trade with foreign nations often leaves us with a balance due from us to them. This balance has been often discharged without sending abroad our money, the basis of our currency; sometimes with the stocks of this bank, and, to some extent, with the bills of it. For the bills of this bank are current at Liverpool and in London. One of the evils of a system of currency, not gold and silver, but based on money coined from those metals, is the liability under which the commerce of our country places this money to be exported, as merchandise, to Eastern Asia, and thereby to derange the value of the currency, and greatly injure all the productive labor and capital of the nation. This bank has begun to correct that evil. Its bills are beginning to be current in Calcutta and Canton, and to aid in the purchase of return cargoes of East India and Chinese merchandise. [H. OF R. This defence, provided under this system, will not be found in a condition like that of your armies in the last war, dependent, as they were, on your enemy for their blankets, the only covering which separated their unsheltered limbs from the stormy face of the winter skies. Sir, your own domestic market, furnished under our system of encouraged and protected labor, can lack nothing needful for the use of the soldier. His subsistence, clothing, camp equipage, munitions of war, will, at all times, be found, and found in great abundance, in that market. Should any part of your coast be so assailed that the militia in the immediate vicinity would not be sufficiently numerous to make efficient and successful defence, that case has been considered, and provision made for remedy of the evil, in that behalf. The regulation of commerce In time, if this bank shall be sustained by a renewal of among the several States, placed in the power of Conits charter, large bills of it will be current throughout gress by the constitution, has induced the commencement Europe and Asia. Moslem pilgrims, travelling in cara- of such a system of internal improvement, in aid of that vans from Delhi to Mecca, Suez, and Cairo; and Chinese commerce, as will ultimately unite, by roads, railways, merchants, journeying in like manner from Peking to canals, and rivers, all the great and populous parts of the Astracan and Moscow, would carry these large bills rather interior with the maritime frontier of our country. On than gold, silver, or precious stones, to buy the rich com- these great thoroughfares of travel and transportation, modities of the West. The roving Bedouin or Tartar the armed and provided militia can, in thousands and might encounter these caravans, and might seize their hundreds of thousands, be poured down from the interior, diamonds, or their precious metals; but they would re- upon any point of the seacoast which may have been asgard these silken securities for money as so many tran- sailed by a force too powerful for the local militia of that scripts from sacred books; and the name of Biddle, as of neighborhood. some holy man, would thus preserve the laborious merchant and the pious pilgrim from peril and plunder. Sir, the other part of our national defence, the navy, is, if possible, still more the progeny of our great system Our great system of encouragement for domestic labor, of encouragement and protection; and, for its existence and of protection for that labor against all injurious fo- and support, more intimately connected with that system. reign competition, would have been incomplete and im- It was built by the encouraged and protected mechanical perfect, had it not contained ample provisions for the labor of our country. It is manned from our encouraged defence of the United States against the arms, the mili- and protected navigation; from our encouraged fisheries; tary and naval force and power of foreign nations. Such our encouraged coasting trade; our encouraged foreign provisions for defence have, therefore, been made a part commerce. This navy is supplied with arms, with muniof the system. Look a moment at those provisions, and tions of war, with clothing, from our own encouraged you will perceive that the great founders of our system and protected manufacturers. have so united the common defence with the general wel- In war especially must it be fed and subsisted from enfare, that no crude and improvident legislation can de-couraged and protected American agriculture. Examine stroy the one, without overthrowing the other. every point of defence made by a naval station along your coast. At Pensacola, your navy must draw its supplies of subsistence through the canals cut into the rivers which unite that station with the great fertile and exhaustless valley of the West. At Norfolk, in the wars of future times, the navy at that station would look for supplies not only up the long rivers of Virginia, but also along the quiet and level waters of that canal which is now working a resistless course from this city, through rocks and mountains, until, lock after lock, this stupendous engine of human power shall have ascended the Alleghanies, and, in like manner, marched down, on the other side, to a level with the Ohio. Is your navy stationed in the Chesapeake or Delaware, still must it draw most of its subsistence from the distant interior, over the railroads, or through the canals, built up under the impulse given to private adventure by our great system of internal improvement. What has been done, and is now doing, for that defence? Tortifications have either been built, or are now in progress, at all the great assailable points on our maritime frontier. These