a congress which will do as she wishes; and the caucusmongers, among whom doubtless many New England manufacturers are to be found, are only too happy to do all that is asked for them in this respect.

It would be unfair to represent the North as unanimous on this tariff question from the very beginning. It is only as time advances that its full danger has become apparent. There was, and is, a strong party in the North, not without a strong Northern esprit de corps, but not anxious to push matters to extremities; its members are zealous for the Constitution, zealous for State rights, zealous for the preservation of the Union, and fully conscious that it can only be preserved by a conciliatory policy as between the different sections. As may be imagined, most of the Northern statesmen, as opposed to the politicians, are to be found in this party; and they have generally guided it so as to check the ultraNorthern tendencies of their fiercer and more shortsighted countrymen. They have generally, therefore, been considered as the friends of the South; and their superior ability and greater political skill having generally given them a preponderating share in those parts of the government of the Union which foreigners are brought most in contact with, there has arisen a very common idea in Europe that the South has hitherto had everything her own way, and

has seceded in a fit of the sulks because she has at last failed in carrying an election, like a baby crying at not being helped first to pudding. A slight acquaintance with the history of Federal legislation will show that the South was very far indeed from having things her own way; and that on questions which were to her of paramount importance she not only did not have her own way, but was completely powerless and at the mercy of those whose coldblooded selfishness drove them to act towards her in a fashion which might to a looker-on have seemed to be dictated by the most relentless and malignant hatred.

CHAPTER III.

THE BATTLE OF THE TARIFFS-NULLIFICATION AND COMPROMISE.

THE history of the long battle on the subject of the tariffs, which was so fiercely waged between the Northern and Southern sections of the Union for upwards of a quarter of a century, deserves to be narrated with a greater abundance of detail than I either can or wish to bestow upon it. But in making an attempt to account for the disruption of the Union, it is impossible to avoid dwelling for a short time on this, the most powerful of the causes of which that disruption has been the result.

The antagonism between North and South on this point had been signalled at the time of the Convention as one of the greatest dangers which the young Republic was likely to be called upon to face; but it was not till the second decade of this century that the antagonism found its expression in Congress, and in

Federal legislation. Since that time it has gone on increasing. When once it had been started, it could hardly avoid doing so. What one party fancied to be its life, was in no fancy, but in reality, the death of the other. The former, the Protectionist party, was perhaps the strongest at first, and its strength was continually increased. The people among whom it existed had a hereditary character for being hard, selfish, intolerant, and merciless beyond probably any other that has existed on the face of the earth. They had known too little adversity to have learnt moderation, and been fed too long upon bunkum to have learned modesty. They would not yield an inch out of respect for the rights and feelings of others, and if they had an advantage, would not refrain from pressing it to the uttermost. There will be people in every state who will do this; and it is the duty of governments to keep them from encroaching too much. But this duty the Government of the United States could not perform. In the first place, it has not the power. In the second, it was ingeniously contrived so as to foster the evils which it ought to have prevented, to an extent which no other constitution ever devised has been able to approach; for no other government has ever provided such a machinery for disturbance as the quadrennial election of the President. Not only does it excite passions, but

it invites the repetition of factious pledges. At every recurrence of that event, the support of the Northern voters had to be bought by promises of higher and yet higher protective duties. If it had not been for this, it is conceivable that even New England might at length have been satisfied. Had the legislature and the government been permanent, they might have exacted a pretty high tariff, if nothing less would serve them, and been content to let it remain. But if there is a grand upsetting of everything every four years, and if at every recurrence of that period the party wirepullers come forward, bidding for support for their respective nominees, by trying which can make the highest promises, to be fulfilled at the expense of their neighbours, it is hardly in human nature—it certainly is not in New England nature— to resist the temptation of trying to make a profit out of the circumstance.

I have represented this tariff question as entirely the result of the criminal selfishness of the North, worked upon, for their own factious purposes, by a set of clever though ignorant dealers in politics, considered not as a science but as an article of trade. And I mean so to represent it. The honest Protectionists of this country, who prefer a high tariff on necessaries, on its own merits, and as a matter of public policy, have few parallels in the American

Ꭰ