There, everything has found its place and its level, and everything, one would think, might there be safely let alone. Here, everything is new and unfixed. Neither the State nor the individuals who compose it, have yet settled down in their firm and permanent positions. There is a constant tendency, in consequence of the extent of our public domain, towards production for foreign markets. The maxim, in the comprehensive sense in which I am considering it, to entitle it to observance, requires two conditions, neither of which exists first, that there shall be perpetual peace; secondly, that the maxim shall be everywhere respected. If there be no reciprocity--if on the one side there is perfect freedom of trade, and on the other a code of odious restrictions, will gentlemen still contend that we are to submit to such an unprofitable and degrading intercourse? I will not enter into a detail of the restrictions with which we are everywhere presented in foreign countries. I will only assert that they take nothing from us which they can produce themselves, even on worse terms than those upon which we could supply them. Take again, as an example, the English corn laws. America presents the image of a fine, generous-hearted young fellow, who has just come to the possession of a rich estate; an estate which, however, requires careful management. He makes nothing; he buys everything. He is surrounded by a parcel of Jews, each holding out his hand with a packet of buttons or pins, or some other commodity, for sale. If he asks these Jews to buy anything which his estate produces, they tell him no; it is not for our interest; it is not for yours. Take, says one of them, this new book on political economy, and you will there perceive that it is for your interest to buy from us, and "let things alone" in your own country. But this maxim, which requires us to abandon our home industry to the influence of the restrictive system of other countries, is not observed by gentlemen in regard to the other great interests of the nation. We protect our fisheries by bounties and drawbacks. We protect our tunnage, by excluding or restricting foreign tunnage exactly as ours is excluded or restricted by foreign States. We passed, a year or two ago, the bill to prohibit British navigation from her West India colonies to the United States, because ours was shut out from them. We have now upon our table bills connected with that object, and proposing restrictions upon the French tunnage, to countervail theirs upon ours. The General Government, from its first formation to the present time,

has nourished and protected the foreign trade. Why have not all these great interests been left to the operation of the gentleman's favorite maxim? Sir, it is perfectly right that we should have afforded this protection. And it is perfectly right, in my humble opinion, that we should extend the principle of it to home industry. I am a friend to foreign trade; but I protest against its being the monopolist of all the favor and care of this Government.

The general measure of the protection which the proposed tariff' affords, is pronounced immoderate and enormous. Yet no one ventures to enter into a specification of the particular articles to show that it deserves to be thus characterized. . . . The grain growing country, the fruit country, and the culture of cane, would all be benefited by the duty. Its operation is said, however, to be injurious on a certain quarter of the Union. It is not to be denied, that each particular section may feel some one or more articles of the tariff to bear hard upon it, during a short period; but the compensation is to be found in the more favorable operation of others. I am fully persuaded, that no part of the Union would more largely share in the aggregate of the benefits of the tariff than New England. No quarter of the Union can urge, with an iller grace, objections to a measure having for its object the advancement of the interests of the whole; for none has participated more extensively in the benefits flowing from the General Government. Her tunnage, her fisheries, her foreign trade, have constantly been objects of federal care. There was expended the greatest portion of the public revenue. The building of the public ships; their equipment; the expenses incident to their remaining in port, chiefly took place there. That great drain upon the revenue, the Revolutionary pension law, tended principally to New England. I do not complain of these advantages which she enjoys. She is probably fairly entitled to them. But gentlemen from that quarter may at least be justly reminded of them when they complain of the onerous effect of one or two items of the tariff.

If this bill shall be defeated, what account shall we render to our constituents on our return among them? Can we plead ignorance of the general distress, and of the ardent wishes of the community for that protection of its industry which this bill proposes? No, sir; daily, almost throughout the session, have we been receiving petitions, with which our table is now loaded, imploring us to extend this protection.

Unanimous resolutions from important State Legislatures have called upon us to give it; and the people of whole States, almost in a mass-of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Ohio-have transmitted to us their humble petitions to encourage the home industry. Let us not turn a deaf ear to them. Let us not disappoint their just expectations. Let us manifest, by the passage of this bill, that Congress does not deserve the reproaches which have been cast upon it, of insensibility to the wants and sufferings of the people.

The debate closed on the 29th of April; and a motion was made to postpone the bill to the next session, which was negatived: Yeas, 78; nays, 90.