are to be kept and defended, not by a standing army, more perilous, in times of peace, to liberty, than all the wars of the world. A few sold.ers stationed at each of these fortresses will keep them in repair, and place and preserve all their military armaments in a good working condition, and ready to be put in operation by the national militia, whenever any foreign Power may choose to make any hostile demonstration on our shores. Where will that militia be found? Not here and there, scattered over a wide country, as would have been the case had not our system of encouragement and protection been established; but collected into cities, towns, villages, hamlets, at harbors, and waterfalls, as they now are, by the operation of that system on manufactures, on the fisheries, on navigation, on commerce among New York is united to the valley of the Mississippi by the States, on commerce with foreign nations, and on her own canals, and by that of Ohio; and the subsistence that agriculture which crowds around the neighborhoods of your navy at that station would come not only coastof such communities of men, to feed them, and thus to wise, from the South, through canals, but also in abunaid and participate in their prosperity. Your system of dance from the great interior of the West and the North. encouragement and protection, in its natural operation, It may never be a part of our politics to make Narrabrings together a dense population over all your mari-gansett bay a naval station in time of peace. No matter time frontier. Rhode Island, not more fertile than other for this oversight: for when war shall press on our coasts, parts of New England, can, like Flanders, sustain five that bay, Newport harbor, will be the great starting and hundred persons on each square mile; and, ultimately, returning point of all your fleets. That bay is now united furnish an armed militia, forming such a phalanx of defence on every foot of her shore, as no foreign army can ever break through and reach the land with one man of them alive. to the very centre of New England, by a canal leading from Providence to Worcester. A railroad is at this time in progress from Boston to the head of this canal; and projections have been made to unite this point with H. OF R.] The Tariff Bill. [JAN. 26, 1833. the waters of Lake Champlain, or of the Hudson; and added to this great national burden. Under the operatime only is wanted, to mature one or the other of these tions of our system of encouragement and protection, the schemes; when Providence, Boston, and Portsmouth, all people have not only prospered and grown wealthy, but New England, will be united, by canal or railroad trans- they have, while in this progress of prosperity, paid off portation, with the great valley of the West; and aided to their creditors 390,000,000 dollars; and taken up and by our perfected system of internal improvement, your cancelled outstanding demands against them, to that navy, at either of these stations, may be abundantly pro- amount. This payment has been made, not principally to visioned and fed from the banks of the Hudson, the Ohio, foreigners, as was so incorrectly stated by the chairman and the Mississippi. of the Committee of Ways and Means, [Mr. VERPLANCK.] Thus, sir, it is seen that the defence of our country This debt, when outstanding, was in stocks, owned, against hostile aggression is a part of our great system of much of it, by corporations; some for banking, some for that encouragement and protection which has been ex- insurance, some for religious, some for literary and scitended to every department of national industry. You entific purposes. Much also of these stocks had been cannot destroy the one, and preserve the other. You owned by individuals. Some of them had died, and their cannot hew down the whole tree, and hope that any one stocks had been shared among their widows and orphans. of its branches can be preserved, and kept in a flourish-Many such owners had, by misfortunes, failed in busiing condition. ness, and their stocks had been distributed among their Sir, the regulations concerning the disposition of the creditors, some rich, some of humble fortune. So it has public domain are a part of the same great system of na- come to pass, that the burden of taxation has been lighttional policy. The encouragement and protection given ened by the division and distribution of payment. Payby that system to your mechanic arts, manufactures, na- ment has carried relief and comfort into hundreds and vigation, fisheries, commerce with foreign nations, com- thousands of households; gladness into millions of bomerce among the several States, and with the aboriginal soms; and literally caused "the widow's heart to sing nations and tribes, have held out to the agriculture of for joy.” these United States such bountiful encouragement as that Thus, sir, has Congress, for about forty-four years, of no other country ever received from any system of Go- exercised the power given by the constitution, "to provernment. This encouragement has created and sustain-mote the general welfare," by a system of burdens imed a regular and increasing demand for fresh lands to be annually brought into cultivation. posed on the labors of the people, for the support of Government; and a system of benefits, done for them in return, by the labors of legislation. This was the great system, begun on the 4th of July, 1789, and brought down to the commencement of the last four years by various enactments, all devised and put in operation to finish and perfect that system. The right