our mutual dependence and intercourse, and will, as a necessary consequence, excite an increased attention to internal improvement-a subject every way so intimately connected with the ultimate attainment of national strength and the perfection of our political institutions. He regarded the fact that it would make the parts adhere more closely; that it would form a new and most powerful cement, as far outweighing any political objections that might be urged against the system. In his opinion the liberty and the union of the country were inseparably united. That as the destruction of the latter would most certainly involve the former, so its maintenance will with equal certainty preserve it. He did not speak lightly. He had often and long revolved it in his mind, and he had critically examined into the causes that destroyed the liberty of other states. There are none that apply to us, or apply with a force to alarm. The basis of our Republic is too broad, and its structure too strong to be shaken by them. Its extension and organization will be found to afford effectual security against their operation, but let it be deeply impressed on the heart of this House and country that, while they guarded against the old, they exposed us to a new and terrible danger— disunion. This single word comprehended almost the sum of our political dangers, and against it we ought to be perpetually guarded. CHAPTER III THE TARIFF OF 1824 [THE AMERICAN SYSTEM] Protective Tariff Bill Is Introduced in the House-Debate: in Favor, Henry Clay [Ky.]; Opposed, Daniel Webster [Mass.]. TH HE financial depression in the country continued, and early in 1824 Henry Clay, who had in the meantime formulated a comprehensive policy by joining his favorite projects of a protective tariff and internal improvements-which policy he presumptuously - christened the "American System"-instigated the introduction of a bill in the House of Representatives which increased the duties on imports to a point where the former policy of the country to lay a "tariff for revenue with incidental protection" threatened to become the reverse-"a tariff for protection with incidental revenue." Indeed, the average rate of duties under the bill was 37 per cent., whereas, in the tariff of 1816, 25 per cent. had been considered a most liberal protective rate, and had been laid on only a few commodities such as cotton, the home manufacture of which was thought especially desirable. The measure was debated in the House from February 14 until April 14, 1824, when it was passed by a vote of 105 to 102. In the Senate it commanded a majority of four votes. From the alignment for and against this bill it was apparent that sectional interests were coming more and more to replace economic theories as a cause for upholding or opposing the protective system. Thus the Senators and Representatives from the importing and agricultural South, with notable exceptions, such as Senator 36 Andrew Jackson [Tenn.], voted generally against the bill, along with a majority of men from New England, where commercial interest still overbalanced manufacturing; and, on the other hand, most of the Senators and Representatives of the manufacturing Middle States were in favor of the measure, as well as a majority of the men of the growing West, who had visions of great manufacturing development in the region, and to whom the bill offered further inducements in the form of heavy duties on their sectional products, such as wool and hemp. Indeed, this tariff bill was the first in which a design was apparent to secure votes by an appeal to local interests, and in framing which "log-rolling" or bargaining between the sections began to play a part. The chief of the many speakers upon the bill were Henry Clay [Ky.] and Daniel Webster [Mass.],1 who discussed in the House of Representatives the general principles of a tariff primarily for protection versus a tariff primarily for revenue, Clay advocating the former and Webster the latter, and each claiming that he was presenting the policy for which America by nature and institutions was peculiarly adapted. THE AMERICAN SYSTEM HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, MARCH 31-APRIL 2, 1824 MR. CLAY.-Two classes of politicians divide the people of 1 the United States. According to the system of one, the produce of foreign industry should be subjected to no other impost than such as may be necessary to provide a public revenue, and the produce of American industry should be left to sustain itself, if it can, with no other than that incidental protection, in its competition, at home as well as abroad, with rival foreign articles. According to the system of the other class, while they agree that the imposts should be mainly, and may, under any modifications, be safely, relied on as a fit and convenient 1 In August, 1816, Webster removed from Portsmouth, N. H., to Boston, Mass., and on the expiration of his second term in Congress [March 4, 1817], devoted himself to the practice of law. In 1822 he was returned to Congress from Boston. source of public revenue, they would so adjust and arrange the duties on foreign fabrics as to afford a gradual but adequate