of our distress and impoverishment. I have looked carefully into the matter; and my inference is that it results, to a great extent, from the simple fact that we sell cheap and purchase dear. Other causes may conjoin with this, but this is the great controlling cause, and amply sufficient in itself to account for the condition of the South.

The home market has been represented to us as of vast importance, more especially in reference to breadstuffs. This delusion has now been kept up for fifteen years. An increase of duties has never, at any time, been proposed, but we have had representations made of the great importance of the home market, produced by the encouragement of domestic manufactures. And yet, sir, no man has ever known produce so low as it has been during the last seven years.

The foreign price regulates the domestic price; and the fluctuations which take place every fall in the wheat market here are ascribable to hopes excited by the slightest circumstance of an increased price abroad. If a cloud is over the face of the sun during the harvest time in England, prices advance; and, if accounts are brought of a fall of rain, the spirit of speculation immediately becomes more active, and the farmer pockets the benefit.

Simplify this American system, and what is it? Take for illustration four individuals: one shall represent the Southern producer, the second the English manufacturer, and the remaining two Northern manufacturers. The Southern farmer interchanges the valuable productions of the soil, at their minimum price of production, with the English manufacturer, for articles necessary for his consumption, at their minimum price of fabrication. The exchange thus made is equally beneficial to each, and neither, notwithstanding the great fall in price which has taken place in the fruits of their industry, experiences decline. The first obtains for his flour, his tobacco, his cotton, or rice, as great a quantity of the articles which constitute the mass of his consumption as he formerly did when he obtained much higher prices; and so does the latter. The means of living as abundantly as ever exist with both, and both are equally prosperous; but the two Northern capitalists suddenly interpose, and forbid this advantageous course of exchange. They shackle it with heavy restraints, imposing upon the farmer the necessity either of purchasing of them at a greatly augmented price or of encountering still greater exactions in the course of the foreign trade. They are enabled to legalize their purpose, if indeed injustice can ever be legalized, by the majority

power which they wield. I submit it to honorable Senators to say if I have not drawn, by this example, the epitome of the American system; and I demand of all candid men to say whether the power thus exerted is not selfish, despotic, and unjust.

Since the main debates on the tariff in the House occurred at a time when popular feeling in the South was aroused to the last degree in opposition to the oppressive measures, the Southern Representatives proclaimed resistance by their States even to the point of secession from the Union.

Rufus Choate [Mass.] was the leading advocate of the tariff in the House, and Thomas Clayton [Ga.] and Dixon H. Lewis [Ala.] were its chief opponents.

"TO YOUR TENTS, O ISRAEL!"

DEBATE ON THE TARIFF, HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, JUNE 13-15, 1832

MR. CHOATE.-The question pending is the broad one: Shall the existing protective system be maintained, or shall it be overthrown, either by direct abolition, or by compromise?

I have heard only one plausible reason suggested for the abandonment of the protective system. That reason is that the system operates with a local and partial severity upon the planting States. It is true that other considerations are pressed in argument. Elsewhere, as well as in the South, there is hostility to the system. Elsewhere, as well as there, there are political economists and politicians who maintain that it rests upon an unsound theory of the wealth of nations; that it unduly depresses and unduly fosters individual interests; that it is aristocratical and anti-republican in its tendencies, and that it produces, in the long run, national loss and national immorality. Elsewhere, as well as there, there are pursuits on which some of its provisions do press with unquestionable severity. Elsewhere, as well as there, it produces some good and some evil, like all other contrivances of man; and it divides public opinion, to some extent, like every other subject which addresses itself to the reason and passions of man.

Now, as a matter of course, as fast as we could, we should reduce the revenue to the wants of government, but we should

do this without so much as touching the principle of the protective portions of the tariff.

I repeat it, then, the only plausible ground of attack on this policy is this that it oppresses the States of the South; that it blights their harvests, blasts their fields, and causes the grass to grow on the wharves, and in the great thoroughfares of their commercial cities; that it enhances the prices of all they buy, and depresses the prices of all they sell.

To this argument of the South various answers may be given. I shall confine myself to one, and that a plain, practical, and intelligible answer. It is this: that the injury which the abandonment of this policy will do to the individuals, and to the interests and sections remotely or directly connected with, and dependent on, manufacturing and mechanical industry, and to the country, will outweigh, immeasurably, any rational estimate of the good which it will do to the South.

It is a question of expediency we are debating. "The greatest good of the greatest number" is the turning consideration, is it not? If the act to which gentlemen urge you so zealously will occasion more evil than good, in a large and comprehensive estimate of its consequences, will you be persuaded into it?

It is true, certainly, that a different doctrine has been insinuated, if not openly pressed, in this discussion. It has been argued that this is not a question of expediency, but of right, justice, and principle. It has been argued that, no matter how great may be the amount of the pecuniary, economical, individual and national sacrifice on the one side, occasioned by the subversion of the protective policy, or how trivial the compensation on the other, our Southern brethren may demand its subversion as a matter of clear right and justice.