of pre-emption claimed by the British crown, to the exclusion of all other nations, was, in respect to all the lands within those territorial limits of the United States, established by the peace of 1783, conquered by the United Colonies from that crown, by the revolutionary war. The conflicting claims of the several States to What is the new system, already begun, and to be these lands were finally ceded to the United States, in nearly completed by the measure now under consideratrust for the benefit of each State; and the right of pre- tion? Government is hereafter to be a scheme of buremption, against all nations, all the several States, and dens, without any corresponding benefits to the people. all individuals, was, by many treaties with the Indian na- We are to raise money by impost, to support Governtions, acknowledged and established. As these tribes ment, that is, to pay ourselves; but we will not enact any diminished in numbers, or as time and other events commercial regulation "to promote the general welfare." brought them to the habits of agriculture, manufactures, We retain the power taken from the States by the peotrade, and civilization, their title to lands grown useless ple, and given to Congress; but we send the people back to them has been, by treaties, gradually extinguished. to the States for that encouragement and protection of Surveys of such lands have been made; and a great land their labor which we know the States have no power to give. market opened in the United States presented to the eyes Is not this bill a mere scheme of taxation? It provides of nations a spectacle never seen by them until exhibited for the wants of Government, but makes no provision for here, in this part of the new world. Demand and supply the wants of the people. Without inquiry, without knowhave been considered in this as in other markets; and ledge of the amount of means in the hands of any man, the one has been so adjusted to the other, that speculation, or the amount of payment to be made by any man or though not excluded, has never been able to control this any State in this Union, we sit here, and, without any examination or survey of property first had, we are about Under this system, territories have been formed; ex- to enact a great doomsday volume of taxation, which shall, tensive regions peopled; and great, flourishing, and po- in its exactions, visit every free laboring man in the na pulous States brought into existence, and admitted into tion, in his food, in his clothing, in his habitation, and in this Union. A revenue of two or three millions derived the instruments of his labor. Nor is this all. Not only it from this source has hitherto been appropriated to the visits his labor with a blighting curse, withers and conpayment of the national debt. When that debt is dis-sumes its productive energies, but also places him on the charged, this revenue belongs, of right, to the several degraded level, and in competition with the paupers of States, and must, under our great system of policy, be Europe, and the slaves of South Carolina. distributed to each of them. This it is now proposed to Sir, you dare not enact and pass this bill into a law. do, that each State may hereafter receive and retain its Never did the fathers of those freemen, even in their dividend for the great national purposes of education. struggle for independence, permit a slave to lift his hand Thus, in every State, the means of instruction shall be in aid of their battle, until he had first been purified and brought into every family; every child, hereafter born in consecrated to the holy service by the sacrament of the United States, no matter how poor and lowly, may be emancipation. We shall never degrade the blood of our taught not only letters and ordinary science, but also all fathers. those great truths which secure the blessings of this, and the hopes of another life. market. Is the product made by South Carolina slavery reduced in price? Let the master diminish the task of the slave. When our great system was commenced, the nation Spare the lash. Reduce the quantity of cotton, pushed was burdened with a heavy debt; the cost of the revolu- to surplusage on the consumption of the world. tionary war-the price of our national independence. labor now and then a holiday. Send a less quantity to Since that time, the expenditure of another war has been market; and bring home as much or more money for it. Give JAN. 26, 1833.] The Tariff Bill. [H. OF R. Employ the slave in some other vocation, if not of pro-couragement and protection now, which was so libefit, it may be of ornament, and adorn your country. La- rally bestowed on both by those laws in 1816? No one bor for something which cannot be swallowed. Raise ever dreamed of this hostility of interests, until within monuments, or after generations may never know that the last eight years. Until then, our great system, esyou have existed. Let the little tyrants of these days, tablished to promote the general welfare, did equally like some of the greater ones of ancient times, build py-advance the individual and particular interests of all.' If, ramids of bricks, and no longer toil to scale the highest then, by some strange perversity of purpose, or of acciheavens on bales of cotton. dent, any particular interest have, since that time, sprung Sir, disguise this question as you will, it is, after all, a up in our country, hostile in its nature to the general crusade against free white labor; first preached on this welfare, can the owners of that interest call upon the floor and