matter; take even this only, the fact that in this country wages are high. They are, and they ought to be, higher than in any other country in the world. And the reason is, that the laborers of this country are the country. The vast proportion of those who own the soil, especially in the Northern States, cultivate the soil. They stand on their own acres. The proprietors are the tillers, the laborers on the soil. But this is not all. The members of the country here are part and parcel of the government, and every man is one of the sovereign people, whose combined will constitutes the government. This is a state of things which exists nowhere else on the face of the earth. An approximation to it has been made in France, since the revolution of 1831, which secured the abolition of primogeniture and the restraint of devises.

But nowhere else in the world does there exist such a state of things as we see here, where the proprietors are the laborers, and, at the same time, help to frame the government. If, therefore, we wish to maintain the government, we must see that labor with us is not put in competition with the pauper, un

taught, ignorant labor of Europe. Our men who labor have families to maintain and to educate. They have sons to fit for the discharge of most duties of life; they have an intelligent part to act for themselves and their connections. And is labor like that to be reduced to a level with that of the forty millions of serfs of Russia, or the half-fed, half-clothed, ignorant, dependent laborers of other parts of Europe? America must cease then to be America. We should be transferred to I know not what sort of government, transferred to I know not what state of society, if the laborers in the United States were to do no more to maintain and educate their families, and to provide for old age, than they do in the Old World. And may my eyes never look upon such a spectacle as that in this free country!

I believe, that, so far from injuring the great interest of the cultivation of the soil, the reasonable protection of manufactures is useful to that department of industry in all its branches. I believe, in the first place, that the protection of manufactures is useful to the planting States themselves, though I know most of those engaged in that pursuit are of a contrary opinion. I believe the planter of South Carolina is better off than if there were no manufacturers of his staple in the United States. These take a considerable proportion of every crop of his cotton. They take it early, they fix a price, they are near customers, and to them he disposes of no small portion of his annual crop.

Again, I believe the establishment and successful prosecution of manufactures at the North materially diminishes the price of those articles which the Southern planter has to buy. But a gentleman from the South, already alluded to, is present, to whom I will leave these matters, and speak of something nearer home, the great farming interests of the Middle and Western States.

Now I hold it to be as demonstrable as any moral proposition, that the agricultural interest of this State, and of the adjoining Western and Southern States, is materially, substantially, and beyond measure benefited by the existence of the manufactures of the North. To elucidate this, allow me to inquire what is it that the farmer of the county of Albany, or Duchess, or Rensselaer, desires? Next to the favor of Heaven, in showers and summer heat, and the blessing of health, he desires a market of sale, at fair prices, for his produce, and a mar

ket, near and reasonable, for what he has occasion to buy. If he has a market where he can sell reasonably, and buy reasonably, these two conditions fill up the measure of his exigencies.

Where shall he go for a market of sale? I wish to put the question to those who decry the Northern and Eastern manufacturers. Where shall a farmer in any great county of New York find a market for his produce? Why, say some, abroad, in England. But England will not take it. France will not take it. I see it is insisted, in some of the leading presses in the interest of those opposed to us, that our tariff prevents the sending of our bread stuffs to England. There is nothing more absurd, nothing more entirely destitute of all truth and fact. I assert it as my opinion, that, if our tariff were abolished to-morrow, you would not sell one bushel more corn in England than you do now. Why does not England take it now? Not because she cannot pay for it; but the laws of England prevent the importation of grain or flour, except when the price rises so high in England as to exceed a certain rate (which it seldom does), and then it comes in under a low duty.

This happens sometimes, but not often. Flour, therefore, is sent abroad to wait these occasions, but only in small quantities. You have sent a good deal of wheat to Canada, where it is ground and becomes Canadian flour. This gives a vent for some, and so far it is well. Some beef and cheese and other provisions go from New York to England, and this is all well. The more the better. But depend upon it, that nothing of this kind is affected by the tariff. The reason England takes no more is because her laws (and of their alteration I see no prospect) do not admit it, except when there is a short crop in England, and then under a reduced duty.

Now what becomes of the surplus produce of the grain-growing States? Where does it go to? Who consumes it? The great demand is at home, at home, in the manufacturing districts of this State and of other States, and in the consumption of the persons engaged in navigation and commerce. The home demand is the great demand, which takes off the surplus agricultural produce.

subject, which must satisfy The New England States,

I think it sheds light upon the reasonable minds, to look at facts. three of them at least, do not raise their own bread-stuffs. They are consumers largely of the flour and grain of this and other