protection to American industry, and lessen our dependence on foreign nations, by securing a certain and, ultimately, a cheaper and better supply of our own wants from our own abundant resources. Both classes are equally sincere in their respective opinions, equally honest, equally patriotic, and desirous of advancing the prosperity of the country. In the discussion and consideration of these opposite opinions, for the purpose of ascertaining which has the support of truth and reason, we should, therefore, exercise every indulgence, and the greatest spirit of mutual moderation and forbearance. And, in our deliberations on this great question, we should look fearlessly and truly at the actual condition of the country, retrace the causes which have brought us into it, and snatch, if possible, a view of the future. We should, above all, consult experiencethe experience of other nations as well as our own, as our truest and most unerring guide. In casting our eyes around us, the most prominent circumstance which fixes our attention, and challenges our deepest regret, is the general distress which pervades the whole country. It is forced upon us by numerous facts of the most incontestable character. It is indicated by the diminished exports of native produce, by the depressed and reduced state of our foreign navigation, by our diminished commerce, by successive unthreshed crops of grain, perishing in our barns and barn-yards for the want of a market, by the alarming diminution of the circulating medium, by the numerous bankruptcies, not limited to the trading classes, but extending to all orders of society, by a universal complaint of the want of employment, and a consequent reduction of the wages of labor, by the ravenous pursuit after public situations, not for the sake of their honors, and the performance of their public duties, but as a means of private subsistence, by the reluctant resort to the perilous use of paper money, by the intervention of legislation in the delicate relation between debtor and creditor, and, above all, by the low and depressed state of the value of almost every description of the whole mass of the property of the nation, which has, on an average, sunk not less than about fifty per cent. within a few years. This distress pervades every part of the Union, every class of society; all feel it, though it may be felt, at different places, in different degrees. It is like the atmosphere which surrounds us-all must inhale it, and none can escape it-and in some places it has burst upon our people without a single mitigating circumstance to temper its severity. What is the cause of this wide-spreading distress, of this deep depression, which we behold stamped on the public countenance? We are the same people. We have the same country. We cannot arraign the bounty of Providence. The shadows still fall in the same grateful abundance. The sun still casts his genial and vivifying influence upon the land, and the land, fertile and diversified in its soils as ever, yields to the industrious cultivator, in boundless profusion, its accustomed fruits, its richest treasures. Our vigor is unimpaired. Our industry is not relaxed. The causes, then, of our present affliction, whatever they may be, are human causes, and human causes not chargeable upon the people, in their private and individual relations. They are to be found in the fact that, during almost the whole existence of this Government, we have shaped our industry, our navigation, and our commerce in reference to an extraordinary war in Europe, and to foreign markets, which no longer exist; in the fact that we have depended too much upon foreign sources of supply, and excited too little the native; in the fact that, while we have cultivated with assiduous care our foreign resources, we have suffered those at home to wither, in a state of neglect and abandonment. The consequence of the termination of the war of Europe has been the resumption of European commerce, European navigation, and the extension of European agriculture and European industry in all its branches. Europe, therefore, has no longer occasion to any thing like the same extent as that which she had during her wars for American commerce, American navigation, the produce of American industry. Europe in commotion, and convulsed throughout all her members, is to America no longer the same Europe as she is now, tranquil, and watching with the most vigilant attention all her own peculiar interests, without regard to the operation of her policy upon us. The effect of this altered state of Europe upon us has been to circumscribe the employment of our marine, and greatly to reduce the value of the produce of our territorial labor. The further effect of this two-fold reduction has been to decrease the value of all property, whether on the land or on the ocean, which loss I suppose to be about fifty per cent. And the still further effect has been to diminish the amount of our circulating medium, in a proportion not less by its transmission abroad, or its withdrawal by the banking institutions, from a necessity which they could not control. The quantity of money, in whatever form it may |