elsewhere, and now put in the form of war by nation to cherish and cultivate this their deleterious plant; the owners of slaves. It is the maker of cotton against and, to promote its growth, demand that every other inthe grower of wool, the mere tiller of the ground against terest, which has hitherto flourished in our land, shall be the keeper of sheep; and because the first brother of extirpated and destroyed? Who would pluck up fields our race did, in such a strife, succeed in committing the of wheat, that he might thereby encourage a more violdest fratricide on record, the movers of this contro-gorous growth of hemlock? Does not the less always versy seem satisfied to earn a like malediction, if they give way to the more useful plant? Let, then, these polican but succeed in performing a kindred achievement. ticians beware how they undertake to prove to the AmeriSir, I repeat it, this controversy is a war against the can people that their production of cotton, rice, and tofree white labor of this country: a war levied by the bacco, by the labor of slaves, is hostile to that general owners of slaves. How often have you been told on this welfare which has been for more than forty years establishfloor, first in the voice of complaint, but now in the ed and promoted by our great system of encouragement tones of insolent menace, that the free laborers of the and protection. Admit that it were so. Do the owners of North could earn fifty cents a day, while the slaves of slaves believe that the system of encouragement and proSouth Carolina could not earn more than twelve and a tection is to be abolished, and more than seven hundred half cents? How often has the same voice told us that thousand free white people now employed in mechamanufacturing capital, used by this free labor, cleared a nic and manufacturing labor, and more than nine hunprofit of twenty per cent. per annum; while slaves and dred thousand employed in agricultural labor, are to be land, the cotton-raising capital of the South, would not, thrown out of employment, and reduced to poverty, in any year, come up to six? This base, inglorious ques- merely to render slave labor, employed in growing cottion is now agitating our country. We are told that our ton, rice, and tobacco, somewhat more profitable? Sir, great system of national policy encourages the labors of you may as soon "tear this steadfast earth from her axis;" the free, and renders capital in their hands highly pro- roll the moon into our orbit; and compel this globe to, fitable; but the same system discourages the labor of spin round that, as a mere satellite. What number of slaves, and renders them, and the capital employed with men, citizens of this our country, are concerned, and them, in growing cotton, rice, and tobacco, not profitless, rely for revenue and wealth on this growing of cotton, but merely less profitable to the owners. These men rice, and tobacco, for the market of this and foreign aver that the same system of laws is encouragement to countries? the free, but discouragement to the slave labor of the In this production, the planters own and work, on an country; and that all the great interests of all the free average, not less than seventy-five slaves each. These labor in the United States must be, nay, shall be, sacri- produce from two to six bales of cotton, each of three ficed; not to preserve, but to render more profitable, the hundred and fifty pounds weight; and four such bales will capital vested in Southern slaves. Dare these men place be estimated as a very low annual average product of one such an issue before the country, in all its naked, base, slave. In 1830, 732,840 bales were exported; 221,430 and odious deformity? Dare they tell the world of chris- sold in the domestic market. This quantity, at four bales tian nations the true state of this question? Would not each, would require 268,542 slaves. Rice and tobacco those nations who have universally excluded slavery from make about one-fifth part of the whole cotton, rice, and their civil policy, would they not hear with a shout of in- tobacco production. One-fourth part of the number of dignation, that one of these States had taken up arms slaves employed on cotton will be employed in these. against the Union, and had sworn to destroy that Union, This makes their number 67,135; and added to_the.numfor the glorious purpose of rendering their negro slaves ber engaged in the cotton production, the total number more valuable, by rendering the labor of those slaves is 335,727, employed in growing cotton, rice, and tobacmore profitable? They have not dared to do it. They co. If the average number owned by each planter be not have put a mask on this base-born controversy of avarice. less than seventy-five, then the whole number is owned Under this mask, this Shylock question of interest, of and employed by 4,476 planters. Some planters own mere money, of so many dollars and cents, has been several hundred, and some much less than seventy-five: changed in appearance; and is now, to the deceived eye but it will be found that the whole cotton, rice, and toof the nation, a question of State rights-State sovereign-bacco interest is owned by less than five thousand men. ty-freedom-chivalry-nullification. Egregious mas- This number of planters have placed themselves before querade of valor and patriotism! Brave cavalier-for how the whole nation, some part of them in the attitude of utmuch money-for how many pounds of flesh-will you ter defiance, and demand the entire abolition of the great sell all these painted, pasteboard glories? For