found on the same side with the democracy of the Northern States in the political controversies by which the country has been divided. It is a natural alliance. The Southern States, depending on free trade for their prosperity, must always be opposed to any attempts on the part of this Government to build up, by commercial prohibitions, an aristocracy of favored monopolists. Sir, this is not a contest, as some are anxious to represent it, between the Southern and Northern States. It is a contest of less than one hundred thousand manufacturers and farmers against all the other farmers and manufacturers in the Union, and against the whole population in the Southern States.

Mr. Speaker, such are the disguise and delusion incident to this sort of legislation that baseness and treachery are not unlikely to receive the reward appropriate to disinterested patriotism.

Indeed, sir, when I contemplate the extraordinary infatuation which a combination of capitalists and politicians have had the singular art to diffuse over more than one-half of this Union-when I see the very victims who are about to be offered up to satiate the voracious appetite of this devouring Moloch paying their ardent and sincere devotions at his bloody shrine, I confess I have been tempted to doubt whether mankind was not doomed, even in its most enlightened state, to be the dupe of some species of imposture and the victim of some form of tyranny. For, sir, in casting my eye over the history of human idolatry, I can find nothing, even in the darkest ages of ignorance and superstition, which surpasses the infatuation by which a confederated priesthood of politicians and manufacturers have bound the great body of the people in the farming States of this Union, as if by a spell, to this mighty scheme of fraud and delusion.

MR. HAMILTON.-Sir, one of the great masters of human knowledge, who with a ken little short of the spirit of prophecy, perceived some of the causes of the success of our revolution in the very turn of thinking of our people on the subject of taxation, has told us that "Liberty inheres in some sensible objects; every nation has formed for itself some favorite point, which, by way of eminence, becomes the criterion of their happiness. It happened that the great contests for freedom, in this country, were, from the earliest times, chiefly upon the question of taxing. It is not easy to make a monopoly of theorems and corollaries. The colonies draw from you, as with their life blood, these ideas and principles. Their love of liberty is fixed,

and attached, on this specific point of taxing." And so, sir, it has continued, down to the present day, in our transit from colonial dependence to sovereign States. This habitual sensibility, which belongs to a free people, you have aroused, by observing no sort of moderation in your objects, until you have fixed the conviction in the public mind that the difference between "taxation without representation" and taxation with representation, in violation of the spirit if not the letter of the constitution, is too idle, in the abstract, to mitigate the evils which, in practice, are common to both; and depend upon it that it will require a more ingenious and talented casuist than even such a man as the pensioned author of "Taxation no Tyranny" to satisfy our people that you are not doing the same thing, in a different form, with the superadded burden of an amount of impost, which never arose even in the imaginations of Grenville and of North, to stimulate their cormorant appetites for American revenue; aggravated, as all this is, by the irrepressible sentiment that you are breaking the faith of that equal compact by which this Union can alone hope to live the fountain from which its current runs, or bears no life."

But I trust, sir, that this cup may pass from us; that in our firmness and enlightened patience-not base submissionand in your returning sense of justice, we shall find our remedy and relief; that the spirit of concord and affection may again be breathed into this Union, animating it with the durability of eternal life. But, if an adverse destiny should be ours -if we are doomed to drink "the waters of bitterness," in their utmost woe-if we are doomed under a tyrannous legislation to be reduced in effect again to a condition of colonial vassalage, by your compelling us to purchase, in one quarter of this Union, all that we may consume, and of selling all that we may procure by the sweat of our brow to the same favored portion, you may rely at least on one thing-that, in a juncture so full of difficulty, South Carolina will be found on the side of those principles, standing firmly on the very ground which is canonized by that revolution which has made us what we are, which has imbued us with the spirit of a free and sovereign people.

MR. TURNER.-This Government was formed for great and noble purposes; it was formed upon the principle that the people should be able to control their rulers; it was formed for the benefit of the whole; it was not formed for a majority to promote their own views, as their private interest may direct.

