ferent, each must have the power to protect its interests by the organization of the Government or it could not be free. "The southern States now stand exactly in the same position toward the northern States that the colonies did towards Great Britain. The northern States, having the majority in Congress, claim the same power of omnipotence in legislation as the British Parliament. "The general welfare' is the only limit to the legislation of either; and the majority in Congress, as in the British Parliament, are the sole judges of the expediency of the legislation this 'general welfare' requires. Thus the government of the United States had become a consolidated government, and the people of the southern States are compelled to meet the very despotism their fathers threw off in the Revolution of 1776.

"The consolidation of the government of Great Britain over the colonies was attempted to be carried out by taxes. The British Parliament undertook to tax the colonies to

report of the Committee as soon as I can obtain one. It is thought, however, that the new oath will not receive the sanction of the Convention.

Gen. Hamilton made quite a conciliatory speech yesterday towards the Union party, which Judge O'Neill very cordially responded to. Very respectfully yours, etc.,

Columbia, March 16th, 1833.

AUGUSTUS FITCH.

P. S. This is also a great muster-day here. Gov. Hayne is to review the Volunteers, but he will not find them any great affair. Saturday, March 16th.

A. F.

Across the face of the letter, which was addressed, His Excellency, Andrew Jackson, President of the United States, Washington, D. C., the President indorsed:

Mr. Fitz.-The Ordinance & all laws under it repealed-so ends the wicked & disgraceful conduct of Calhoun McDuffie & their co-nullies. They will only be remembered, to be held up to scorn by everyone who loves freedom, our glorious constitution & government of laws. A. J.

not

promote British interests. Our fathers resisted this pretension. They claimed the right of self-taxation through their colonial Legislatures. They were not represented in the British Parliament and, therefore, could not rightly be taxed by its legislation. The British government, however, offered them representation in Parliament, but it was not sufficient to enable them to protect themselves from the majority, and they refused the offer. Between taxation without a representation and taxation without a representation adequate to protection there was no difference. In neither case would the colonies tax themselves. Hence they refused to pay taxes laid by the British Parliament.

"And so with the southern States toward the northern in that vital matter of taxation. They are in a minority in Congress. Their representation in Congress is useless to protect them against unjust taxation, and they are taxed by the people of the North for their benefit, exactly as the people of Great Britain taxed our ancestors." For the last forty years the taxes laid by Congress had subserved the interest of the North. "The people of the South have been taxed by duties on imports, not for revenue, but for an object inconsistent with revenue, to promote, by prohibitions, northern interests in the production of their mines and manufactures."

Nor was this the limit of the evil. The defeated British policy of 1776 had been fully realized towards the southern States by the northern. "The people of the southern States are not only taxed for the benefit of the northern, but after the taxes are collected, threefourths of them are expended at the North." This cause, it was now claimed, had "made the cities of the South provincial;" paralyzed their growth and made them "mere suburbs of the northern cities." It had "almost annihi

THE NORTH ACCUSED.

575

lated" the foreign trade of the South.1 No man could for a moment believe that such a government was intended when the government of the United States was formed. That government was "limited to those matters only which were general and common to all portions of the United States. All sectional and local interests were to be left to the States. By no other arrangement would they obtain free government" under a "Constitution common to so vast a Confederacy."

It was not at all surprising "such being the character of the government of the United States, that it should assume to possess power over all the institutions of the country." The agitations on the subject of slavery were "the natural results of the consolidation of the government." "Responsibility follows power, and if the people of the North have the power by Congress, 'to promote the general welfare of the United States' by any means they deem expedient, why should they not assail and overthrow the institution of slavery in the South?" "To build up their sectional predominance in the Union the Constitution must be first abolished by constructions, but that being done, the consolidation of the North to rule

1 "Our foreign trade is almost annihilated. In 1740, there were fine ship-yards in South Carolina, to build ships to carry on our direct trade with Europe. Between 1740 and 1779, there were built in these yards twenty-five square rigged vessels beside a great number of sloops and schooners to carry on our coast trade and West India trade. In the half century immediately preceding the Revolution, from 1725 to 1775, the population of South Carolina increased seven fold." (Journal of Convention, 469-470.)

For the effect of slavery on skilled labor, immigration and productions, see Theodore Parker's "Letters to the People of the United States touching the matters of slavery. Boston: James Monroe and Company, MDCCCXLVIII. Also its discussion in the Constitutional Convention of Kentucky, 1849, in Vol. II, Chapter vi, of my Constitutional History of the American People, 17761850." Parker's Letter was based on the census of 1840.

576

THE CONSTITUTION AN EXPERIMENT.

the South, by the tariff and slavery issues, was in the obvious course of things."

"The Constitution of the United States was an experiment. The experiment consisted in uniting under one government peoples living in different climates, and having different pursuits and institutions. It matters not how carefully the limits of such a government be laid down in the Constitution-its success must, at least, depend upon the good faith of the parties to the constitutional compact in enforcing them. It is not in the power of human language to exclude false inferences, constructions and perversions in any Constitution, and when vast sectional interests are to be subserved, involving the appropriation of countless millions of money, it has not been the usual experience of mankind that words on parchment can arrest power. The Constitution of the United States, irrespective of the interposition of the States, rested on the assumption that power would yield to faith—that integrity would be stronger than interest, and that thus the limitations of the Constitution would be observed. The experiment has been fairly made. The Southern States, from the commencement of the Government, have striven to keep within the orbit prescribed by the Constitution. The experiment has failed. The whole Constitution, by the constructions of the northern people, has been absorbed by its preamble. The northern people have had neither the wisdom nor the faith to perceive that to observe the limitations of the Constitution was the only way to its perpetuity.

"Under such a government there must, of course, be many and endless 'irrepressible conflicts' between the two great sections of the Union. The same faithlessness which has abolished the Constitution of the United States will not fail to carry out the sectional purposes for which

DISCORDANT ELEMENTS.

577

it was abolished.

There must be conflict, and the weaker section of the Union can only find peace and liberty in an independence of the North. The repeated efforts made by South Carolina, in a wise conservatism, to arrest the progress of the general government in its fatal progress to consolidation have been unsupported, and she has been denounced as faithless to the obligations of the Constitution by the very men and States who were destroying it by their usurpations. It is now too late to reform or restore the government of the United States. All confidence in the North is lost by the South. The faithlessness of the North for half a century has opened a gulf of separation between the North and the South which no promises nor engagements can fill.

"It cannot be believed that our ancestors would have assented to any union whatever with the people of the North if the feelings and opinions now existing amongst them had existed when the Constitution was framed. There was no tariff-no fanaticism concerning negroes. It was the delegates from New England who proposed in the convention which framed the Constitution to the delegates from South Carolina and Georgia that if they would agree to give Congress the power of regulating commerce by a majority, they would support the extension of the African slave trade for twenty years. can slavery existed in all the States but one. The idea that the southern States would be made to pay that tribute to their northern confederates which they had refused to pay to Great Britain, or that the institution of African slavery would be made the grand basis of a sectional organization of the North to rule the South never crossed the imagination of our ancestors. The Union of the Constitution was a Union of the slave-holding States. It rests on slavery by prescribing a representation in Con

Afri