dantly procured than formerly? Sir, the main cause I take to be the progress of scientific art, or a new extension of the application of science to art. This it is which has so much distinguished the last half-century in Europe and in America, and its effects are everywhere visible, and especially among us. Man has found new allies and auxiliaries in the powers of nature and in the inventions of mechanism. The general doctrine of political economy is, that wealth consists in whatever is useful or convenient to man, and that labor is the producing cause of all this wealth. This is very true. But, then, what is labor? In the sense of political writers, and in common language, it means human industry; in a philosophical view, it may receive a much more comprehensive meaning. It is not, in that view, human toil only, the mere action of thews and muscles; but it is any active agency which, working upon the materials with which the world is supplied, brings forth products useful or convenient to man. The materials of wealth are in the earth, in the seas, and in their natural and unaided productions. Labor obtains these materials, works upon them, and fashions them to human use. Now it has been the object of scientific art, or of the application of science to art, to increase this active agency, to augment its power, by creating millions of laborers in the form of machines all but automatic, all to be diligently employed and kept at work by the force of natural powers. To this end these natural powers, principally those of steam and falling water, are subsidized and taken into human employment. Spinning-machines, powerlooms, and all the mechanical devices, acting, among other operatives, in the factories and workshops, are but so many laborers. They are usually denominated labor-saving machines, but it would be more just to call them labordoing machines. They are made to be active agents; to have motion, and to produce effect; and though without intelligence, they are guided by laws of science, which are exact and perfect, and they produce results, therefore, in general, more accurate than the human hand is capable of producing. When we look upon one of these, we behold a mute fellow-laborer, of immense power, of mathematical exactness, and of everduring and unwearied effort. And while he is thus a most skilful and productive laborer, he is a non-consumer, at least beyond the wants of his mechanical being. He is not clamorous for food, raiment, or shelter, and makes no demands for the expenses of education. The eating and drinking, the reading and writing, and the clothes-wearing world, are benefited by the labors of these co-operatives, in the same way as if Providence had provided for their service millions of beings, like ourselves in external appearance, able to labor and to toil, and yet requiring little or nothing for their own consumption or subsistence; or rather, as if Providence had created a race of giants, each of whom, demanding no more for his support and consumption than a common laborer, should yet be able to perform the work of a hundred. Now, Sir, turn back to the Massachusetts tables of production, and you will see that it is these automatic allies and co-operators, and these powers of nature, thus employed and placed under human direction, which have come, with such prodigious effect, to man's aid, in the great business of procuring the means of living, of comfort, and of wealth, and which have so swollen the products of her skilful industry. Look at these tables once more, Sir, and you will see the effects of labor, united with and acting upon capital. Look yet again, and you will see that credit, mutual trust, prompt and punctual dealings, and commercial confidence, are all mixed up as indispensable elements in the general sys tem. I will ask you to look yet once more, Sir, and you will perceive that general competence, great equality in human condition, a degree of popular knowledge and intelligence nowhere surpassed, if anywhere equalled, the prevalence of good moral sentiment, and extraordi nary general prosperity, are the result | erty is more equally divided than anyof the whole. Sir, I have done with Alassachusetts. I do not praise the old "Bay State" of the Revolution; I only present her as she is. Mr. President, such is the state of things actually existing in the country, and of which I have now given you a sample. And yet there are persons who constantly clamor against this state of things. They call it aristocracy. They excite the poor to make war upon the vich, while in truth they know not who are either rich or poor. They complain of oppression, speculation, and the pernicious influence of accumulated wealth. They cry out loudly against all banks and corporations, and all the means by which small capitals become united, in order to produce important and beneficial results. They carry on a mad hostility against all established institutions. They would choke up the fountains of industry, and dry all its streams. In a country of unbounded liberty, they clamor against cppression. In a country of perfect equality, they would move heaven and earth against privilege and monopoly. In a country where prop where else, they rend the air with the shouting of agrarian doctrines. In a country where the wages of labor are high beyond all parallel, and where lands are cheap, and the means of living low, they would teach the laborer that he is but an oppressed slave. Sir, what can such men want? What do they mean? They can want nothing. Sir, but to enjoy the fruits of other men's labor. They can mean nothing but disturbance and disorder, the diffusion of corrupt principles, and the destruction of the moral sentiments and moral habits of society. A licentiousness of feeling and of action is