Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB
[blocks in formation]

nufactures twelve and a half per cent. This would be equivalent to a bounty to the British manufacturers, in their competition with those of the United States, while the latter would experience the disadvantage resulting from the increased price of grain, and consequently of labor, in this country, proceeding from the same cause. That I have not overrated the effect of the repeal of the corn laws of Great Britain, may be inferred from the fact, that a very intelligent writer in that country has expressed the opinion that the productive industry of the nation would be as much relieved by the abolition of the corn laws, as it would by the total extinguishment of the public debt. It would be absurd to suppose, therefore, that the tariffs of 1824 and 1828 were designed to produce a repeal of the British corn laws. It follows that there is nothing, either in the causes which gave rise to those measures, or the objects they were designed to accomplish, at all connected with the foreign relations of the country, or of a nature to give them any pretensions to be considered constitutional regulations of commerce.

What, then, was the real cause, and what the real object, of the prohibitory laws of 1824 and 1828? Did they proceed from any commercial regulation of foreign powers, injurious to the rights or interests which may have been committed by the constitution to the guardianship of this Government Assuredly they were not. Were they intended to foster and protect any branch of our foreign commerce, or any other national interest intrusted to the protection of Congress! The very reverse, sir. It cannot be disguised-indeed, it has been openly avowed, that they were intended for no other purpose than to annihilate, not for a season, but for all time, a lawful branch of commerce which Congress is constitutionally bound to protect, in order to build up on its ruins another branch of industry with which Congress has no more right to interfere than with the parish poor rates.

I ask you then, sir, in the name of the constitution, and of the principles of eternal justice, what right has Congress-what right can any human Government possess-to destroy the interests of one entire section of this confederacy, to promote the interests of the other sections? What right have you-I put the question to the majority of this House, in the name of all the people of the Southern States -what right have you to lay your hands upon our property-upon that which is ours by the highest of all earthly titles the blessing of God upon our own honest industry, and arbitrarily appropriate it to your own use, or to that of your constituents! No freak of tyranny, ever committed by an absolute despot, can exceed this outrage upon the principles of natural justice, which you are perpetrating under the perverted powers and prostituted forms of a free Government.

We have an undoubted natural right to the enjoyment of that commerce which you are now engaged in the unrighteous work of sweeping from the great highway of nations. Superadded to this natural right, we have a constitutional right to call upon the majority of Congress, as the special guardians of this very commerce, to guaranty the enjoyment of it, not only against the lawless pirates of the ocean, but against the injurious regulations of foreign States. And it is in this state of our mutual rights and obligations, that this majority are carrying on a system of legislative piracy-degrading the Government from its high estate, and reducing it from the sacred relation it ought to bear to all the interests of the Union, into a disgraceful confederacy with sea robbers and outlaws. Sir, this is no picture of the imagination; for I solemnly declare that I would rather, as a southern planter, take my chance, unaided by the public arm, against all the pirates that ever infested the great deep, than to be subject to the comprehensive and desolating sweep of the prohibitory system.

And now, having shown that the tendency and object of

[blocks in formation]

this system is to confiscate the commerce of the South, under the false and delusive pretext of regulating it, and to appropriate the proceeds of the property thus confiscated and condemned by the high admiralty of this system of plunder, to the special and exclusive uses of the northern capitalists, I beg leave to call the attention of the committee to a view of this subject, well calculated to develop and illustrate the true genius and character of the system. The representatives of the manufacturing and tariff States allege that they have large and extensive manufacturing establishments, which it is their interest and their right to encourage and protect, and deny the right of the southern representatives to interfere with their protecting policy. Now, sir, as a southern representative, I claim no right to interfere with any protection, which any portion of the northern States may choose to extend, at their own expense, to ther own manufactories. All I pretend to claim, is the right to put my veto upon this scheme of injustice and plunder, by which the property, the rightful and exclusive property, of my constituents, is unconstitutionally applied to that object.

