as by several preceding ones which brought the confederacy to the verge of dissolution. The power to which Mr. Adams alludes, exists in our states respectively, and their people, who, instead " of slumbering in indolence and folding their arms," have advanced in the career of public improvements, canals, rail-roads, plank-roads, electric telegraphs, steamboat navigation, steam-ship construction, public education, and all the other elements of progress, to a degree which no other people ever witnessed; and to a degree which the national government could not have attained had it been legally invested with the attributes of unrestricted sovereignty.* Our only alternative is strict construction or dissolution. Seeing then that the loosest construction which can be imagined will not promote good objects so effectively as the strictest construction, we need not regret, that by the laws of nature we possess no alternative but to be content with the good which the general government can effect within the sphere of its most restricted powers, or to weaken the bonds of our Union. Recent events show that these views are more than theoretical, and they have painfully forced on the perception of the most obtuse intellect, that the loose construction by which Congress claims the power to circumscribe domestic slavery in the territories, interferes so sensitively with our southern confederates as to immediately endanger the Union. Now in relation to the right of a state to secede from the Union, or to redress injuries to her sovereignty by any other means in her power, the right is not constitutional, any more than our original revolution was loyal, or than our war of 1812 was conformable to the definitive treaty made with Great Britain in 1783, and which stipulated for a "perpetual peace." The right of secession is nevertheless perfect, being among the "inalienable rights" referred to in the Declaration of Independence; and with which it says, we are endowed by our Creator. Enumerated among these, are "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness ;" and "whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government." We all feel that secession is practicable, and to urge a discontinuance of further annoyances against the South, we have lately seen numerously attended "Union Meetings" in our large commercial cities, and their influence will be salutary; but the parties seem not to have probed to the bottom of the difficulty. Indeed, the superficial views which these meetings take of the difficulty of our position, is painfully indicative that the nature of our confederacy is too little understood by its friends. They see our present danger, and are desirous of averting it; but they seem moved thereto more by fear of consequences than conviction of error, in the principle from which the danger has arisen. They cry aloud for Union, and some would fight for it, but these are not the way (especially the latter) of obtaining it; and humanity may rejoice that it is not. But especially they seem not to know that slavery agitation is only the symptom of a disease, not the disease itself. The disease is a loose construction of the Constitution, and the remedy is a strict construction. *For further elucidations on this point, see the author's article in Hunt's Merchants' Magazine for December last, entitled, "The Advantages and Disadvantages of Private Slavery is only the symptom of to-day, as a protective tariff was the symptom of 1832, and as a great system of internal improvements by the general government may be the symptom to-morrow. The friends of Union, therefore, should understand that they must be strict, constructionists of the Constitution, if they would be Union-men in an intelligent, pervading, and enduring sense. Wholesome restriction exceeds the conventional restrictions. Nor need we fear that the strictest construction to which we can subject the constitution, will be prejudical. Our dangers lie not thitherward. The abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia is constitutionally within the power of Congress, as was the abolition therein of the slave trade; but who knows not that this legislation is distasteful to the South, and thus conflicts in spirit with the constitutional restrictions which enable the confederacy to hold together? When, also, some years ago, the proceeds of the public lands were distributed among the States in the most equitable manner, to the great relief of some States, and to the support of education in others, yet it was offensive to some of the agricultural States, though certainly constitutional. They saw that the money which was thus diverted from the federal treasury would necessarily be supplied by an enhanced tariff; and that the non-manufacturing States would thus be taxed to the benefit of the manufacturing States, as effectually, as though the tariff had been enhanced for the express purpose of protec tion. The most efficient preservative principle is the danger of aggression. But after enlightening ourselves fully on the preservative qualities of a strict construction of the constitution, how can we insure its application in national legislation? A present good has ever preponderated over a prospective evil. The strong have ever tyrannized over the weaker, to the extent that aggression was met by sufferance. Aggression, therefore, can only be arrested by resistance. Nor is the remedy speculative merely. When Missouri, in 1820, was refused admission into the Union, by reason that the constitution framed by her inhabitants permitted domestic slavery, nothing prevented the consummation of the aggression but unmistakable demonstrations that it would effect a dissolution of the confederacy. So the resistance, in 1832, of South Carolina, to a protective tariff, was mainly effectual in the subsequent abandonment of the principle; till now, the most which is claimed by the opponents of free trade, is an incidental protection, after the expenditures of the government shall be reduced, as much as practicable, by economy and the land money. But to omit old examples, what caused the abandonment, at the last session of Congress, of the Wilmot proviso, though patriotism during the war with Mexico, and our armies there in imminent peril for reinforcements, in vain could cause it to be abandoned? And what caused the efficient amendment of the fugitive slave law, the nullification of which for many long years, had been the labored effort of States, and the favorite amusement of associated societies? and what arouses in nearly all our cities union meetings, without distinction of party, to arrest slavery agitation, on which parties so long have lived? It is the determined spirit evinced by some of the aggrieved States, that they will no longer submit to what outrages their interests and their feelings. Let not the truly Union men, therefore, look with disapprobation at the agitation which is pervading the South, for it is but the tempest which is to purify the political atmosphere; and by a means which God has ordained for the purposes of longevity. Nations and society of every grade are kept peaceable and just by only the antagonisms which nature arouses between the aggrieved and the aggressor. Sufferance, on the contrary, but facilitates further aggression; and unrestricted submission in the intercourse of mankind with each other, would be attended with universal ravage, rapine and outrage. Thus, had the slave States tamely submitted to the imposition of the Wilmot proviso to New Mexico and Utah, we should, instead of Union meetings to arrest further agitation, have had meetings every where to spirit forward the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia; and our confederacy, "soaring in its pride of place," would have