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 1Hurt 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

effectually accomplished the purposes of fraud and ambition as if achieved by the dagger or the fagot.

Mr. Chairman, this country was never perhaps, except in time of war, in a higher degree of excitement. We hear of meetings at the North; indeed, very large ones have lately been gotten up to dictate to the House the course it must pursue; we hear of legislatures pursuing the same course, and saying the protecting system shall not only not be repealed, but it shall not be relaxed; we hear of the presses saying that even the measures of compromise suggested, with the best intentions, by the Administration, for the sake of peace, will be resisted by "a million of musket-bearing people." Now, sir, when the South acts or talks thus, it is treason! She must suffer, and, if she complains in a tone anything above the strain of supplication, she is rebuked for insolence, and charged with a design to dismember the Union.

Such a charge I fling back in the teeth of our accusers. What! the South disaffected to the Union! The South that suffered so much in the Revolutionary War from the common enemy, from savages on her frontier, and Tories, worse than savages, in her very heart! The South, that so gallantly opened her purse and shed her blood in the last war with the British and Indians, when in another quarter But I forbear. It cannot be believed that the South is disloyal. Who were the supporters of Jefferson, and Madison, and Monroe? And who, more than Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, were the defenders of those republican principles which moved, directed, and consummated the Revolution of '76, and were happily laid at the foundation of the Federal Government? Did the South keep back when the North refused to give up a sacrifice rightfully necessary to support and defend the principles of the Constitution? No, sir; it is a slander to whisper the slightest suspicion of disloyalty against the South.

MR. LEWIS.-Mr. Chairman, the crisis has at length arrived when this question must be settled on a permanent basis. The Southern people have looked with delight to the payment of the public debt, as a period when they might expect some alleviation of their burdens. There is no longer an excuse or pretext for continuing the present rate of duties, except for the single purpose of making the South tributary to the North. We have borne, patiently, our unequal burdens in discharging a debt incurred in our common defence, and we now demand of you to lessen our taxes to the amount annually paid in the discharge of that debt. Partaking in the common feeling of our country

men, in satisfaction at an event which has freed the Government from pecuniary obligation, we call upon you to adjust your revenue to the legitimate wants of the Government. Sir, do we ask too much in calling for a reduction of our taxes to the fiscal demands of the Government? The subjects of European despotism would have at least this claim on the humanity of their sovereign. Sir, I will state that nothing short of a practical abandonment of the principle of protection can or ought to satisfy the wounded feelings of the South. The repeal of the duties on the unprotected articles which forms the basis of the present bill will never be considered a fair adjustment of this question. It has been no part of our complaint that revenue duties should be levied on those articles which are not manufactured in this country. Such articles are mostly luxuries consumed by the rich, and are the most legitimate subjects of revenue, because the duties on them are borne equally by all who consume them. Our complaint has been that protecting duties have been levied on those articles which are manufactured in one portion of our country, for the purpose of raising the price of manufacturing labor; and that, while those duties. operate as a tax on the South, they operate as a bounty on the North. This is the sum and substance of the whole controversy; and if you take the duties off of wines, silks, teas, spices, and such other luxuries, and throw the whole burden of the revenue on salt, iron, cotton, and woolen goods, and such other necessaries of life as are consumed by the South and manufactured by the North, you not only relieve that section from the whole burden of taxation, but you make the labor of the South tributary to the North.

Mr. Chairman, the Southern people will abandon the Union only in the last struggle for their rights; and when it is gone they will have no cause to upbraid themselves. They have not asked, nor will they ask, any favors, or bounties, or privileges at your hands; they claim but the right to enjoy the proceeds of their honest labor. In their name, I invoke you, by the blood of our common ancestors, by the independence which they struggled to achieve, by the emblems of liberty which surround us, by the stars and stripes of our national banner, suffer us to remain in the Union, not as slaves, but as freemen, paying no other tribute than that which we owe to our common country.

CHAPTER VI

THE TARIFF OF 1833

[HORIZONTAL REDUCTION]

Gulian C. Verplanck [N. Y.] Introduces Bill to Reduce the Tariff to the Act of 1816-The Clay Compromise Bill, Which Provides for Gradual Reduction Through Successive Years, Is Substituted-Debate in the Senate: in Favor, Henry Clay [Ky.], John C. Calhoun [S. C.]; Opposed, John Forsyth [Ga.], Daniel Webster [Mass.]-Bill Is PassedIts Subsequent Expiration.

I

N accordance with a suggestion of President Andrew Jackson in his message of December 4, 1832, to reduce the tariff substantially to the act of 1816, a bill was introduced in the House early in the session of 1832-33 by Gulian C. Verplanck [N. Y.]. Within a week of the close of this session Robert P. Letcher [Ky.] proposed as a substitute a bill offered in the Senate by Henry Clay [Ky.]. This was afterward designated a "horizontal reduction" bill. It provided for the gradual reduction of the tariff through successive years until 1842, after which the highest duty levied should not exceed 20 per cent. Senator Benton said of this bill, in his "Thirty Years' View":

It was offered in the House, without notice, without signal, without premonitory symptom, and just as the members were preparing to adjourn. The Northern Representatives from the great manufacturing States were astounded, and asked for delay, which, not being granted, Mr. John Davis [Mass.], one of their number, thus gave vent to his amazed feelings:

"THE SOUTH'S COMPLAINT DEEPER THAN THE TARIFF"

JOHN DAVIS, M. C.

I do not object to a reasonable adjustment of the controversies which exist. I am in favor of a gradual reduction on