There cannot be a proposition more self-evidently just and equitable, than that those States in which the manufacturing establishments are situated, should bear the burden of protecting them. Can a man be found, sir, in this House, or out of it, who would have the boldness to contest this position? Then why do not the manufacturing States protect their own manufactures? Will it be pretended that they have not the constitutional power? Has not the Legislature of every State in the Union an unlimited power to impose taxes upon the people of the State, and appropriate the proceeds, in the form of bounties, for the protection of domestic manufactures, or any other branch of domestic industry? No man of common information-no man, indeed, of common sense, will deny that every State Legislature has this power. Why, then, is it not exercised? Is the protection it would afford less direct and efficient than that which is afforded by the imposition of high impost duties? I will answer this question in the language of a man to whom the manufacturers have always looked, as to an oracle-I mean Alexander Hamilton. Speaking of "pecuniary bounties," he says: been found one of the most efficacious means of encouraging manufactures; it is in some views the best. "It is a species of encouragement more positive and direct than any other, and, for that very reason, has a more immediate tendency to stimulate and uphold new enterprises.

*

"This has

*

"It avoids the inconvenience of a temporary augmentation of price, which is incident to some other modes, or it produces it in a less degree, either by making no addition to the charges on the rival foreign article, as in the case of protecting duties, or by making a smaller addition."

**

*

*

*

"As often as a duty upon a foreign article makes an addition to its price, it causes an extra expense to the community, for the benefit of the domestic manufacturer. A bounty does no more."

These quotations are perfectly conclusive as to the su perior efficacy of pecuniary bounties over protecting du ties, as a means of encouraging domestic manufactures. I will add an additional advantage, which the advocates of the bill before us will not surely regard as unimportant. The protection given by these bounties cannot be evaded by smuggling or by false invoices. This, of itself, would seem to be perfectly decisive in favor of the bounty system. Under that system, sir, there would be no occasion for creating custom-house inquisitions and arbitrary ap praisements. How, then, has it come to pass, that, while the manufacturers have been, for more than ten years past, clamoring at our doors for protection, the Legislature of no single State in the Union, so far as I am informed, has ever appropriated a cent, or raised a finger, to sustain

APRIL 29, 1830.]

The Tariff.

[H. OF R.

these languishing and suffering interests, which certainly tural staples of the southern States, which can find a have a claim upon the States for protection, if indeed they market only in foreign countries, and which can be adhave any claim at all! Sir, I have frequently put this ques- vantageously sold only in exchange for the foreign manu tion in former discussions upon this floor, and have never factures which come in competition with those of the found a man bold enough to answer it. The advocates of northern and middle States. It follows, as a necessary the protecting system have invariably passed it over with consequence, that it is the interest of the manufacturers a prudent and profound silence. The reason is obvious. in the northern and middle States to prohibit, by heavy No man dares to avow openly the true cause why the ma- taxation, the importation of these foreign manufactures, nufacturing States, having the undoubted power, will not which it is as undoubtedly the interest of the southern extend any protection to their own manufacturers, but send planters to import as free from taxation as possible. them to Congress for relief. These interests, then, stand diametrically, and irreconcilThe moral sense of this nation would not tolerate the ably opposed to each other. The interest, the pecuniary avowal, that the State of Massachusetts, for example, will interest of the northern manufacturer is directly promoted not tax her own citizens to afford protection to her own by every increase of the taxes imposed upon southern commanufactures, because the Federal Government can be merce; and it is unnecessary to add, that the interest of made the unrighteous instrument of taxing the people of the the southern planters is promoted by every diminution of southern States for the purpose of affording that protection. the taxes imposed upon the productions of their industry. This, sir, disguise it as gentlemen may, is the true ques- If, under these circumstances, the manufacturers were tion involved in the protecting system. The tariff States clothed with the power of imposing taxes, at their pleawould permit every establishment within their limits to sure, upon the foreign imports of the planter, no doubt sink into utter ruin, before they would levy taxes from would exist upon the mind of any man, that it would have their own citizens to nourish and sustain them. That all the characteristics of an absolute and unqualified deswould be too plain and palpable a proceeding. It would potism. It will be my purpose, then, to show, that, by instantly open the eyes of the people to the true charac- the aid of various associated interests, the manufacturing ter of the protecting system. It would tear off from the capitalists have obtained a complete and permanent conmonster the veil which conceals its horrible deformity, trol over the legislation of Congress on this subject. A and break its infatuating charm forever. If the protec- great number of causes have contributed to give the tion afforded to the manufacturers by this Government manufacturing interest this ascendency. The prominent were entirely withdrawn to-morrow, I do not believe there and leading cause is, beyond all doubt, the natural influence is a State Legislature in the Union, that would dare to sub- of accumulated capital in the hands of a comparatively stitute an equivalent protection in the form of pecuniary small number of men, acting with the sagacity, perseverbounties drawn from the people of the State, and appro-ance, and concert, for which they are invariably distinguish priated from the public treasury. Nothing that could be ed, in matters affecting their own pecuniary interests. It possibly suggested, in the way of argument, would exhi- is a melancholy fact, to which all history bears the most bit the palpable injustice of this system in so strong a light as the course pursued, in this respect, by the Legislatures of the tariff States. Would any man believe, sir, that the Legislature of a Sovereign State would memorialize Congress to protect the manufactures of that State, by imposing restrictions and duties upon the commerce of other States, when that Legislature, having the admitted power to protect those manufactures, utterly neglects to do it Yet such was the conduct of the Legislature of Massachusetts; and such is, substantially, the course pursued by the Legislatures of all the tariff States.