been continually thus "hawked at by every mousing owl," till it would have lost all its preservative elements, and become practically a huge consolidation, which the diversity of exasperated local interests, and geographical hatreds, would, eventually, have broken into irreparable fragments. For the aggrieved to resist aggression is, therefore, the most patriotic of duties; and the fault of the South consists in not having resisted effectually in 1820, instead of compromising by the circumscription of slavery in Missouri. If an injured party is subdued by force, he must submit; but he who submits without physical necessity is an accessory to his own dishonor; and in our confederacy he becomes an accomplice in the overthrow of the Union. All the concessions of the South have been rendered without an equivalent. Nor need we be surprised that the South is not quieted by the late compromise measures. Who sees not that the Californians formed their constitution under the coercion of knowing that admission into the Union was impracticable, except by a prohibition of slavery; and that an extension of the interdict over nearly all the territory acquired from Mexico, would facilitate the admission. Το say that the new fugitive slave law is an equivalent for this aggression, is to aggravate the injury by taking advantage of our own wrong; for the new law is beneficial to the South only because we practically nullified the old. The like may be said of our abandonment of the Wilmot proviso in the organization of New Mexico and Utah, an abandonment that was useful to the South by reason only of our wrong in meditating the restriction. In short, every compromise the South has entered into has resulted in a sacrifice without an an available equivalent. Capitation and other direct taxation was, by the constitution, to be apportioned among the States according to the ratio of their representation; hence, rather than be taxed for the whole number of their slaves, the South consented that every five slaves should be counted as only three persons. But no direct taxation is levied, and the loss of representation by the South is without an equivalent; aggravated, too, by the fact that every five slaves who escape into the North without being recaptured, will be represented in Congress as five persons; though the blacks are usually as much debarred from the right of suffrage in the North as in the South. The remedy which alone can restore fraternal harmony. The people, like other sovereigns, are so little accustomed to hear truth, that the foregoing remarks may seem strange; but the time is arrived 1 1851.] when the whole truth should be told, that our citizens, never acting inten- THE CONCLUSION. Politicians who excite each other in Congressional debate, are prone to mistake for public feeling what is only an effect of their own position. The people of the North cared nothing last winter what terms of compromise should be concocted, so long as the terms would restore peace; and they care nothing now for the respective measures, except as they shall In truth, the North had, last winter, prove effectual towards harmony. no surrenders to make, but a relinquishment of their own unwarrantable interference with the domestic relations of other men, as free as themselves, and as capable of self-government. If these views impute too much good sense to the North, and especially if we are not prepared for such a reversal of our conduct as is urged in the foregoing leaves, we are not equal to the exigency of the times, or to live under a confederate government such as no preceding people ever enjoyed. The South, even now, show a placability (as they have during our whole period of encroachments) which nothing can cause but a great love for the Union. We may, therefore, under a persistance in our errors, enjoy a truce for a season, but no enduring union. With the restoratives herein recommended, and a strict construction of the constitution in all future legislation, we may safely expect long years of internal tranquillity. Geographical divisions, which constitute "the madness of the many for the gain of a few," will fade away. No causes will exist for rejecting new confederates, by local jealousies in regard to the balance of sectional strength; and we may diffuse the blessings of our system illimitably, Canada-ward or Mexico-ward, to the advantage of ourselves, and the happiness of others. In the language, therefore, of inspiration, (and no language is too sacred,) placed before you this day are good and evil. Choose ye! THE TREASURY.* THE Report of the Secretary of the Treasury has become a mere partisan document in the hands of politicians, instead of an important State Paper fraught with information, and based on sound principles of finance. It is to be remarked, that the laws of trade and the principles of finance, have been recognized, defined and developed, since the establishment, by Congress, of the Treasury Department. Since then the great lessons of the French finances during the revolution; of the operations of the Bank of England, suspended during the war; the effect of peace upon trade and finances, which had received an anomalous direction during a war of twenty-five years; the experience of two United States banks, one during a state of European war and restricted commerce, another during a period of peace, of increasing trade and industrial competition, with an extraordinary development of national and individual credits on a grand scale, leading to disaster, have been given to the world. Meanwhile the position of the United States has, in forty years, gradually changed in respect of other nations, until she now takes a leading position, holding in her hand that thread of cotton which she has woven around England and western Europe, putting them upon their good behavior. From a strictly prohibitive policy, Great Britain, under the force of American competition, has gradually burst every legislative restriction until she approximates entire free trade. The nations of western Europe have made progress in the same direction, although somewhat more slowly. The United States have corrected that erroneous financial policy which caused our interests to hang on the credits granted in Threadneedle-street. We have, in the last ten years, refused credit, and conducted a cash business which has made us independent, and capital has accumulated in the country to an extraordinary extent, while the importance, to all interests, of a free interchange of the products of industry, without which labor is of little value, has become manifest. All these lessons have been given to the world in the last fifty years, and the modified commercial policy of all commercial nations, affords evidence of the truths they have taught. The United States alone show no progress commercially, although they have improved financially. The Reports of the two Secretaries, Meredith and Corwin, carry the reader back half a century. They contain only the crude notions of trade and commerce which might have been entertained by a fourth-rate statesman of the last century. What would be thought of a Secretary who would gravely recommend to cotton-spinning machinery that was in use half a century since, without alluding to the wonderful improvements which experience has since suggested? this has gravely been done in relation to the nation's commercial policy. The lesson taught by the pauper condition of England, and the starvation of Ireland, the legitimate results of a century and a-half of mis-government, is entirely lost upon the head of the Treasury Department. He does not rise above the petty contentions of faction, to recognize only the Yet Annual Report of the Secretary of the Treasury, to both houses of Congress. cember, 1850. |