the base and grovelling provisions of this bill; for their negro cloths at five per cent.; their own coats at twenty, and cottons, calico or plain, both for themselves and slaves, at the same rate of impost. national system of encouragement and protection. Here are five thousand men, backed by three hundred thousand slaves, now threatening destruction to a great system of national policy, which gives labor to more than sixteen hundred thousand free white people; and puts into use, in Does not this strip the question of all its paintings? productive employment, six hundred and eighty millions Yes, sir; they plainly tell us that the great cotton and of capital, owned by more than five hundred thousand tobacco interest of Southern slavery cannot thrive, un-men, engaged in the agricultural, mechanic, and manufac less the greater interest of Northern freedom in manufacturing production of the country; and supporting their tures and agriculture shall be destroyed. Are these two own families of not less than 2,000,000 people, by the interests indeed hostile to each other? and cannot the profits of this capital, and the savings made by their own same system of laws give to each of them the same en-care and labor in these vocations. Will it come to pass that more than two millions of men, owners or workers of six or seven hundred millions of capital, feeding, clothing, sheltering, or educating more than eight millions of people, shall be utterly ruined, their capital in a great measure destroyed, their labor turned over to foreigners, their bread snatched from their mouths, their clothes rent from their bodies, the shelter pulled down over their heads; and all this done by less than five thousand owners of slaves, who threaten to destroy the Union, unless this whole free working white population will agree to be destroyed themselves for its preservation? What cause do these owners of slaves allege for all this hostility against the free labor of the country? They contend that the great system of encouragement and protection, under which this free labor and the capital used by it have prospered, does render their capital of land and slaves, employed in growing cotton, rice, and tobacco, less profitable than the capital employed by free labor, and much less profitable than it would be if that system were destroyed. Let us examine these allegations. Amount of cotton sold to the American manufacturers, Rice and tobacco, not less than [JAN. 26, 1833. 7,752,000 2,999,928 Here, sir, is the great efficient capital of the slave owner, in amount $139,336,705, and here, too, is the annual income of it, $48,000,000. What is the capital employed by free white labor, in mechanics, manufactures, and agriculture? $678,453,848. And what is the annual profit on that amount of capital' $50,428,520. The profit on capital in land and slaves is 34.5 per cent. per annum, while that of capital used by free labor is, per annum, but seven per cent. and a small fraction. If any thing can satisfy the owner of slaves, such a rate of profit must fill up and satisfy the utmost wants of the most greedy avarice. Thirty-four per cent. on capital! And that, too, secured by a monopoly of climate which does not suffer We have seen that mechanic and manufacturing labor, its production to grow beyond its own limit. Yes, and by together with labor employed in raising wool, use a capi-a monopoly of labor, also, of which the laws of the free tal, annually, of the value of $312,453,848, and that this States do not permit the use. labor returns to the owners of this capital a profit, annu- Do you say that more slaves and more land are required ally, of $23,428,520. It has also been shown that North- to make this amount of production in cotton, rice, and toern agriculture, in supplying this manufacturing labor, bacco? Then, if you please, double the number of slaves, and realizing a profit of $27,000,000, does actually use and double the quantity of land; say one man can grow more than $366,000,000, as a capital for that purpose. but two bales of cotton, and that each bale will require Now, what amount of capital do these owners of slaves five acres of land for its production. What then? You employ in the production of cotton, rice, and tobacco? will still have a profit of 174 per cent. on your capital. and for what amount do they sell their whole production? Nay, do you still say it will require more labor and more It has been seen that the number of slaves, employed land? Then double them both again; and take 1,100 on these products, is 335,727. Fifteen years ago, these working men, if you have so many in the whole cotton slaves were not worth more than $200; most certainly not region, and take 11,000,000 acres of land to raise your over $250 each. The system of encouragement and pro- crop; let each slave make but one bale, and let that be tection which, in its progress, has been felt in every part grown on ten acres of land; and even then, on such a of our country, has enhanced the value of slaves not less weight of capital, you will realize 8 5-8 per cent. per anthan from 20 to 50 per cent. This whole number may num. Do you tell me your lands will wear out? Not, sir, now be reckoned at $300 each, and amounts in value to if you are skilful husbandmen. Will your labor grow old $100,712,100. Each slave can easily cultivate, in cotton, and become useless? There is in that labor a restoring ten acres of land. This will much more than raise four principle, and it reproduces itself more than once in the bales, of 350 pounds each; but let it be allowed as the need-course