And, sir, these political schemes, which I conceive to be entirely hostile to our institutions, are doing more to weaken the Union of these States than any plan that could be devised. Instead of leaving the people to manage their own affairs in their own way, we must administer our medicine most profusely; and God grant that we may not inscribe on the tomb of our patient the old Spanish epitaph: "I was well, would be better, here I am." It is but too evident that both in our general and State governments we have too much legislation. Let us pass only those laws that are absolutely necessary, and no more; leave the rest to the people-let nature take its course; this is the correct policy of this Government. For all these fine-spun political schemes, which appear so well in theory, when reduced to practice, nine times in ten bring misery and oppression upon some one portion of the community. Something is left out of the calculation which was not foreseen-it produces too artificial a state of authority; and the machine ultimately becomes so complicated that no political juggler, however expert he may be, will be competent to its management. It is upon these principles that I am opposed to all those political measures which, in a country so extensive as this, where the interest of the people is so diversified, must have a tendency to build up one portion of the community at the expense of the other. For the justice of these remarks I would instance England, that glorious but unfortunate country, where political legerdemain has been exercised, until their tricks can no longer conceal that they have brought their country to the brink of national bankruptcy.

It appears, sir, that we, too, like England, must have our schemes; and to render them the more palatable great names are given the American system. But gentlemen differ widely as to what is the American system. Just as the supposed interests of particular portions of country, which gentlemen happen to represent, require, so they speak. Sir, we all know and feel the influence and magic of a name; but the veriest minnow, to whom this bait is thrown, will, I hope, discover too much sagacity to be deceived. The American system! Sir, we disclaim the name; and denominate it a system to use this Government to promote the views of particular sections of country. The true American system consists in the Government not interfering in matters which are calculated alone to promote the interest of comparatively few individuals, and those confined to particular sections of country, at the expense, nay, sir, the ruin, of other portions of the Union.

After the bill was passed a Representative moved to amend its title by adding the words "for the encouragement of domestic manufactures."

MR. RANDOLPH opposed the motion, insisting that domestic manufactures meant those which were carried on in the families of farmers, in the fabrication of what used to be called Virginia cloth; and that the bill, if it had its true name, should be called a bill to rob and plunder nearly one-half of the Union, for the benefit of the residue, etc. Let the friends of the bill christen their own child; he would not stand godfather to it. The title was merely ad captandum vulgus;1 like the words of the continental money ridiculed in Swift's verses:

Fine words indeed! I wonder where you stole 'em.''

The bill referred to manufactures of no sort or kind, but the manufacture of a President of the United States.

"For taking (in) the common folk."

*""Liberty and native land."

CHAPTER V

THE TARIFF OF 1832

[PROTECTIVE PRINCIPLE]

Revision of the Tariff in Further Interest of Manufacturers-Debate in the Senate in Favor, Henry Clay [Ky.]; Opposed, John Tyler [Va.]— Debate in the House: in Favor, Rufus Choate [Mass.]; Opposed, Thomas Clayton [Ga.], Dixon H. Lewis [Ala.].

I

N 1831 the issue between free trade and protection had been squarely drawn for the first time in American history, the free traders meeting in convention in Philadelphia, and the protectionists in New York, and both assemblies sending memorials to Congress.

In the protracted congressional session of 1831-32 a number of tariff bills were prepared, the result of which was the passage, on July 14, 1832, of a composite act in which the protective features of the existing tariff were maintained, and a number of revenue taxes reduced, and duties abolished on some raw materials, such as varieties of wool-a measure, as will be inferred, in further interest of the manufacturer and against that of the agriculturist. The Southern Congressmen were greatly indignant at the imposition of additional burdens where relief from present ones had been expected by them, and, indeed, promised in the beginning of the session by their opponents-Henry Clay [Ky.] himself introducing in the Senate a resolution in favor of "reduction of duties."

In the debate in the Senate Clay was a leading speaker in favor of the principle of protection, and John Tyler [Va.] was prominent among those in opposition.

THE SOUTH'S COMPLAINT AGAINST THE TARIFF

SENATE, FEBRUARY 2-13, 1832

SENATOR CLAY.-Eight years ago it was my painful duty to present to the House of Congress an unexaggerated picture of