The question on the final passage of the bill was then taken, and decided in the affirmative: Yeas, 91; nays, 78, as follows:

New Hampshire: Nays, 5. Massachusetts: Yeas, 10; nays, 7. Rhode Island: Yeas, 2. Connecticut: Yeas, 5; Nay, 1. Vermont: Yea, 1; nays, 4. New York: Yeas, 25. New Jersey: Yeas, 6. Pennsylvania: Yeas, 22; nay, 1. Delaware: Yeas, 2. Maryland: Yeas, 2; nays, 7. Virginia: Yea, 1; nays, 18. North Carolina: Yea, 1; nays, 12. Georgia: Nays, 6. Kentucky: Yeas, 5; nays, 3. Tennessee: Nays, 5. Ohio: Yeas, 6. Indiana: Yea, 1. Illinois: Yea, 1. Mississippi: Nay, 1. Louisiana: Nay, 1. The bill was taken up in the Senate on the 4th of May. A motion was made by Mr. James Barbour, of Virginia, to postpone the bill to the next session; and after a debate of several hours, in which Messrs. Barbour, of Va., Dickerson, of N. J., Burrill, of Rhode Island, and Otis, of Massachusetts, participated, the question was taken, and decided in the affirmative: Yeas, 22; nays, 21.

CHAPTER VI.

Session of 1820-1821. Report of the Committee on Manufactures. Counter Report of the Committee on Agriculture.

WHATEVER hopes the friends of the adjourned tariff bill of 1820 may have entertained of its passage at the succeeding session, it is evident from the remonstrances presented to Congress, that such a result was feared by its enemies. The memorials at this session seem to have been more numerous against, than in favor of the passage of the bill, and the consequent increase of duties on imports.

Mr. Baldwin, from the Committee on Manufactures, to whom the memorials had been referred, again made a report to the House. This report is one of unusual length. It represents the condition of the country as in no measure improved. It says that at the end of thirty years of its operation, the Government finds its debt increased $20,000,000, and its revenue inadequate to its expenditure; $35,000,000 drawn from the people by internal taxation, $341,000,000 by impost, yet the treasury dependent on loans; in profound peace, and without any national calamity, the country em barrassed with debts, and real estate under rapid deprecia tion; the markets of agriculture, the pursuits of manufac tures, diminished and declining; commerce struggling, not to retain the carrying of the produce of other countries, but our own. It is not a common occurrence in the history of nations, that in peace the people should call on the Government to relieve their distresses; and the Government should reciprocate the call, and ask the people to relieve the Gov

ernment.

For the first twenty-two years we enjoyed all the advantages of peace at home, and war abroad. We prospered amidst the distresses of others. But it ought not to be said of a Republic, that its institutions are calculated only for a state of foreign convulsion; that it can flourish only when others suffer. History does not furnish another instance of a nation relying on the importation of goods as the almost exclusive source of revenue. In every other nation, agriculture, manufactures and commerce, have been deemed inti

mately connected, each necessary to the growth of the other, all essential ingredients of national happiness; in ours there is said to be an hostility deep, inveterate and incurable. To every individual among us, it is the first lesson of economy to earn more than is expended, to sell more than is bought, to export more than is imported; yet this is said to be bad policy for a nation.

Our population has, within the thirty years of the present Government, increased nearly three-fold; of the aggregate of our exports, cotton excepted, there is scarcely any increase. In cotton, there has been not only a prodigious increase, but, as it were, a new creation. The value of this article exported is to the amount of all our exports, as twenty-two to fiftyone. It exceeds all the other agricultural productions of the country, but can be raised only in southern sections. To them and the nation at large, it is of infinite interest; it relieves the general gloom; but to sixteen States it affords no profits, except by carrying and consumption: it furnishes no foreign market for other productions.

When the statesman has compared the imports with the exports, he can well account for the following view of our situation, as given in the Treasury report on the currency:

"The currency of the United States has in three years been reduced from $110,000,000 to $45,000,000. The reduction exceeds fifty-nine per cent. of the whole circulation of 1815. All intelligent writers upon currency agree, that, where it is decreasing in amount, poverty and misery must prevail. The correctness of this opinion is too manifest to require proof; the entire voice of the nation attests it accuracy. As there is no recorded example in the history of nations of a reduction of the currency, so rapid and so extensive, so but few examples have occurred of distress so general and so severe as that which has been exhibited in the United States."

Without inquiring whether the state of the currency is a cause or an effect, it is enough to know and feel the melancholy truths thus avowed. The sea, the forest, the earth, yield their abundance; no calamity has visited the people; peace smiles on us; plenty blesses the land. Whence, then, this universal burst of distress? When the bounties of Providence fail to prove beneficent in their effects, man must be perverse, or Government unjust. Past the thirtieth year of our existence, in the present form, approaching the fiftieth of independence, and, counting from the year of its recog