ranks in preparation to follow the executive standard-(the device, an officeseeker couchant with arm extended and porridge-dish right side up, held expectingly, beseechingly in the oily fingers)into the most exposed interspaces of the adversary's line, and thence charge with desperate venom on the weakened defences of their late brethren in arms. On the other side was ranged the ever active and formidable party which rallies under the profaned name of Democracy, having retained the exasperation and recovered from the depression of the rout of 1840, under the stimulus of the novel and sanguine hopes which recent events had inspired and justified-its ready instinct sharpened by the prospect of a restoration of the comfortable offices it had so lately forfeited, and the gratifying prestige of ascendency which, after long possession, it had so lately yielded. This party was now far stronger than if it had not been defeated in 1840; the Whigs proportionally weaker. Even victory afforded little sunshine to the latter; for if they carried the next Congress, to what end was it carried? Its measures were sure to be met and crushed by the inexorable Veto. In any event, the substantial power as well as the patronage of the government was sure to be against them; a barren prospect of responsibilities incurred without hope of corresponding opportunities, and expectations excited without a chance of satisfying thein, was all that victory held out to the Whigs. Two-thirds of the States had been previously, or were simultaneously, districted by their opponents so as to secure to themselves an advantage equal at least to the twenty-three odd Members-in other words, on an equal division of the aggregate popular vote, the Democrats' would carry at least one hundred and twenty-three Members of the House to not more than one hundred Whigs. Of course, there could be at no time a rational doubt of the result; and the election of a House wherein the Whigs had, at its organization, less than seventy members to one hundred and forty opponents, was very nearly what any safe calculator would have anticipated.

The Senate, though weakened by the results of the popular elections of 1841-2, was still obedient to the more powerful impulse of 1840, and exhibited a moderate but decided Whig majority. But this

conservative and dignified body did not assume to measure strength with its more numerous and popular coordinate branch, contenting itself with arresting the destructive measures originated in that assemblage. The Breakwater of the Constitution,' it was no part of the Senate's duty to dash out upon the broad ocean in search of mountain waves to breast and shatter; its high purpose was answered when it calmly rolled back the breakers which were hurled upon it in reckless but impotent fury. How this duty has been performed the sequel will indicate and history shall proudly record. Meantime, be it noted that in speaking generally of the Twenty-Eighth Congress we intend to refer to its numerical majority-to its impelling not its resisting force to that which began and ended with its appointed two years.

The Session was opened with the choice, as Speaker of the House, of a Member* who had been returned by 33 majority, and whose seat was then contested by his opponent -a most excep. tionable proceeding, though in this instance its practical mischiefs were precluded by a unanimous agreement, on due investigation, that Mr. Jones was entitled to the seat. But this the House did not, could not foreknow, and there was a fair presumption against it, from the closeness of the popular vote on a heavy poll, and the fact that there are always many illegal votes taken in an exciting contest under the suffrage-restricting Constitution of Virginia. Suppose the right had been with Mr. Botts, or had been extremely doubtful, would a Committee appointed by Mr. Jones, composed in major part of his co-partisans and supporters, be expected to weigh the evidence and apply the law with perfect impartiality-to sift the immense mass of testimony presented, with a patient resolution to render equal and exact justice? At the very best, the decision of a Committee so constituted could not be expected to carry with it the moral weight of a clearly impartial judgment. This was admitted by Mr. Jones in his subsequent deference of the choice of the Committee on Elections to the House-a course imperatively dictated by propriety, but which itself suggests the awkwardness of the Speaker's position. No man can properly be the

† Hon. John M. Botts.

chosen presiding officer of a legislative body at the same time that his right to sit in that body is seriously contested, and he liable, at any day, to be declared no member and his seat the rightful property of another.

The next important step taken by the House was one of far greater momentof vital and enduring significance. It was a clear, naked, undeniable Nullification of a law of the land by a simple resolution of one branch of the Federal Legislature. In earlier instances of Nullification it was deemed requisite that the invalidity of a subsisting enactment should be determined and pronounced by a body at least equal in authority (though not of commensurate jurisdiction) with that to which it owed its existence. But here the House alone nullified a provision of law which had been enacted by the Senate and House, signed by the President, and duly inscribed on the statute-book of the Union, to be heeded and obeyed by every loyal citizen. For this disorganizing act, not even the poor excuse of a party necessity could be given. It was a simple dethronement of Law, to exalt a perverse and disloyal Will-a prostration of eternal Right at the footstool of temporary Power. Let the facts be duly set forth.