unequivocal testimony, that whenever society becomes so far advanced in commerce and the arts, as to have produced a considerable accumulation of capital, the holders of that capital are perfectly irresistible on all those questions in relation to which the action of the Government is brought to bear upon the great pecuniary interests of society. Every one knows that there was a time, not very remote, when the great and leading feature in the policy of this Government was to favor and foster, by every species of exemption and bounty, the navigating and commercial interests of the nation. I need hardly add, that, at the period to which I allude, almost the whole of the accumulated capital of the country was embarked in the business of navigation and commerce.

But as soon as this capital was transferred to the business of manufactures, the whole policy of the Govern ment, and the political principles of an entire region of country, on the subject of free trade and commercial restrictions, underwent a corresponding change. One would almost imagine, who had been long enough in Congress to have witnessed this extraordinary political transmutation, that the New England members of Congress were sent here as the representatives of capital, and not of numbers, so implicitly have they followed its direction.

Sir, no man of the slightest observatien can be insensi

I have, thus far, considered this system as involving an unconstitutional perversion of the power to regulate foreign commerce, with a view to bestow indirect bounties upon the manufactures of certain States, by imposing taxes and restrictions upon the commerce of certain other States. I will now invite the attention of the committee to some considerations calculated to show that it involves a violation of the great and fundamental principles of civil and political liberty. There is not one of those principles of more vital importance, or more absolutely consecrated by all the historical associations of both Great Britain and the United States, than that which secures the people against all taxes and burdens not imposed by their own representatives. This principle, indeed, is essentially involved in the very notion of self-go-ble of the influence of large capitalists upon the members vernment. Now, sir, owing to the federative character of of this House, on all questions affecting their peculiar inour Government, the great geographical extent of our terests. It is not to be disguised, that two or three wealthy territory, and the diversity of the pursuits of our citizens iron-masters in a congressional district will exercise more in different parts of the Union, it has so happened that influence over the representative here, than all the rest of two great interests have sprung up, standing directly op- his constituents united, upon the question of increasing or posed to each other. One of them consists of those diminishing the tax upon foreigu iron. The same is equalmanufactures which the northern and middle States are ly true as to the sugar planters, salt makers, and manufac capable of producing, but which, owing to the high price turers of cotton and woollen fabrics. It is not a difficult of labor and high profits of capital in those States, can matter to account for this influence of capital, employed in not hold competition with foreign manufactures, without manufactures. I do most confidently believe that two or the aid of bounties, directly or indirectly given, either by three large establishments, carried on by white laborers the General Government or by the State Governments. who were entitled to vote at elections, would be an overThe other of these interests consists of the great agricul-match for all the other interests in any congressional dis

[blocks in formation]

trict in the Union. I have seen enough, even in my own district, to convince me that even that forms no exception to the general rule I have laid down.

[APRIL 29, 1830.

The unanimity with which the members of this House vote, even for private claims coming from their own States when scarcely anybody else can perceive any justice in them-is a commentary upon what I have been saying, which every gentleman will know how to estimate.