of its existence? Do you tell me that the other ful quantity. At ten dollars per acre, when cleared and part of your slave capital is less productive? Sir, does it enclosed, the whole quantity will be 3,357,270 acres, and not feed and cloth itself? Yes, and also doubles its own the value equal to $33,572,700. Add to this amount five value once in twenty-five years. This gives four per cent. dollars for each slave, annually, for instruments of labor, per annum; and the whole capital of the world does not or a sum equal to $1,678,635; and ten dollars each, for equal that rate of profit. yearly clothing, equal to $3,357,270. These several sums are, To this add the value of 335,727 slaves, at $300 each, And the total amount is, It is, therefore, demonstrated, that capital in lands and $38,618,605 slaves, employed in the production of cotton, rice, and tobacco, in the South, is more, very much more, profita100,718,100 ble, than capital employed by free labor in the agriculture or manufactures of the North. $139,336,705 Nothing is added in this calculation for the food of these slaves, because it is well known that, over and above, the cultivation of so much cotton as, by this estimate, is set down as the production of each slave, he cultivates five or six times as much corn as serves to furnish his food. This, sir, is the condition of capital in the North and in the South, under the provisions and operations of our great system of encouragement and protection. Not only has the value of the slave portion of it been increased from 20 to 50 per cent. during the last 15 years, but, even at the present high valuation of both slaves and lands, their united profits are more than 34 per cent. a year. Will this Here, then, is a capital in lands, instruments of agricul- capital be more profitable if that system shall be destroyture, and slaves, of one hundred and thirty-nine millions, ed? Can the ruin of seventeen parts of the country proand one-third employed in producing the great Southern staples, cotton, rice, and tobacco. What do the owners of that capital annually realize, in money, from the production of this capital? Here we have no difficulty in finding the answer. It may be almost entirely found on the records of the treasury. Take the year 1830. That year, the value of exported rice was, Tobacco, Cotton, Total exported, mote the welfare of the other seven? What man of wisdom, what statesman, of this or any other nation, will undertake to prove, that, if seven hundred millions of Northern capital were ruined, or thrown out of use, and one million and a half of free working men in our country were, with all their skill and all their machinery, excluded from employment, left without the power to produce, $1,985,824 or the means to consume, the fruits of the earth, or the 5,586,365 fabrics of labor; who, I say, in his senses, would attempt to 29,574,883 prove that such an overthrow of the wealth, and strength, and prosperity of the free States in this Union, would ena$37,248,072 ble four or five thousand owners of slaves to grow cotton, JAN. 26, 1833.] rice, and tobacco, in the South, with a greater amount of head. annual profit? 1 [H. OF R. The Tariff Bill. That gentleman will never give up his project, unless he should be made to believe that the repeal of If such a catastrophe in the North would produce such those laws would benefit the free labor of the North. effects in the South; if the repeal of our system, and the The shipbuilding trade of the United States is protected ruin of capital and labor in the free States, would enhance by laws which exclude all foreign built vessels from your the value, and multiply the profits of slaves in the other market. Will this law be suffered to remain unrepealed States; yet who, that speaks in the accent of a christian, in your code of navigation? No, sir, the same siroc of the or stands on the feet, or moves with the gait of a chris- South, which has blighted other branches of Northern latian, pagan, or man, would call for such a repeal, and effect bor, will also wither and destroy this. such a ruin, that he might obtain such a profit? The very The laws of protection now secure to American navigaidea of the proposition is a horror; an outrage on reason, tion the trade among the several States; and all foreign on morals, on liberty, on the constitution itself; and vessels are excluded from your canals, rivers, bays, and whenever the great common welfare of all the free peo- from coasting your shores from port to port. What shall ple of the United States shall be sacrificed, or even en-preserve these laws from the fate prepared for other parts dangered, to render slaves more profitable to their own- of your system of protection? The same spirit which ers, our constitution will be blotted out, our Union ex- has arrayed South Carolina against the Union, and which tinguished; and a people, now the guardians of the world's now calls on us to pass this bill, and with a cowardly soul freedom, shall then be made the miserable panders of surrender the great interests of the nation, to satisfy that profit to the insatiable avarice of a base and vulgar despotism. rebellious spirit; that spirit will, in a few years, demand Sir, the advocates of this measure, what do they pro- the repeal of those laws which protect our coasting and pose to do? They intend to establish their new system of internal navigation. Vessels of every navigating nation policy on the overthrow and ruins of the old. They de- will be invited to scour your shores, from port to port; mand the utter abandonment of all