On the twenty-seventh Congress devolved the duty of determining, under the census of 1840, the ratio of population upon which Members of the five succeeding Congresses should be chosen, and thereupon apportioning to each State its due number of Representatives. This was done; and, by a second section of the Act of Apportionment, it was plainly directed that each State should be divided into as many Congressional Districts, each of contiguous territory, as it was authorized to choose Members to the House, each District being entitled and restricted to one Member. This provision, which had been originally reported by the Committee entrusted with the framing of the Apportionment bill, had been fully debated in each House, and duly passed by each. Its policy was based not only on the general and obvious propriety of replacing incongruity by congruity, multiformity by uniformity, and thus securing to the American people that equality of representation demanded alike by the genius of our government and the obvious requirements of our Constitution, but on an immediate

and glaring instance of partisan abuse of the license before accorded to the several States of choosing by general ticket, by single districts, or by such a patchwork blending of the two as had prevailed in this State and in Pennsylvania. The State of Alabama had chosen her Members of Congress by single districts, prior to the Presidential Election of 1840. In that election Mr. Van Buren carried the State on the aggregate vote, but a majority for Gen. Harrison was given in three of the five Congressional districts. The Legislature met soon after; the Members of the Twenty-Seventh Congress were to be chosen the following August. To deprive the Whigs of the local advantage which had fortuitously accrued to them, (just such as their opponents are now enjoying in the case of Tennessee,) the Legislature repealed the Districting Act and directed that the five Members of Congress should be chosen by a general ticket. They were chosen accordingly-all of the dominant party-though such was the dissatisfaction of the people at this bare-faced partisan juggle, that a decided popular majority at the same time directed a restoration of the district system. But the end of the manœuvre had been gained; an example had been set of changing the mode of election from time to time in accordance with the exigencies of the party having control of the Legislature, and it was morally certain to be followed and retaliated, until each State should come in time to be newly districted, or have its district system changed to a general ticket, or vice versa, at every fluctuation in its politics.

But not alone to ward off occasional or apprehended evils was the uniform district system demanded. It was required to obviate and correct existing and flagrant inequalities in the relative power of the several States in the House. Let a single instance be considered: Vermont and New Hampshire, two States of equal extent, population and representative capacity, have for years stood opposed in politics by very decided majorities. Vermont is a Whig State, warmly attached to the Protective Policy; New Hampshire is Loco-Foco, and ostensibly for Free Trade. Vermont, since 1820, has chosen her members by single Districts; New Hampshire hers by General Ticket. Vermont, with five Repre sentatives under the census of 1830, had sometimes two of the party decidedly a

interests or the will of triumphant Democracy.

The assumption of unconstitutionality in this instance, is probably weaker than in any other known to our history. The Federal Constitution expressly says:

"SECTION IV. Election of Members. The times, places, and manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but Congress may at any time, by law, make or alter such regulations, except as to the places of choosing Senators."

Here is all that the Constitution says on the subject; could more be desired? The States may regulate the incidents of choosing Members of Congress, in the absence of any enactment by Congress itself; but in Congress is vested a paramount power, to which all State legislation must give way. Thus, each State may legally choose by general ticket, by single districts, or by double and treble districts, as to it shall seem good, in the absence of any law of Congress prescribing the manner of choosing; but whenever Congress acts, all State laws which conflict with its regulation are superseded by it. The House had no more right to admit four members from New Hampshire chosen in notorious defiance of the second section of the Apportionment Act, to partake in its organization, than forty members from the same State, if that interesting sovereignty had seen fit to nullify the first section of the same act, and send two score of her Jacobinic Solons, to direct the councils of the nation.

The ground on which the enactment of a uniform district system was pronounced unconstitutional, is, if possible, more preposterous than the judgment itself. It is, in substance, a denial of the mathematical axiom, that the less is always included in the greater; Congress, argued the special pleaders for nullification, had a clear right under the clause of the Constitution above quoted, to divide each State, however exceptionably, into single districts, and the States would be bound to obey the act, and elect members in accordance with such apportionment. But Congress has no right to prescribe the manner in which the States shall legislate on the subject; its action must be perfect in itself, or it is invalid. The simple answer to this quibble affirms that the action of Con

gress in the premises is perfect, to the extent of the desire or intention of acting at all. Congress first prescribed the ratio of Representation; then the number of members to which each State is entitled under that ratio; lastly, a uniform manner of electing them. There it stopped.So far all was perfect without a particle of State legislation. The States were to commence, as all but four did commence, where Congress left off, and, in view of the paramount law of the land, perform that duty in regard to the apportionment which had been wisely remitted to local regulation. That Congress might legally have gone much farther than it did, is quite true; but this truth is singularly employed, when adduced to prove that it had no power to go so far. A commander who should assert that he could carry a certain fortress with twenty thousand men, but that forty thousand would be utterly inadequate, would aptly parallel the absurdity employed to justify nullification, and sustain the five contumacious States in trampling upon a law of the Union.