On all questions to be decided by Congress, therefore, affecting the interests of the manufacturers, or any of those associated interests which the persons concerned are pleased to denominate domestic industry, I am constrained to regard the policy of the tariff States as fixed and unalterable; as much so, as if the representatives of those States were chosen exclusively by the manufacturers themselves, and sent here as their special agents, acting under instructions.

thies and prepossessions of the States and sections of the Union to which they belong. The question of granting relief, for example, to eight or ten manufacturing esta What number of farmers, scattered over the country and blishments in Massachusetts, would be evidently regarded unaccustomed to combination, could resist the influence of as a State question, though not ten thousand people should three large manufacturing capitalists, each having three be directly or indirectly interested in it: and the member hundred free laborers in his employment entitled to vote? of Congress who should oppose it, would be deemed to Upon any question affecting the interest of the manufac- have deserted the interest of his own State. There is anturers, three thousand farmers would hold no competition other consideration still more decisive. The relief sought with them. In the first place, there would be a perfect by the manufacturers is to be obtained by imposing burunity of action among the capitalists themselves, on the dens and restrictions upon the commerce of other States, question, for example, vital to their own interests-of in- and remote sections of the Union. All classes, therefore, ducing Congress to give them a bounty, or impose a pro- in a manufacturing State, will naturally take sides with the hibitory duty having the same effect. In the second place, manufacturers, in regard to all those measures which proall the laborers in their employment would, upon the most pose to advance the interests of those manufacturers, by obvious principles of human action, give their votes in taxing the commerce of the southern planters. Viewing such a way as to gratify the wishes, and promote the inte- it as a sectional question, there can be no doubt that the rest, of their employers. This would indeed be their own aggregate interest of the State would be promoted by such interest. In the third place, a considerable number of a measure, however inconsiderable the number of manufarmers and other persons, in the vicinity of these manufac- facturers. It is, indeed, the interest of Massachusetts to turing establishments, would find a market for a great protect any of her manufacturers, however small the numnumber of agricultural productions, which would other-ber, and however heavy the imposition necessary to effect wise be of scarcely any value to them. All these causes it, if the benefit, however small, accrues to her citizens, would produce a perfect unity of action amongst this and the burden, however great, falls upon the citizens of large number of voters, directly and indirectly connected other States. with the manufacturing establishments, and all their ef forts in political contests would be directed to a single object-the protection of the manufacture in which they were engaged or interested. Whatever division might take place among other interests of the district, you would never find the manufacturers divided. Every candidate for popular favor would be made to understand that the consolidated vote of this manufacturing interest would be given against him, unless he would promise to support their applications for the bounty and protection of Congress. In this manner it would come to pass, that the contest between the manufacturers and the farmers would be like that between regular soldiers and untrained militiamen, in which superior discipline would overbalance superior numbers. Men confederated together upon selfish What, then, becomes of the great principle of liberty, and interested principles, whether in pursuit of the offices to which I have adverted-which secures the people against or the bounties of Government, are ever more active and any burdens of taxation not imposed by their own reprevigilant than the great majority, who act from disinterested sentatives? Is it not absolutely annulled-nay, is it not and patriotic impulses. Have we not witnessed it on this completely reversed, as to the people of the southern floor, sir? Who ever knew the tariff men to divide on States, in all cases involving the interest of the manufaeany question affecting their confederated interests? If you turers, and the policy of the protecting system? Is not the propose to reduce any one of the duties, no matter how majority of Congress composed of the representatives of obvious the expediency of the reduction, they will tell you, those who have a direct and positive pecuniary interest in if not in plain words, at least by their conduct, that the du- imposing taxes upon the people of the southern States, ty you propose to reduce is very oppressive and unjust, in the form of high and prohibitory duties upon their lawas in the case of salt: or very absurd and suicidal, as in the ful commerce-the product of their honest industry? Does case of raw wool; but that, if you reduce either of these not that majority declare it to be its interest, and avow it duties, a proposition will be made to reduce some other, to be its object, to pursue this system of prohibitory duties and then some other, until the whole system of confede- until the whole of that commerce which gives value to rated interests will be shaken to its centre. The watch the agricultural productions of the southern States, and word is, stick together, right or wrong, upon every ques- without which our fields would be left desolate, shall be tion affecting the common cause. Such, sir, is the con- utterly and absolutely abolished? It is not many days cert and vigilance, and such the combinations by which since I heard an honorable gentleman from New York exthe manufacturing party, acting upon the interests of some, press the opinion, that, in less than ten years, probably in and the prejudices of others, have obtained a decided and half the time, the whole of those foreign manufactures permanent control over public opinion in all the tariff which fall within the purview of the prohibitory policy, States. All the representatives of those States, however and which are the only articles the southern planters ean decidedly opposed in principle to the prohibitory policy, receive, to any tolerable extent, or with any sort of advanare constrained to regard the interest of the manufacturers tage, in exchange for their staples, would cease to be imas that of their constituents at large. No man, sir, from a ported, leaving not a vestige of that important branch of manufacturing district, would dare to vote against any mea- our foreign commerce. There is too much reason to besure, however unjust and oppressive, if it be only deemed lieve, sir, that this opinion is well founded. When the beneficial to the manufacturers, and denominated a tariff. tariff of 1828 shall have reached its maximum, and the riIn addition to the reasons I have stated, for regarding gorous enforcement of the duties shall be secured by the the manufacturing as the controlling interests in the tariff bill on your tables, I have no doubt you will have providStates, I will add another, which every reflecting man will ed a system which will accomplish the work of entire produly appreciate. The manufacturers, in their applications bibition in the time limited by the member from New to the General Government, naturally enlist the sympa York, to whom I have alluded.