sometimes produced by prosperity itself. Men cannot always resist the temp tation to which they are exposed by the very abundance of the bounties of Prov idence, and the very happiness of their own condition; as the steed, full of the pasture, will sometimes throw himself against its enclosures, break away from its confinement, and, feeling now free from needless restraint, betake himself to the moors and barrens, where want, erelong, brings him to his senses, and starvation and death close his career. REMARKS ON THE POLITICAL COURSE OF MR. CALHOUN, IN 1838. FROM THE SAME SPEECH. HAVING had occasion, Mr. President, | paper describing political operations, and to speak of nullification and the nullifiers, I beg leave to say that I have not done so for any purpose of reproach. Certainly, Sir, I see no possible connection, myself, between their principles or opinions, and the support of this measure. They, however, must speak for themselves. They may have intrusted the bearing of their standard, for aught I know, to the hands of the honorable member from South Carolina; and I perceived last session what I perceive now, that in his opinion there is a connection between these projects of government and the doctrines of nullification. I can only say, Sir, that it will be marvellous to me, if that banner, though it be said to be tattered and torn, shall yet be lowered in obeisance, and laid at the footstool of executive power. To the sustaining of that power, the passage of this bill is of the utmost importance. The administration will regard its success as being to them, what Cromwell said the battle of Worcester was to him, "a crowning mercy." Whether gentlemen, who have distinguished themselves so much by their extreme jealousy of this government, shall now find it consistent with their principles to give their aid in effecting this consummation, remains to be seen. exhibiting political opinions, it is without a parallel. Its phrase is altogether military. It reads like a despatch, or a bulletin from head-quarters. It is full of attacks, assaults, and repulses. It recounts movements and counter-movements; speaks of occupying one position, falling back upon another, and advancing to a third; it has positions to cover enemies, and positions to hold allies in check. Meantime, the celerity of all these operations reminds one of the rapidity of the military actions of the king of Prussia, in the Seven Years' war. Yesterday, he was in the South, giving battle to the Austrian; to-day he is in Saxony, or Silesia. Instantly he is found to have traversed the Electorate, and is facing the Russian and the Swede on his northern frontier. If you look for his place on the map, before you find it he has quitted it. He is always marching, flying, falling back, wheeling, attacking, defending, surprising; fighting everywhere, and fighting all the time. In one particular, however, the campaigns described in this letter are conducted in a different mar. ner from those of the great Frederick. I think we nowhere read, in the narrative of Frederick's achievements, of his taking a position to cover an enemy, or a position to hold an ally in check. These refinements in the science of tactics and of war are of more recent dis The next exposition of the honorable gentleman's sentiments and opinions is in his letter of the 3d of November. This letter, Sir, is a curiosity. As a covery. 1 The Sub-Treasury. Mr. President, public men must cer tainly be allowed to change their opinions, and their associations, whenever they see fit. No one doubts this. Men may have grown wiser; they may have attained to better and more correct views of great public subjects. It would be unfortunate, if there were any code which should oblige men, in public or private life, to adhere to opinions once entertained, in spite of experience and better knowledge, and against their own convictions of their erroneous character. Nevertheless, Sir, it must be acknowledged, that what appears to be a sudden, as well as a great change, naturally produces a shock. I confess that, for one, I was shocked when the honorable gentleman, at the last session, espoused this bill of the administration. And when I first read this letter of November, and, in the short space of a column and a half, ran through such a succession of political movements, all terminating in placing the honorable member in the ranks of our opponents, and entitling him to take his seat, as he has done, among them, if not at their head, I confess I felt still greater surprise. All this seemed a good deal too abrupt. Sudden movements of the affections, whether personal or political, are a little out of nature. Several years ago, Sir, some of the wits of England wrote a mock play, intended to ridicule the unnatural and false feeling, the sentimentality of a certain German school of literature. In this play, two strangers are brought together at an inn. While they are warming themselves at the fire, and before their acquaintance is yet five minutes old, one springs up and exclaims to the other, "A sudden thought strikes me! Let us swear an eternal friendship!" This affectionate offer was instantly accepted, and the friendship duly sworn, unchangeable and eternal! Now, Sir, how long this eternal friendship lasted, or in what manner it ended, those who wish to know may learn by roferring to the play. But it seems to me, Sir, that the honorable member has carried his political sentimentality a good deal higher than the flight of the German school; for he appears to have fallen suddenly in love, not with strangers, but with opponents. Here we all had been, Sir. contending against the progress of executive power, and more particularly, and most strenuously, against the projects and experiments of the administration