Vain was all argument, all remonstrance. 'Democracy' had power and the disposition to use it to the uttermost. The second section of the Apportionment Act, standing to this day unrepealed, was deliberately overborne, and twentyone Members of Congress hold seats and are potential in making laws, by virtue of the overthrow. The immediate practical evil of this outrage may be borne if not forgotten. The requisition defied is, in itself, so obviously just, that it must eventually triumph over every impulse of party madness. Already two of the nullifying States, Georgia and Missouri, have receded from their untenable ground and districted according to law. But the spectacle afforded to the Nation and the world of law-makers foremost, if not alone, in defying the restraints of law, and a Congress palpably constituted on the basis of contempt for the authority of Congress, will long be potential in poisoning the fountains of loy alty-a sentiment no where so needful as in an unmilitary republic-and teaching the lustful, the violent, the unprincipled, the easily tempted, that law is no emanation or reflection of Divine justice, but a device of the cunning to facilitate the gratification of their own passions, while imposing restraints on others, and is only to be obeyed when obedience is convenient, and resistance directly peril

one.

The plan of operations for this Congress, indicated by the leading organs of the Democratic party, was a very simple Its execution implied barely the undoing of all that had been done-in our judgment, wisely and nobly done by the preceding Congress. To this end, an early demonstration was made upon the Tariff of 1842-a measure very possibly defective in some of its infinity of details, but as a whole eminently judicious and beneficent. Against this Tariff, both in inception and in operation, the whole artillery of the party had been directed, and well-nigh exhausted. It was represented as a measure taxing onerously our eighteen millions of people for the benefit of a few thousands of purse-proud manufacturers. It was the Black Tariff, the Aristocrat Tariff, the death-blow to the industry, commerce, and prosperity of the country. The Farmers were told, as a notorious and even admitted truth, that it would signally enhance the price of every article they purchased, and depress that of whatever they had to sell. The Planting interest was assured that it would destroy the market for cotton, while increasing the cost of cloths, bagging, &c. The Cities were haunted by the spectre of a crippled commerce and famished internal trade. In our own city of New York it was formally proclaimed that the tariff would increase the cost of manufactures by some twenty-five to fifty per cent, while depressing the wages of labor and drying up the springs of trade. When the sailors in port turned out to oppose a reduction of their wages, they were met and harangued by the standing orators of Tammany Hall, who assured them that the Black Tariff was the cause of their trouble, and that neither ship-building nor navigation could flourish until this was repealed. Its failure to afford an adequate revenue was predicted with undoubting confidence. Even so late as the midsummer of 1843, Mr. James K. Polk, then canvassing the state of Tennesee as a candidate for Gov

ernor, did not hesitate to declare, in writing, that the Tariff of 1842 must be repealed, because (among other reasons equally sound) it would not afford adequate revenue !-that we must return to a twenty per cent. horizontal Tariff to save the country from bankruptcy. The very next year afforded a striking evidence of his slender claims to eminence, either as a statesman or a prophet. The receipts of that year, (1844) exceeded by many millions of dollars the current expenditures of the government, and more than doubled those of the year preceding the enactment of this Tariff, when the duties were the lowest and most uniform that they had been in any year of the last twenty.

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The Black Tariff" was the most important object of Loco-Foco hostility in the first session of the Twenty-Eighth Congress. The Speaker, strongly antiTariff, placed at the head of the Committee of Ways and Means, Gen. James J. McKay, of N. C.-a man of barely respectable talents, but a consistent and decided champion of free trade--with a working majority of like principles. By this majority a bill was in due time elaborated and reported, contemplating a radical reduction of the Tariff. Its general range of duties was thirty per cent. on the foreign valuation of articles imported for one year ensuing; after that, twenty-five per cent. From this standard some remarkable deviations on either side were allowed. The coarsest wool was to pay fifteen per cent. duty, but the fabrics (woolen blankets) made of such wool were admitted at ten per cent.-a discrimination against the American producer. Cotton fabrics were universally reduced to twenty per cent. and every minimum abolished. On the other hand, iron and sugar, the staples of Pennsylvania and Louisiana, were to be let off with a slight reduction, leaving the duties on each in their several varieties still specific and fully equal to seventy per cent. ad valorem. This glaring inequality was the device of politicians subtler than Gen. McKay.

The manufacturing interests of the North were given over to destruction, as inexorably hostile to the Democracy; but Pennsylvania and Louisiana were States of doubtful political bias, which the party must have in the approaching Presidential canvass. By this indefensible partiality, their apprehensions of evil from a Loco-Foco ascendency in the