APRIL 29, 1830.]

The Tariff.

[H. OF R. 1

[ocr errors]

It is in vain, then, that the people of the South attempt | tions in our federative system of Government, growing to palter with this question, or to disguise any longer the out of the constitutional compact, and founded upon the sad reality of their condition. They have no security principles of natural justice. In the first place, the ma-, against taxation, but the will of those who have a settled jority cannot rightfully do any thing not authorized by the interest and fixed determination to increase their burdens; constitutional charter. The great object of a written conthey have no rights of property, no title to that commerce stitution is to restrain the majority. It is founded upon which gives the principal value to the productions of their the idea that an unchecked majority is as dangerous as an industry, which they do not hold by the same miserable unchecked minority. I believe, when cut loose from the and degrading tenure. They are, to all intents and pur- moorings of an effective and real responsibility, it is more poses, the slaves of northern monopolists. If I were call-so. But of that hereafter. ed upon to give a definition of slavery, I could not use In the second place, the right of the majority to govern, language more appropriate than that which should accu- in a political system composed of confederated sovereignrately describe the condition of the people of the south- ties, and extending over geographical subdivisions having ern States. diversified and conflicting interests, must be limited to There is no form of despotism that has ever existed up those cases where there is a common interest pervading on the face of the earth, more monstrous and horrible the whole confederacy. This is a limitation growing out than that of a representative Government acting beyond of the very nature and object of the compact, even upon. the sphere of its responsibility. Liberty is an empty the exercise of powers expressly granted. The submis- : sound, and representation worse than a vain delusion, un- sion of interests which are essentially adverse to the con less the action of the Government be so regulated that trol of a common Government, necessarily involves the responsibility and power shall be co-extensive. Now, I destruction of one or the other of them. This is the would be glad to know, under what responsibility the foundation of the checks and balances, even of consolimajority of this House act, in imposing burdens upon the dated Governments, and of the partition of power among industry of the southern people, and in waging this mer-distinct sovereignties in this confederacy. ciless warfare against their commerce. Are they, in the It is contrary to the clearest principles of natural justice, slightest degree, responsible to those upon whom they that the majority, merely because they have the power, impose these heavy burdens? Have they any feelings of should violate the rights and destroy the separate and common interest or common sympathy to restrain them peculiar interests of the minority. This would make from oppression and tyranny? Does the system of pro-power and right synonymous terms. The majority have hibitory duties, which falls with such a destructive power no natural right, in any case, to govern the minority. It upon the dearest interests of the southern people, impose is a mere conventional right, growing out of necessity and any burden, or inflict any injury at all, upon the constitu- convenience. On the contrary, the right of the minority ents of that majority by which it has been adopted? to the enjoyment of life, liberty, and property, without any unjust interference on the part of the majority, is the most sacred of the natural rights of man.

The very reverse of all this is the truth. The majority which imposes these oppressive taxes upon the people of the South, so far from being responsible to them, or to those who have any common interest or common sympathy with them, in relation to the matter, are responsible to the very men who have been, for the last ten years, making the welkin ring with their clamors for the imposition of these very burdens. Yes, sir, those who lay the iron hand of unconstitutional and lawless taxation upon the people of the southern States, are not the representatives of those who pay the taxes, or have any participation in it, but the representatives of those who receive the bounty, and put it 3 in their pockets.

Can there be a more gross, monstrous, and insulting $mockery, than to tell my oppressed and outraged constituents that their rights are secured by the principle of representative responsibility? It would be just as rational to talk about the responsibility of a Roman emperor to the Prætorian bands by whom he was elevated to the throne, as a security against plundering the subject provinces for the purpose of paying the stipulated donatives by which he had purchased the empire.