encouragement and and to swarm up your bays and rivers, from the ocean to protection, not in one or two, but in all and every depart- the very heart of your country. You will see, on your ment of industry. This bill is the commencement of the wharves, and far up in the interior, not the honest, brave, war, and is levelled, almost exclusively, at cottons, and and frank-hearted American seaman; but sailors of every at wool and woollens. It may be more easy to destroy region, of every garb, every tongue, and every vice, in manufactures in detail, one or two branches at a time; the whole catalogue of human profligacy. in this it is thought the friends of one will not come in to aid those of another. Accordingly, under this bill, iron and steel are left in a very well protected condition. Other manufactures are not touched at all by the provisions of this measure. Shoes, boots, cabinet ware, glass, hats, carriages, saddlery, leather, jewellery, and plated ware, are all perfectly protected, by a duty of thirty per cent.; and this protection excludes, in these trades, all foreign competition from our markets. Let not those concerned in them fancy themselves secure. Cottons and woollens do not peculiarly excite hostility in the owners of slaves. It is protection itself at which their blow is aimed; and when they shall have repealed the law which protects cotton and woollens from the conflict with foreign capital and labor, and ruined those two great manufacturing interests, they will demand a repeal of other laws, which protect other departments of industry; and if, terrified by their array of hostility, we now surrender to their menaces, you will see, one by one, all your mechanic trades, all your various manufactures, stripped of protection, and left to be destroyed by a competition with the exhaustless capital and labor of foreign nations. Why should not this chivalrous spirit of free trade, which invites the world to work against our labors on the land; why should it not challenge that world to come into free competition with our vessels, and our mariners on the waters? England, we are daily told, can work cheaper than America; and why should not our commerce among the several States have the benefit of their competition, and be moved from place to place by those who can afford to carry it at the smallest cost? Doubt not, nay, sir, you cannot doubt, that these all potent masters of slaves will, when they have beaten down one barrier of protection, never cease the strife until all are demolished." Your foreign navigation and commerce are among the great protected interests of the nation. Will that protection, do you believe, be preserved, when all others are abandoned? The laws which give the American character to our ships and their cargoes, and secure a preference in carrying the merchandise of the world to those ships, will follow, in the progress of repeal, those laws which now protect your manufactures; and that voice at which the negro slavery of the South trembles throughout a thousand plantations, will, when at the call you have torn the spindle from its place, and thrown the loom out of gear, command you, and you will obey, and haul down the sail. Nor will this anti-protection hostility stop at the overthrow of your mechanical labor and manufacturing industry. Are not other labors of the free States protected? Your fisheries will, when you have yielded up your manu- Sir, what is your navigation or your foreign commerce factories to appease the South-your fisheries will be made to the seven anti-protection States of Virginia, North Cato feel the vengeance of these lords over three hundred rolina, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and thousand slaves. Do not tell me that these fisheries are South Carolina? They have turned all their navigation the great nursery of seamen; these seamen are free men, to the more profitable trade of growing cotton, rice, and are white men, are protected men, and each one of these tobacco. They do not export or import in their own vesattributes of a Northern manhood is odious in the eye of sels; nor send abroad to foreign countries, or bring back him who owns, and drives, and works the slave. So long from those countries, in any fiscal year, more in amount as protection exists, under any law, the planter will make than $2,500,000. The great staples of their agriculture war on that protection, and never be satisfied until he has are sold to American merchants, and help to make up the destroyed it, and ruined those who are sheltered by its mass of our foreign commerce which is sent out and provisions. It was, I believe, at the last session of the last brought home in American ships. Do you believe they Congress, or at the first session of this, that a resolution prefer these American merchants and these navigators? was placed on your table, requiring some committee to re- No, sir; it is the law, the system of American protection, port a bill to repeal the laws making allowances to the which brings this Southern production on board Ameriowners of vessels employed, and to the men employing can ships, and makes it a part of American commerce. them, in the fisheries. Do you think that scheme was These planters will not longer endure that their cotton abandoned? It was proposed by the head of nullifica- shall be spun by American spindles, or woven in Amerition in this House, if it may be correct philosophy to can looms; and do you believe that when they have reaffirm that such a thing as nullification can have a lieved themselves from these evils, they will not seek and |