question of dividing out the spoils of certain States amongst the influential capitalists of the other States of the Union. Sir, when I consider that by a single act like the present, so large an amount of money may be transferred annually from one part of the community to another-when I consider the disguise of disinterested patriotism under which the basest and most profligate ambition may perpetrate such an act of injustice and political prostitution,—I cannot hesitate to pronounce this very system of indirect bounties to be the most stupendous instrument of corruption ever placed in the hands of public functionaries. Do we not perceive, at this very moment, the spectacle of less than one hundred. thousand capitalists, by means of this unhallowed combination, exercising an absolute and despotic control over ten millions of citizens? Sir, I will not anticipate or forebode evil. I will not permit myself to believe that the Presidency of the United States will ever be bought or sold by this system of bounties and prohibitions. But I must say that there are certain quarters of this Union, in which, if a candidate for the Presidency were to come forward with this tariff in his hand, nothing could resist his pretensions, if his adversary were opposed to this unjust system of oppression."

It may be said that Jacob is not showing much of

the craft which belongs to him, or anything of his character at all, except a determination to stick at nothing, in order to push his brother to the wall; for he seems to gain his ends by pure force of physical strength, and weight of numbers. But that would be doing him gross injustice. He has not much of the wisdom of the statesman about him. If he had, the words of Benton and the two Carolinians would have had their weight with him. But though he has not that sort of wisdom, he has abundance of low cunning. He knows how to divide and conquer. The Western States have no desire to protect the peculiar interests of New York and New England; and their votes must be bought; and it may be possible to carry the process still further, and to purchase the votes even of some of the Southern States, who may have some points in which their interests are not identical with those of the rest. So, in pushing forward the new tariff bill, its promoters added to it clauses, which were meant to catch stray votes from the other side. cessful. The people of the

tended to buy, though they

Jacob is only too sucStates whom it is indislike the system of

Protection, when only the Yankees profit by it, view it with different eyes, when they themselves are to have the benefit of it; and though their representatives in Congress may see the drift of the proposal,

and feel that it is both short-sighted and unworthy to be caught by such a device, yet they dare not vote in accordance with their sentiments, for the evil fashion in which elections are carried on has reduced them to the condition of mere delegates. Benton, the Missourian, as we have seen, endeavoured to mitigate the evil, by proposing to extend to the Atlantic States of the South the protection to their industry which the crafty Northerners wished to give to that of Missouri. But he was obliged to vote for the bill, whether it contained his indigo clause or not, and he and the other representatives of the West, though gnashing their teeth with rage and shame, were forced to follow the triumphant chariot-wheels of New England. Yet they could not refrain from murmuring; and their displeasure found vent in the words of a senator from Kentucky. "It is in vain," he says, "that this is called the American system. There is but one American system, and that is delineated in the State and Federal Constitutions. is the system of equal rights and privileges, secured by the representative principle. A system which, instead of subjecting the proceeds of the labour of some to taxation with a view of enriching others, secures to all the proceeds of their labour, exempts all from taxation, except for the support of the protecting powers of the Government. As a tax neces

It

sary for the support of the Government, I should vote for it, call it by what name you please. As a tax for any other purpose, and especially for the purposes to which I have alluded, it has my individual reprobation, under whatever name it may assume." But after this decided expression of opinion, how does the speech proceed? It proceeds thus: 'It might be supposed from what I have said that I will vote against this bill. But I am not at liberty to substitute my individual opinion for that of my State," and more to the same effect.

Surely the Union may now be held to have ceased to exist, if the Union may be considered to have been instituted for the common good of all its component parts. There has been a notion in former days that subjects existed for the benefit of their sovereigns, though I hardly suppose that even the courtiers of James the Second or Louis the Fourteenth would have said so in so many words. But that, in this century, half the citizens of a Federal Republic, and their several Governments, should be supposed to exist for the benefit of the other halfthat they should be taxed for them-that they should have to keep up a system of commercial legislation for their advantage, though it was bringing themselves to the verge of ruin-that while they saw their neighbours fattening on their spoils, they

should be themselves debarred from reaping what small advantage they might have got out of a system which was devised against their interest—that Virginia should have the bread snatched from her lips, in order that Massachusetts might dine off turtlesoup and hang her rooms with damask,-I think that the most fanatical Filmerite would have stood aghast at such an idea. He would not have realised, that it would be held by his enlightened posterity that a majority can do no wrong. Might not the South have said, that Liberty and Union are fine things in their way but if this is what they mean, it is not easy to see what we revolted against King George for, and we wish our ancestors had let it alone?

:

Why did they not secede at once? They had a perfect right to do it; and even if the Constitution had dropped from heaven, bearing in letters of gold, "Art. 1. No State shall secede from this Union under any circumstances," they would still have been justified in doing so.* Far less provocation had produced the rising which their Northern oppressors celebrated every 4th of July with a carnival of bombast, and which, illegal as it was, even the Brit

* In the articles of the German Federal Union, there actually is a declaration that the Confederation is indissoluble. The legal powers which the German Diet possesses as against individual States are much greater than those of the President and Congress in America, although, of course, it has much fewer functions.