The very principle of representative responsibility, when the Government is thrown from its balance, becomes itself a principle of the most despotic tyranny. It would be far better for the southern people, so far as this tariff policy is concerned, (and, as God is my judge, I would prefer it,) that the majority of Congress should be responsible to no earthly power, than that they should be responsible to the very persons who have the deepest interest of all the people on earth in the taxation and oppression of the southern people. Sir, these things cannot, must not, be. It is utterly impossible that such a state of things can be permitted to continue in a land where liberty, constitutional liberty, is endeared by so many glorious associations.

I am aware that the answer given to all this will be, that it is the right of the majority to govern, and the duty of the minority to submit. There is no political principle more undeniably true, in all the cases to which it properly applies. But it is subject to two very important limita VOL. VI.-108.

When the great antagonist interests of society become arrayed against each other, particularly when they are separated by distance, and distinguished by a difference of elimate, character, and civil institutions, the great object of the Government should undoubtedly be, not to become the partisan of either of those interests, but to interpose its power for the purpose of preventing the stronger from destroying the weaker. Instead, however, of assuming this attitude, instead of restraining the major interest from doing this act of injustice and oppression, this Govern ment degrades itself into the character of a partisan of the stronger interest, and an instrument of its oppression. It cannot be otherwise, sir, as long as the majority in Congress, being nothing more than the agent of the major interest in the confederacy, assumes the power of arbi trarily and unjustly appropriating to its own use the rightful and exclusive property of the minority. The majority can have no such rightful power. It is neither more nor less, stripped of the disguise thrown around it by the empty forms of legislative proceeding, than downright swindling and robbery: crimes which, in any civilized country in the world, would subject the individual perpetrator to infamous punishment. What human power can confer upon one set of men, however numerous, the right to commit such an outrage upon another set, however few in number? Will any advocate of the tariff policy admit that ten men have any greater right to rob him of his property, than he has to rob the ten of theirs! Yet this would be a legitimate consequence of admitting that a majority of Congress have an unlimited and uncontrollable right to dispose of the property of the minority.

If the commerce which this prohibitory system proposes to destroy were the common property of the whole Union; if the great agricultural staples, which are the basis of that commerce, were equally the productions of all the States of the confederacy, the principle of representative responsibility would furnish to the southern planter all the security against oppression which human

858

H. or R.J

The Tariff.