upon the currency. The honorable member stood among us, not only as an associate, but as a leader. We thought we were mak ing some headway. The people ap peared to be coming to our support and our assistance. The country had been roused, every successive election weakening the strength of the adversary, and increasing our own. We were in this career of success carried strongly forward by the current of public opinion, and only needed to hear the cheering voice of the honorable member, "Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more!" and we should have prostrated for ever this anti-constitutional, anti-commercial, anti-republican, and anti-American policy of the administration. But instead of these encouraging and animating accents, behold! in the very crisis of our affairs, on the very eve of victory, the honorable member cries out to the enemy, not to us, his allies, but to the enemy: • Hollo! A sudden thought strikes me! I abandon my allies! Now I think of it, they have always been my oppressors! abandon them, and now let you and me swear an eternal friendship!" Such a proposition, from such a quarter, Sir, was not likely to be long withstood. The other party was a little coy, but, upon the whole, nothing loath. After proper hesitation, and a little decorous blushing, it owned the soft impeachment, admitted an equally sudden sympathetic impulse on its own side; and, since few words are wanted where hearts are already known, the honorable gentleman takes his place among his new friends amidst greetings and caresses, and is already enjoying the sweets of an eternal friendship. In this letter, Mr. President, the writer says, in substance, that he saw, proposes to take possession, to wit, the ground of the old State-rights party. They will have, he says, no other alternative. Mr. President, stripped of its military language, what is the amount of all this, but that, finding the administration weak, and likely to be overthrown, if the opposition continued with undimin ished force, he went over to it, he joined it; intending to act, himself, upon nullification principles, and to compel the Southern members of the administration to meet him on those principles ? in other words, to make a nullification administration, and to take such part in it as should belong to him and his friends. He confesses, Sir, that in thus abandoning his allies, and taking a position to cover those in power, he perceived a shock would be created which would require some degree of resolution and firmness. In this he was right. A shock, Sir, has been created; yet there he is. at the commencement of the last ses- | party to occupy the ground of which he sion, that affairs had reached the point when he and his friends, according to the course they should take, would reap the full harvest of their long and arduous struggle against the encroachments and abuses of the general government, or lose the fruits of all their labors. At that time, he says, State interposition (viz. Nullification) had overthrown the protective tariff and the American system, and put a stop to Congressional usurpation; that he had previously been united with the National Republicans; but that, in joining such allies, he was not insensible to the embarrassment of his position; that with them victory itself was dangerous, and that therefore he had been waiting for events; that now (that is to say, in September last) | the joint attacks of the allies had brought down executive power; that the administration had become divested of power and influence, and that it was now clear that the combined attacks of the allied forces would utterly overthrow and demolish it. All this he saw. But he saw, too, as he says, that in that case the victory would inure, not to him or his cause, but to his allies and their cause. I do not mean to say that he spoke of personal victories, or alluded to personal objects, at all. He spoke of his cause. He proceeds to say, then, that never was there before, and never, probably, will there be again, so fair an opportunity for himself and his friends to carry out their own principles and policy, and to reap the fruits of their long and arduous struggle. These principles and this policy, Sir, be it remembered, he represents, all along, as identified with the principles and policy of nullification. And he makes use of this glorious opportunity by refusing to join his late allies in any further attack on those in power, and rallying anew the old State-rights party to hold in check their old opponents, the National Republican party. This, he says, would enable him to prevent the complete ascendency of his allies, and to compel the Southern division of the administration | This administration, Sir, is represented as succeeding to the last, by an inheritance of principle. It professes to tread in the footsteps of its illustrious predecessor. It adopts, generally, the sentiments, principles, and opinions of General Jackson, proclamation and all; and yet, though he be the very prince of nullifiers, and but lately regarded as the chiefest of sinners, it receives the honorable gentleman with the utmost complacency. To all appearance, the delight is mutual; they find him an able leader, he finds them complying followers. But, Sir, in all this movement he understands himself. He means to go ahead, and to take them along. Ha is in the engine-car; he controls the locomotive. His hand regulates the steam, to increase or retard the speed at his discretion. And as to the occupants of the passenger-cars, Sir, they are as happy a set of gentlemen as one might desire to see of a summer's day. They feel that they are in progress; they hope they shall not be run off the track; and when they reach the end of their journey, they desire to be thankful! |