Gentlemen assert a moral right, not a constitutional one, to have the protecting system forthwith abandoned without reference to consequences. Fiat justitia, ruat cœlum,' say they.

Now, the constitutional power to continue or withdraw protection is conceded to us. By what principle of political morality ought we to regulate the exercise of this power? For all legislation which is admitted to be authorized by the Constitution, the people of the United States are one people. The confederated character of the Government and the separate existence of the States, for all such legislation, are of no importance. The power of the majority, and the rule of political morality which should control its exercise, are precisely the same, for such legislation, as if the Government were consolidated. Local in"Let justice be done though the heavens fall."

terests, pursuits, and opinions there are, of course, different, conflicting, almost irreconcilable. The South, the North, the West have each their own. We are called to deliberate upon a policy which affects them all; some favorably, others unfavorably, or less favorably. What is the rule of our right and our duty? Sir, we ought, if we could do so, to adopt a policy which shall reconcile and harmonize all these interests, and promote the good of all, and of all equally. But that is impossible. What then are we to do? Consult the greatest good of the greatest number; regardless where or on whom the particular hardship which all general policy must produce shall fall, but regretting that it should fall on anybody, and lightening it as well as we may. The moral right of the minority is that the majority shall exercise a sound discretion in good faith. The moral duty of the minority is acquiescence. If they are subjected to loss and hardship, and it be direct, specific, measurable in money, or such as the customs of civil societies recognize as a fit subject of compensation, they must be compensated. If not so, it is what the gentleman from South Carolina calls damnum absque injuria.1 Extreme cases provide for themselves, and are a law unto themselves.

All men admit, and free trade theorists as fully as any, that manufactures are indispensable to the higher attainments of national greatness, and consideration, and wealth, and enjoyment. What they contend for is that you shall not force manufactures upon our people by commercial regulation. They are a great good, only you may give too much for it. But they all admit that manufactures, however unphilosophically introduced and sustained, when established, are a perennial spring of resource and energy to a State. They all admit that it is the industry of England, helped forward perhaps by a hundred foolish laws of Edward or Elizabeth, which has placed her at the head of modern civilization, and put into her hands more than the scepter of the sea. Now you choose to begin by forcing this species of industry by a protecting tariff. Grant that you started wrong. It is better to go through than to go back. It is more economical to do so. Do you not see that the country has grown to your laws? Occupation, capital, hope, which is the life of the world, are they not rapidly accommodating themselves to this policy? The first bad effects, the disturbance and derangement which mark the moment of its introduction, are disappearing. Consumers of all classes feel the benefits of a full domestic competition. A great body of skill is generated, worth "Hurt without injustice."

more, in the contemplation of philosophical statesmanship, than a thousand mines of barbaric gold.

What is there, sir, so very terrible in the signs of these times? What is this great crisis upon which gentlemen are so eloquent? What if there be some excitement of feeling, some harsh words, and some lowering looks between the brethren of this wide. household? All these things must needs be, and may very safely be. They are only part of the price! how inadequate the price!-which every nation pays for greatness and liberty. All signal and durable national fame and empire are reached, if they ever are reached, through such occasional and temporary tribulation as this. Instead, then, sir, of anticipating with the gentleman from Georgia the time when, in pursuance of the pathetic suggestion of the patriarch which he has just repeated, we shall divide our flocks and herds, and take each our several way, "that there be no more strife between us"; instead of looking with so much apprehension upon this diversity of pursuits and interests, let us adopt a more cheerful theory. Let us agree to see in it, as long as we can, "merely that combination and that opposition of interests, that action and that counteraction which, in the natural and the political world, from the reciprocal struggle of discordant powers, draws out the harmony of the universe." This is the language of one of the wisest men and most accomplished minds that ever lived. I hope our example may illustrate its truth.

MR. CLAYTON.-I could give you a most feeling account of a city in my own State, once the pride of the South, the busy mart of one of the greatest staples of the earth, the source of wealth, the seat then and now of hospitality, and every generous virtue; but what is the fate of Savannah? Let her withering commerce and her sinking dwellings tell the story; and, sir, to your American system will she point you for the cause of all her misfortunes.

The mere operation of human law, actuated by the selfishness of human nature, has done this foul deed of mischief; has drawn, secretly and insidiously, all the resources of the South to the Northern and Middle States. We have generally been instructed to believe that man alone, in his individual character, is disposed to be a despot, but a regulation of a whole community is sometimes as great a tyrant, and we are often deceived and lulled into security under the tame belief that it is intended to protect, and not to destroy, when it oftens happens that some combination of robbers or usurpers have artfully transferred their power into the form of law, and, in that way, as