[APRIL 29, 1830. wisdom can provide. There would be a real and effect- | try-it must be apparent, I say, that whole sections of the ive responsibility pervading the whole system. A citizen Union, distinguished from the minority by the peculiarity of South Carolina would confidently confide his interests to of their civil institutions, and arrayed against that minority a representative from Massachusetts, not because that re- by this united motive of interest, and ambition, and prepresentative was responsible to him, but because he was judice, will prosecute their schemes of injustice and opresponsible to persons having the very same interest. It pression with all that want of moral responsibility which is this community of interest that can alone insure the distinguishes the proceedings of an infuriated mob. Yes, effective responsibility of a representative Government. sir, the mighty mass, blinded by a delusion which converts Where this does not exist, the principle of responsibility plunder into patriotism, will perpetrate, under the prosticeases to afford any security against oppression, and the tuted forms of legislation, acts of oppression and injustice, which no individual composing it would think of perpepower of the common Government should cease with it. Whenever the Federal Government, therefore, assumes trating, when acting on his separate responsibility. Such, to act upon the local or peculiar interest of particular then, is a faithful portrait of that majority, which we are States or sections of the Union, it as clearly transcends the told have a natural right to regulate and confiscate the in appropriate sphere of its constitutional and responsible terests of the minority. What despotism can be pointed power, as a State Government would do, in attempting to out, either among the dark realities of history, or the wildcontrol those common interests that have been committed est fictions of poetry, more fearful to contemplate? What to the protection of the Federal Government. In the refuge, what hope, what security have the minority, when one case, it would be despotism; in the other, anarchy. this devouring monster walks abroad, clothed with the God forbid that we should ever be driven to the dreadful mantle and armed with the sceptre of power, and stimulated by the insatiable spirit of monopoly? Shall I be told alternative of choosing between them, even for a time. I have said that there cannot be imagined a more odious that the minority must throw themselves upon the humaniand intolerable form of despotism, than that of a majority, ty, justice, and moderation of this majority! What, sir ! stimulated by motives of self-interest, and acting without are we to expect justice, humanity and moderation from any restraining power upon the interest of the minority. the spirit and genius of monopoly itself! You had as well A just analysis and exposition of the true character and think of striking fire from an icicle! You had as well atprinciples of that combination, or, more properly, con- tempt to satiate the appetite of a cannibal by the cries of spiracy of interests, which constitutes the tariff majority infant tenderness! no I solemnly declare that I would prefer the Government in the United States, will exhibit this idea in a more striking point of view than any thing I have yet advanced on the of a single despot to that of such a majority as I have desubject. I venture the assertion, that no priesthood, in scribed, acting upon the rights and interests of the mithe darkest ages of ignorance and superstition, ever pur- nority, without any restraint but that imposed by its own sued their selfish objects with more untiring perseverance will. The subjects of an imperial despot are not without and consummate art, than the manufacturing capitalists some security against the extremes of oppression. The have prosecuted their mercenary schemes of monopoly greatest tyrant that ever reigned-even the Emperor TiCommencing with a few followers-like other impostors of berius, was still a man, having the soul, and the feelings, whom we read-they have successively enlisted under their and the sympathies of a man, and could not, therefore, bebanner a sufficient number of confederate interests to ren- hold, without some "compunctious visitings," the sufferder themselves formidable; and, finally, by addressing ings of his subjects, and the desolation and plunder of his themselves to the ambition of some, and the prejudices of provinces. But such a majority as I have deseribed has others, they have disseminated the delusion of their false no more soul than a corporation, and, in the very nature doctrines through all ranks of society in the tariff States. of things, is utterly incapable of human sympathy. There is another restraint upon the power of a single Aspiring politicians, finding it conducive to their political advancement, have not scrupled to form an alliance, ce- tyrant, which does not operate upon this tyrant majority, mented by avarice and ambition, and not less ominous to appropriately denominated in another place "king numpublic liberty than that which has existed in other times, bers." The physical force of society is on the side of the and in other countries, between church and State. By the oppressed, in the case of a single despot. An act of tyartful use of cant phrases and cabalistic terms, addressed ranny will vibrate through the hearts of all his subjects, to the national pride and local prejudices of the people from one extremity of his dominions to the other. Every such as the "American System" and the "British System," man will feel that the blow which strikes down his fellow"Old England" and "New England," the "Free States" subject to day, may fall upon him to-morrow. A sense of and the "Slave States "-they have succeeded in working common danger and common suffering will induce the up the public mind in the manufacturing States to a state most degraded population in the world to impose such of infatuation almost incredible, and, in my opinion, utter- limits upon the practical exercise of despotic power, as ly incurable. What, then, are we to expect from a ma- will prevent the extremes of oppression. It is a historical jority, thus bound together by the two strongest of human fact, sir, that there does not exist on the face of the earth passions-avarice and ambition; and acting under the im- a despotism that is not restrained by some principle, moposing disguise of disinterested patriotism? It has been ral religious, or political, which operates as a practical said, sir, by a wise man, that one hundred philosophers, check upon power, and a security against oppression. thrown together, and acting under the impulse of a common interest, and the contagion of a common passion, would be converted into a mob. There can be no doubt of the correctness of the principle; and it is even more powerfully exemplified in its application to large masses and communities of men, united by common interests, common passions, and common prejudices, and directing their efforts to a common object. It is but too apparent that entire sections of the Union, bound together in a confederacy of interest and ambition, urged on by the master spirit of manufacturing monopoly and political management, and There is another particular in which the despotism of a sustained by the blind and demoralizing delusion that it is the dictate of true patriotism to oppress and plunder the single tyrant is preferable to that of a legislative majority 801-IV JOV minority, because they prosecute trade with a foreign coun-such as I have described. His appetite for taxation and

[graphic]

But what human principle, what earthly power is there to restrain the majority? To what tribunal can the oppressed minority carry their appeal, and urge their plea against oppression and injustice? Can they appeal to public opi nion, that Eigh tribunal by which the despotism even of Napoleon, with all his military power, was controlled? That public opinion is the very spirit and soul-the animating principles of the tyranny that oppresses them. Then, sir, there is no refuge for the minority, if the sacred and protecting power of the constitution cannot be interposed"Their final bope is flat despair."

« AnteriorContinuar »